Hey, Athletes! Want to learn a new way to lose body fat and become leaner? Tune into this week’s episode to find out how!
Episode 45 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
How to Get Leaner
In this week’s episode, Joe is back and the team gives us their updates and announcements before they dive into the study for the week. This week’s study is about sleep and how better quality and a good amount of sleep can actually help make you leaner.
For this week’s topic, the team discusses how to be the best athlete over a long period of time. They give their tips on how to stay healthy and how to continue to be an athlete throughout a lifetime. This week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is called Heavy Load Long Distance. It’s just how it sounds so get ready to Meet Yourself!
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 47-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Heavy Load Long Distance
- The Shrums Go Dairy Free
- How To Be The Best Athlete For A Lifetime
- Sleep-The Key To Being Lean
- The Countdown To 19 May!
- Joe’s Chapstick Saga
- Updates and Announcements
- And A LOT MORE!!
Diving Deeper
If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you:
Study of the Week
Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
- Where does High-Intensity Fit in Training?
- Macronutrients for Better Sleep and Bolstering the Immune System
—
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 Get Leaner
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. I’m your host Jared moon. The garage team athlete podcast is a result of my desire to build better humans, unequivocal coaches, and autonomous athletes. I’ve spent the last several years obsessing over program design, nutrition in every other way you can optimize human performance.
This podcast distills the latest scientific research with what I’ve learned and blends it with the not so scientific field of mental toughness. We are here to build you into a dangerously effective athlete. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find out more about our training at garage gym, athlete.com and if you want to pursue more into the field of coaching and programming, head to end@threefitness.com.
Thanks for listening.
All [00:01:00] right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Kyle Schrum. What’s up, Kyle? Hey, how’s it going? It’s going well. Ashley Hicks, how are you doing?
Ashley Hicks: Hey, what’s up?
Jerred Moon: And Joe Courtney. Hi. Hi back. You are back. So let’s start with you since you’re back. How’s life? Give us some updates.
Joe Courtney: I have a big one and a less big one.
Jerred Moon: Great. And
Joe Courtney: the big one is, for the past two weeks I’ve had pretty bad chapter lips and I finally got chapstick and now it feels amazing. I don’t think my lips are used to having a beard.
Jerred Moon: Just real quick. That was the big update. That was the big one.
Kyle Shrum : Okay. My goodness.
Joe Courtney: Lots been going on.
Jerred Moon: I’ve been super busy.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. The, the last big one is I had to kind of reshuffle and reorient my life. Because workouts
Jerred Moon: sound backwards as
Joe Courtney: chapped lips are constantly on your mind and like, it causes me to lose sleep. the other thing I was just wasn’t working out. That’s not, we feel okay.
so yeah, [00:02:00] I re shifted around my schedule and my days so that I was working out. I wasn’t working on it as much, but now it’s, it’s working better. I was finding that with all the, you know, life crap and living out of a suitcase and a locked down BS that I just don’t really want to get into. That is just everything sucked.
I was just getting really frustrated and aggravated at anything, like things that would, I can normally brush it off. I would just get pissed off at and I just wouldn’t feel like doing anything or working out. So now. I started my day instead of like getting coffee and then going and doing work and stuff.
I just get coffee. I chill for like 30 40 minutes while I drink coffee. May watch YouTube videos and then work out right away before I can get pissed off or during the day. And then later on I might get this off, but it’s fine cause I already worked out
Jerred Moon: okay. One day. One day you’ll have a home again, Joe.
Yeah.
Joe Courtney: One day. Maybe
Jerred Moon: a couple of months. Yeah. Damn. Alright. that was a great updates. I
Kyle Shrum : love the chat
Jerred Moon: stick. Kyle? Nope, go ahead.
Kyle Shrum : Go ahead. Go ahead, Ashley.
[00:03:00] Ashley Hicks: I was just going to say Walmart soap and like, you could still go in and grab some champs.
Joe Courtney: I mean, grocery stores have them. I just haven’t gone to get it.
And every time I’ve gone to go to strive forgotten or like. My one stick that I had was like very at the bare bottom minimum. So I was just trying to make it last, but now I bought like five of them and I stashed them around. So in case I lose one, I can just go and find it.
Jerred Moon: Well, I just, I just set a PR.
This is the most I’ve ever talked about. Chapstick. I’m just going to go ahead
Joe Courtney: get the big picture.
Jerred Moon: That’s a, that’s a year when
Joe Courtney: you’re not grooming your facial layer. There’s new irritations.
Kyle Shrum : He’s like a chapstick, squirrel. Just kind of hoarding things away.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. Every single bag that I have has one in it.
Jerred Moon: Anyway, that’s a tee shirt. I do know it’s not. All right. All right. Kyle, updates from you, man.
Kyle Shrum : I’m not really sure how to follow the chapstick squirrel, but, we actually, Hannah and I decided to go dairy free this week and our nutrition. And I have mixed [00:04:00] feelings. I don’t feel any kind of like bloating or anything like that, but I don’t really know how much bloating I was feeling before.
I do know that I miss cheese. I miss cheese and I miss milk. and also cut Hill almond cream cheese is very tasty,
Jerred Moon: but
Kyle Shrum : it’s like three times as expensive. And I had to go to like five different stores to find this stuff. So the money I spent in gas trying to find the stuff, I don’t know. Anyway.
Jerred Moon: it’s dairy free.
And also don’t try and substitute your preview. Just cut out the whole like Garrett desire.
Joe Courtney: I’ve been in dairy free for like 10 years, and I know there was such thing as all men, cream cheese
Jerred Moon: and
Ashley Hicks: a recipe he needed.
Jerred Moon: No. Yeah. Got it. I definitely had it, but I.
Kyle Shrum : Yeah, I’m not, I’m not just sitting around eating cream cheese out of the tub.
Jerred Moon: So
Joe Courtney: it’s like you live your life.
Jerred Moon: I don’t know what your habits are.
Kyle Shrum : It’s for recipe. Well, my habits can’t be as bad as hoarding chapstick. So anyway,
Joe Courtney: that’s not a bad habit.
Jerred Moon: That’s healthy. [00:05:00] And it’s not, it’s not a habit yet. It takes, you know, several weeks.
Joe Courtney: Clearly I was failing at it.
Kyle Shrum : Anyway. dairy free experiment is ongoing.
That’s what I’ll say.
Jerred Moon: That’s great. Well, okay. Good.
Kyle Shrum : Yup.
Jerred Moon: I mean, Joe’s dairy-free. I’m Jerry Ashley. Are you dairy free? So like, why? Well, cause there’s gluten and dairy. So what dude? What took you so long? I just realize everybody’s dairy free, but you,
Kyle Shrum : well, I’m not the only one in my house that has to jump on board.
So
Jerred Moon: yeah, I mean, I’ll have dairy. I’m not as like hardcore dairy free is probably the other two, Ashley and Joe. But, I mean, I’m dairy free, but like, if I have a cheeseburger, if I could, I’m going to do a cheeseburger. Like I’m going to go unhealthy. I’m just going to go all the way unhealthy. And have a cheeseburger.
I’m not going to be like, no, give me that lettuce wrap burger. Cause that’s, if I’m trying to be healthy, that’s what I do. But I don’t eat burgers that, [00:06:00] I mean we’re at like once a month max
Joe Courtney: probably. I think you’re even bigger thing was you discovered coconut aminos.
Kyle Shrum : That’s true. Yeah. I had to use that for them.
We’re using the Coke one seed all week book. And so that’s something that she, that’s the first time I’d ever heard of this stuff and went and got some of that and to soy sauce, a substitute. And Hannah eats a lot more soy sauce than I do not have. She doesn’t just drink this stuff, but like anytime we have like rice or anything like that, she put soy sauce in it.
I’m not really big on soy sauce, but, I might be pretty big on coconut aminos, but that stuff is, my stuff is good. So,
Jerred Moon: alright. Anyway.
Kyle Shrum : Yeah, so stuff. Big changes to diet,
Jerred Moon: dairy and chapstick. I’m loving how we’re getting started here. Ashley is good stuff. What’d you got?
Ashley Hicks: I don’t have anything too big. We’ve done, some beach trips this week, just cause the beaches are open again.
So that’s, Kyle’s rolled his eyes at me, but shoot, I mean, we’ve just taken the mornings and Scott, [00:07:00] because of his schedule, they’re not working 100% full time. So he’s had a couple of days or like mornings off. So we’re able to take the little man down to the beach and he loves it. As soon as we cross that bridge, he’s like, Whoa.
Which. His water and he freaks out. So, and then they just opened certain parks here too, so we took him down and got to, yeah, that’s a slide on side. So things are, things are opening up slowly, but surely the restaurants are lit like 25% capacity here. And, yeah, as long as you maintain social distancing still.
things are starting to slowly but surely get back to normal. So it’s been kind of a fun week. so I’ve had a workout in the afternoon or just I pushed a workout to today actually, which is normally my rest day. So, definitely shifted my workouts to have some fun on the beach.
Jerred Moon: Nice. Well, restaurants are opening back up and Emily and I went to one last, like the luckiest day.
The first day they [00:08:00] opened back up. We were just like. You know what, we’re not going to be, we’re not gonna be afraid. So we went to MI Casina shocking.
Joe Courtney: Right?
Jerred Moon: Which was a nice, it was, it was a beautiful thing and that’s it. It was cool to go to a restaurant and I’ve been to a restaurant in like a long time.
the only other updates for me, the, I feel like I can have a given update on the aura ring now. So I’ve been wearing it for a week. And I love it. That’s it. I love the ordering. I think it’s awesome. it gives me all the, the data that I want, which is, so it shows you your heart rate variability, like throughout the entire night, and then gives you an average and then gives you your highest, and you can see your lowest.
And same with resting heart rate. It’ll, it’ll show you what your lowest resting heart rate was and the average for the night. And I didn’t like how much, like, whoops, tracking all that data, but they keep it a secret. They’re like. Like Joe, you know, like you, you’d have to like go back and [00:09:00] find where your lowest heart rate was.
Like they wouldn’t tell you. You have to go find it. And again, if it wasn’t in that last wave of deep sleep, I’m not going to get on that anymore. Like whatever. I don’t understand. Whoops. Recovery thing. I like, Or as algorithm, whatever, they’re doing a lot better. It seems like it’s more heavily based on sleep, body temperature and resting heart rate with a factor of heart rate variability.
But not like the main factor. And cause I’ve never seen my heart rate variability tracked like on a. I don’t know, every 30 minutes for a full night of sleep or, or, or more, I’m not sure how much they’re tracking, but you can see the graph and my heart rate variability is all over the place, just like I suspected.
So it’s like, you know, it goes, it gets really low. It gets really high. Like it just jumps up and down all over the place. So to say, like one minute recording somewhere during the night like Luke does is how recovered you are. The next day I think is complete BS. And the aura ring has just kind of further pushed me.
Down, not liking loops, recovery score, but liking loop for everything else. [00:10:00] the things that it doesn’t do well at all, it’s, it’s a horrible finished tracker because it’s not one, it’s basically a glorified pedometer. So if you think about getting an aura ring to track workouts or whatever, not a good, not a good fit.
It’s really only good for sleep and, and kind of knowing your, your readiness. But it does communicate both ways with, Apple health. So I wear my Apple watch for workouts, not, I take the ring off and I wear the, The Apple watch for workouts. So ordering imports that and add that to my activity for the day, so that, that makes it’s tracking a little bit more accurate.
and so, yeah, the combination of wearing my Apple watch only for workouts and ordering the rest of the day and during sleep, is pretty big. And the battery life is like, I don’t know, six or seven days, I guess. That’s awesome. Yeah, I charged it yesterday, which. Was it a week of having it, but I didn’t need to.
I just was like, I’m going to charge it because I don’t want it to die anyway. Ordering is, is awesome. So I like that. Again, no affiliation, [00:11:00] just trying out all the different, I think I’ve tried everything now. I don’t, I think everything that we talk about, I don’t know. I haven’t tried the garment. I don’t know if I will.
They’re just too expensive. but they seem really cool. A lot of that is like the number one in our community. I didn’t have no idea until he did that poll. that’s it. Other than the book. The book is like right around the corner, so you can actually preorder the book right now. On Amazon, you can go search for killing cover book and on Amazon and order the digital version, and then the paperback and hardback stuff will be available closer to May 19th when the book comes out.
If you are on the email list, you’ll be getting lots of emails about that this, this week, this week when the week this podcast episode publishes, so you have that to look forward to. I can’t wait to get it done. Just know the audio book. I’ve been get this question a lot. I guess people listening to the podcasts are accustomed to hearing my voice and they’re curious about the audio book.
It will come out one week after the. After May 19th so one week after that, it’ll be [00:12:00] available. And that is it. You guys want to talk about fat and sleep?
Ashley Hicks: Let’s do it.
Jerred Moon: Alright. We’re looking at a 2020 study, a randomized controlled pilot, trial of sleep health education on body composition changes following 10 weeks resistance, exercise, Aleve, no women in this study.
Ashley, I think it was pretty, yeah. 30 male participants. So I’m just gonna give you the gist of the study because the title makes it fairly clear what they did, but they had two groups, the exercise group and the exercise plus sleep education group, and it’s just sleep education. That’s all they did was like educated them on how to get better, higher quality sleep through a lot of recommendations.
I’m going to read every single one of the things that they, Gave in the study as like suggestions. That way everyone knows everyone listening to this. This is, that’s my big takeaway for this entire podcast, so I’ll read that later. but essentially they just [00:13:00] educated people on sleep and then they put them both on a 10 week resistance training program, and then they tracked, lean.
Lean mass, fat mass and overall body fat percentage. And the lean mass change, was not a significant difference, but the exercise plus sleep did have more of a lean mass change. and. Fat mass loss was much significantly greater in the exercise plus sleep group. So sleep is very important, especially when you add it to a resistance training program.
I think we all already knew that, but the big thing, like I said, I wanted to get out of this, was to actually read. All of their, the sleep education that they gave. that way everyone here who’s been already probably on a training program can start implementing those things a hundred percent, and you can start seeing your body fat drop and lean mass change and all this stuff.
So first I’ll read that. As the main takeaway at the end. But you guys, [00:14:00] I’ll get your takeaways. Actually, what did, what’d you think about the study?
Ashley Hicks: I like to study. The thing that I mentioned, or that I think I should mention is the, so they had two groups. One of the groups was just working out, just training.
And then one, the other group was training and sleeping, or. Implementing their sleep regimen, I should say, or before sleep regimen. And it was only a 1% difference. Correct me if I’m wrong in that, but I believe it’s only 1% difference. So to me, that wasn’t too huge, but it’s still there. Lean body mass still went down more than the group that was not focusing on their sleep regimen.
So it’s still, I think, a win for sleep, if you think of it that way. but. I think sleep should just already be the priority regardless of lean body mass. it is a nice benefit is what I said, but, I think it should always be the priority. not just for the body mass, but just in [00:15:00] recovery to sleep is all around good for your body.
and then I would like to see more of a nutrition. implemented into this. I said, I feel like if they would have added that, that would have been like a triple threat and maybe there could have been something even bigger, between the groups. Again, I don’t know. I would have liked to have seen that.
And I think I said sleep is a key takeaway here for anyone listening to the podcast. I feel like this just adds to the growing list as to why you should get sufficient sleep. So.
Jerred Moon: All right. And Kyle.
Kyle Shrum : So, and I think, I think the breakdown that we read about it kind of highlighted this as well, but, there were some pretty. Pretty high limitations to this study. They, they didn’t put a whole lot of, a whole lot of factors into the study itself. it was pretty much just a, here’s your workouts, and then this part of the group is going to have sleep [00:16:00] intervention.
And literally the sleep intervention, all it was was, here are some tips to get better sleep. You know, they didn’t have them in a lab or anything. You know, they didn’t have them, you know, hooked up to anything. They weren’t, you know, supposed to track it. I think they had a questionnaire that they had to fill out before and after, and that was pretty much it.
so there were, there were some pretty high limitations to the study, but what I took away from it was that even with those limitations on the study. There was still a statistically significant difference between the, the group that got the sleep intervention and the group that didn’t it, especially in the fat loss, the body fat percentage, really went down for those who had a sleep intervention.
So literally just trying to sleep better. Was enough to have a statistically significant difference on your fat loss, which I thought was interesting that. All you have to do is just know [00:17:00] some basic principles of how to sleep better and try to implement them, and you can see better results in your body composition.
And so I feel like, just like what I actually said, I think I’m a nutrition portion. Would have been, would have been helpful. And then maybe even something where, maybe it was a little bit more extensive, where their sleep was kind of tracked better and was, was monitored a little bit better. but you know, to know that just, just practicing some better sleep hygiene habits, can really have a significant difference.
I think that’s a, that’s a big win. I
Jerred Moon: think what you guys bring up is the lacking parts of what you guys bring up is actually why I really like this study. Because as you mentioned, Kyle, all all we did was. Throw in some basic education and the results speak for themselves. Now, whether or not their calories were controlled or they changed their diet, or, or were they [00:18:00] even actually sleeping better?
Like those are variables we don’t know. So I see why you guys would want to see that in the study, but I think it’s ultimately awesome that there was change between the two groups, even though there weren’t those things because the nutrition side of things. I agree with that. But to a point I’m like.
That that like, I don’t know if they should have just done a food log as opposed to like tracking their calories or put them both on the same diet, you know? But, but then like if you drastically changed their diet too much, then you, it’s like you’re doing two different studies. So I see why they excluded nutrition altogether.
They’re just like. Keep eating whatever you’re eating, and we’ll see if this one little thing makes any change. so I think the nutrition thing would have been really hard to execute, but I see where you guys are coming from. Joe, what did you take away from this. First
Joe Courtney: I want to say that I think it’s completely BS.
I have been getting all kinds of great sleep for two, two decades, and I’m still at about 15% body fat. So no, no, that doesn’t work. just [00:19:00] kidding. But I think this is something that is, is great for, for newer people, and. That that might not understand sleep and stuff. So like a lot of times you get a new athlete, they have all these goals, they want to do all these things.
You get all kinds of stronger, change their diet, change whatever and lose weight. But if they’re lacking sleep, lack, lack of sleep is a, is a still a stressor on your body. And if your body’s stressed from not getting enough sleep and it’s going to overcompensate somewhere so it’s not going to get as much to cancer.
And one of the things, I don’t know when you guys talk to athletes and coach is sleeping, one of the first things that’s brought up. Which is why, and I think this because of how basic of a study, kind of like what you were saying, Jared, is that like this is just a very basic, basic, super easy, not a whole lot in depth study, but it still has great changes.
And when you’re first talking to an athlete. everybody’s going to be like, okay, so on your checklist, you know, you should do this and make sure you’re getting eight hours of sleep, and then you move on to the next thing. Whereas now you could be like, Hey, look, here’s a study that all they did was implement good sleep and this is how [00:20:00] much weight they lost more.
So it could just back up a very easy initial tip that you give to newer athletes or people that need some sort of change and it’s easy to digest and easy to implement.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, I’m going to, I’m going to steal like just straight Jack these from the study and put them in our documents and links section of for all the garage gym athletes or just like sleep tips because it’s public information.
It’s not actually stealing for anyone who finds me unethical, but readily available. Yeah. So, yeah, I think I agree. My only counterpoint is to, your first comment is if you weren’t sleeping so well. What position do you think that you’d be in?
Joe Courtney: At least 18 19% I don’t
Jerred Moon: know. There you go.
Kyle Shrum : Well, in the study, these were untrained individuals too, so we’re not talking about people with 15% body fat anyway,
Jerred Moon: so, and that’s what’s annoying about a lot of these studies is I am just seeing it over and over.
We’ve pulled a lot of studies now and [00:21:00] they’re always like, yeah, I mean sometimes they’re like, we want trained people, but it depends on what they’re doing. But anytime they want to see some sort of big. Change in body fat or, or body, lean mass or something like that. They’re always like, let’s get some people who haven’t worked out in a while.
This is going to be great. And they do it every time. And I, I get it. Not women, not women. but they, I still don’t know why I need to, like, I want to go talk to a scientist about
Joe Courtney: that. I think it’s because they can only have like. If you only want it two months, if you’re going to see a whole lot more percent change over two months with untrained people versus if you get actually trained athletes, you might not see as much of a correlation or difference.
You might need like four or five months because the, the, the, the results are going to be just a, you know, a little bit here, a little bit here because they’re already training.
Jerred Moon: Yeah.
Joe Courtney: But I didn’t, I didn’t, I almost did point out the fact that in the study there they were at about mid 20% body fat. So
Jerred Moon: yeah, I mean, that’s a short protocol to see the results that they did.
And [00:22:00] I dunno, my hypothesis on why they don’t include women in some of these studies is like, I think if you go beyond one month, like they probably have to track start tracking cycles too, because it’s probably a factor. You know, if, if someone was, they started this protocol, you know, everyone’s going to have their cycle at a different time too, right?
All the women would, I’m sure they’d have to track that. So I really think it’s just laziness on that cause all it is is another data point. Like it’s just like. Tell us like, let us know and you know, I don’t feel like it’s that much more difficult. I feel like it’s just laziness on the scientist part.
I’m on your
Joe Courtney: side. Just don’t want to be studied.
Ashley Hicks: Or
Jerred Moon: it could be that they’re just not, yeah, they’re not volunteering. I don’t know.
Ashley Hicks: Hey, I’ll volunteer. I will say on their points that you’re probably about to dive into, if you, we’ve talked about these in the, I think we did a down-regulation topic a few months ago, and most of these are.
In that podcast. So if I’m,
Jerred Moon: yeah, and this is like, this is all stuff that I’ve known [00:23:00] people listening to this probably know. but it’s nice just to have like. Here’s the actual list from a scientific study. You know, cause you know, we’ve all probably gathered these tips and tricks here and there from reading books and like other podcasts and interviewing people and stuff.
But now we have like, okay, here’s a list from a study in which people saw results. So here we go. I’ll read them all off. So these were all of the intervention education pieces they gave people in the study. Number one, keep it dark, quiet, and cool in the room. You sleep. That’s multiple things, but that’s number one to go to bed and get up at the same time during the whole week, including weekends.
Joe Courtney: That was my favorite one.
Jerred Moon: Consistent, sleep and wake times. I’m, I’m super consistent on that. You guys as well.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. And I think it makes
Jerred Moon: the male.
Kyle Shrum : Yeah. No. My three year old woke up at five 20 this morning, so no, I don’t, I don’t get up at the same time every day.
Jerred Moon: Yeah.
[00:24:00] That’s all right. Three go, go to bed so that you can get eight hours of sleep. Now that is, what’s crazy about that is I, the whoop says it and so does the aura ring. Like apparently I’m awake. For a large portion of the night and in all of their like little popups in the app or whatever, like this is normal, but I guess I toss and turn quite a bit and I’m awake so I could have a nine hour sleep window and only get eight hours, you know, because I’ll, I’ll be awake and not even know I’m awake is the point there.
It’s not like I’m staring at the ceiling and I’m like, I don’t know why I’m awake. Anyway, so yeah, I think the sleep window. Is important. Like if you want a full eight hours of like being asleep, then you need to extend that window probably by an hour. Or if it’s seven hours in an eight hour window number four, two hours before bed turned down, the lights put away.
PC. [00:25:00] Pads and mobile phones or use blue light filter and lowest possible light setting. No exercise, no food, coffee or black tea or drinks with energy, do calm and positive activities and do not bring up relational conflicts before bedtime. That’s all number four. That’s a, B, C, D, and E.
Joe Courtney: You can’t always control.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. That’s like when I thought of that. It’s like if you started to get in a fight with your spouse, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m in my downregulation. I need a good night’s sleep tonight. You cannot do this to me right now. That would only like escalate things, so I don’t know, just try and try to avoid that.
Maybe just stop talking to people as much during that. That those last two hours,
Kyle Shrum : just take your sleeping bag outside.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. I’m going to sleep in my car. We will talk. We will discuss this in the morning. alright. Number five, when you get up in the morning, expose yourself to as much light as possible right away.
That’s a good one. helps [00:26:00] set your circadian rhythm. They didn’t really, I don’t think I said why, number six, last cup of coffee for the day, six hours before bedtime. I think that’s just a good, good rule of thumb there. Seven, try to get at, get so much sleep that you do not need an alarm clock to wake up.
Now that is something that is relatively new for me, but I’ve been doing ever since whatever. Last year when I started getting more sleep and stopped waking up so early, I don’t wake up to an alarm clock anymore, but I wake up around the same time every day, which is still generally before six. You guys use alarm clocks.
Collin to catch a flight. I don’t think you sleep though. Like how many, how much sleep did you have kids for your
Joe Courtney: long class? I see.
Kyle Shrum : Yeah. My alarm clock went off at five 20 this morning,
Jerred Moon: so my kids wake up early, but we just put the fear of God and then stay in their rooms. Oh man.
Kyle Shrum : I wasn’t going to bring that up on the podcast because, but anyway, yeah, that happened.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. We’re like, Hey. [00:27:00] Don’t, don’t come in here until after six. and then they got really good about listening to that. And so now we just push it to six 30 and they just play until, we get up. But I’m normally up and cooking breakfast before they even come out of their rooms that these days,
Joe Courtney: I think my sister installed a light into her kids’ room that they can change with the app.
And if it’s like, if it’s a color red, they can’t leave. And then once they turned the color to green, they can leave something like that.
Jerred Moon: We had, alarm clocks like that and our kids’ rooms for a long time where. Because they would wake up at like, they would just wouldn’t know what time it is, you know?
And they’d wake up, it’d be like four 45 they come in our room and be like, alright, breakfast time. Like, no, it’s not. Go back to sleep. and so then we gave him these alarm clocks that turned color instead of waking them up. You know, like it, it turns green when you’re allowed to, allowed to wake up and the cabin.
Yeah, we’ve, we’ve done that. All right. Number eight, do not use electronic [00:28:00] devices that emit light in bed. It’s a solid one. Number nine, learn a relaxation technique. Use it to fall asleep at night, or if you wake during the night. And that’s it. And now that I think is really important. I try and do a breathing.
we talked about this in the downregulation, but I try and do a breathing exercise before bed every night cause it does help relax me and get me ready for bed. But that last part they mentioned, if you wake during the night. So I don’t have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night every night.
But some nights I do like whatever. I wake up at 2:00 AM and I have to use a bathroom that I have found that if I do box breathing, as soon as I get back in bed after having used the bathroom, I go to sleep much faster as opposed to just like laying there and trying to go back to sleep. So I think that’s, I’ve never actually heard someone suggest that before.
And I kind of just have started that not that long ago. And it does help done. So for anyone out there who. Peas in the middle of the night. There you go. There’s a tip. [00:29:00] That’s everything. And if you’re an athlete, we’ll put all those, in the documents and links so you guys can snag those and start to really decreasing your fat mass and increasing your lean muscle mass.
According to science, right? Topic is seasoned athletes in minimum effective dose. So this kind of, this comes from one of our athletes. So how do we find the optimal balance between athletic performance and athletic longevity? Like the philosopher Toby Keith said, wonder if I should just keep reading all this.
I ain’t as good as I once was, but I am as good once as I ever was. Alternatively, how can we be our optimal selves over the longest period of time without blowing up. I love this question and I would love to hear what you guys think, Kyle.
Kyle Shrum : Oh, okay. well, I will say, man, I was expecting Ashley to go before me, so my first point was going to be the Ashley stole all the points, but I’m going first.
[00:30:00] Okay, good.
Jerred Moon: I was trying to put that in there.
Kyle Shrum : Yeah, I would say, I would say ego is the enemy. So I kind of feel like with seasoned athletes, people who have been doing something for a long time and are expecting a certain level of performance at that certain thing, if the, if you’re finding that your, your performance is not where it used to be, then try to keep your ego in check.
And understand that that’s kind of, that’s going to happen. You know, that’s kind of part of it, of, of becoming a seasoned athlete, to use the PC term, I guess, becoming a seasoned athlete means that your performance changes. I don’t want to say it gets worse, but it changes. And so maybe being at the same level that you used to be.
Is this. It’s just not what’s going to happen. So just kind of try to keep your ego in place. And I think ego might be part of what leads people to injury
Jerred Moon: as well,
Kyle Shrum : not just seasoned athletes really. I think ego. Is an issue that we have to deal with in training through out our entire [00:31:00] history and experience with training.
I think it, I think it can lead to injury and new new trainees. I think it can lead to injury and seasoned athletes. So ego is the enemy. Make sure that you keep it in check and, and don’t try to do things that. that your body’s not prepared to do anymore. and don’t expect certain performance things out of your body that it’s not prepared for it anymore.
I would also say. And I think this person was asking us specifically, obviously about this. And I would say that we program with athlete health in mind. You know, we want to keep our athletes healthy. We want to make sure that we’re not pushing people to hurt themselves and all of those things. And so, Stick to our programming, you know what I mean? If you’re, if you’re going off the beaten path, you know, and you’re kind of putting our programming in with something else. I know there are athletes out there that do that, and, but if you’re going off the beaten path and kind of doing things other than our programming, you know, we can’t really.
Can’t [00:32:00] really help you with that, but understand that with our programming, we have your health in mind. And so if you stay to our program and we’re going to take care of you, and we make sure that there are scaling options for everything that we put, that we put together for you. And, and we’re trying to make sure that you can be as healthy and as optimal as possible.
So. That’s what I’ll say.
Jerred Moon: I don’t think any of us have anything else to say. Ashley, what you got?
Ashley Hicks: I think that the three elements that we have, I said these should be a priority. That’s the reason that they’re in our training app and what we have. You check them off every day for, A point to for each one that you do.
And I think that that should be, you’ve said it multiple times. I think we’ve all said it multiple times. That is the basis for before you add the, the program and the training onto it. So, that helps launch for you for longevity as well as staying healthy. so that way you can, have a better training session.
And. Again, [00:33:00] just helps you in the long run. And I just said, listen to your body and don’t try to overdo it. I agree 100% with what Kyle said, he hit the nail on the head. It’s just you cannot expect yourself to do what your younger self could do or you know, or. Potentially, like if you’ve gone through something like a surgery or you know, if you are a female who’s had a baby, or there’s so many things that happen in life.
So I think you need to train to the best of your ability at that moment and focus on that. and you are training to better yourself. Right. don’t try to focus on what others are doing either. And then I decide to move every day, whether it’s a walk or some yoga, even during rest days. And then just have fun in your training and activities, you know, whether you want to do sports or anything else to, do something that you enjoy, on top of that.
And I find that it helps you be an athlete longer or be an athlete through, you know. [00:34:00] Throughout your life versus, you know, if it’s just training and you’re, you kind of always don’t look forward to it. It makes it harder to continue the habit, I feel like, so
Jerred Moon: Jody got,
Joe Courtney: I think variety is key for longevity in the long run.
I think if even if you’re training for one specific thing, you need to change it up at times. So even if you’re. Goal for the year is to have 50 pounds to every single lifts and you just want to, you want to lift heavy things, then you still need to be adding a plyometrics and doing other things to switch things up and even looking longterm, you need to have mixed in some other cycles of other things that aren’t directly related to what your normal training is.
Just to give your body something new, because I didn’t, anything new is going to help your body prepare for more stuff and. I noticed that if I’m socially watching football, some of the best pro athletes were multi-sport athletes, so even with them, they’re not training the same sport all [00:35:00] their life.
Usually the best ones did two sports, three sports in high school, even two sports in college, and they’re still performing and excelling because they are more well rounded. And because since they have so much versatility, they’re getting injured less and they might have more stability, more, more, more of everything.
So I think you need to add in more variety, do some different things on the weekends, change up every couple of weeks, every couple of cycles on something that’s just a little bit new, just to, you know, keep things new.
Jerred Moon: I don’t have a ton to add beyond what you guys said, other than, you know, getting redundant.
But what I do have, I think the first thing you need to do is know your goal. So we talked to a lot of athletes on the podcast. You know, I’ve coached a lot of athletes, and that is very normally a very lacking answer. You know, some people have one for the most, most of the time the answer is like. You know, be healthy, you know, be able to play with my [00:36:00] kids, live a long time, all great.
Those are great goals, but if those are honestly your goals. Then you can’t really get upset if you don’t PR your back squat. You know what I mean? Because that wasn’t your goal. It’s kind of like being in a ton of debt and being frustrated that you’re not out of debt, but you’re not doing anything to try and get out of debt.
So like, why are you pissed off about it? Like you’re not trying to move in that direction. So why, why be upset about it? So I think know your goal, and make sure that you. Are moving within that goal and at some point you’ll probably have to drop the PR mindset, you know, RPR shirts and stuff. We kind of feed into that mentality, but I don’t ever want it to be into anyone’s detriment.
You know? I want people to set PRS and get better, but it also kind of depends on where you’re at at that, on that spectrum. Like I, you know, we’ve talked about this a lot. I want to maintain a competitor by our standards, competitor level fitness across all the, all the different [00:37:00] domains we have in the conditioning, and we even have age brackets for it.
You know, we have age brackets, and so if you have a similar goal, then it’s really just like trying to balance all these things. And that’s a fun goal for me. But you know, that that means for me on like my back squat, my back squat is in the competitor level. Has been for several years, fluctuates up and down, but I don’t care about it getting more.
All I ever care about is it being above, at or above that competitor level, so I’m not trying to hit PRS anymore. I’m like, normally when I, when we go into fit week, I’ll warm up, I’ll load up what would be the competitor level, which for squat is not like, not crazy for me. I’ll make sure I still got that.
And as long as I hit that and my first, first attempt and fit week, I’m like, I’m good. Like whether I do any more sets today or not, like I’m fine. I still have that. And that’s kinda what I do in all of these things. It’s like I’m trying to keep, you know, they’re talking about minimum effective dose.
I’m trying to keep minimum effective, high level [00:38:00] fitness. They’re within our competitor realms because if I were to increase those standards to something that’s ridiculous, I probably won’t be able to achieve it. And that’s what I’d be chasing. So I’m not chasing UPRS anymore. I’m just chasing. How long can I, how long can I maintain this well-rounded level of fitness and that it’s going to be like a lifelong pursuit.
Cause I’m, I’m now, I’m just waiting to get older so the brackets can change and I can ease up a little bit, but I’m not, I’m not there yet. so just know your goals and, drop the PR mindset if it’s, if it’s becoming a problem, like feeding into the ego issues everyone else was discussing. And that’s all I have on.
That guy is now here is a, is a good one. It’s a great one. Heavy load, long distance. I’ll brief it. Formax meters. Bear hug a sand bag for 60 minutes. We recommend recruit 20 to 30 pounds, established 30 to 40 pounds. Competitor 40 to 50 pounds or greater. And so you’re just gonna walk for max meters, bear hugging, something heavy around that weight.
[00:39:00] And I’ve said it a hundred times. I think that this style right here is the best test of mental toughness and a great way to build up your mental toughness. Really just to work on your internal dialogue is what I would say, because it’s going to get, if you use the same way every time and you go for 60 minutes every time, like everything’s locked into place, so they really only the parameter you have.
Are those meters, but also your mindset, you know, I call that mental benchmarking. Like how many times did you cuss me out when I programmed his workout last time? Was it 20 times? Okay. Did you only cuss me out 10 times this time? I’m talking to the athletes out there who are cussing me out for some of these meters, have Saturday workouts.
So I think that’s, that’s really important. but those, that’s the only tip I have is kind of keeping a mental benchmark. what do you guys have. Kyle.
Kyle Shrum : So this is not one that I’ve done before, but it sounds really fun. and also we just did the iron mile, right?
Jerred Moon: So I’m putting lots of carries in the programming and the
Kyle Shrum : got the [00:40:00] iron mile, and then now I’ve got haloed long
Jerred Moon: distance.
So happy about it.
Kyle Shrum : Yeah. So, but I’ll, I love it. So, but I would say kind of the same thing as our mile. Just embrace the suck. get in there and. And do it and be there. Be present in the moment. Just let, let your mind go to some dark places and kind of feel around in there and feel what that feels like because that’s exactly what this is going to do to you.
Jerred Moon: Because this one’s not painful, like the iron mile. You know that one. There’s a good amount of pain you’re dealing with. This one is just like, what are you made of? Let’s see. There’s no reason to like really stop. Like, unless you. Well, again, some looks here. Alright, Ashley, what are your tips? Sorry, I was getting getting too deep into in the meat yourself land.
Ashley Hicks: I don’t know if, to be honest, I don’t know if I could carry something like that for just an hour. I probably could. Maybe if I,
Jerred Moon: well, I’m not saying you can’t, you can’t stop, but if you can not set the weight down for an hour.
Ashley Hicks: All right, well maybe that, that’s my [00:41:00] challenge.
Jerred Moon: What if that was your child and you were like, couldn’t,
Kyle Shrum : that’s what I do.
That’s what I do for these kinds of workouts like that. I imagine that I’m carrying my kid and I’m like, yeah, can’t put them down. Can’t do it. Yeah.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah, but I carry my kid on my hip, not in a.
Jerred Moon: I’m trying to think of a real world scenario, which you’d have to carry your child for an hour and not be allowed to put them down.
Even like in an emergency, like in the world thing, and I can’t really think of it, but just to put yourself in that situation
Kyle Shrum : now, for sure. If I had to now you can do it. I’ve trained for it.
Jerred Moon: I always have put everything like this in relation to my kids and now William, he’s a little too big. Like I’m like, dude, a year you’re becoming an iron mile situation, so we’ll see what happens.
Ashley Hicks: well if you do have to stop, I said, you know, have little goals for this. Like carry it to the light post. If, if, you know, if it’s towards the end and you’re just dying, you know, make yourself go to that, whatever. Is it a visual representation that you have? Or maybe it’d be like every half [00:42:00] mile or every mile, you know, just kind of check yourself and keep pushing yourself if you can, but if you have to.
I don’t know, drop the weight and kind of shake it out and then bring it back up. That’s what I would do in order to keep going on this. And then, Yeah. If for, I always say jams, but for this one I would say listen to an audio book or a podcast, like it’s a long time, so why not just kind of try to take your mind off of it a little bit and just listen to, I don’t know if that killing comfort book was on that audio book.
Maybe we could all just listen to that while we’re doing that.
Jerred Moon: Reprogram this workout a week. Release just for you, Ashley. Oh,
Ashley Hicks: people are going to hate me, but anyways, that’s my, those are my
Jerred Moon: tips. Awesome. Yeah. You got anything?
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Listen, I had fun when we did this one, it was pretty good. We took a our slam balls to a trail and carried them along a trail.
I had, I used my 60 and she used the 40 and what we did to break it up, we did five minutes on, one minute off [00:43:00] for the whole thing. Even from the start, just so we stuck to the time the entire way. So in the beginning it was, it wasn’t too bad. But then toward the end, the last two minutes or so of each five minute grouping.
I got a little challenging. We just kind of power walked in and walked all around the trails. So I’ll break it up to timewise if you want or if you need to, but start from the beginning cause then later on it’s
Jerred Moon: going to get older. Yeah. You guys have some great like practical. I just want to throw it out there.
I challenged someone to not put it down. Now I will let you know I have not achieved this. So I will try again to see if I can do it. I tried the first time I did it right after Joe and I programmed this one and I could not do it, and I was a little upset with myself. but it’s, it’s worth a try.
Joe Courtney: That’d be easier with a sandbag on a slam ball, but it’s still pretty hard.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, because you have to bear hug it like,
Kyle Shrum : yeah, it’s
Jerred Moon: good, Stacy. Alright, well that’s it guys. thank you so much for listening to the podcast. you know, if you’ve been enjoying [00:44:00] the episodes and everything that we’re doing, just just podcast wise, go ahead and leave us a. Five star review and a positive comment.
just so we can see how we’re doing. We’d love that feedback. And also if you’re not already, sign up for a free trial to train with us so you can see how we integrate some of the, some of the science into our programming and also how awesome the community truly is if you already are a part of the community.
Thank you so much. We love having you as a part of it and a hope to keep you around for a long time so we can show you what. A seasoned athlete looks like for a minimum effective dose over long periods of time, but that’s it. That’s all we’ve got this week. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the garage gym athlete podcast.
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. [00:45:00] .