Hey, Athletes! Want to learn more about mental training? How about fat loss or muscle gain? Then you will love this episode!
Episode 04 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
04: How Mental Training Increases Gains, The Fat Loss-Muscle Gain Checklist, and MURPH
This week on the podcast, we dive into a study that included mental training and visualization for some awesome results across the board.
We also dive into the Muscle Gain/Fat Loss Checklist. Then lastly, we discuss our best tips and strategies for MURPH.
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
IN THIS 67-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Why we are sponsored by blueberries
- How Mental Training Increases Gains
- How EXACTLY to Perform Mental Training in Your Workout
- The Fat Loss and Muscle Gain Checklist
- The Real Challenge with Body Composition
- Other future topics for the show
- MURPH Tips & Strategies
- 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:
- Training to Live Longer (while being a badass), Fitness Pacing, and Sally’s Revenge
- S3E2: Training with Your Spouse and Knowing Your Why with Reto Gugerli
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Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure add it to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript
Hey, my name’s Jerred Moon and I’m part of a group of underground athletes you’ve probably never even heard of before. Most of us don’t even have gym memberships. We don’t have every piece of equipment known to man, nor do we have a ton of time to train and we don’t need it because we’re achieving amazing things without it.
We are Garage Gym Athletes. And these are our stories.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, Jerred Moon here, and welcome to the garage team athlete podcast here today with me as always, Joe Courtney, what’s up, Joe?
Joe Courtney: As always, happy to be here.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, man. Let’s, let’s get into it. I want, so I got this question. About, sponsors, sponsors for the podcast. And this is an interesting topic.
So first I’m gonna, I’m gonna tell you who the sponsor is for today’s [00:01:00] podcast. And then I’m also going to explain to you why, why we don’t have sponsors in the podcast. I, I think that some people, they, they think that a sponsor of the podcast makes it like a little bit more legitimate. but we actually refuse sponsors.
So today’s. Sponsor is blueberries because they are high in fiber, high nutrient, low net carb, antioxidant re they reduce DNA damage and they improve brain function. All the things I could Google about blueberries, a pretty awesome, fruit. And so that is who the podcast is brought to you by today. because we sponsor our own damn podcast, we don’t have sponsors because we don’t want to be.
Sitting here trying to, you know, tell you all this information, but have to plug in some random bandaid exercise routine that we don’t actually believe in because the podcast sponsor paid for it. So that’s why we don’t have sponsors. And no, if you want to sponsor the podcast or no is the answer. If you want to sponsor the [00:02:00] podcast for anyone out there listening who might be reaching out, which is interesting, man, the.
We’ve had a lot of people just reaching out to want to be on the garage, gym, athlete, podcasts, a lot of great feedback from our athletes and a lot of cool stuff. It’s been, it’s been unexpected, I’ll say. Yeah, athletes, we always want to get our athletes to always want to get on, but we just have to keep it within house.
Kind of. Cause it’s, yeah. Yeah. We sponsor you. We sponsor you the athlete. All right. all right. Let’s get into a few things. I’m going to give an update on my training. I posted on my Instagram as I do on a weekly basis, kind of my update on my Murph project, the EO three Merck project, doing that once a week, and this past week I said I’d be giving an update about.
The 78% heart rate cap Murph that I did. so what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to do things a little bit differently than I did last time. I did a year of Murph. I want to make sure I’m training appropriately. because as [00:03:00] we’ve, as I’ve said before, as we roll into summer, I will not be getting anywhere close to PR times on Murph just because it’s too miserably hot.
So I have to make sure that my training is smart and I’m still making progress. So when the temperature cools down, I’ll be able to hit those PRS. And what I’m trying to do is make sure that Murph is. At least once a month, make it as a Roebuck as possible. Because the whole goal in training Murph every week is to turn muscular endurance into aerobic endurance, which that’s an entire topic we could cover, you know, maybe on a different podcast, but essentially, I’m trying to just.
Make the whole thing and a big, giant aerobic workout. and I wanted to try and train specifically in the aerobic, target heart rate zones. And so that’s what I did this past week. And it’s very interesting. So I kept my heart rate right around 75% of my max heart rate the entire time. and I had to end up.
W running a little bit slower on the miles, but also had to scale up, in, I mean scale up, how to do strict pull-ups in hand release [00:04:00] push-ups to add in a little bit more muscle fatigue, which actually lowers heart rate because you’re just not moving as fast. And so that is kind of the update. They’re trying to make that aerobic I challenge anyone cause.
What I was also trying to do is continually move. So through continuous movement and keep my heart rate in one spot. I am now training my body in this one specific area or domain to be a robotic during these muscle contractions, which. There’s not a lot of, transfer in fitness. Like, I’ve learned this, this over and over personally, but it’s also true.
Like, you can get really great, GPP. So like general physical preparedness and be ready for almost anything like Joe mentioned, running a half marathon, you know, without really training for it. Things like that. But if you, aren’t training specifically for something, you really can’t get better at it.
Like you survive the half marathon, but if you want it to crush the half marathon, you’d have to do a lot of running. Right. A lot of run training. And so that’s what I’m trying to do with Murph is like, just stay in the Murph workout, but make it more [00:05:00] aerobics. So. If I can make the entire workout more Roebuck, I can get it even faster because I won’t have be having to rely on these top end to energy systems that aren’t meant to be used for the durations that I’m using them for.
so I’m gonna stop right there and see if you have any questions about that or you think I, I explained the adequately enough. so is it distracting for you to like monitor your heart rate or cause you’re just constantly looking at your watch? not really. I just, I normally look at it during each portion.
So are right after each portion. So, you know, I’ll finish the pull-ups. I’ll take a quick glance, I’ll go into pushups, I’ll take a quick glance, squats, take a quick glance to make sure that no one area is increasing or decreasing my heart rate to any. Like ridiculous level, like pull ups, have strict pull ups, have a tendency to drastically reduce my heart rate.
So, but kipping drastically increases it. So I just had to like make sure that it was a good tempo. [00:06:00] So this is more of a kind of like strength building, but then when you actually start to go to, I guess you’re not gonna be doing this every time because there’ll be times you just don’t want to get you your higher heart rate zones.
Yeah. And I guess, I guess the big point would be, The difference between sprinting and and running, you know, five miles or like an an endurance athlete. They can hold these really fast paces for very long periods of time, but they’re purely aerobic. So let’s talk about, you know, the guy running the three minute mile, or the guy, you know, running the two hour marathon, things like that.
They’ve trained. Their aerobics system so much that they can get to these really high levels intensity. And really what I’m doing up to this point is flirting our, should I say, going in and out of. The aerobic energy system to glycolytic and back throughout that entire workout, which isn’t truly training my aerobic system.
So what I’m trying to do is get my [00:07:00] aerobic systems so efficient that I can become like the three minute miler or the two minute mile, a two hour marathon guy, where I’m like training at these very high intensities, but it’s still purely aerobic energy system, which your body can sustain for very long periods of time.
Okay. so let me see if I can get my own little interpretation of it. So like if you’re training, these longer workouts and then your normal pacing is a, you have like a floor low pacing and they’re like at the ceiling, at the top of your pacing, you’re kind of raising your floor versus your ceiling right now.
Yes, absolutely. Yep. And so once I can raise that and keep a, so it’s not necessarily I want to train at a higher heart rate zone. I want to be able to do. More work at the same heart rate. You know, that’s, that’s really what you want to be able to do that way. Cause if you think about it, 75% of your heart rate, max heart rate, you could probably hold that for a very long period of time.
That might be like a jog for a lot of people. depending on the athlete, but you could do it for a [00:08:00] very, very long period of time. Now, if you could keep that same heart rate, but run twice as fast, you know, that’s where real fitness is built. Cool. Cool, man. All right. let’s see. How about you? How’s your, your training this past week?
pretty good. it’s getting back to, it’s on and off. good weather here in San Diego. So we might, we might start to throw in some trail running. because it’ll be nice out and sunny and the trails won’t be, you know, money and slippery. granted had San Diego, so it’s not always terrible, but just this last couple weeks, I’ll start off.
So crap about living in San Diego and having good weather. I’ll just, I’ll just leave it be, well, I mean, we, we get a couple of weeks of London feel. And then it just gets back to sunny and warm. we also might even start looking to, train for some trail runs or something to Jack see as an event, which I kind of posted in the group, but that’s a whole different nutshell.
And they’re like a hundred and something comments on that little post. That’s amazing. A lot of it’s love advice. People wanted you to [00:09:00] start training for different, different things. Some of them were legit. Other ones are just a giving my picky taste. Some hate, which I don’t really mind. I did that a little bit.
Yeah, it’s whatever. I fully said that, that we’re kind of picky about what we want to do, but I get it though, like I was kind of like joking around with you, but at the same time, I. I get it, man. Like I, I’ve enjoyed Spartan races, to some degree, but some of them I’ve been there just, there’s so much damn mud.
And I know that’s, that’s like the point. Like, I get it. I don’t, I don’t need anybody to tell me that. But like, sometimes you just wanna. Like, go fast and not have to worry about like slipping out or, you know, whatever, like, and so those things are, are fun to do. So I think obstacle courses, races like Spartan with no mud would still be really challenging.
Maybe, maybe a couple more obstacles and just go a lot faster. I think that’d be, and people mentioned those stadium ones, but. the stadium one kind of defeats purpose to me. I mean, I think you’d get the experience I’m talking about, but I also [00:10:00] like the nature aspect of the, the Spartan races, like being, you know, not in a concrete jungle or, yeah, yeah.
Like going through the mountains or, or something like that. I think it’s a lot of fun. Yeah, and I, and I mean, I said mud run just as like a umbrella thing. It’s not like mud specifically, but most of those are just made for the masses to get as many people to sign up for the races as possible, which is fine for a lot of people, but it’s not exactly what we’re looking for though.
I did see, I don’t know if you saw an art group, somebody did. It was like an OCR, but with a rock. Which I thought was really cool, like you actually rock forward the, the mileage and you can do some of the obstacles with a ruck on instead of mud. so that was interesting, but there’s some good trail ones that I’m going to consider and, maybe even look to form a group for a, whatever the, the, I can’t think of it now.
It’s the, the relay race with like eight people. Ragnar, isn’t that Thor movie? Yeah, that too. Look at me with a cultural reference. Popcorn, you read the title. [00:11:00] All right. We can get into, you know, the, that can be a topic for another time about, certain events. And then, for the first couple of months this year, Y Y, Y wife, usually as you come back for lunch, but most of this year, she hasn’t been able to cause of, you know, ship life.
But these last couple of weeks, she’s actually become coming home to work out during. During lunch and I’ve been working out with her. And it’s just a reminder that sometimes working out with a partner can be, can add another element to your workouts. And it kind of helps me pace, like I don’t necessarily take forever to do my workouts, but I might rest a little bit longer than I, that I need to or, and just work it out with somebody in general can sometimes push you a little bit more.
on Monday we had the squats and they were squats. This week were rough cause there’s only doing these cluster stats with only 10 seconds of rest in between. You’re at 75%, and you’re just like, who had a breath? And, but having her like, we get to switch on and off cause it’s cause of the wreck. And it may be to keep pace with that.
But then. Like she’s on such a time crunch for her lunch schedule. Like we finished the squats and I’m like, I’m going to [00:12:00] go sit down just to just take five cause I need to catch up. But she’s already moving on to the next thing, warm up for cleans and like tapping her toe and be like, all right, I need to start this in the next 90 seconds, so let’s go.
I’m like, all right, well I guess I’m going. Yeah. That I’m always amazed, like I’ve gotten to a pretty good spot in my training, like in training alone, like you’re talking about like just being a little bit more efficient and people pushing you a little bit, but every time I, I, you know, bring been over for a meet yourself Saturday or some other training partner, it is definitely a different dynamic and that’s why I recommend people try and do it at least.
monthly or weekly. you know, as much as you can. And even if you like start kinda like I’ve, I’ve been doing like, starting like a meet yourself Saturday club where people can train with you or something like that is a really great way to get the benefits of training with other people and, and bringing up your intensity level a little bit.
Yeah. And you can suffer together. You can suffer together. Suffering is always more fun when it’s with somebody else. Yeah. Misery [00:13:00] loves company. All right, man. And last thing I wanted to update everyone on this is kind of a, a more serious topic. this past mother’s day, this past week was mother’s day Sunday.
my entire family was at my parents’ house, and this is just kind of a crazy story. I, we were all hanging around. the, the pool. We’d actually gone swimming. I went swimming with my boys. The water was really cold. but we did it anyway. I was like, if you guys can get in and handle the water, I’ll do it too.
So we were in, the water is really freezing. but then we got out, you know, eating some food and then people want to take pictures. And, my dad has this like giant dog. I don’t even know what type of dog it is. It’s like, it’s basically like a horse. and he kept running in and out of the, the steps of the pool and it was just kind of frustrating.
So he set a chair in front of the step so the dog would stop. His dogs name is Harley. So Harley would stop, going into the pool. And long story short, I was on the other side of the pool. My mom wanted me to take a picture of her with my wife and I was, I was doing that picture. And, My son [00:14:00] Graham had gotten tangled up in that chair and then fell into the pool.
So I’ve already told, yeah, my four year old. And, just worst case scenario, like your biggest nightmare as a parent. Like, there’s so many people around my entire family. but you know, not, Knock on anybody, but like, no one in my family is in good shape. Like, I, you know, I’m talking about my, my, Parents, everything. They’re not in phenomenal shape. And, you know, that’s the, I’ll just say that like, no, none of them pursue fitness. you know, the whole, like, you can’t be a prophet in your hometown, like truer words and never spoken with me, no matter how much I talk about or whatever. they, they’ll do good for a little while and then back off.
And like, it’s, it’s really a big yo-yo effect with a lot of my family. And I tried to help out as much as I can, but I only say that to highlight. My son got tangled up in this chair. He fell in the pool. He’s sinking to the bottom of the pool, and like I said, [00:15:00] as a parent, this is absolute worst case scenario.
I’m on the other side of the pool and it’s this ridiculous, it’s a big, big distance. And so I immediately react. I’m by far not the closest one to my son at all. Jump. I do this like massive, broad jump from one side of the pool to where he’s at. I didn’t dive cause I don’t wanna like break my neck cause it wasn’t super deep.
It’s not like 12 feet or anything like that. and so I dove in. he’s still Tang it up, tangled up in this chair, like singing the bottom. When I get there, I have to lift him in the chair, out of the pool. And to be honest, I was, it was incredibly hard to do and I don’t know how much strength that it actually took for me to be able to do that.
Like, I can’t give you a, a poundage. But you’re lifting water, all the water in the chair and my son all at once. so, well over a hundred pounds worth of a force, you know, cause my son alone is over 40 pounds and, the chair, everything else. Anyway, I get him out. Luckily he had not inhaled any water.
the whole thing happened pretty fast. [00:16:00] I’d say he was underwater though for 10 seconds or less. And I’m only pointing all this out to say, if I wasn’t there, if a less fit people were left in charge to handle that situation. It doesn’t take a lot for a kid to. Drown to inhale some inhale some water and have a much bigger problem on your hands.
Now, I’m not saying that he for sure would have died if I didn’t do what I did or something like that, but I do know what I do know is the fact that absolutely nothing happened to him and he was perfectly fine. It was the fact that I had a level of fitness that I can count on on a daily basis, and I can count on one hand.
So far the times in my life where my fitness has directly saved my life, where the life of others. And, if you around in the better humanology podcast, you’ve probably heard the other stories of where my own life has been saved from my fitness level. And I just like to tell that story because one, my son falling in the pool, getting tangled up in that chair is 100% my fault.
I should’ve paid more [00:17:00] attention, as his parent to, you know, move the chair, make sure that that wasn’t, in a good situation. But we feel pretty comfortable with our kids around the pool because they can swim or whatever, but I still take full responsibility for that even happening. and to just fitness is so important.
Like, I, I just want to challenge everyone listening. Would you have been able to do the same thing if you were in the same situation? best case, just don’t get in that situation. But next, would you have been able to help? And I don’t think that anyone in my family could have answered the, that question.
And the positive except for maybe my wife, but she was even further away than than I was. So I just like to tell that story cause I think fitness is important. I think what we’re doing is important. I think being ready for anything and everything is important. It’s also, I don’t think that just power lifting is, is the right answer or just bodybuilding or whatever, or just running.
I think that it really takes combination and everything to be a very effective human being and to be prepared for situations like that. Yeah, Willie. We even had somebody on [00:18:00] Garage Gym Athletes, many seasons go where they were in a situation where the, they’re on some trail and hiking and, their wife was having an asthma attack and they forgot the inhaler in the car.
So he had to run all the way back to get the inhaler and bring it back. Having your, your fitness put to the test in those situations. And one thing I learned, I’ve learned in those situations in the more exhaustive, longer endurance ones is that whole like a third gear, like that secret, strength you get when you’re lifting a kid, the car off your kid.
You know, those stories you’ve heard right? that’s not real. Like, like I think it’s real to some degree, but you have to be a really trained human being to see the results of like an increase in performance. You’re not going to go from fat and out of shape to dead lifting a 2000 pound car after into somebody, you know?
Like, it really is like this incremental approach. So if you ever think like, well, if I was ever in that situation, I would probably be able to handle it. And my response to you as you probably won’t be if you’re not training right now. [00:19:00] You can remove the governor on a car, but a car can only go as fast as it’s built.
Exactly. Exactly. All right, man. Well, hopefully everyone got something out of that and you are more motivated to train. And like I said, it’s only been a handful of times. I’ve been training for well over a decade, and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve actually been in those situations. But. I don’t know what if, what if I, you know, wasn’t trained for those situations.
so just something to think about. Food for thought and speaking of thoughts. All right. This week study, let me read the actual name of the study. Effects of mental training on muscular force, hormonal and physiological changes in kickboxers. So that is the name of the study we’re going to be talking about mind over matter.
And how mental training increases strength gains. so we put out in the group, we actually planned to do this, and before we even heard it in the group, but someone said they wanted to hear a lot more about, [00:20:00] the mental side of training and what studies there were behind it. So this is a great one. something that’s really interesting to me.
So let me dive into the study a little bit more. Kind of tell you the results right off the get go. We’ll talk about how some of the stuff was done, and how it can apply to you as a Garage Gym Athlete. So they took two groups of high level kickboxers and perform the same lifting program over 12 weeks.
One of the grow groups did additional mental training, including motivational self-talk and visualizations. Now, while both groups experienced increased performance, the group doing additional mental training made larger gains. And the group, doing additional mental training also showed markers of decrease stress, including an elevation in test toast, testosterone to cortisol ratio, and larger decreases in resting heart rate and blood pressure than the group not performing the mental training.
So we’re hitting this on a lot of different sides, performance, and then even hormonal response and resting heart rate and blood pressure. So pretty crazy. Now. [00:21:00] Sometimes you read these studies and you’re like, well, I’m not a kickboxer, to be honest, that, that kind of stuff. This happens a lot in studies that doesn’t really matter.
we’re taking like human beings and putting them through strength programs. They just happen to have kickboxers and you’ll see, you know, some, some studies are done on softball players and some are done on random college students, so on and so forth. I wouldn’t get too wrapped around that fact. I really don’t think that it matters that much.
But this one is, is pretty phenomenal. And something else I want to point out before I kind of get your take on it. Joe, was. I was looking at the, the relative increases in performance. So we have the group who did physical training only, and then we have the group who did physical training plus mental training.
And if you actually look at the, the great, the breakdown of. All of their performance metrics, which there are for a medicine ball, throw counter movement, jump bench press, half squat like these. They’re not like these small increases. It’s not like, Oh, well they, this, the, the group who did physical training only had a 10% [00:22:00] increase in the people who did a physical training plus mental training had an 11% increase.
The physical plus mental training was like almost doubled in every single category of relative performance increases. So like the counter movement jump. Was about 8%, and it looks about like I exactly double like 16%. the, what was it? Medicine ball throw was an actual double, double performance and nearly double with the bench press and half squat.
We’re talking about relative increases in performance. And so we’re not talking about these like little small, like, Oh, add a little mental training and you get a 5% jump. We’re talking like. Holy shit. You can like actually see significant increases in performance just by doing a little bit of mental training and I’ll talk a little more how to do it.
But, Joe, what’s your take on this study? You know, having glanced over it and kind of heard me break it down a little bit more. And when we talk about dialing in the, the mental side and focusing on things a lot, but, kinda touch back [00:23:00] from, I believe last week when we were talking about the stimulus and why we do things.
whenever we like programming stuff, if you’re just going through the motions of certain. movements and things, working out versus actually like thinking about what you’re doing and really trying to emphasize what is being trying to is the right emphasis and stimulus. Then, you’re not going to get the full, full, benefit.
So like for example, today. and, and it’s not even just like effort. It’s so like today or this week for some of the people, we’re doing a whole bunch of tuck jumps and now with tuck jumps, it’s a very explosive movement. And if you actually thinking every single time to explode up as high as you can versus just, okay, I’m just going to jump in the air and pick my feet up.
Those are two different things that you’re technically doing the movement either way. And I’m not saying that like it’s trying harder one way or the other, but actually thinking about that, that last, it’s almost like that last 10% of. executing the movement properly to fully get the benefit is, is kinda how I thought of it as well.
and I know a lot of the, this study was done in between like resting or like, post-workout. [00:24:00] But it’s just another, another side of the mental thing to me. You know, and what you’re saying about there is like the intent of the exercise and execution of the exercise. And I think that’s so true. I think so let’s say level one beginner type stuff is, yeah.
I’m just going to encourage you to do the movement and be consistent, you know, and like, not much more than that. Like, yeah, if you want to do some half-ass tuck jumps that, you know, you’re barely getting off the ground, but you’re burning calories moving, sweating. And you’re developing this habit of fitness.
That’s great. Congratulations. But where I think a lot of people get stuck and they get into this, This, you know, black and white mindset is like, people think our bodies are our robotic, you know, it’s just like get it put in the sets and reps and then you’re going to pop out on the other side with the same result and no matter what, and that’s not true.
Your in the intent of the stimulus, like you’re saying, your intention applied to the exercise, your intensity, all of that stuff matters in the results that you [00:25:00] specifically are going to see. And I think so once we get past level one area fitness and going to level two, you need to be really super intentional about how you are lifting the weight and when you focus on how you are lifting the weight, it gets more uncomfortable.
Even if you’re an advanced athlete, if you’re thinking about every single. Okay. I am, you know, now extending, bring back down and you, cause after you have really good muscle memory and good mechanics, you don’t need to think much about movement. You know, you can just do it with very little thought. But if you start thinking about it, this is how you continue to see progress.
And this isn’t the mental side of training that they’re talking about here. This is just me encouraging athletes to remain intentional during your training session. you know, drop the Instagram. On your phone, you know, the checking emails between sets, all these things that all of us have done. You know, I think it really can kill your performance.
Now keep in mind, in this study, people, people saw results either way, right? They followed the program, they were consistent and they, and they saw the [00:26:00] results. But the difference in how much, what you could see if you were just a little bit more intentional in your training is huge. So let’s talk about how to get this done.
So specifically they would do a 15 minute warm up general and specific, then they would do 30 minutes of, basically what it looks like to me is some dynamic training, dynamic effort training with . It’s close to a hypertrophy, you know, muscle endurance type work. So they do bench press and half squat, four times eight was 70% and then they do medicine ball throws and counter movement jumps.
Okay. So. The group that, only did physical training. They did 80 seconds of rest between sets. The people who did mental training, they did 80 seconds of motivational self-talk between sets. So however, excuse me, some people get too wrapped up in how to execute this, but it’s just any sort of self talk that you know is going to keep you positive and keep you [00:27:00] focused on, Succeeding in the next set, the next reps, you know, all of these things so that they’re, they’re basically just using their rest time to do, to do motivational self-talk between sets. They rested the same amount of time. They just were using their rest time. This is like, you know, we’ve talked about a lot, like, I do the dishes and clean the kitchen in my family, because my wife cooks, and so I do that at night.
And what do I do while I’m doing that? I’m using my time when I cleaned the kitchen and when I do the dishes too. Learn, you know, I have an audio book going because that’s one place I can actually double up and still be productive. And it’s, this is no different here. This to me, it’s the same exact thing.
I’m going to start implementing this like immediately in, in all of my training. cause I’ve never seen a study like this where it’s so beneficial. I mean, I’ve talked about visualization and motivational self-talk for years. In fact, if you’re. If you are one of our athletes and you haven’t done our 21 day mental toughness course, or it was formerly known as mental toughness militia, [00:28:00] every single garage of mouthy has access to that and their members area.
You can go access that and it has a lot of these kinds of things in it. And I, you know, I put that together back in. 2011, 2012 timeframe. Yeah, I did it all in 2012 and release it in 2013 anyway, so put putting your rest time to work I think is takeaway number one is using whatever rest time you have to do some motivational self talk in between sets.
what are, what’s your take on it and do you think that you will try that, doing self talk during, during rest? Yeah. You think you’ll do that? You think you’d give it a try? So I think there’s, there’s definitely times where I already do that. Like when we get to heavier weights, especially like maxing out days and, whenever there’s 85, 90% plus of just really like the being confident in saying like, you know, pumping myself up.
And, and, and. Mentally dialing in to those, do those sets versus, you know, hanging out in between looking at my phone and whatnot. Yeah, and that’s, I think I will. I [00:29:00] definitely, I don’t think I do motivational self-talk during my rest, but if it’s going to be something that’s challenging, I definitely do a visualization, which we’ll talk more about here in a minute.
to where I actually just visualize, like if it’s a really heavy back squat or something, I just visualize that repetition happening. So what’s it going to feel like on the way down? What am I going to feel like in the bottom, you know, how explosive do I need to be in the bottom to get out and push that weight back up?
What am I going to do? I kind of have a contingency plan. What’s my plan if I get stuck? Cause there’s always that sticking point, you know, I have all these plans, so that’s. That’s one thing. One part of mental training, I would say I do. I definitely don’t think, you know, and I’d have to probably do a few training sessions to see, but I don’t think I do any motivational self-talk as of right now.
So that’s something I’d like to try adding on top of visualization. Now that’s only one part of what they did in this study, with the quote unquote mental training. So take away for the athletes, start doing motivational self-talk during your rest times. Now, the second thing that they did, [00:30:00] may not be as beneficial.
Not, no. It’s definitely as beneficial. It might not be as applicable as the word I was looking for, applicable for everyone, but they would do 30 minutes after the training session was over and they would do first-person motory image. Motor imagery for bench press, half squat, medicine, ball throws, and counter movement jumps, which are all the movements that they were testing.
So what is first person motor imagery? It’s really what I was talking about. It’s just as visualization, like moving through the exercises. And they say the best way to do this is to, when you visualize these things, is to actually visualize from your perspective. Not like visualize yourself doing it and you know, not like seeing yourself outside your body doing it, but to actually just visualize what it would be like to do to the movement because it helps your brain better prepare for executing the task when it sees it.
so this really. This visualization of the movements for a half hour [00:31:00] after your training session is over. Now, I don’t think a lot of people have the time nor the desire to do something like that. but it’s something if you are training for something specific and you know, you really want to make sure that you, you know, I think it can be really helpful, like power lifting needs or maybe even maybe even a Spartan race.
You know, all these things. If you know the, the obstacles and have done them before and you can start, you know. Visualizing yourself, completing them and doing them and what it feels like and how that looks, I think that’d be really beneficial. But personally, I don’t know if I’m going to add 30 minutes to the end of my day, to visualize my next training session or specific movements.
But who knows? Maybe I’ll give that a try. Joe, do you think that’s something that you would, ever tackle? Probably not. try to think. So is it like it’s in preparation to the next day or following the workout you just did, remembering what kind of, what you did. What they’re really doing is they were just doing motor imagery for those movements.
So they’re their training program. Like it’s kinda hard to put in context of like hard to kill, which is a track [00:32:00] you’re on because you might be doing something. Almost a different every day. But if, say you just wanted to focus on getting your strict press, your back squat and your dead lift increased, maybe it’s just sitting there for 30 minutes after every session, no matter what you did that day.
And just focusing on those movements and, you know, walking your body through a training session with those movements over and over again. So really it’s kind of movement specific. just making sure that you’re executing those and visualizing them. Hmm. I’m not sure if I, if I will, I might try it on like pull-ups because I have certain, queuing problems on poles right now because of my shoulder.
But yeah. Now, one thing I, another thing I want to point out is the, the other group, the physical training only group they did in neurocognitive tasks. So I don’t, I didn’t look too far into exactly what they’re doing, but I’m thinking of things like, have you ever messed around with the app, like Lumosity or done any a brain training app?
So Lumosity is a brain training app. and there, there are a lot of other ones out there, but. They, they still had the [00:33:00] people doing physical training do some sort of mental stimulation after the fact, which I think is very interesting cause they really controlled for, you know, every aspect. So they both had 80 seconds of rest.
Okay, good. So there’s no. Different than the rest. And it’s like, well, these people that 30 minutes of visualization stuff, and then you can be like, well, what if they’re just working out their brain and their brain? No. These guys, the other group actually did like cognitive tasks too for 30 minutes after their training session, which kind of controlled for it.
They just didn’t do visualization. They did more like brain teasers and stuff like that. And they still didn’t see as many results as the people who did the, The visualization and the motivational self-talk, which I just think it’s just insane, really, especially if you like actually pull up the study.
It’s just insane how different the, how much the results are. The performance results are just really crazy. They’re just kinda crazy. I just want to go back to when you were talking about, like level one, level two and stuff. Cause it the very last note on the, on the thing that we’re reading is that a positive self talk and [00:34:00] first person kinesthetic mental imagery, absolutely do not replace slinging around heavyweights and every I heavy iron obviously, but they can help get larger gains from your training program.
So. It’s so, as you kind of touched on, like getting actually in the, in the groove of a, of a PR of good programming and in working out is step one. But if you’ve have already been doing some working out and you need to like, okay, you need to up your, up your game a little bit more. This is when, this is a small thing to incorporate small and easy to incorporate.
Yeah, I mean super applicable, super easy to do. Cause you can just do it during your rest sets. So I think, I mean, I want to encourage every Garage Gym Athlete to start trying it, myself included. Cause like I said, I haven’t been doing the self-talk, been doing more visualization. I think I would like to try both now just going a little bit further.
I kind of already mentioned it, but they didn’t only see performance indicators, their resting heart rate was significantly lower and their blood pressure was better. Like, I think was there anything else? Oh yeah. And then the. [00:35:00] The biggest, the coolest thing, I think is the, the decreased markers, a physiological and psychological stress.
So like, they had, better testosterone, the cortisol levels, and they just were actually like, way better off. Let me just go ahead and say better humans, when they were doing the, in the mental training thing, like not only did they, you know, see performance increases a lot of things that have to do with
You, feeling less stressed. so they had decreased stress markers and more testosterone. Like you’re, you’re affecting all these different areas that you’re really just becoming way more well-balanced, which is going to really, help me lead into the next, next part of, this podcast and what we’re talking about.
But I just think this is super cool, really interesting study. If you guys want to dive more into it. And then, Joe, I just, this’ll be the last thing I say before we move on to the topic in the. The mental training program we have inside a Garage Gym Athlete. I referenced a study in there, which I thought was really interesting.
They had very similar [00:36:00] stuff. this one, this study has a quite a bit older, but they had like. Training only training plus mental performance. And then they had mental performance only, and they still only, so like one group trained, one group trained and did mental exercises. And then the other group only did mental exercises.
And what was crazy was, in order of seeing results, it was, Training plus mental performance, then training. But the crazy thing is the people who did literally Jack shit like did not work out, only thought about it, still had performance increases. They weren’t significant. They weren’t significant performance increases, but they were still increases.
and so that study, I’ll have to see if I can dig it up. That one really crazy also blows my mind. And also one of the reasons I’ve always been so obsessed with this topic and focusing on this side of the human being in the athlete. Yup. Alright. Now let’s get into the topic of gaining muscle and losing fat.
Either gaining muscle while losing fat or [00:37:00] losing fat or gaining muscle. They’re all really a one in the same to me. and I’m going to let you kind of kick off your thoughts on this. so really just the topic of, of doing it, right? Like how, how is it possible? What do we need to be thinking about? And, all of that.
yeah. Everybody, pretty much, when they start working out with us, they pretty much say that they want all of this and everybody wants everything, right? Yeah. I want to, I actually want to. Yeah. And I don’t, I mean, I’m all about it. Like I, I want all of it to like, I want to gain muscle and lose fat and be faster and stronger.
It’s just. It’s not an immediate thing, right? Yeah. I actually used to just get faster and stronger. It’s almost like those two different things too, to be strong and fast or almost not, not necessarily posing, but harder to achieve at the same time, just like gaining muscle and losing fat. So you’ve got to I, to me, I either athlete either.
If somebody needs a prioritize one or the other, you focus on one. And then the other can have sometimes via by-product. So if you, you can do strength training and then after a [00:38:00] while you can still lose some fat, just not as fast as you would to be doing for just a straight up cardio. so it all depends on, on goals, for me or to me and like what, what the program is you’re doing and what you, or what you haven’t been doing.
so it’s, it’s kinda situation on the person. but if. You do want both, just like with strength and conditioning, like on harder to kill is that it’s, you’re going to have to extend your, your goal window. So if it takes you, you know, two months to achieve this much strength and table two months to achieve losing this way, then you might take three to four months to achieve both.
If you’re working on both at the same time, there is no speedy process fast way to do either. And there’s, there’s, if you’re looking for a fast way to do anything in fitness wise, you’re, you should probably stop. Doing that, right? It would just change your Jane overall goal. How would you just stop? no, but so going to the performance side of things, getting stronger faster, all that stuff.
A lot of coaches out there, if you guys listened to, you know, more advanced coaches, read the articles or [00:39:00] whatever. Sometimes they’ll say, Hey, it’s not possible. And when I say advanced coaches, I’m talking not like they have a lot of experience years wise. I’m talking about they’re working with really top end athletes.
So I’m elite level. I wouldn’t call them elite coaches. I just call them coaches who work with elite athletes. There we go. And they will say it’s not possible. But the reason that they say it’s not possible is because, and I’ve seen this over and over again, and this is cause people always want to come and argue with me or have a conversation about why these things aren’t possible.
But the information that they are pulling from is some guy who is training these elite level athletes. And so yes, if you are trying to get Hussein bolt to run faster. While gaining muscle, maybe that’s going to be difficult, or you know, you’re, when you’re, when you’re trying to operate at these. Opposite ends of the spectrum, it’s just going to become more of a challenge.
And so most of the time, and most of the people listening to this aren’t going to find themselves in this, Hey, I’m already 3% [00:40:00] body fat. I’m, I’m looking to cut it a little bit more while also, you know, you know, gaining strength, like all of like 10 other things, right? That, that’s not where most of us are starting right now.
And so that’s why I just urge people to know that it’s 100% possible to. Gain muscle and lose fat. At the same time. I had a, I did a long video, about the difference between being catabolic and anabolic because there’s this old, Idea that’s still around today, that you can’t be catabolic and anabolic at the same time.
And I F I find it very frustrating when people even say stuff like that. because I used to hear that growing up in the more bodybuilding world, that here, that you can’t be catabolic and anabolic or anabolic and catabolic at the same time. So what does that mean? Antibiotic is just like you’re building up.
It’s, it’s a feature of your metabolism. It’s a, you know, building things in surplus and catabolic is tearing down, are breaking down, and they’re really just, There, there parts of your metabolic system, they’re not really necessarily these States that you attain like a Nirvana or something like that.
You’re not like constantly in its [00:41:00] antibolic state. And I used to believe that, but, but the truth of the matter is that they are just processes that your body performs. You could be catabolic for part of the day, you could be anabolic for part of the day. but like you’re saying, Joe, you, you could accelerate like a muscle gaining process, which would be more anabolic.
By only focusing on that, you know, only focusing on that one thing and having a shorter goal window. And same with losing fat. You could go a little bit more catabolic, less anabolic, and you know, do that and shorten that time frame and probably see more results. But if, if you want to do both, which is a little bit harder, you definitely can’t do them at the same exact time.
I think that’s what people mean. And what has kinda gotten lost is. You can’t do both processes at the same moment. And I mean second in time, your body can’t be doing both at the same time. It’s either one or the other, but it can be different in a day, a week, a month, a year of your training program. So if you do want to be kind of switching back and [00:42:00] forth, you know that it’s just like task switching, right?
Like if you wanted to write a book, but you kept stopping every hour to respond to email, Hey, that email might be 100% necessary for you to do, but. You do know that you could write your book a little bit faster if you stopped checking email altogether. Right? And so that’s just kind of the point I like for people to, I like to point out is that you can do both.
It is possible and just really, I’ve said a lot of words to agree with you that a, you need to extend your, your timeline. if you have this goal to, to do both at the same time, if you want to shorten your window, know that you might be doing it at the expense of the other, the other option, whichever one that might be.
Yeah, I think dividing up your days to get both in, kind of like what we do in hard to kill us. So like yesterday it was a lot of lifting. It’s basically everything we did was touching a barbell, but today there was no barbell. It was a lot of different other things, the body weight stuff, some kettlebell stuff, and just working different, different [00:43:00] systems that way.
And, even, and you mentioned that the . Depends on what level you’re at. You know, if you’re a high level thing and you’re talking about fractions of a percent to get better at, but if you’re not doing anything, then you could literally do anything and get better. So yeah, you have to assess where you’re at versus just, okay, I want all of this stuff.
And that’s what I used to point out when if someone was, had never trained, And then they started doing something, they start doing CrossFit, they started doing whatever and they got stronger. Like, yeah, of course you got stronger. Like you can get stronger by lifting. you know, milk jugs like that will make you stronger, but you’re going to cap out real fast.
Right? Then you have to start focusing on your programming and getting intentional. Now, something else I want to bring up in just the body composition world, cause I think that this often gets overlooked and it really is. I’m not going to say one, one important factor. These, these are the most important factors, the most important factors.
If you want to gain muscle [00:44:00] or you want to lose fat, I. E. you have any sort of body composition goal, I. E. every single person who’s training. And so sometimes I think we take these for granted Joe, cause you and I are. Fairly good at these things naturally. just cause we’ve been focusing on fitness and nutrition and health for longer periods of time, but if you don’t have all of these things dialed in, I’m calling it your pre-fight preflight checklist.
If you don’t have all these things dialed in, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to lose fat or it’s impossible to gain muscle. I’m just saying that. You are making things way harder than they need need to be. If you find losing weight challenging, if you find gaining muscle challenging and you find doing both challenging, it’s probably because you don’t have this preflight checklist, taken care of.
So one is you, you have to be any low stress standpoint. And when I say low stress, w it’s fine. If you have a stressful job, like I’ve, I’ve been in some really stressful situations as an entrepreneur, in the military, so on and so forth. Like. I’m not saying avoid those things. I’m not saying you can’t [00:45:00] ever be stressed.
also having three kids is a little stressful sometimes. what I’m saying is you need to manage that stress in the actual, you know, hormone cortisol, like taking care of that. And we’ve talked about ways to do that a lot in this podcast. So low level aerobic cardio can help, lower your cortisol levels.
We’ve talked about it. Mint, your mental game we just talked about in this study that can help lower your cortisol levels. So you really need to be dialed in. and some of the other things I’m going to touch on, will be really important. So manage your stress is really the first one. The second is you really need to digest your food well, and that’s going to start with how it enters your mouth to how your, your body actually digests it.
And Joe, you probably know more about this stuff than me, but really don’t swallow your food hole. Make sure that you choose, you chew it. A lot of people miss that. Like that’s, that’s where digestion starts, is the manual labor, so to speak. You put in, in the mouth before it gets swallowed. Then after that, you really need to focus on your digestion.
And there are a lot of things that you could do, [00:46:00] probiotics, making sure that you have, you know, good gut microbiome, all these different things that you could focus on. But that’s the second thing is making sure that you’re digesting your food well. the third thing would be hydration. Hydration is so important and so often overlooked, and sometimes people get in a good habit for a little bit of time, but then they, they fall off.
You really just need to live the water bottle lifestyle, carry that thing around all the time, drink a lot of water. Next, get adequate levels of vitamin D, not through supplementation through sunshine if possible. If you live in some sort of climate where that’s not possible, then supplement a sleep. Make sure that you are.
Sleeping, bottom line, you want to make sure that you’re getting enough sleep. That can be different for everyone. Now, some people are like, well, I don’t actually need that much sleep. Well, there’s a study done on people who they’re there. They’re apparently Thai people in this world who can not just function with six hours of sleep, but like they are perfectly healthy and good to go.
And guess what? They are estimating that it’s about 3% of the [00:47:00] population that are in that boat. Everyone else. Is going to be in the seven to eight hours, possibly nine hours of sleep a window. So you’re probably not that 3% you might be, but you’re probably like, I used to think, I was like, I operate pretty well.
I had, cause I had to do a lot in the military. I’m five and six hours, but I just know now, you know, having my sleep pretty dialed in, that I operate a lot better with more sleep. and then if you want to lose weight, you should be trying to increase your muscle mass. Now this is kind of that the, the, the preflight checklist is over.
So stress, digestion, hydration, sunshine, sleep, make sure that you’re doing those things now you want to make your body as thermogenic as possible. And how you do that is by having a muscle mass. And so don’t, don’t go type in thermogenic on Google cause you’re going to get a shit ton of supplements that you don’t need to be taking.
I’m talking about becoming thermogenic by just having muscle mass. If you have muscle mass, your body’s going to run a little bit warmer. It’s going to take more calories to consume. Your base. Basal metabolic rate is going to be higher. All these things, just because you have more muscle mass [00:48:00] now, you might not actually gain a ton of muscle mass if you’re trying to lose weight, but your training should be trying to gain that muscle mass because if you’re trying to gain that muscle mass.
Ah, you’re going to be more thermogenic, you’re going to burn more calories. This is good for any human being. You want to be in this state, whether you’re trying to gain muscle, cause if you’re trying to gain muscle, then do it. Eat a lot of calories and you probably will. If you’re trying to lose weight, try and gain muscle and that type of training is going to help you, help you lose weight by becoming more thermogenic.
And then especially if you’re trying to lose fat, you need to be doing a lot of easy aerobic work and that’s all we programmed that and shred. There’s a lot of aerobic zone type training just because easier over is going to burn fat and it’s just a lot easier and make sure circulatory system work better, everything.
So that is kind of in a nutshell, the, the preflight checklist and things that you should be thinking about in your training. If you’re trying to gain muscle, lose fat, or, or possibly do both at the same time. Yeah, and I mean, I could probably talk about nutrition and stuff for a while. one thing from before, it’s like when [00:49:00] we were talking about, The fractional gains to, depending on what level you’re at, if you’re eating like garbage, you don’t need to be subscribing to these meal services that are, measuring all of your macros and doing all this stuff. You just need to eat cleaner. You just need to like, just cook and just start with that. You know, my dad tried to clean up his diet, a few months ago, and the people that, some of the guys that he hang exams out with were doing Quito.
So he’s like, okay, I’m going to clean up and I’m going to keep cute. I’m just like, no, stop. Just clean. Just, just cut out. These couple of things, Jesse clean and stick with this for a couple of weeks and he kind of fought me on it at first, but I was like, no, just do it and then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll work from there.
Cause you don’t need to make extreme changes at first. The more the, the more extreme change you make, the the heart, the less likely you are to stick with it. almost any athlete I’ve. Coached, and, you know, we always take a really small level, small, small approach when we’re working with anyone in a, in a coaching situation.
And typically the first thing I eliminate, if I, if I can tell there’s a lot of low hanging fruit, I’m going to tell you to stop [00:50:00] consuming liquid calories. And that by far is like the biggest, how many people, I had some, some athletes lose like 50 pounds depending on their starting point, just from stopping liquid calories in in most of the time.
I mean like a hard stop. So I’m talking no cream in your coffee. That’s a small one. And then we’re also talking about no soda. If that was in your life, I’m going to help you lose a lot of, a lot of weight really fast without advice and then no alcohol. There’s so many calories in alcohol. If you didn’t know, there are actually four macro nutrients.
There’s carbs, fat, protein. The fourth one is actually alcohol. It’s seven calories per gram. And that one can really F you up and add a lot, that you weren’t looking to. So getting rid of liquid calories, if you have weight to lose. Is the first spot. And then if you want to start looking at all these other things like a, you know, micronutrients and keto diets and all this other stuff, after you’ve added a couple of vegetables and lean meats, you know, like, okay, now we can start doing these fancy or dieting techniques or counting macros.
But if you’re still drinking soda, having beer, cocktails, cream in your coffee and [00:51:00] other sugary beverages, Gatorade with your workout. You, you don’t even to be talking about this other stuff yet. You know, I 100% agree with you that there’s so many other things that you need to do before you, you go down the nutrition rabbit hole too far about what you should be doing.
Most of the time. It’s really simple stuff. Just one thing to work on at a time. And, just real quick on the stress part, look into a grounding or earthing, whatever. Yeah. There’s two different things. So like if you are, if you are at a high stress. A job and you have a whole lot going on with kids just, you know, crown yourself 10, 15 minutes a day if you can.
did you just open a whole can of worms? So now I’m not going to talk about it, but what we will do, but it paid maybe for another time. We’re going to have to definitely. cover some of the research on earthing or grounding, and how that works and some of the research that’s been done on it.
But yeah, we’ll, we’ll come back to that one for now. Anyone interested in what Jody said? Google it. and there’s some pretty cool, pretty cool information out there about it and that would something we can definitely dive deeper on. but the, to go back to nutrition, one things [00:52:00] that I definitely like to help people with and even ourself is reducing the inflammation and like inflammation that you don’t even realize you might have.
Yeah. what my mother-in-law came out back in April and she didn’t have a very good diet and she came out and eating with us how we eat for two weeks and she lost like five to six, so five or seven pounds, not even being active, just lost it because all the inflammation and everything just left her.
And she had a hard time sleeping. She didn’t, she actually had to take sleep AIDS, but when she was here, she slept very soundly. And you know, if reducing inflammation will help your sleep, we also touched on sleep. So in a lot of that comes with a digestion and food and things that. Might be irritating you.
you said probiotics, a lot of, a lot of things now. Like I don’t go looking for things that say probiotics. I guess I just know some things that have probiotics, but it’s another one of those marketing buzzwords that people will say, Oh, no probiotics or extra probiotics or whatever. which they’re still good.
but just try and make sure that those are good. But one thing that we [00:53:00] consciously always try and get in our diets are vegetables. Like cabbages. Cause that’s really good for your gut health. they actually, it’s, it tells, promote the good bacteria in your, in your intestines and also eating fermented foods because all of that helps to clean you, to clean out some of the gunk in you and get the good bacteria to, to, to digest all of what you got going on.
And if there’s less gut inflammation, then there’s going to be less inflammation all around. Man, you made me realize that every single one of those points I just talked about could be their own topic and we, we could go in a lot deeper now I think. I think we will, man. I think all of those are talking a lot more about sleep.
How to specifically reduce inflammation. I think that’d be a great topic for a podcast cause I haven’t a hundred percent agreement with you. Like if that’s the only thing that you were trying to do through diet health, fitness wise, like. You would have a ton of mental clarity and mental acuity. You would not struggle with weight.
You know, almost, you know, even if you had really simple training, you would see [00:54:00] results faster. You wouldn’t be in as much pain. You would recover faster. There’s just so many different things that come with, reduce inflammation. Yeah, we can, we can hop into all these topics and I think that we will, so I’ll definitely put a pin in these so we can cover more.
but let’s move on to the workout of the week. It’s one that I’m pretty familiar with. and I know most everyone is because Memorial day is coming up. actually I think this is being published on Memorial day technically, right? I think so. Am I wrong? I might be a week off. I’m a week off, so that’s right.
We have a Murph planned for Saturday, and that coming Monday is Memorial day. So a week from now should be Memorial day when you’re listening to this, if it’s on Monday. but so Murphy’s coming up, we put it in the programming, more frequently than most. Anyone else. and, Memorial day. A lot of people are doing it now.
If you want like full breakdown from my last year, Murph, to like really dive into this stuff, you’d go to end of three fitness.com forward slash Murph and there are a bunch of different links there, [00:55:00] tips, tricks, strategies. But, we’ll cover some right now. Let me see. I’m going to start with you, Joe, on any tips, tricks that you have, and then I’ll get into the real nitty gritty, like little things I think could help people with, cause some of them are just like your approach to it.
Not necessarily any like any strategy. So I’ll let you kick it off. I mean, I don’t know. Some are pretty obvious. Some of them you might even cover, like, don’t go hide out the gate with the, with your first mile. That’s, that’s a lesson you, you, you’ve had to had to learn. Yeah, it happens all the time.
breaking up, the sets into into 20 rounds of five, 10, 15. it’s good. I think one of the things that have made the biggest difference in my Murph times and stuff is working on my pushups. So like before when I would do Murphs, I would always even unvested I was always had to break them up into five and five reps each for pushes.
I would do five and I’d sit back on my knees and I’d do five again. But now, just working, working in places wherever I can, I can do 10 all the way through. which [00:56:00] helps. And. that I learned in my last Murph is don’t eat before and let it, well, I guess keep up with what you’re doing. We’ll watch whatever you’re normally used to doing.
But, so if you work out fast that don’t feel the need to eat something before Murph, cause I did and my stomach was not happy after most of the calisthenics. Do some carbohydrate rinsing. Don’t eat. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There carbons is dead. And then the mile kind of expect to be that, that you’re, I mean, well, for me, my second mile is about a minute slower than my first, but, but that last mile is when you should really just.
Leave it all out and get as good as much as you can. Empty the tank. Yeah. so, and let me, let me, rewind just a second, just for anyone who doesn’t know what Murph the Murph workout is. So it’s an in memory of Lieutenant Michael Murphy. he was killed in action in Afghanistan. and this is the workout that he actually did when he did the workout.
It was called body armor after he passed, received the medal of honor. They CrossFit. Actually named [00:57:00] this workout after him, and it is run one mile, 100 pull-ups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, and run one mile. And if you have a 20 pound vest or body armor, you should wear it. now it does say that you can partition it however you would like.
Now, anyone out there who says, you know, this way is harder to do. It’s not. And to be honest, we already talked about me doing hand release, pushup and strict pull ups, Murph this past week, and I was doing that to lower my heart rate. Lower heart rate typically means a little bit easier, right? it may have taken me a longer time to do the workout.
but those things are actually easier because unless you can do. Like 50 strict pull-ups, unbroken is not going to be as challenging as doing kipping. Now, there are benefits to both. I think if you can’t do any strict pull-ups, you probably shouldn’t be kipping either. I don’t think it’s, it’s good for you.
so things to keep in mind if you’re, if you’re thinking about tackling this workout, maybe do your sub, whatever it is. Ring Rows is going to be my, my [00:58:00] GoTo for anybody who can’t do pull ups, do ring rows and that should be your scaling option. Now, Joe mentioned going 20 rounds. So it says you can partition to run a mile.
You can’t partition the runs, so run a mile, and then 20 rounds of five pull-ups, 10 pushups, 15 squats. The only thing I’ll throw in there. Joe, you talked about not being able to hit the, the pushups because you know, you run out of gas. When I first started this project back, I, my pushups had surprisingly failed me or left me, should I say it?
It took me a few weeks to work them back up, because I was reaching muscle failure as well as well towards the, like round 14, 15. I was. Failing on the pushups and they’re having to rest more than I wanted to. And so what I’ve found that works is if you are in that situation, but you still want to go as fast as possible.
Now all these tips and tricks are based off the fact that you don’t just want to complete it, you want to do it quickly. So you do 20 rounds of five. Pull-ups, five pushups, 15 squats, [00:59:00] five pushups. So you’re breaking up the pushups into two sets of fives on either side of your squat. If you have problems being, you know, finishing out the, the pushups, that’s a great way to do it.
I did that. Well, I think I only did it once or twice in this project so far, but it significantly increased my time cause I never reached that muscle failure that you’re talking about. once I did that, then once my pushups came back, you know, down to five, 10, 15, and I really haven’t found a faster way.
Until recently, I broke it into five sets, instead of 20. But I did that unvested and I was still able to do everything. So I was able to do sets of 20 pull ups, unbroken. I was able to do everything unbroken and sets of 40. And what does it, 60, 80, what is that? 75 squats. Anyway, I did five sets instead of, 20 and if you can do everything unbroken and move just as fast, it will be faster. Because if you think about, there’s fewer transitions in there, but [01:00:00] it’s really fricking hard to get to that point. And I’m not at that point with a vest on. I’m only at that point with a vest off. but that is really the fastest way.
Now, other little tips and tricks, like Joe said, don’t go hot out the gate, but don’t overpay because you could lose like a full minute or two. so. If you know your mile times that, you know, try and keep it around 90% instead of a hundred. pull ups are pull-ups. I already told you I was doing pushups.
Squats is the big thing. I think people do squats too slowly. When I see them do Murph, it, it really becomes almost like a rest period. People are taking several seconds to do one squat. You should be up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down until you don’t feel like you can, you can hold that pace anymore. but squats are where people get really slow.
And then that last mile. really like, just start feeling sorry for yourself and like in thinking about how much your legs hurt, all that’s gonna go away in about 45 seconds into the run. It like your heart rate might be jacked, but that whatever pain you, you feel it, all of that, like from a muscular endurance [01:01:00] standpoint is going to go away.
Now you just need to run. You need to run and focus, really stay focused. This is something, so I’m doing Merv every single week. My buddy Ben, he joins me. He’s joined me for at least maybe half of them now. And a tip I gave him, because he’s, he’s getting really fast. Like he’s getting really pretty good at Murph.
And a tip I gave him was like, dude, you just, you need to focus more. And he like was when I first told him that at the beginning of the workout, he’s like, like, what are you, what do you mean? I’m like, you really need to like focus, dude. You need to like, act like this is. Like a test, like you need to stay concentrated on staying fast and keeping the pacing that you want.
And I told him that. And he PR that day, he PR that day with a vest on all because he stayed focused. It’s really hard to do because, whether you’re doing Murph, like a lot of our athletes in the 30 minute timeframe or up to 60 minutes staying focused for that long. That that much time is very challenging, but that is, that is my biggest [01:02:00] tip for most people now is if you want to do Murph quickly.
You need to dial yourself in mentally to where you can focus on your pacing, on staying fast, on your repetitions. if, if music is going to distract you, then drop the music and stay focused. Like do whatever you have to to stay as in the game mentally as you possibly can and stay focused. and that’s my biggest tip and.
I think everything I’ve got on doing Murph, quickly, and then also making sure that you remember the man, especially they on Memorial day, you know, everyone who has paid the ultimate price for our freedom, you know, do the workout and remember, do both. Yep. All right, man. Well, we will, well we gotta.
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