Hey, Athletes! Have you heard of tryptophan-rich protein? What about âº-lactalbumin? This week we go over a study that looks at whether or not these can help with sleep and recovery. Make sure to check out this episode!
Episode 115 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
Is Tryptophan-rich Protein Best For Recovery?
In this week’s episode we have the fourship back again! The coaches go over a study about tryptophan-rich protein and if it can improve your recovery. They break this one down and give you their ways on how to kill comfort! This week’s topic is new tips for new athletes. The team goes over some of the most asked questions we get and give you some tips on how to navigate your way as a Garage Gym Athlete. For this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout we have Heavy Load Short Distance. Make sure to get some good tips for 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 58-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Tryptophan-rich Protein
- Recovery
- Heavy Load Short Distance
- Tips for New Athletes
- âº-lactalbumin
- Tips For MYS
- 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:
- Macronutrients for Better Sleep and Bolstering the Immune System
- The Recovery Game: How to Build Athletes into Better Athletes (and humans)
—
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:
Jerred Moon 0:02
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast here with Kyle from Murray. I tried to church it okay. But as Joey save Courtney, and just make more rhyme and Ashley Hicks, man,
Kyle Shrum 0:19
gentlemen,
Jerred Moon 0:19
let’s get into it. Sorry for throwing you off there right at the start. Joke. What did you call this one? Sleep milk?
Joe Courtney 0:28
sleep? No, that’s what I had in our spreadsheet, because it just it intrigued you didn’t it?
Jerred Moon 0:34
It does intrigue me, we’re gonna be talking about sweet milk today. And all the reasons you should be getting on the sleep milk train. So the study is called alpha lactalbumin, improved sleep and recovery post simulated evening competition in female athletes study was conducted this year 2021. And so I think we have to start with what alpha lactalbumin is. and Kyle pointed us to a great, very in depth study, maybe we can also link to this one in the show notes. That just kind of talks about it, because we like to introduce new things to the community studies, topics, and whatnot. But I would say 7080 90% of the time, I’m in no way an expert in what we’re talking about. I’m just going through the science and doing my best to pull out what I can for athletes, when we get into energy systems training, that that type of stuff. I’m all about it, I could go really deep. So these I’m kind of learning on the fly. So I was like, why are we even interested in alpha alpha lactalbumin. And so, like I said, qog is the study, I’m going to read the conclusion, just because it has a good you know, overall, what the hell is alpha lactalbumin. It’s a milk protein that constitutes over 1/3 of the total protein in human milk. Through recent advances in food processing, pure alpha lactalbumin has become commercially available, generating new opportunities to research the use of alpha lactalbumin in nutritional and medical applications. And in creating functional food products. alpha alpha lactalbumin is an attractive protein, both because of its physical characteristics, which include a clean flavor profile, high water solubility, and heat stability, which combined allow for diverse food applications. And because of its biological properties derived from its protein quality, which creates potential for diverse nutrition applications. Now, I’m just going to kind of stop right there. It talks about the use of infants and how it’s similar to breast milk. And it can enhance mood, and sleep and all these other things. So if you do want to read all of that, you could dive into this, if it’s you know, we go over some of the science today. And you’re like, Hey, I actually want to dive into this a little bit more. The study we are specifically covering today, it was 16 females. And all the study participants were competitive athletes. 10 played a team sport like football, not American football, field hockey, for middle distance runners and to wear competitive lifters. And I thought it was interesting, they pointed out because they are looking at sleep that some of the people were evening type, intermediate types and morning types. And I think that is important to know, if you’re going to be forcing people to sleep at a certain time, you should probably know what they they were doing. So the purpose of the study was to determine the efficacy of alpha lactalbumin supplementation to improve sleep as well as physical and cognitive performance recovery following a simulated evening competition in female athletes. And the research show, the researchers thought that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. And so it was a crossover trial, meaning each participant completed each of the three study conditions. So there was an alpha lactalbumin. control group way, and water. And so each person did each one of those. I think it was just for one day, is that what we decided? Not three days? Yeah, it was a little bit confusing at first when you read it, but it’s what they did was they did cognitive testing, they had to sleep in a lab, all these things. And then they had a really hard, you know, simulated competition in the evening. And then they would sleep or give them the food and the supplementation sleep. And then they would monitor all these things and then see how they did compared to their baseline tests before the study began. And there was a 28 day washout period to control for ministration. And just overall, I think a washout period is pretty good and studies to have in general. So they were their own control, meaning that they would do supplement with alpha lactalbumin weight and water with 28 days separation, and then they just looked at overall Sleep. And to be honest, I mean, the I’ll just jump straight to the takeaway. It kind of help sleep. And but it was, you know, I can’t like dive in enough to look at these sleep graphs because they use like the gold standard of sleep. So I can’t look at something like this and maybe I’m jumping more to my takeaway and tell you if like, Oh, this might be better than
melatonin, you know, like, like I don’t know. And so I think I would rather go with melatonin personally, but we could talk about it all. That’s the gist of the study, it helps. That’s why we’re talking about it, what did all of you think about this specific study,
Joe Courtney 5:47
the construction of it was really good, really good, you know, having different types of female athletes, I like to see that versus just either unexperienced or or evaluate that because it wasn’t even a totally performance. I mean, they they did check performance metrics. And I didn’t really expect those to matter very much for the small parameters. So I think, who they chose and how they chose their, how they constructed the study was good. But I also think that it could have been better done. More results could have been better if they did over a longer period of time. Because since we’re doing recovery and performance over over, it might make a difference over longer periods of time versus just a couple of days, like a week later, seeing much results from that. But so I was just I was one thing that I think would have been better long term. Let’s see, they were I liked they were all comparing with within themselves versus between the athletes because I was confused about how they were going to do that with all the different types of sports, but they were only looking at their own data from each individual person, so it didn’t. And so that’s also good, because then you could see, if all they correlated between the athletes and the different training protocols they’re doing, they’re really just concerned about their sleep and recovery, no matter what type of training that they do. The but I think as far as takeaways go, I think this is only a great takeaway, if you’re one of the people that train in the evening. And that is, because one thing one reason why we say to not train in the evening is because it’s harder to down regulate. And then you’re also having to get your recovery in and getting either a meal or a shake. And then if you’re going to bed, then you’re going to bed with stuff in your stomach and you’re still trying to down regulate. So you might have to turn to certain sleep meds. So supplementing basically making your protein shake, eating your sleep, could be very beneficial for people who are forced to train in the evening. So I think that’s the main takeaway from this, but overall, cool construction of the study and actually tried to find some of this. And I think it’s, it seems fairly hard to find, and I say fairly hard to find, because I searched Amazon and I couldn’t get on Amazon, which means it’s hard to find.
Jerred Moon 8:05
It doesn’t exist.
Joe Courtney 8:07
Yeah, just it’s not on Amazon, I don’t know how you get it, you know, get hooked up with some lab, I don’t know. So, other than that, I think, if you can’t, if that’s not something that you want to use, then on top of your protein shaker after that, you could turn to have some partier juice or something like that. But Kyle
Kyle Shrum 8:27
so that’s kind of where I was gonna go with this was, was, to me this study just kind of made another point about supplement quality. And it kind of it kind of goes to to what Joe was talking about as well. It was kind of because I did the same thing. I was looking for some some whey protein powder that that was that had this thing called what’s it
Joe Courtney 8:51
called is looking for an alpha lactalbumin something to just like put like a teaspoon of it. And
Kyle Shrum 8:55
yeah, so I wasn’t I wasn’t looking for specifically just that by itself, just alpha lactalbumin isolate, but I was looking forward because this is used in a lot of whey protein powders. And so I was looking for a whey protein powder that had this stuff in it and it was kind of hard to find, I did find a couple of them but but they’re also more expensive than what most you know, most whey protein powders are going to are going to run you for for a tub of it, but you can’t find them out there. And but to me that just it just points to how important it is. And we talk about it all the time. If you’re putting it in your body, it needs to be high quality. And so if you’re wanting to after listening to us break down the study and you want to maybe try to find some of this stuff and supplement with it and have a higher quality supplement. That’s a good thing. But it’s your it’s going to be harder to find and it might be it might running a little bit more expensive. And I agree with Joe because this study was specifically focused on training in the evening, an evening competition. And so I would say not just for people who train in the evening, but people like I know that we have athletes in our community who are playing like rec league sports and things like that, and they have games in the evening. And so if you’re doing something like that, and you’re playing on a rec league game, whatever sport it is that you’re playing, this could apply to you as well, making sure that this stuff gets any, but I would say, make sure you’re getting your protein shake, or make sure you’re getting your supplement before you do that. Because I just kind of thought that, and I don’t want to take this away from Ashley, but I’m going to take it away from Ashley, that kind of that supplementing like two hours right before bed, because that’s what they did in this study. That’s pushing it a little bit. And just like we we kind of suggest you not train close to bedtime, if possible. And we also suggest you not eat close to bedtime, if possible. So I would just say, get your protein shake before you train if you’re having to train in the evening. And then just an asterisk on evening training.
Jerred Moon 11:09
Sometimes that like when I was in the Air Force, that was just my schedule, if I wanted to, like there was no other way for me to get it done, I was not able to train during the day, I did silly PT with the airman in the morning, and then I did real training in the evening. And so that’s just that was my life for a long time. And so I think the big takeaway with evening training is try to avoid high intensity in the evening. Just keep it a little bit lower intensity, because the biggest problem with high intensity training in the evening is jacking up your cortisol significantly, and then you’re not able to that that’s going to combat with melatonin and your ability to it can just actually mess with your sleep cycle. And so for some people, it’s not that big of a deal, I don’t know if it becomes more of a factor. With age, I know that it didn’t bother me much when I was younger. But it does more so now. And so that’s why I wonder if it is more of a factor of age or I don’t know. But if you have to do it, do it, just be mindful of your intensity, would evening training. Actually.
Ashley Hicks 12:19
Um, so this study was interesting to me, because alpha lactalbumin, as we’re calling it, um, for me, I wouldn’t have thought of it as a sleep aid. So it was kind of cool to read. It just, there’s a lot of like antibacterial and immunity properties it has when it’s digested. Especially in infants, if we’re looking at that, but so that’s kind of where my mind would go if I was looking at this. But for, like Joe said, it was a good mix of ladies, which I really appreciated. And a lot of thought process went behind what was going on with each of the women up to like, they had to know what if they were on contraception or not what type of contraception they were on, it was just it seems like a lot. And so I give a lot of studies a lot of crap, because they don’t include women. And I think cycles may be a reason why. But this is kind of eye opening to know, like they even had to do like a 28 day wash out kind of thing just because of you know, how God made the female body kind of thing. So I’m sleeping in a lab hoof. And I don’t know, I when I read that I was like, noise takes me a couple nights, like if you go somewhere else, or if you’re travel, traveling to kind of get good sleep. So that whole one night of sleeping in a lab thing. I was just like, I don’t know, if I would have even had good sleep if I was one of these ladies, but um, and then, like Kyle said, I just wish they would have maybe spaced it out a little bit. But we just talked about melatonin and other ways on how to sleep. And this study didn’t quite like, you know, it works. But it didn’t quite make me want to be like, this is what I want to take in order to try to improve my sleep. I feel like there are other great ways to improve your sleep before trying this out. And I think that’s that’s one of my takeaways on this. Like, it’s, I mean, sure it improved it, but it wasn’t so much so significantly that I’m like, this must be done. I think I would try to do what we talked about, like the elements and we always talk about downregulation and other sort of things like melatonin, they even talked about tart cherry juice, things that you can use in order to help improve your sleep. So that’s kind of what I took away from this, Jared.
Jerred Moon 14:46
I just think it’s funny that like we mean so good source of alpha lactalbumin. It’s to go by baby formula, like you could, you could go find that in baby formula. You can start drinking that and that sounds odd. It also works be expensive because formulas already expensive but to drink a, an adult size of Formula hadn’t sure even gets way more expensive, new kinds of games. Yeah, but um,
Kyle Shrum 15:12
I’d say the games. I’ve seen
Jerred Moon 15:14
this in the fitness industry before. The I had this friend who was he’s a big bodybuilder very successful, like, I mean, one of the most ripped dudes I ever knew. So, anecdotally, I was like, interested in what he’s doing. I’m gonna, obviously I hate to be like, Mike strategy, but I was watching what he was doing. And he was eating a bunch of baby food. And I was like, What are you doing? And it was like, the, like the, the mashed up ones, like, it almost looks like applesauce or whatever, you know. And he’s like, I don’t know if I’m gonna pronounce this one correctly, but he’s like, it’s got a rocket donek acid in it. And I was like, Okay, he’s, like, any thought told me about how like, it helps your muscles like, they become more sensitive to, to growth and to in response to strengthening, strengthening them in general. And they ended up he did that for a while it kind of caught on in the bodybuilding scene. I heard other people doing it, then they came up with it. And then they came up with an arachidonic supplement. And I actually took it and that stuff is crazy. It like you take it. And it increases your muscle sensitivity to Dom’s by like 30x. If that sounds like something you want to be a part of, like, go for it. But like I’m talking like, you go like, let’s just say do a set of squats. And then if you’re on this stuff, your legs are gonna be so sore. Like it’s unbearable. And, and the main reason I stopped taking it, this was just so everyone knows this is back when I was also taking like jak three D this is like 15 years. Isn’t that recent history? So if I take next to no supplements these days? checked three. Yeah. So like, like when it was the illegals banned or not the new like safe version. So anyway, I took that stuff, the main reason I stopped taking it is because what what it actually does is it promotes inflammation. Like that’s what it’s doing. arachidonic acid by itself is not bad. for infants, when they’re in these growth stages, they’re they’re growing massive amounts almost on a daily basis and infant is growing. You don’t need to do that. And so when we, when we pull out these like little like, oh, let’s try this amino acid. You know, like, I always get a little bit leery of it, because I’m like, you know, food was created a certain way, probably for a reason. Like when you eat a steak, that it’s the steak has all the things that you need to balance things out. Same with like vegetables, and fruits. And so when you pull out these like one little things, one little thing here and there. I worry about overall health. I think alpha lactalbumin might be fine. It has some promise, and it looks like recovery, and improve sleep. And even physical and cognitive performance, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. I just because we don’t know. Like, like with the arachidonic acid like I guess I didn’t fully explain. But I think we should all everyone listening, everyone here knows, if you want to, like, dial up in inflammation in your body. That’s where a lot of bad things happen. Like this is where disease takes place. This is where sickness takes places when, when you’re becoming chronically inflamed. So do anything like that on purpose seems odd to me these days. But people still do it in search of results. So this is something that shows some some promise. And it does look to be safe as well, from everything I can read, but I just thrown that huge asterisk of like, be mindful when you’re pulling out these one one at a time. Like I don’t even I started to for a little while, like leucine, we’ve talked about leucine before you need leucine post workout for muscle hypertrophy. Yeah, we’ve talked about it. But if you’re taking just just leucine, I just I feel like okay, what is what happens if I do this for 10 years? You know, like, is this going to be bad? Because there’s no way to get this amount of leucine ever without like this. If I were to eat like two pounds of steak right now maybe I could get the amount of leucine you can supplement with one little scoop. And so it just seems unnatural to me and I think it will lead the body down some some poor paths. So but you maybe you should try it. Maybe you should try. I don’t have anything else. My killing comfort for this. is just kind of what Ashley was saying, Let’s focus on all the other things.
For recovery, your three elements, let’s focus on sleep. Those things are very important because I do a lot of stuff like sauna, ice bath, all these things. To be honest, those are just fun. For me, that’s just like, I don’t have any other hobbies, guys, I’m not like, I do fitness. That’s what I do. And so if I want to go sit in some cold water, or get in a hot box, like that’s just that’s fun for me. And so maybe that helps you understand why I do things like that. I don’t have any other any other hobbies. But nothing, those things don’t do anything for me, in comparison to a good night of sleep in like some zone to cardio, like, those two things make me feel 10 times better than any recovery strategy I’ve ever tried. Or any supplement I’ve ever taken. Just those two things right there. So keep it simple and focus on doing those things. Daily over decades.
Kyle Shrum 21:01
Kyle, Okay,
Jerred Moon 21:04
I’m gonna remove this calling of the names thing. It’s gotten a little bit out of hand. Okay.
Kyle Shrum 21:10
I would say despite everything that Jared just said about supplements, which we don’t we that is our stance on supplements, like, like you need it. Most of most importantly, you need to just eat enough and you need to eat well, you need to eat good, high quality food. But if you are somebody who does supplement, and you’re going to use supplements to help with your training, molecule comfort for this one is just kind of going back to what I was talking about. Just bite the bullet and get that high quality stuff.
Unknown Speaker 21:44
They do their research.
Kyle Shrum 21:45
Yes, baby food. No,
Jerred Moon 21:48
no, I’m serious. I had this explained to me a long time ago, who If a If a company in the United States messes up baby food, like formula and kills an infant. That’s the end of it. Like that’s, that’s it? It’s over that stuff. Like, as far as regulations and testing going? I don’t know if there’s anything more stringent, you know, like they i’m not i’m not whatever with with, you know, baby formula. I’m not I don’t know which one’s good or which one’s bad. Emily breastfed a lot in for a very long period of time. So I don’t have any recommendations for you. But I just think that that might be your safest bet for stuff like this, because, like, I would prefer that over some some Joe Schmo no offense Joe, who started a supplement company, because he had a big Instagram following. And then found out about alpha lactalbumin from another Instagram post and then contacted his manufacturer in China and asked if he could throw it into the supplement. Like I would rather go the baby food route to be honest.
Kyle Shrum 22:47
There you go. High quality I’m
Jerred Moon 22:48
agreeing with you. I just think that might be the highest quality source you can get. Yeah,
Kyle Shrum 22:52
that’s my that’s my kill comfort. Actually,
Jerred Moon 22:56
my toe comfort was technically my takeaway. So thanks, Jerred. Moon. You had a good one. I really just reiterated it. Yeah, just get after this.
Ashley Hicks 23:07
downregulation practices and really focus on that sleep. And before you just dive in and try to take all the supplements. Joe.
Joe Courtney 23:21
There’s much else overkill. Medical comfort added time off? Yeah. Yeah. Like there’s not really don’t train in the evening. If you can avoid it. Maybe maybe take some of that acid stuff Jerry was talking about cuz that sounds uncomfortable. But the
Jerred Moon 23:42
discomfort right there.
Kyle Shrum 23:43
Yeah. Joe’s point go take acid. I was hoping that wasn’t the comfort. Take acid.
Joe Courtney 23:53
Yeah, I don’t don’t.
Jerred Moon 23:56
Sounds good. We’ll move on to. So the topic for today we are talking we’re at the start of a new cycle. Right? Yes, yeah, correct. So we’re at the start of a new cycle. And we like to do this periodically. Just give any tips, tricks, strategies, ideas, anything we can for, you know, maybe the veteran Jiu garagem athletes who’ve lost their way or the brand new ones who need to hear these things. So what do you have Joe?
Joe Courtney 24:30
We’re just gonna do one at a time around you do that really any better, just so I don’t take all the good ones. So first one I’m going to say is actually the last one I thought about is don’t get FOMO or overthink what program you’re doing that for us. It’s whatever track you’re doing. But this could apply to anybody because once you get FOMO, you start to program hopping after two or three weeks, you’re just like, well, I’ve already know what this tracker program has. So let’s just jump on something else because I see everybody else posting their stuff about it and talking about it. So I should go and see what they’re doing to whatever you pick, just stick with it stick, stick it out for 12 weeks, you can jump on on another tracker program after your 12 weeks, because the overall goals are still gonna be the same on all programming track. So it’s still gonna be there, the tracks are still gonna be there, it might be different arrangement of the programming, because they’re always fresh each cycle each every, you know, all the time every week. But just don’t, don’t hop around. Don’t Don’t you know if there’s something crazy going on. Because you know, sometimes it comes in waves whether Jared does something super painful or VDS, doing something super painful. People get very shiny object syndrome, like I should go and be painful to be in pain with those people. Just stick with whatever program you’re on and stick it out for the 12 weeks commit, at first and pick whichever one’s best for their goals. And don’t overthink it. Ashley
Ashley Hicks 25:55
Um, so track changes, I’ll talk about like, where you can find that you can find that in the app, wasn’t me. You can do Doc, it’s documents and links is in our app. And there’s a ton of great resources there. So make sure to check that out in the team builder app, you can also find, I think you can find this on if you log on to on the website of team builder. And then also on our Facebook group, we’ve got a fax page that just kind of shows you like, hey, these are some of the most frequently asked questions. So we made sure that this was easily accessible. Once you sign on to our Facebook group. And track changes, there is a link for you to click on there. And also know that it doesn’t just the computer doesn’t just automatically update your track. It’s either Joe or I that. Do that. So it takes a little bit of time sometimes, especially if you do it like the night before. Because we do not work 24 hours. Well.
Kyle Shrum 26:59
And so he has his own weekends as well. So
Jerred Moon 27:02
we don’t know when Joe works, and he doesn’t he’s like halfway across the world.
Ashley Hicks 27:08
So if you are getting a little frustrated, cuz you’re like, man, I wanted a stranger immediately. That’s it, it might take a few hours, or maybe even a day or two, if you did it over the weekend, Kyle,
Kyle Shrum 27:21
I’m gonna say so Jared had to step in for me on our concurrent training elite call. couple months ago, I was on vacation. So he jumped in, and he threw this tip in the concurrent training elite call. So I’m gonna steal it back from him and put it on the podcast. And I’m gonna say, safety valve. So, and my point in my notes was like, move every day. But the point of that is like, there are going to be days as grass mathletes. Because we have lives, we have work, we have kids, all that kind of stuff. there gonna be days where the schedule gets in the way life gets in the way, workouts just not gonna happen, can’t throw an hour in there. But my point is move every day, put a safety valve in place, where there’s something that you’re going to get done, that’s intentionally that’s intentional, that is training that is moving you towards your goals every single day. And if there comes a day where something happens, and the workouts just not gonna happen for you that day, you’re going to do this now, whether it be you know, some burpees, or be some air squats or push ups or you know, something like that, but set something for yourself that this is the bare minimum of my fitness training that I’m going to accomplish every day. And if even if I don’t make it to the program workout for the day, this is going to happen. And so that’s, that’s one of my points, Jared.
Jerred Moon 28:48
Along those lines, I was gonna say, Don’t get too wrapped around. And we’ve actually looked at the science on this, like, the days in order, or you know, any of those things, you have to mix things around. The scientific literature perfectly supports that it’s okay. Like, to be honest, I don’t put a lot of thought even into, well, that’s not true. I was gonna say I don’t I don’t put into thought like which day is which. But that’s not in the programming. I do. But I don’t in my execution is what I mean. They’re like, I don’t put a lot of thought into it when I am doing let’s say like the hard to kill track. I, I will for the most part will stick to whatever to program Monday through Friday. But we’ve talked about this before and on that podcast where we talked about kind of the science that supports you being able to mix days around, I might have had a completely mentally taxing day. I just a tough day and I’m like, okay, I can only do this training session today. of the ones I have left this week. That one sounds like who’s the one I can get through and so that’s the one I’m going to do. And so, but that could be at the detriment of like doing legs. Back to Back days. So I don’t really put in that into account in my own personal execution of a track, because I’ll just be like, well, this is what I can do. And then tomorrow, if it’s, you know better than I’ll just do, we’ll get back on the program. So don’t get too worried about that, you’re ultimately going to see the same results. And just do what you can throughout the entire thing. Like we, if you come into our program on, let’s just say, your day one, or week one, day two, you don’t have to worry about that connecting to week nine, day four or day two or anything like that, like the we program in these four week waves intentionally because we know humans are not perfect. So we have a three week wave with the D load three week wave with a D load three week wave with a D load. And that’s a cycle. And we do that. So you can all you really need to focus on first and foremost is the block that’s in front of you. So the 10 minute block, whatever the blocks that are programmed focus on that. And then second, if you want to go a little bit big picture, just focus on being super consistent for a three week time period, and then get into the D load, and then the next they do build on each other. But if you were to come into our program, in the second wave of a cycle, you’re gonna be fine. Because of how we program things. It’s not like I forgot the first way we don’t program like that. There’s a difference between undulating and linear periodization. In we lean heavily more towards undulating because we don’t need people to miss all this linear progress, you know, when they come into the program later. And so we’ve already thought about everything, hopefully the webinar last week. Otherwise publishers podcasts, you guys realize how much thought is going into the programming and things that we’re looking at. But just get it done to whatever you can and don’t get so worried about the all or nothing mentality that I like to talk about.
Joe Courtney 31:58
My next one is going to be whenever you need a substitution substitutions aren’t always going to be exact, we don’t have like, you don’t have this piece of you can’t do this like piece of equipment, or you can’t do this exact movement, like plate jump, it’s not always going to be okay, if you don’t have x, then do y. Our substitutions come with proper stimulus. And that means you kind of have either more freedom because as long as you mentioned stimulus, like if if there was a box jump and you don’t have a jump, then we want you to do some kind of jump, probably or it could be a we just want you to get your heart rate elevated. So understanding the difference between that and just you know, reaching out to either us or in the being active on the Facebook group. for proper substitutions, you know, not just throwing something in there just to make it harder, or just putting something in there to put something in there, everything has a purpose, for why we have them in there, whether it’s a unilateral movement, or a jumping movement, powerful movement, something like that. So just understanding that we just we want to make make sure you’re getting the proper stimulus of each exercise of each workout. And we’re not just throwing something in there to throw something in there. So really, it would be utilize the Facebook group, utilize the team feed on team builder, because I checked that regularly. And just any avenue that you that you can because we can help with any kind of substitute that that you need want, and whatnot
Ashley Hicks 33:29
or their drive that point home. That is what I’m going to talk about next. Just really be active in our Facebook community, post in the group. Make sure you join the group first. And feel free to ask questions there. But we’ve got a lot of veterans who can help if you know, Joe, I Kyle, Jared, Marco Vidi. Any of us coaches are all on that group too. So we can always answer your questions as well. But typically, we’ve got some great veterans who have been around for a while and have probably asked those same questions. And so they can also help you. Obviously, if it’s more support, that’s what our support email us for support at garage gym athlete.com.
Kyle Shrum 34:18
I’m gonna go two blocks. So Jared mentioned blocks, and this is our, our way, our methodology of programming. We program in 10 minute blocks. And so each workout that we program, each training session, we try to keep it an hour or less. And so we’re gonna have 510 minute blocks that are programmed. And then we have a six, a 610 minute block. That’s the ghost block, which is your transition times and things like that between movements and lists, Instagram. Instagram, exactly. So that so we get we get a lot of questions about the box, what is this blog, what does this mean and all that and so it’s a It’s a 10 minute block. And sometimes we throw in fractional blocks, you know, like fractional plates, some of us like those, sometimes it’s a, it’s a block and a half, sometimes it’s two and a half, right. So that just printed a quarter though, never done a quarter, you never see a quarter block, that’s not gonna happen. But that just means it’s a, it’s five extra minutes added on to that block. So you get to that point, we put that in there of this is how many blocks this section of work is supposed to be. And so you set the timer, do the work, when that 10 minute block is up, move to the next block. And so we do that intentionally. Because we’re grasping athletes, we work out at home, we train in our spare time that we have to build into our schedule every day. And so we don’t want to be spending an hour and a half to two hours every day trying to get our training them. And so we programmed it that way on purpose, stick to the blocks, if you’re not finished with the work for that block, move to the next block anyway. That way you can get it done in that time period. Or if you have extra time built into the day, then finish it, you know and take extra time. But we programming blocks on purpose, so that you’re not spending a whole bunch of time in the gym. Alright, I
Jerred Moon 36:23
torn between. I have to maybe we’ll all get one more. And so I would say Yeah, well, the other one, I have to say is very important. So no, III, oh, three elements. We haven’t really hit on that. But I, I can’t really stress the importance of that enough. There’s a lot of thought that went into it. A lot of studies that are pulled, and just do it, you know, if going back to what Kyle said as his very first thing, like, if you don’t do anything, today, just do the three elements. Like if you were unable to train today, but you focused on the three elements, that’s still in my book considered training, cuz you’re on a path with purpose, which is training to me, you know, and so I think, just do and it’s not about perfection, it’s not about getting every single, you know, element every single day, just getting as many as you can, it’s just changing your mindset to making better decisions Little by little, like, even in the nutrition side of it, we have two healthy meals, like that’s the baseline. And if you’re eating three or four meals a day, we’re actually only saying two of those need to be healthy. And by healthy, we typically mean protein and vegetables. Like that’s, that’s what we mean. So just focus on it, focus on it every day, like that’s probably the most important thing. Because if you’re doing let’s just say in of those elements, sleep is probably the most important. So if you’re doing like all of our training, and then you sleep three and a half hours a night. I don’t know what what you’re going to look like feel like or, or anything really. So yeah, that, that the three elements, and then we might go to Ashley.
Joe Courtney 38:13
Um, so I was gonna say all of our tracks too many buttons, I’m still here.
Jerred Moon 38:18
Right out for a second, we
Joe Courtney 38:19
thought we lost no connections fine. Sorry, I just since I already do real things, mine is gonna be come to prepared, I just want to keep it in order. Sorry. So my wife is gonna be preparing for the workout. Now when it comes to the warm ups, black zeros the warm up. And we always say this in the brief, but or at least in the beginning. And that is you’re just taking 10 minutes and warming up. But you don’t have to do our warm you can do whatever you want. And as long as you just for 10 minutes warm up. And then also if you are struggling with time and you need to keep things on a specific time crunch, and especially those on shred. Make sure you’re looking at the workout the night before so you can familiarize yourself with what you’re doing the next day. Look at all the exercises the flow of it, any new exercises, you might not know watch those demo videos so that when you start your warmup and start your workout, you know what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and where you’re going. Because you know sometimes that every day there’s a lot of moving pieces and it could take 234 or five extra minutes of your workout that you’re looking at looking at the workout and changing things versus if you look at the night before then you already kind of fresh in your head and you’re you’re good to go and it’d be a lot smoother to save time or next night.
Ashley Hicks 39:38
I was just gonna say anything can be scaled within our tracks. If you we’ve talked about blocks if you can only start out working 20 to 30 minutes you can do the same thing. And just kind of take what some of the programming that we’ve done and say you know today I can only a lot this amount of time. So don’t get too caught up in all of that. We’ve All talked about that there is a three block track that you can use to help you with that, that we’ve already kind of utilized for you. But, you know, even when I’m out of town and I can’t get to a gym, I’m a, I’m able to do harder to kill track with, you know, some dumbbells, it’s, it looks different, but it’s still the same dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbag, we’ve done, you can even do it with just your bodyweight. So don’t get too caught up in that. But we do offer seven different tracks. So there’s bound to be one of those that works for you.
Kyle Shrum 40:36
I’m going to kind of piggyback off Joe here a little bit, but I’m gonna say one of the most important things that every garage mathlete needs in their gym is a whiteboard. And I’m gonna cover the sarcastic comments we’ll get later and say you also need a dry erase marker, so that you can write on your whiteboard. But um, the reason I say I’m piggybacking off of Joe, is because he said, you know, review the workout the night before, I would say go to your whiteboard, and write the workout on the whiteboard the night before, you’re going to do it. That way, it’s already there. And also, I think this is going to cut down on looking at your phone to find out what you need to do next, right. So instead of having the app pulled up with the workout on it, and looking at your app, that means you’re looking at your phone, which then means you get distracted, and your ghost block gets extended, right. And so you start losing time, because you’re distracted by your phone,
Jerred Moon 41:33
turn your phone, it says it kills your results.
Kyle Shrum 41:35
Absolutely. And we’ve covered that. So like, write it down on your whiteboard the night before. So go into your gym, it’s right or your journal. And and so that it’s ready to go and you have it in front of you, it’s all written down. And I would also say, don’t log your results until the workout is over. So write your results for each block if you’d like whatever your whatever weight you did, or whatever meters you were supposed to hit or whatever time you were supposed to hit write it down on your whiteboard during the workout and then log all of it in the app after the workout is over. That way, you’re not on your phone during the workout. So I guess really, my point is, don’t be on your phone during the workout. But the way that you avoid that is by having a whiteboard in your gym so that you can write all that stuff down.
Jerred Moon 42:24
It’s weird. My last tip was, just make sure that you have the app open during the entire
Kyle Shrum 42:29
work. That was not your next.
Jerred Moon 42:32
No, mine was super tactical it yeah, it kind of goes in. And with my first one, I’m just like consistency doing what you can. But it was like two years ago, I threw down the challenge to athletes. And something that I was doing as well was my goal for the year was just 300 training sessions. And that was the only thing I tracking fitness wise and tracking. I don’t really care about back squat, or like anything else is just like get 300 sessions over the course of a year. And it’s very doable for most people. But what I think is really cool. And what I didn’t do, if you see Dominic Decker post the shot of his occasionally he just bought like a big, like, annual monthly calendar, right. And he just kind of marks his training that he did. And I think it’s cool to have that visual representation. how I do it is just I look at the garment calendar, cuz the garment has a has a calendar, and if you did a workout to have like a green bar on it. So that’s how I, I track it. But I think having like a physical thing, like it’s in his gym, which is really cool. So I think doing that having like a visual representation of what your month look like, is really solid, because that was the original reason I started to do it a few years ago, because I would miss training sessions like here and there, you know, it’d be like, I missed this one. I missed that one. But when you’re only training, when your expectations about five days a week, and you’re missing one here, one there, and you’re like, I only trained, you know, 18 times this month, you know, that’s not how many times I want to train in a month. And so you know, these things skipping here, and they’re really, really add up. And I think having a visual representation, maybe in your gym next year whiteboard, Kyle, right, there you go. Or maybe buy a really big whiteboard and just write out all the months of the year there. But I think having that visual representation of your consistency would be huge. It’s helpful. Joe was looking at the garment app or calendar.
Joe Courtney 44:33
Yeah, I looked at the bars and it’s it has all the bars I have, like mine are all full bars, but it has like sleep, heart rate, weight and stuff like that. I don’t really care you can change what you view. I just see, you know, found that as well.
Jerred Moon 44:46
My mind only shows, training sessions.
Joe Courtney 44:49
So got a lot of bars.
Jerred Moon 44:51
One then if you also just a technicality if you do like more than one event in a day. It’s going to show multiple bars on one day
Joe Courtney 44:59
or like Yeah, which I do fairly often cuz I’ll do strength and then when I do my zone to a close that strength that I just like older,
Jerred Moon 45:06
and that doesn’t count as two accounts as one. Right? Yeah. Okay,
Joe Courtney 45:11
I’ve only been trained like twice a week.
Jerred Moon 45:15
Alright, let’s get into the workout. Kyle, what do we have?
Kyle Shrum 45:18
This week, we have heavy load short distance. Anyone who’s listened to the podcast before knows I’m a, I’m a burden carry top guy. It’s one of my favorite things. So this one is one of my favorites. Really, really simple. For max meters, you will carry two kettlebells in the front rack position for as long as possible. When you reach max distance, set them down and rest for two minutes. And you’re going to do this for 20 total rounds. And your score is your total meters walked substitutions, you may use two dumbbells instead of kettlebells. If you don’t have two kettlebells at the same weight, you may use two dumbbells in the front rack position. Or if you don’t have either one of those, you may also use a barbell in the front rack position.
Jerred Moon 46:08
And make sense like a nasty iron while
Kyle Shrum 46:12
it’s uh, yeah,
Jerred Moon 46:13
it’s it front rack iron mile.
Kyle Shrum 46:15
That’s, that’s pretty crazy. Yeah, anyway. So my tips would be like, as I said, I really love burden carries. Especially putting them in the front rack, I think because the front rack trains you to stand up straight, and walk straight and keep your chest up. It really, it’s really going to it will either train you to do things properly, or it will break you in half. So those are the two things, those are the two options. If you don’t carry those things in the front rack position properly, then you will be hurt right there and very, very sorry. So that’s, that’s one of my tips is make sure to keep your back straight in and chest up. While you’ve got those. Whatever implement you’re using. While you’ve got it in the front rack, make sure to keep it in keep everything locked in and in the proper form. Because you will you won’t injure yourself if you don’t. And I would just say, just like Old MacDonald, which we covered. Last time, we covered a workout angry music, listen to something angry and heavy and walk a long way. Actually,
Ashley Hicks 47:31
I have literally you still every single point that I had on
Kyle Shrum 47:34
this, you are welcome.
Ashley Hicks 47:37
Yeah, just he talks about keeping your chest up, make sure your core is engaged. While you’re doing that, too. That’s super important. So that way, if your cores not engaged, obviously, you’re going to injure yourself. And then obviously choose the weight accordingly. It is for max meters. And I know that sounds it’s heavy load short distance, who knows maybe you’re short distances, a 400 meter walk. But again, know you’re doing this for 20 rounds. So take that into account. And then yeah, rock rock music would be my jam for this one. So something that could definitely pump you up through this little fuel by Metallica would be a good one there. Alright.
Joe Courtney 48:23
So for those of you who’ve been on the strength track, you should be well prepared for this because I have created my own heavy load short distance,
Ashley Hicks 48:31
like this is just a normal Tuesday for us.
Joe Courtney 48:34
Oh, it because I mean string size, I always put in with Gary’s because you’re gonna be able to hold the weight. But for this since so a tip on if you haven’t done double front rack carry of kettlebells or dumbbells, there are two positions, both of them have different kinds of pain, one of which is you’re gonna hold it, you’re gonna hold it tight, and keep it compact to help hold away for a while, you’re not gonna be able to breathe very well. And then the other one is to hold it out so that your chest can actually breathe, your shoulders are going to be smoked. So my tip advice, rationalization for this workout is because you’re doing max distance and then resting the max distance trade off and on which one you will do. So hold it tight to your chest. Try and control your breathing, but it’s going to be hard to breathe, set it down, do your two minute rest, pick it up, carry it outward, so you can breathe a little bit better put some put more strain on your shoulders, and then alternate that way so that at least each time you’re kind of getting a different little different kinds of pain each time versus kind of like trying to shift during because that’s just not going to talk too much because it’s not gonna it’s not gonna last. So that would be my tip. thoughts, advice? And then grin and bear it
Jerred Moon 49:48
should be yourself Saturday. grin and bear it. Yeah. Oh man. Here we go.
Kyle Shrum 49:54
Here’s the seed.
Joe Courtney 49:55
Never we don’t know what it’s gonna be. So yes,
Jerred Moon 49:58
that could be anything.
Ashley Hicks 49:59
No It’s not gonna be something you’re grinning about, that’s for sure.
Jerred Moon 50:02
There might be a bear involved there. Meet yourself. It’s great, sorry, the brains just going, Oh,
Kyle Shrum 50:14
we need to bring you back to where you from
Jerred Moon 50:16
I’m going to reiterate why meet yourself Saturday exists and it is to meet yourself. He This is not really part of the training. And to be honest, it’s it’s part of the mental training but not like the programming. You’re supposed to come into these workouts. Finding the person who wants to quit find the person who wants to complain, find the person who wants to make a deal. And then you have to change the conversation with that version of yourself. Like that is the whole point behind me yourself Saturday. So with this one, Ash kind of mentioned it like what is your short distance as a foreigner meters? Just go in not knowing every time, all 20 times going not knowing? Don’t be like, Okay, I got 400 that time. So next time 350 would be okay, because I’m a slacker and don’t wanna try as hard. No, don’t start those justifications be like, I got 400. Let’s see if I can be done. Maybe I’ll go for a one. And honestly, I’m not saying beat it every time maybe round one, you will 400 round two, you make it 420. And then round three, you’re like, holy crap, I can only go 200 you know, like, but go in not knowing every single time, don’t don’t base or gauge your effort from the previous to the next, just go in every time not knowing, then you’ll get to those mental conversations. It’ll happen around round 1314 1516 you’ll get to the place where I want you to be. And that’s where you’re hopefully first off mad at me. That’s great. Mission success. If you anytime. I mean, you’re so Saturday, you think I’m stupid, or you are mad at me. I did my job. And secondary. Now you can transition to changing the conversation in your head about why you feel sorry for yourself, why you’re making deals, all these things and start working on that. So going not knowing every single time that’s gonna be more of a challenge. But you guys did a great job on the on the tips. The form is super important on this one. But that’s it. Does anybody have anything else before we get out of here?
Joe Courtney 52:22
No. Okay.
Jerred Moon 52:24
Oh, go ahead. Yeah, well, you got a new cycle. You want anybody at the end of the podcast? No, anything?
Joe Courtney 52:30
Oh, no. I already covered all the tips. I see it breathe. I don’t think I really said that. Those leaves are up. Somebody should have all said that. It was on everybody’s Yes. We all just it’s just like,
Jerred Moon 52:43
yeah, next time we do newbie tips, we should all say watch the athlete brief. But like for our own reason. That way everyone says watch it the athlete but
Joe Courtney 52:52
mine is so I don’t have to tell you in a support email.
Jerred Moon 52:55
Okay, let’s just do it right now. Mine is cuz I took time to do them. And like frickin watch him. Their their workout? And we can see I mean, people watch him like, Okay, well, 1000 athletes are on this track and 100 views, Dan, you know? Okay. Well, you have to Kyle actually, which is anybody have a different reason for watching the FAA briefs?
Kyle Shrum 53:27
I don’t know of another reason to watch it then. So you don’t have to ask questions. And so you know what you’re doing in the workout? Yeah, there’s a, I wouldn’t I would add to the athlete briefs. Kind of the the sub items for the athlete, Bruce, would be the movement demonstration videos. So if you see in the athlete brief, like something that you don’t know how to do, hey, we have a video for that as well. Word fold. Yeah. So it’s like, it’s like, if you if you see something there, you know, we’re explaining that, hey, you have to do this for the workout. You’re like, I don’t know what that is. Well, guess what? There’s a video for it. So go click on that thing and watch the video for that as well. So
Joe Courtney 54:07
you know what you’re doing? actually do it the night before? Yeah. I have a question for you. Because since you said your wife is on the programming, and I don’t know, if I wish she would be on a different track. But does she ever come to you with workout questions? And then do you ever tell her to watch the brief? Are you talking to me? Yes, Kyle, I have a question for you. That’s how I started this whole thing.
Kyle Shrum 54:30
I didn’t hear that part.
Ashley Hicks 54:31
I didn’t know I don’t have a wife. So there’s that.
Kyle Shrum 54:33
Yeah. And and yeah. Well, that’s what threw me off because Ashley was going next. And then he said as Ashley’s wife. I was like, Wait a second.
Joe Courtney 54:41
Well, you were talking
Kyle Shrum 54:42
MapQuest. My answer to the question is yes, that’s always my first question is did you watch the athlete brief? And she’s like, either, she’s like, no, and I’m like, the athlete brief is there. Go see what it says. And if she has why Then we’ll help describe it a little bit better.
Jerred Moon 55:04
So if any athletes in our community find themselves in the situation, the correct strategy is if you know who program to say they’re on hard to give up, Jared probably mentioned it in the athlete brief, but let me see. Oh, and then you answer the question. So you slipped it in there to where like, watch the athlete brief. Okay, next time. And then next time you watch the athlete, this time I’m explaining it happens again, just say the same exact thing. Joe, probably. Joe probably mentioned it in the athlete brief. But let me let me take a look. Yeah.
Kyle Shrum 55:35
I’m, I’m secure enough in our relationship to just ask her straight up.
Jerred Moon 55:44
Okay, Ashley, did you have an athlete brief reason,
Ashley Hicks 55:47
there’s only so many notes that we could probably potentially put on there. And there’s probably some intensities that we want you to hit. Or maybe even like, if we’re talking about a dynamic movement or the way we want you to lift this weight. And Jared does a great, I think we all do a great job. But Jared does a great job, especially of like, Hey, this is how I want this to be performed at. And so that’s another reason to listen to the athlete brief because it may not have made it to the notes because again, we can only put so many notes in there. So
Jerred Moon 56:17
yeah, yeah. How long does it like? If I were to speak for three minutes continuously? I don’t know how many words that would be. But 400 words like do you want to read that? And you want to put that in the notes. Anyway, we have gone way off on the tangent here at the end. So I’m just going to get out of here. If you’re here and you’ve been here. You’re doing the training. Thank you so much for being garage mathlete. If you’re not go to garage mathlete comm sign up for a 14 day free trial and we would love to have you. But ultimately, the reminder if you don’t feel comfort, comfort will kill you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai