Hey, Athletes! Do you use a wearable? What do you track as far as metrics go? Is HRV one of them? Listen to the newest episode to learn more about the latest study on HRV!
Episode 25 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
This week Ashley joins Jerred and Joe on the podcast. The study is about Heart Rate Variability and if it correlates to any other recovery metrics. Spoiler, it doesn’t and should be considered independent. The team break down their own metrics, how they’ve used HRV as well as how it should actually be tracked. They also go over what they track and measure as athletes and how that has helped them in their fitness journey. Lastly, the crew go over the Meet Yourself Saturday workout and provide tips and tricks on how to accomplish this one.
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
IN THIS 45-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Condition Me To The Grave
- Updates From The Team
- HRV
- Metrics And How They Can Or Can’t Help
- Announcements
- New Cycles
- Tips for MYS
- 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:
- Robb Wolf on The Nuances of Keto, Electrolytes, and Garage Gyms
- If it Fits Your FOOD QUALITY and FIT WEEK
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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
HRV (Heart Rate Variability) Podcast
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. I’m your host Jerred moon. The garage team athlete podcast is a result of my desire to do better humans, unequivocal coaches, and autonomous athletes. I’ve spent the last several years obsessing over program design, nutrition in every other way you can optimize human performance.
This podcast 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 endofthreefitness.com.
All [00:01:00] right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jerred moon here with Ashley Hicks. How’s it going, Ashley?
Ashley Hicks: Going great. And
Jerred Moon: we’ve got Joe Courtney has always, as always, with a confused look. how, how’s life? Joe? that’s me throwing it right to you for updates. ‘ll do my announcements at the end.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, it’s, it’s alright. I guess I can’t, I can’t do much. I’m working with what I got sound. That’ll only, well, it’s been raining like almost more often than it hasn’t been. In San Diego, so I can’t even use my outdoor gym. So I basically, I am grounded to indoor, which means the bike, cause I can’t row either because of my hamstring.
So yeah. And even I’ve discovered a foot potential foot injury that I don’t even know if I’m going to get checked out.
Jerred Moon: It’s just
Joe Courtney: the muscles on top of my foot near my ankle, on my hamstring side, my bad hamstring side are completely like strained and painful to the touch. So I’m just like, alright, I’m
Jerred Moon: just broken.
It’s on the same bad leg though.
Joe Courtney: Same [00:02:00] bad leg, but it’s on the front of the foot and it like, and when I go into like plantar flection, it’s like a super stretched and like kinda hurts. And then even like kinda hurts to touch. I can still do things fine, but like if I bike for too long, I can feel it.
Jerred Moon: That’s what had me finally go to the physical therapist earlier this year was, you know, I’ve mentioned kind of that I had some knee issues, but it was like. My foot started hurting really bad and my knee was hurting. Like it was just getting, and it was getting worse, not better. And I was like, okay.
But it was all connected, you know, because my knee was a slightly Tinder, so when I would run, I would take like weird steps unknowingly, and that eventually injured my foot. And then. Fix all that. But, so my update is the opposite of yours. I’m just going to jump into it cause it’s like a good segue is I feel like I’m like 110% right now.
Like I just feel
Joe Courtney: someone’s gotta be thriving.
Jerred Moon: I feel awesome.
Joe Courtney: I all suffer. So you can fly.
Jerred Moon: I only, I only give that update because of your brokenness, but I feel, I feel great, man. My knee is 100% I’m running, I’m [00:03:00] running fast again, it’s just, it’s just great. Like I’m doing really well. So I just wanted to.
Let everybody know that. And then my other update is I’m just really fired up for the next cycle, started writing most of the programming, and I’m just, I’m, I’m always excited when I’m writing new programming. I’ll be going into your next 12 weeks. What are you guys gonna
Joe Courtney: do? Shred and Track.
Ashley Hicks: Go on shred VD.
You better give me something good, bro. I was
Jerred Moon: seriously going to spin for 12
Joe Courtney: weeks. Well, no, I, I’m going to spin until I can run. So, I’m going to start doing, since I’m already going to PT for stuff. They’re just like, yeah, we’ll just add the hamstring on too. Cause they actually said that if I don’t get it treated properly, it won’t heal properly.
I’ve never had a torn hamstring, but I know they’re very temperamental.
Jerred Moon: yeah. And don’t sprint ever again.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Well, yeah. Which sucks cause I’m supposed to be playing lacrosse, in my five weeks. But yeah.
[00:04:00] Jerred Moon: Probably wouldn’t do that. That’s just, yeah. All right. Ashley, updates from you.
How’s life? How are things going? I
Ashley Hicks: know they could be better, but it’s okay. still living in a renovation said I would never live in a rented. Fading house. How do you, how do you say that?
Jerred Moon: I don’t know. It’s being renovated.
Ashley Hicks: A space that is that is so much better. Jerred moon. Why didn’t I go with that?
Yeah. So it’s starting. Brain is not, I have no structure. I haven’t worked out since our Spartan race. yeah. So if you’re listening to this podcast. Feel bad for me.
Jerred Moon: Well, I do. I’ve never lived it. I’ve done a lot of DIY projects. You know, we have some rental properties and I’ve lived in some older homes that just straight up required that and doing one project at a time is stressful enough.
Like I’ve had to do kitchen work before. And if you don’t get the kitchen work done, like right away, that can really disrupt a family. Like, you know what I mean? Like if you don’t have [00:05:00] an operational sink or a dishwasher, you know, that can become problematic really fast. I’m not saying that’s what you have.
I’m just saying like, it’s, it’s funny how the small things can just throw your entire world out of, out of whack really fast.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. It makes you. Try it now to remember not to take the little things for granted. So we do have a functioning kitchen cause that would, that would drive me crazy.
That’s the biggest thing. And I can shower, so
Jerred Moon: we’re good. We’re good.
Ashley Hicks: I’m just complaining
Jerred Moon: if you can, if you can, like, like we were talking about before, just wipe off enough space anywhere in the house that throw a laptop down. You should be fine. That’s, that’s right
Ashley Hicks: on the dining room table right now.
So we’re good to go. All
Jerred Moon: right, well let’s, the announcements, sponsored by broccoli and blueberry combo. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, I’m still good still. I’m still hitting like 200 grams of blueberries a day, so, Oh my goodness. That’s a lot of blueberries. So I’ll go with blueberries and [00:06:00] AMS.
So AMA is, have like. Yeah, they dramatically went up. Then there are a lot of them now. We had like, there’s just a lot of AMA questioned. You saw some. So I’m getting to those. Joe and I have been working on them and just so everybody knows they’re going to be published, a YouTube and podcasts.
We have a lot of new announcements coming that way. But if you guys want to submit anything AMA for just a quick. Asking a question about a specific topic or maybe you want us to cover a study or idea, go to garage gym, athlete.com/ama you can do that. And then also killing comfort.com the book is done.
I’ve already mentioned that, but I’m still going to wait a while. Probably be the first or second quarter of next year probably first cause I just like to get things out of the way. The first quarter of next year should be a shipping. To everywhere in the world except for China. So I’m kidding.
It’s probably can go to China. I’ve just, I don’t think I’ve ever actually shipped a book to China. So anyway, that’s, those are my announcements. We can, [00:07:00] we can get into the study. So we’re going to be covering HRV. The actual study name is heart rate variability, neuromuscular and perceptual recovery following resistance training by flat 2019 . Okay, so this is, it’s a super simple study.
I’m going to quickly brief what happened then. You guys can, you can say anything you want about it. I don’t have any, whatever you want to say. Just say it. So they wanted to take a look at, HRV in relation to not necessarily lifting, like not, Hey, how does it correlate to lifting? But they really wanted to see how it correlated to other recovery metrics.
So they looked at a lot of other recovery metric metrics, like a vertical jump, some objective, some subjective, and they just want to see if HRV correlated to any of those. And so what they did, they took 10 dudes straight up dudes with at least one year of training experience. All subjects played rugby in the surrounding [00:08:00] area of Savannah, Georgia.
And what they had them do, they did baseline HRV. They had them lay down, standing HRV, a bunch of different stuff. They did 10 rep max testing on the squat, bench press and lat pull down. And then they had three additional visits where they come into the lab after that where they would, check out the velocity of their lifts, the vertical jump, like I mentioned, and then also Tinder max.
They would. Also measure HRV and then they did that consistently across all the visits to find out if there was any significance in HRV data compared to, like I said, other recovery metrics that already have a lot of data in research for a behind them and general. They basically found there is no correlation between HRV and other recovery metrics.
I have to make that very clear and we’re going to talk about it more. But I will just go to Joe first. I mean, anything, man, thoughts, ideas, questions, [00:09:00] comments, concerns? Can I say anything else about HRV or this study? yeah,
Joe Courtney: I was definitely confused at first because I was expecting like.
An actual experimental study, and I don’t think I was overthinking it, but they were just trying to see how HRV relates to things. And it just makes me think that a lot of people really don’t understand how HRV, works or how it affects them. And, To me that like this, this, I guess they were, they could have also been looking at it wrong to me is that because it’s a very shortsighted study was a very small, like within a week versus, I think heart rate variability is more of a longterm thing.
yeah, and I only say that because, I mean, we were, we have whooped data from 18 plus months of wearing it, of looking at it every single day to actually understand how. How it works. So I’m not by no means a expert on HIV, but I think I have a pretty pretty decent graphs of it and how it acts and how you can be having, how you can use it.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, and it’s funny, I mean the, when anything rushes onto the scene, [00:10:00] which I feel like HRV did just because it came became a lot easier. It’s kind of like the human genome project. They finished that several years ago and now you can. Go to whatever website and, you know, spit in a cup or whatever.
I’ve never actually done it. And then you send it off to these companies and they’re like, Oh, you’re, you have genetic predisposition for power exercise, and you might also get Alzheimer’s. Like, you know what I mean? Like they have all these studies that same with HRV. It became very. Easy for the average Joe, no pun intended, to measure HRV.
And now I think a lot of people were trying to combat like, Hey, is it even worth measuring? Should we measure it? Does it help with anything at all? So a actually, what are your thoughts on the study?
Ashley Hicks: I agree with Joe. Like I, I thought it was going to be more so when I read it and I was like, okay, copy HRB is not, you know, it doesn’t really correlate with other measurements.
But, and then. Just always with studies. I always find [00:11:00] things that are like little things that are interesting. So they, measured their HRV standing up and lying on their back. And I thought that was interesting. I was like, would that affect you at all? I mean, and it would have. And then that’s the other thing, right?
With HIV. So you guys have done this, gosh, how many times? Multiple times. And I’ve, you know, in Slack chat, cause I don’t really keep up with my HIV, I’m just going to sh. Say that out loud. but you guys always talk about same time of day, right? Isn’t that important? And I didn’t really see that.
Like did they always do it in the morning? Did they always do it in the evening?
Joe Courtney: window?
Ashley Hicks: There was a two hour window. I didn’t see that.
Jerred Moon: But yeah, and that, that’s a big thing with HRV is consistency in measurement. But I really feel like. So everyone listening, you guys already know what happened.
Like they weren’t trying to prove if HRV core, cause it’s just lifting. There was nothing else. there’s no conditioning, endurance, anything like that. So they, they’re just, they weren’t trying to [00:12:00] say, Hey, does HRV correlate to whether or not you’re ready to perform lifting? They’re just like, Hey, does this, does it correlate to other recovery metrics that we are already aware of that have some efficacy or proven?
And they’re saying, no, not, not really. There, there was some significance, but not anything major. And that can be like a, that could start leading people down the wrong path, thinking that HRV is not, something worth tracking. But I think I have to, I have to just shift to anecdotally here.
I’ve been tracking HRV for a long time and what I think, I feel like whoever did this study wanted to cover HRV, but they don’t, they like weren’t a coach or. They, I feel like they had very poor understanding of how you should test somebody. Because if you were to tell me, Hey, I want to test someone’s HRV, I’m going to have them do three lifts and it’s going to be 10 or at max, and I’m going to send them home and I’m gonna come back and say, I would have told you that’s not near enough stress or volume to affect HRV.
I could’ve told you that [00:13:00] right off the bat. I’d been like, it’s not enough because I know for a fact. That anytime I personally go just do a lifting session, it has very little correlation to my HRV. HRV is way more cooler, correlative to overall strain on the body. And one thing I’ve also noticed is if I’m significantly stressed out, I noticed that my HRV is lower.
You know? And then I talked to you guys before the podcast. Emily happened to be wearing her Apple watch. She wasn’t tracking any of this for fun. She just happened to be wearing her Apple watch when she gave birth to our third Eleanor and her HRV was like four. The the day after, like the day of because of how stressful that is on the body.
That’s a stressful event, both mentally and physically, and that suppressed her HRV. Joe, you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. drinking alcohol, absolutely. 100% every single time we’ll suppress our HRV. So it’s indicative of. Stress on the body. And I don’t think like a cardiologist [00:14:00] use HRV as, as a metric.
So the fact that it’s coming to the fitness world is just like, Hey, how can we use it? It’s not whether or not it can actually be used because it is used in the medical world already. So I think there, there are a lot of things that you’ve taken to take into account and the biggest one being your overall lifestyle parameters.
And. How stressed you are and, and all these other things. But you can do that. Most people are self aware enough to be like, you know, I’m a level four, stress out of five early. Maybe you could do the one to two scale. I’m not stressed. I am stressed. Right. Joe, what’s your experience been with HRV. So
Joe Courtney: I don’t know if you want to explain how I, how I use it or
Jerred Moon: should I explain HRV real quick? We’ve mentioned a thousand times without mentioning what it is, so it’s your RV is heart rate variability and is the variation between heartbeats.
Normally measured in milliseconds. So if you, your heart does not be inconsistent intervals, it beats an inconsistent intervals. They actually, the more consistent in your heartbeats, the more consistent those [00:15:00] intervals, the worst your HRV is going to be. You want a higher heart rate variability.
So it’s different than resting heart rate, resting heart rate. You want a low resting heart rate, heart rate variability. You want a high HRV for the most part. And so that’s the variation in heartbeats measured in milliseconds. Okay. Now, wherever you want to go with HRV, I don’t know the things, personal things you’ve noticed having done 18 months of whooped data, you don’t really do it with a garment anymore, but what are some things you notice in tracking HRV, both training and anything else that you encountered?
Joe Courtney: So for me, HRV does not affect performance. So it’s something that I would look at in the morning and go and think about, okay, that’s what that means, but it’s not going to affect performance. And one thing that the study did was test and retest the vertical jump. But. I, I it doesn’t, and it, aside from a torn hamstring, if I did a vertical jump every day, no matter how sore I was, I’d probably be close to the same, no matter.
Like, so, no matter what my HRV was, how I use an [00:16:00] interpret Hari variability is, think of like a teacher. You’re grading a score of your recovery from the day before. So really it’s the day before. And. It’s on a scale from like what, zero to one 70. I don’t even know how high our HRV goes.
Jerred Moon: high as I’ve seen is in the two hundreds.
Joe Courtney: Okay. So the higher the better. And I take that score and think of, okay, if I’m really low, then I need to put more effort into any of my recovery that I might do. So that’s hydration, that’s food, that’s stretching, anything like that to improve my recovery score, to then perform better in the long run.
It’s not a shortsighted. I, if I, if it’s high now that I can go run faster.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. So yeah, that 100% you can’t wake up and, actually it’s very, has strong opinions about that as well. Like, I’m not going to let a recovery score dictate, you know, what I do today. And I agree with that because I, I’ve talked about it on podcasts before where I’ve had [00:17:00] low HRV and I’ve PR that day.
You know, it’s just, it’s not that indicative. And something I always talk about when we’re talking about data or HRV is it’s trending over time. If I noticed that I had a 30% decrease for, for four months straight, like if I were to map it out over say two years, and over the last four months I’ve been, my HRV has been 30% lower than normal.
That’s enough data for me to look at and take a, take a step back and be like, what’s going on? Am I, am I more stressed out than normal? Has my environment changed. What, what’s going on right now? And I think looking at data for the longterm is what you have to do with these metrics. You can’t look at HRV for five days and come to any sort of conclusion.
So I think the studies trash, I’ll just go ahead and say that. I don’t think you can really pull anything from this study. So it’s not super indicative of other, metrics, recovery metrics. Yeah. But like, you’ve tracked over a couple of days, like, I don’t think that that’s. That’s useful information at all.
I feel like what they did from a programming standpoint, I feel like they should have done way [00:18:00] more volume. They should have done more testing. They should have had some conditioning or aerobic endurance in there. Cause I think HRV is way more sensitive to aerobic conditioning specifically. And I also think that they should, like, you need way more time.
You need a long timeline to, I think, make any, any justification or statement about. Biomarkers, right? Like if I were to take your resting heart rate today and then in three days, like, ah, we’ll see. He did a, he did a spin bike three days in a row and his resting heart rate is no different.
It’s like, that’s not how fitness works. Like you don’t, you don’t do something for three days and expect to see a change. And that’s what a lot of the world wants. But that’s not what actually happens. So I think the study was trash, and I don’t normally say that, but it, something can be published in scientific and still be trashed because they don’t understand the practical.
Application of what they’re testing. They’re not athletes where they’re not coaches. There’s something that’s missing sometimes.
Joe Courtney: Whoo. Probably has like a sea full of data too, to just put [00:19:00] that to rest too and to, to help any further studies.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. But no one who ever listened to it because they sell something.
Right. And we’ve kind of talked about this before, is like no matter how noble somebody whose intentions are. Even if they were donating 100% of their profits to charity, people would still be like, yeah, Oh, they’re selling something, Bob. You know, like, there’s no way, if someone’s taking money for something you can, no one will fully trust a, a company for the most part.
So that’s, that’s very difficult. But yeah, I think things that like a woop publish their own internal study about alcohol and how it takes four days to recover from like a full four days to be like a hundred percent back to normal on HRV. and like, did they, they didn’t control for that in this study, like those guys go home, these 10 rugby players.
Okay. Like, let’s just talk about that for a second. Rugby players, I knew a lot of rugby players in college. They drank more than anyone I know on the planet earth. And so I, you know, their HRV could be trash on one day and not another because of their alcohol intake or the fact that they didn’t sleep.
So that’s why I think this study is trash and should be [00:20:00] completely disregarded if you’re looking at HRV. There we go. That was easy. Does anybody think that? Disagree with me? It’s fine if you do. I think you don’t even like HRV at all anyway, Ashley, so
Ashley Hicks: hi. I think it’s good to, I don’t know. I personally don’t track it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that it’s
Jerred Moon: good.
I do kind of track it. Cause you went enough.
Ashley Hicks: You’re right. Okay. I do wear an Apple watch, but I don’t go and look at my HRV every morning and see how it is. And I don’t actually wear my Apple watch when I sleep too. So cause I feel like HIV, that’s the thing with the whoop. Right. So are you guys tracking all your sleep, your, your deep sleep, your, all of that, and that goes, that accounts into your HRV, right?
Am I correct in saying this?
Jerred Moon: So it all, they give you a recovery score that is. Measures off of three things that your sleep, your resting heart rate and HRV, and then they give you recovery score based off of those three things. But it does [00:21:00] measure HRV while you’re sleeping. Yeah. So I, neither one of us wear a whoop anymore, just for clarification.
Correct? Yeah.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. Not nobody’s wearing a lip, but I think it’s good if it’s going to, like, if you’re, again, tracking over a long period of time, and, you know, I, I jokingly give. This stuff kind of crap because I’m like, Oh, well, this is just another, you know, thing to make. Normal people purchase something and they can, you know, make a profit out of it.
But if it’s making people aware of, again what you said, Jerred, like if a couple of months go by and your HRV is just tanking or something’s going on, then if it’s making them aware of something that they would have never known before, or you know, Joe talked about your nutrition, talked about your sleep, and then you’re like, okay, maybe I need to check my sleep, check my nutrition, and this.
W S score of, you know, your HIV or whatever it is, makes you more aware of that and then makes you fix things. Then I do think it [00:22:00] can be a positive thing. So it’s just something that I don’t personally track or do.
Jerred Moon: Like on the performance side, I agree with you. I think most people’s volume and intensity is not high enough to.
Really pull any significant or meaningful data about your HRV or resting heart rate? I just don’t think, and that’s not taking a shot at anybody. Like I think most, most of my volume and intensity on any given day is not high enough for it to truly matter. I know in the endurance world, cause I just know a lot of endurance athletes like HRV is, is V highly sensitive to your training volume.
But I’m talking about people who are like training for, you know. Iron man triathlons who are running a lot, swimming, a lot, biking a lot, all the time, and they can, they can kind of see these trends. So I do think that it’s obviously, it’s a heart measure. It’s a measure of the heart. So I think a more Robic endurance would take, you know, take precedents there and not necessarily lifting.
and the other thing I would say is, I, I. I also agree with your second point about like if it helps [00:23:00] you to sleep, nutrition or whatever, but I basically, I don’t drink alcohol anymore and it’s pretty much because of resting heart rate and heart rate variability readings. Like I don’t, I mean, I also feel worse than than I have in the past, but like seeing my resting heart rate be 10 or 15 beats per minute higher and my HRV being crushed and then also feeling like crap the next day, I’m like, and that’s like.
Two beers. I’m like, yeah, maybe I should just stop doing this. You know, it’s not good for me. I don’t feel good. The next day I’m a little foggy, like I’ll just quit. So it took a combination of all those things to be like, yeah, I’m done. So I don’t use the woop anymore. But in Bay, basically made it to where I don’t drink alcohol at all.
So that’s a win. There you
Ashley Hicks: go.
Jerred Moon: Positive. Positive. All right, well, we kind of keeping the topic in the same. Same vein. We want to talk about data and tracking. So we co we kind of talked about heart rate variability just now. Like, yes, it can be useful for certain things who would and would not be, but let’s just [00:24:00] talk about tracking and data in general.
Is there anything that you guys track, workout journals, PRS, whatever, two other metrics that you do find helpful? you know, something for garage gym athletes to be able to kind of take away or maybe something they could adopt. I’ll start with you, Ashley.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. So, right now I am, in the beta testing with the woman’s health track.
So right now I’m tracking my nutrition with my fitness pal. So that’s something that I use to track. but a fitness journal specifically, I always, I like to write down my workouts. I have it on team builder. We all do with all of our data, but I like to have it in a journal. Just in case of anything.
Slash I like to go back and look, and say, Oh, man, three years ago I couldn’t do this. Or, basically my progression have I, you know, have I gotten better? Have I gotten worse? and I like the. I don’t know. It’s something about writing things down that it also sticks with me as well.
so I am old school like that. I guess [00:25:00] I’m keeping a journal, but I, and I also like to put like after a workout, so if it’s something that’s really spicy, there are, I should actually take some photos and send it to you, Jerred, because there’s some times where I say, Jerred moon, this was not nice.
Or I’ll. Right, a, you know, a frowny face or a smiling
Jerred Moon: face. Yeah,
Ashley Hicks: no, I keep it, I keep it clean, but, but there’s, I know, Oh, this is terrible. And it’s normally like pushup days or RM days, you know, anytime there’s squat, some always, there’s always a happy face or a. I love leg day kind
Joe Courtney: of faith.
You were asking during the Spartan race, where’s the squat? Where can I do my back
Jerred Moon: squat? Max back squat in the mud? Not dangerous at all.
Ashley Hicks: Hey, if I could have taken off some miles to do a one run mag, run one rep max back squat, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat. But yeah, so I like to track that.
And then, I do keep up with my team builder when I’m working out and I like to put the data in there as well. [00:26:00] But other than that, and I use my Apple watch more for a timer as well as just kind of keep up with what I’m doing throughout the day. I don’t really pay attention to the, you know, like some people’s activity stuff.
They’re like, I have to have. 700 calories for the day. Like I don’t keep up with any of that. I just kind of track what I’m doing and use my Apple watch for, you know, music and seeing,
Jerred Moon: so you’re not too concerned about closing your rings on the Apple watch each day? Correct. Got it.
Ashley Hicks: Perfect.
Jerred Moon: All right. That, that makes sense. Joe, what, do you have anything that you use for tracking or something you follow to keep note of? I’m
Joe Courtney: not really, so I, With the whoop for 18 months or however long. I got pretty good at knowing my recovery. So that’s why I kind of stopped wearing that. I still do like to pay attention to, and I think the most important recovery metric to me is resting heart rate because that’s how I actually know if I’m hurt or sick or didn’t recover it all well because I have a, I have a pretty good window of what I know that I’m, I’m [00:27:00] fine.
But as we all found out, everybody that did the Spartan race, we were all 15 to 20 beats higher and that’s like. That’s like a 30 to 40% difference, and that’s that. That to me is pretty significant. And like when I drink alcohol, I’m also a good five to 10 beats higher.
Jerred Moon: that’s, that’s one thing.
Heart rate is way more consistent than HRV and those type of readings, like what you’re saying.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. So if, if I’m, if I’m 10 beats higher, I’ll think about why I might be 10 beats higher. If it’s alcohol, I might just push through and work out. But if it’s like sickness or, or like injury soreness, I might actually rest because of that, because I know that I’m, Not doing too well. So I’ll, I’ll just do some recovery stuff. So that’s the main one that I actually pay attention to. But the, one of the reasons why I switched to the Garmin was instead of recovery metrics, cause that’s kind of where they lack, they do really good on performance metrics. So pacing, percentage in heart rate during workouts and things like that.
So that’s something that I haven’t really fully set down what I’m going to start tracking, but I can still go back and look [00:28:00] and I know. Kind of where I’m at during certain workouts and running. so that’s kinda what I’m, what I’m at now. The
Ashley Hicks: pacing is right up your alley. But here’s my question for you.
So you said you track your resting heart rate, right? So if you feel bad, let’s say you feel bad, do you then go and look at it and just because that number says, Oh, it’s higher than before I then, then do you choose not to work out or do you go just on like how your body feels over all that
Jerred Moon: day?
Joe Courtney: Typically on my body feels like if it all depends on what I’ve been doing, but typically on how my body feels, and then I’ll, I’ll go to it and be like, Oh, that’s why. Well now I can justify my belly aching, but I’ll probably still, you know, do it depends on what it is though. Just
Ashley Hicks: curious.
Jerred Moon: Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, if anything, it might dictate my intensity level. Like if I’m going to go do Murph and I just felt like crap and all of my recovery metrics said the same, I’d be like, okay, well today’s no [00:29:00] vest and we’re just gonna get it done versus a PR attempt, you know? And that, that might be the only decision I would make because as I mentioned earlier, it’s, it’s always trending because if I had a random.
Lehigh, resting heart rate or low HRV. I mean, I have three kids. What if my body was fighting off a sickness? I never really ended up getting sick, but like there’s no doubt I probably, I come in contact with the same virus or bacteria or whatever they have, right? So it probably goes into my body.
My body’s like, Oh, get rid of this. But it’s hard for your body to do that, you know? So it might just be like that. And then if I’m, everything’s back to normal the next two or three days. Then I’m fine, but if it’s a trend over three or four days, and I’m also feeling that way too, then I might start to be like, well, in my training too much, am I not sleeping enough?
But most of those things are just really dialed in for me right now. So it’s, I don’t know what else I could fix if my re my, my resting heart rate randomly got high and HRV was low, then I would just think I’m dying because [00:30:00] when, and I’m, when I’m at home, like when I’m at home, like I just. I’m sleeping as much as I should.
I’m eating what I should. I’m drinking as much water as I should, like everything’s pretty dialed in, so I would, I wouldn’t know what’s going on and be something, something bigger at that point.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. I just swap days sometimes go for a lower intensity day.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. What about you Jerred? What do you track and like, do you keep a journal style?
I know you used to like have your whiteboard journal.
Jerred Moon: so I do, I’ve gone back and forth on how I’m tracking things. Like for sometimes it’s like, okay, I’m just gonna track everything in team builder. And then. I do, I do what you do. Just not in a journal. I will write the workout on a whiteboard.
cause I really don’t like touching my phone when I’m working out. and so I w I’ll just have everything on the whiteboard and then I can, what’s awesome about team builder though is like the fact that it calculates like the percentages for you and stuff. You know, if you, if you have the proper one or at Max’s in there, then it’ll list that out.
So it’s nice to look at team builder and write all those things down. I have a whiteboard in my garage, so I’ll. [00:31:00] Write it all down. Yeah. Normally snap a picture. another thing that I started doing, cause I used to take all those pictures and put them in Evernote. and I kind of stopped doing that, but I started using a different app called, day one is what it’s called.
And so day one is like a, it’s a dated journal app. And so I’ll take, like if I wrote it down on, it’d be the whiteboard if I’m in my garage to be a three by five card, if it, if I’m not in my garage, if I’m like out traveling or whatever, I’ll take a picture of it with all the results, you know, cause maybe you’re supposed to do seven reps and I could only get six or whatever.
I’ll put those notes in there and I’ll snap a picture of it and put it in the day one for that day. And so then I can go back and look. Look at multiple things cause I’m wearing Apple watch right now. So if I wanted to go back to November 12th, I could pull up and see what my data was for that.
Like if it was running, like what my pace was. But then I can also look up like what was the exact workout I was doing and my results. Cause sometimes, if it’s not in team builder, then it’s going to be in that app. And sometimes it’s all just in team builder. So it’s a little sporadic. But [00:32:00] the main things that I do track.
Our performance metrics, like where are, where’s my Murph time headed? What is my mile time? You know, how fast can I ride my bike 15 miles. Those are the things that I’m way more concerned about, like first and foremost over anything else over a resting heart rate, HRV, because none of those things truly core correlate to your performance.
And that’s taught in like every strength and conditioning textbook in the world. Because if we wouldn’t have the Olympics, if all we had to do is sit down and be like. Okay, well let’s, let’s test everyone’s VO two max. Let’s test everyone’s, resting heart rate and a heart rate variability.
And then we’re going to measure the size of your biceps and quads and, whoever, you know, has the best in all categories, gets the golden medal. We don’t do that. What we do is we see who can perform the best under pressure. Like there’s a lot of those things that factor. And I think that’s what’s most important.
And that’s kind of why I pay attention to those things. Cause you’re not gonna feel good every day. And so you need to be learn to push through some things. And.
[00:33:00] Ashley Hicks: Especially if you’re traveling, like, can you imagine if they were like, Oh, my HRV is low today because I traveled to, you know, where’s the next Olympics is going to
Joe Courtney: be at, you
Ashley Hicks: know?
Yeah.
Jerred Moon: And if I was an Olympian, I wouldn’t want, I wouldn’t want any of that data anywhere close to the race because, I mean, maybe in my training, but like anything that could mess with my mind going up to the biggest event of my entire life. in most, like most Olympians. Only get one shot in the Olympics.
It’s something like 97% or something of Olympians get one Olympics. Like we hear about the Michael Phelps and these gymnast who do two, maybe three, that’s 12 years. Most people can’t maintain any sort of peak level. So yeah, I would, I wouldn’t want a, I want any of that data close to a performance event.
Yeah. Just screw with your screws, your brain. Oh. Anyway, so that’s what I performance first. Then second, I’ll go to HRV, resting heart rate. Cause that stuff’s just kind of interesting. But I always [00:34:00] talk about like not having a data collection habit or hobby, for the sake of just doing that.
You know, we, we’ve talked about that in the podcast for, I think some people get wrapped around wanting to track a bunch of crap for no reason at all. Like always know what you’re going to do with your data if you’re tracking it. and if you don’t know what you’re going to do with it, then don’t track it.
It’s just a waste of your time. And there’s some things that are really dumb. I don’t know if you guys have seen, it’s, it’s being marketed towards CrossFitters. It’s like a, it’s like a shirt you put on or something like that, and it connects to your phone, and then it’ll be like, Oh, your power output for that workout was, you know, 127 foot pounds.
And I’m like, that’s, and I saw some people like super fired up about that. They’re like, this is so awesome. And I’m like. Why? What, what are you going to try to produce more horsepower in your next workout? And the reason I think that that’s dumb is because if you are doing a workout for time, whether that’s CrossFit or running a mile, you are.
Actually doing a real life [00:35:00] physics experiment. You are seeing how much you are doing work like you are doing actual work that has a definition in physics. So you know, putting that over time and distance and now you have your, your equate your work is the time itself. So it’s like just in the CrossFit world, say Fran, if you can do Fran.
In three minutes versus 10 minutes. That’s a big difference in what the equation would come out to be. So you’re already doing that math just by moving weight over time. And so you don’t need this like fancy equipment to tell you the same thing. It’s the same with with running. If you’re like, I’m 185 pounds, if I can run a five minute mile, you know, we could go do all the math for that and find out exactly how much power I’m putting out and all that.
But it doesn’t matter. Because it’s a 5,000, 280 feet, 180 pounds, 185 pound male, five minutes flat. Like that’s all you need to know. And so you could get into the weeds of like, okay, well, if I was 205 [00:36:00] pounds, I’m putting out more power. It’s like, well, it doesn’t matter mile times a mile time.
You know what I mean? So some of that’s such a stupid to track my opinion. It’s just
Joe Courtney: just another whiteboard for people to have a leaderboard to look at and compare and Oh, my shirt told me I’m better.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And, there’s always way to game those things. I’ve seen. People sit there doing a step competitions and just like moving their, their hand over and over to get, get steps on their wrist.
Right. It’s, it’s funny stuff and that’s one thing I’ve never tracked and we’ll never track our steps. I don’t. Alright, I’m getting off. No more. No more rankings get into the HRV style. That study made me angry is what happened cause I was like.
Joe Courtney: It was weird and frustrating to how they went about it
Jerred Moon: was first.
So the new studies are coming out all the time. And if people listening don’t realize that all these studies that we’re giving you are new. We’re not like we, we’ve only covered one study that wasn’t done in the last [00:37:00] couple of months. And that was when we were talking about concurrent training.
Cause it’s like one of the most referenced studies in the world and concurrent training. That’s the only reason we did that. But most every other study is coming out. 2019 came out 2018 something like that. And. So we’re covered. We’re really covering the leading edge here for scientific studies and that one I was just like, what did you do wrong?
Like, how did you miss what H like did you even know what HIV was before you started this study? Did someone puts you up to it? Was it a dare? It was a dare. It’s like someone dared you to do it because it was so, such a bad, bad study. Anyway, let’s get into the workout. Conditioned me to the grave.
Ashley Hicks: Speaking of HRV,
Jerred Moon: this one will affect your HIV. let’s see. I think I, you guys have pulled up. I have it pulled up. I
Joe Courtney: feel like you should know by heart. I,
Jerred Moon: I have the . Scaled version, memorize. I always forget these scaled versions sometimes. So here it is, conditioned me to the grave. You’re going to a hundred [00:38:00] calories on the rower, a hundred calories on the Airdyne hundred double-unders run one mile, then 75 of all three of those run one mile, 50 calories of all or 50 of all those run one mile 25 of all those, and then the without machines version is a hundred Sumo deadlifts, a hundred bucks step-ups total.
100 double unders, run one mile and then drop down in the same scheme. So 75 run a mile, 50 run, one mile, 25 run one mile. And if you guys, that was confusing to hear, Google conditioned me to the grave. There’s no one else who’s ever even tried to name a workout that. So you’ll find us right away.
And let’s go. Tips, tricks and strategies. Joe, I think we’ve talked about this workout before, but. So
Joe Courtney: the sumos are, you can do with kettlebell, not barbell, and they’re fairly light too. That’s always a question that people, why I ended up . Some people end up doing high poles, but it’s just just regular Sumo, a hold the kettlebell.
I dunno. There is not much, I mean pacing. I don’t know how [00:39:00] to like you have a pacing card if you really want to get under 60 but only like 10% of people can do that or something.
Jerred Moon: That was going to be my advice was. Make a pace card. I have a pace card. Maybe we can put it in the show notes that I keep and hitting.
Cause if you, if you can just keep in the pacing for some reason that really helped me. There was like a mental block with me being able to complete that. the first couple times I did it, but once I had the pace card. I knew I was on track cause it really feels like you’re not on track because the, the workout is so front heavy, eh, but it’s, it’s very quick towards the end, those 25 calories and like that’s super fast.
It’s very, very, very short. But it’s super front heavy. So I’d say make a pace card and a goal and know that there’s a gigantic difference between these scaled and not scaled version of these workouts. It takes, it takes doing it to figure it out. but it’s a whole nother level of workout when you’re not doing the substitutions.
And I understand most people are just doing that out out of a necessity. They have the equipment or they don’t. But if you ever get a chance, you have [00:40:00] all, all of the machines and equipment in place, do it as prescribed and see how you like your life afterwards.
Joe Courtney: So we’ve actually been doing the hundreds in hard to kill.
And I think some other tracks, I’m not, I can’t remember which ones. So if you had been doing those on the programming, then think of what that pace was for just just the hundreds because of that. That was without the mile. And maybe, I don’t want to say dial it back a little bit. You might need to dial it back a little bit so you don’t hear hit a wall right away because I went up those hundreds fairly fast cause I knew that’s all I had to do.
But then the, I think of, okay, you’re doing that, and then a mile and then coming back and doing 75 of that and then. Over and over.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. I think 75 is the worst of it to me. Yeah,
Joe Courtney: probably cause it’s still a lot and you’re still have a lot. I mean, even mentally you’re like, Oh man, I still have a ton of this left to go.
Jerred Moon: The fifties are kind of bad too. And the hundreds in
Joe Courtney: the
Jerred Moon: 20 fives are easy. Ashley, what do you on this one?
Ashley Hicks: Yeah. I would say if you’re scaling it to, you talked [00:41:00] about using a kettlebell, Joe. I remember that. it says light on there, but I don’t know. I wanted it to mimic as close to sucking as much on a rower as it could.
So I remember I used a 53 pound kettlebell, which, I like a lot better than the 35, because if you do the hundreds on the 35, I feel like if you’re, I mean, if you’re doing it fast enough, like you should be that just, you just blaze right through that. and then for the actual, if you’re doing the actual prescribed written workout without the substitutions, then, I would, Oh man.
I would just say to like chug at it, and I’m like, you don’t, it’s more mental. I feel like this one too. just because of how long it is. and then didn’t you put an hour time cap on this?
Jerred Moon: Yeah.
Ashley Hicks: So if you’re getting close to it, I dunno, I, I remember I was at the fifties when I did the actual, you know, full up workout and that really got to me, but, you’ve got [00:42:00] to.
You’ve got to kind of book it to, to finish the actual one again, like I always time cap when I do the full one and then if I have to substitute anything, I can finish it. So that also, that kind of shows you the difference between the substitutions as well as the machine. Like how I think it’s way more difficult to be able to do.
Jerred Moon: That’s what, and I realized that after, like I probably should have when I was writing the substitutions maybe doubled like the kettlebell deadlift or something like that, but I didn’t, I just didn’t want them. Get too crazy on the volume piece for people finishing, cause people would still finish it with 200 reps, you know, 200 and then 150.
It’s just a lot of repetitions. But that’s what I realized when people are posting in the group there times for conditioning the grave and they’re like, yeah, 38 minutes. And I’m like, what? Like, I don’t know if that’s possible, but it’s because they did the substitution version. And that’s very possible when you’re doing that.
Yeah. Crappy workout. Conditioned me to the grave. [00:43:00] Try it out and have fun.
Ashley Hicks: Yeah, just grind through it.
Jerred Moon: Just grind. All right, so garage, gym, athlete. Why should people join? I have, I have a good reason, but I want to see if you guys have a good reason
Joe Courtney: because of all the new content coming for everything.
Jerred Moon: They’re going to let the cat out of the bag. Yeah. We have a cat inside of a bag right now. I
Ashley Hicks: only you two know.
Jerred Moon: No, you know, you’re just not maybe top of mind. they’re just gonna be a lot more content next year, on a weekly basis.
Ashley Hicks: Oh
Jerred Moon: yeah. Cat’s half out of the bag. Yeah. It’s going to be cool.
We have a lot of cool stuff coming up and a lot of stuff for garage. Mathletes my mine is, we’re starting a new cycle, so we have two weeks left. this as, as of recording this. So during this recording, you’ll have this week and then next week, and then we’ll hit fit week, which is the last week of the year.
[00:44:00] Sorry. That fit week came like right in Christmas and new year’s timeframe. That’s, that’s tough if you are going to be hitting the holidays hard with the food and, and drank. but if you’re not, then, then hit those PRS, but then we roll into a new cycle. So that’s my why. Rolling in a new cycle.
I have some awesome things I’m going to implement that we’ve never done before. And so I’m really excited to get the new programming released in January means pain
Joe Courtney: gains. What’s
Jerred Moon: gonna be, and your track is going to be really painful. I know that for a fact, hard to kill, moderately painful, but in Jeremiah, just be painful like every day, but from an aerobic standpoint, so, all right.
Joe, you’re not going to have to hook. Wait, you got it? I
Joe Courtney: said first I jumped on that one.
Jerred Moon: That’s too fast. I’m getting slow. All right guys. That’s it all I got. Thanks for listening to the garage gym athlete podcast. If you want to learn more, go to garage gym athlete.com you can learn about our [00:45:00] training.
Let us send you a copy of our book, the Garage Gym Athlete, or you can even get featured on the garage gym athlete podcasts. Thanks for listening.