Hey, Athletes! We have hit 100 episodes! We cover our top three studies and more so make sure to catch this week’s episode!
Episode 100 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
Our Top Three Fitness Studies & THE Questions
On this week’s episode we have Jerred, Joe, and Ashley for the 100th episode of the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast! As a celebration, the three coaches decided to go over their top three fitness studies they have covered over the last 99 episodes. Each coach goes over their list of studies and why they chose them. Afterwards, they go over THE questions! The ones we ask every athlete and guest that comes on the podcast. The coaches have answered these before but it always seems to change depending on their seasons of life. For this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday we have Burpees Save Me. It’s a doozy but a fun 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:
- Episode 100!
- Burpees Save Me
- Top Three Fitness Studies
- THE Questions
- MURPH Donation
- 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
- Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number
- Are Trap Bar Deadlifts Better than Conventional? (+Building Habits)
- Grounding for Improved Athletic Recovery & Reduction in Inflammation
- How To Burn Fat
- Is Low-Intensity Training the Next Big Thing?
- Cardiorespiratory Fitness & Long-term Mortality, Vegan Diets (Re: Game Changers Documentary), and MURPH
- If it Fits Your FOOD QUALITY and FIT WEEK
- The Magic of Tart Cherry Juice
Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
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Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Jerred Moon
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast Jerred. Moon here with Ashley Hicks in Joe Courtney. Sir. Hello, good, sir. Yeah. See did from the briefing? Less Than I gave last week, right?
Ashley Hicks
Yeah, we were listening to it in the car. And Scott was like, it’s very true.
Jerred Moon
Exactly how you do it. So Kyle’s not here. Big, big deal. Today’s episode 100. Yeah, made it to 100. Whoo.
Ashley Hicks
We need like the 100 glasses, you know,
Jerred Moon
Joe sound effect, man. All right, next to over the next 100 episodes, we’re gonna get way better. we’re skipping updates this week, because there’s a good amount to cover. What we’re doing this week is we’re gonna go over our top three studies personally that we’ve selected, because we’ve gone over 100 different studies now or close to it, technically not this one. So 99 studies that we have covered on the podcast, we’re going to pick our top three and kind of tell you why we like those. And then we’re also going to get into answering the questions we ask our athletes every single week. So hardest workout you’ve ever done the best activity for building mental toughness, we’re all going to answer those as a team. And so that’s what we’re doing today, something a little bit different for Episode 100. But the only update I do want to start with is just a community wide update. I said I would share the numbers with everybody. We have just finished. As of this recording. We’ve just finished the Murph burner track, and all the donations to the Special Operations warrior foundation. And we have as a community donated $32,870 to the Special Operations warrior foundation. So awesome job, everybody, the community, it’s just amazing. You guys blown me away, how much you’re willing to put into this, and how much the community means to everyone. I know it means a lot to us all here. So thank you, thank you so much for being a part of it. And you know, getting some good training in pra Murph all that fun stuff, but at the same time doing something really awesome, you know, for a charity. So I think that’s really cool. All right, we’re just gonna hop right into it. This is gonna be a little bit weird for us. But we’re gonna we’re gonna get into it
Joe Courtney
not even warm yet.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, so let’s get into the studies. Like I said, we’re each going to pick a study, three studies apiece, that were our favorites. We’ll do one at a time. So you kind you’re going to have to rank order here, actually in Joe. So you have to pick the number one or we’ll go number three, your third favorite than second favorite than first favorite. And I’m going to start with Ladies first. Oh, man, I knew that was gonna happen. Actually, what is your of your top three? What is your third favorite study we have covered on the podcast and why?
Ashley Hicks
third favorite study? Why I was gonna say that any study that had females and it was my favorite study. But that was
Jerred Moon
like what 10% of them.
Ashley Hicks
Um, I will say my third favorite study was Episode 51, which is age Ain’t nothing but a number is what we titled it. But the study was over, they tested middle aged men, as well as a young younger men and middle age being probably like 40s 50s, I believe. And they tested squatting. And so I said, I’m gonna love this study, because it was squatting. It wasn’t like some leg press or random stuff that they did. But basically, it proved that even because a lot of people say oh, I’m getting older, I can’t, I can’t be as fit as I was when I was younger, or whatnot. And this study that almost debunked that like said, like, you can still keep up with, you know, the younger guys and your dudes and still stay as fit. So I that was my third favorite study. And I kind of liked it just because, I mean, I don’t think I’m old. But I know that I’m getting older, obviously each year. And so I just loved that it kind of says like, you can still stay fit and still be strong and have goals even as you are getting older. Which
Jerred Moon
Yeah, and I think really like age, I really feel like there’s this, there’s two sides to that, because in certain cases you are there are actually factors to getting older. But I feel like a lot of those are mindset driven early on, you know, and so yes, there will be some disadvantages to getting older, you know, they probably not as big as you think that they are. And you shouldn’t use those as these limiting beliefs that you’re not able to achieve certain things or do certain things or just you know, because you’re getting older I I was a big fan of that study as well.
Ashley Hicks
Yeah, didn’t want to use age as a crutch.
Jerred Moon
Alright, Joe, you’re number three.
Joe Courtney
Alright, so I’m cheating on this one already. And it’s Like a twofer, and that’s they’re similar and related, but it also the logic behind. So I, my minor offer three different reasons actually, just to break it down that way. But so this one is, we’ve done a study about squat bar position, high bar, low bar and then deadlift type, whether it’s Romanian or trap bar and that and these two I like to combine together because there’s some of the more similar questions we get with athletes, what are our programming preferences? What is the best for whatever they’re doing, and those two both shed light on, which to advise with from a coaching standpoint, and from our standpoint as well. And they both tested strength and velocity metrics and muscle activations. And so we can actually say, Okay, if you’re looking to do this, then you should be focused on this, if you’re looking to this, and they should be focused, you should be focused on this or using this type of Bar Bar position. And, I mean, I’ve always kind of been against the trap bar deadlift, and it kind of made me look at it as as Actually, I should use trap our deadlift as a tool, because we learned that that’s a good way to work on velocity with with deadlift, because you’re taking some of the lower back strain out of it, and you can move a little bit more explosively. So that was cool to see. And how trapped bars can fit into training or how, you know, the different bar positions on the back can fit in your training or certain types of athletes. So that’s why I really liked that what for advising standpoints, the squat one was 38, and the deadlift was 89. Or if this batch were actually, I think I have this backwards. Yeah, the number of episodes 3889 either way,
Jerred Moon
yeah, and we do have all of the podcasts listed by number. So we will be telling episode number for everyone. If you want your Oh, that’s interesting, I’d love to hear the full thing, whatever, you can flip back to that number. And and listen to it.
Ashley Hicks
They’re also recapped on the blog post, if you want to go to our blog, on our website, too.
Jerred Moon
I was actually doing that earlier, I so i’d click on a blog post, and I’d use the search feature on on our own website to just like, make sure I could pull up this study and look at the notes on it again, and everything. So that was really helpful.
Joe Courtney
As long as plugging things. There’s also a podcast highlight page,
Jerred Moon
there’s also probably
Joe Courtney
over the last 100, there’s 30 or so of our highlights, and basically all of them that we’re talking about here, I think are on that page anyway.
Jerred Moon
All right. And just big picture, I love how much I know, I know this format is something I kind of decided on but the fact that we’re all reading studies every single week, I don’t think maybe the athletes understand. So we’re all if you had to label us, let’s say strength and conditioning coaches, coaches in general, whatever you want to call us. If you go anywhere else to a gym, or other online programming, and you ask them how many studies they read per year, it you know, they’re they’re gonna, you’re gonna get some probably blank looks. And I know me and the team were reading a minimum 52 new studies per year, like Joe was just talking about how he’s using stuff from the science from trap bar deadlifts to make recommendations to athletes, like the it’s just a really big picture. It’s cool, that, you know, I’m biased, obviously, but I think it’s cool that we’re like the most well informed group, probably all around who were actually providing programming officially. Now I’ll get to my third favorite it was episode or number 14 grounding for improved athletic recovery and reduction in inflammation. I mentioned last week too, that I’m grounding again, I just kind of forgot about it like the the grounding mat gets put away. There’s no real reason for me to do it, not do it. Um, and so that’s a big reason I, I’ve been grounding since before we did that study. And then I just recently brought it back. But it’s cool because it’s just something that impacted my daily life. You know, I read that study, I got more serious about it. And so if you’re not familiar with the grounding is we did mention it last week, you could take your shoes and socks off and go stand on the earth to actual grass or dirt outside dirt if you’re in Texas, and you’re officially grounding you can also get these grounding mats that plug into your wall through the grounding wire of the electrical outlet. So no, you’re not electrocuting yourself or anything like that. But in this study, they did a lot of downhill running and to get as much muscular fatigue and soreness and muscle damage as they possibly could. And then they had you know, a placebo group where the mats the grounding mats did nothing when they had the grounding group. And it said the grounding was shown to result in faster recovery and or less pronounced markers of muscle damage and inflammation. So this wasn’t like hey, do you think you’re you feel better like you feel better than you did yesterday. They’re actually looking at blood markers of inflammation and muscle damage to see if the their recoveries actually working. And the reason I like this one is just because it’s so weird. Like, if right? If you just tell someone about grounding or earthing, they’re gonna think that you’re some crazy hippie, like, this is some weird stuff. The first time I heard it, I was kind of in that camp. I was like, Okay, yeah, all right, whatever. But then you start to look at a little bit of science. And it’s just, it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool how much science there actually is behind it. And it’s super easy to do very, if you buy one of the pads, it’s very cheap. If you can go outside, it’s free, and can really help with your recovery time. So I think that one’s really cool and can can be really helpful.
Joe Courtney
That’s the reason to my one wireless, the ones that I pulled out is that the science is great. And the application is super easy.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ashley Hicks
I gotta love those. I was like, did we do one two, that talks about traveling, or whatnot, it was, I don’t think that was the same one where we talked about grounding, as for like,
Joe Courtney
jetlag, and stuff. You didn’t read them?
I think, yeah.
Jerred Moon
I remember you’re talking just it’s like, helpful, like, helps you adapt quicker, or something like that. Right? I
Ashley Hicks
just remember, it was one of the summers that I was living in England. And Joe told me for one of my trips, he was like, as soon as you get to the airport, take your shoes off and walk through the Alps.
Jerred Moon
I know. All right, number two for Ashley.
Ashley Hicks
Okay, number two, um, I’m gonna say was Episode 27. And we titled it is low intensity training. The next big thing we’ve talked a ton about zone two. And we’ve talked a ton about, you know, what high intensity does to the body, if you do it over and over. I even in like the camp of I think cross it might have contributed to some of the stuff that I’m going through. Now, again, I can’t really prove it. I just happen
Jerred Moon
right there. Like, I, I am seeing this. So you and I have been we kind of started along the same journey that we are fitness for other reasons. We got into CrossFit around the same time. And then we also both got out of CrossFit. But I just have all these friends, let’s call them online, friends, acquaintances, I’ve made it a better human ology podcast, and people who got involved round when we did. And I, I hate to say it, but I’m seeing it left and right, of these problems popping up. And I can almost guarantee it’s because of high intensity exercise. And they’re coming up with some weird, like, I’ve seen people hospitalized at least three friends now with some sort of weird, like, anxiety thing, or autoimmune thing, or if they can’t quite figure it out. And, you know, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I just think that high intensity all the time is not just like it like it’s dangerous at this point, in my opinion. It’s not just like, oh, you kind of do whatever you want is no, there’s there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. And I’m very, kind of set on that now. And I used to I Becca, yeah. Everybody, you know, to their each To each their own. But no, you could you could be doing the wrong thing.
Ashley Hicks
For sure. Yeah. And just for everyone listening, it was about 10 years ago, when I jumped in, and Jared was probably mom around that time, too. So yeah, so this study basically proved that you didn’t have they were training to I believe it was like leg extensions. And they were training to failure with one leg. This was the one where they did two legs, which we were kind of making fun of like, if we were in this study, would we like do one thing with one leg and one thing with another, but anyways, one was to max effort, or failure. And then one was to, obviously not max effort. So they just kind of throttled it back. And it showed that you could get the same strength results by not doing max effort, all the time. And it just proved that you don’t have to put the wear and tear on your body. You don’t have to go full throttle every single time when you train. And we kind of talked about I believe in that episode, like the differences of like Jared talked a little bit about, you know, that’s what I just thought I had to do. You know, when I was I’ll call it bro lifting or whatnot. But yeah, and it’s kind of like the same way in CrossFit. If you think about it, too. When I was training that way, it’s every doesn’t matter what workout it is you are going 100% you’re not throttling back or trying to get in different zones for your heart rates or anything like that. You’re just going 100% each time and you just try to get to the end as fast as you possibly can. And this shows there’s a better way to train. So yeah, that’s my second favorite one.
Joe Courtney
Well, great segue because it’s gonna be overlap with Jared says zone two. I mean, we talked about it a ton. It’s fantastic. The fact that you know, I think we we got everybody to listen to that one because we titled How to burn fat, and so sneaky sneaky. And I think that’s when we talked about being fat breeders. And that was the thing I remember, making the graphic for that one was really funny, because what the graph that we had made. But zone two, we do it all the time. I mean, we prescribe it to athletes all the time, we do it ourselves all the time. I mean, I do it almost even during regular training weeks. And now zone two is conditioning that is 60 to 70% of your max heart rate, and your burning a lower, very much lower intensities, have your body run on more of fat for fuel. And just to have it shipped. The study we did, we looked over showed that it boosts mitochondrial function. And it is great for recovery and your conditioning in general and really helps your body to operate at higher or lower heart rates to do more, I’m trying to I’m trying to word right now I can’t think of like, be more efficient with your heart rate. So you can do go vegan, you know, after a while, you can be able to run faster at a lower heart rate and therefore conserving more energy and using less energy. That’s and that is, it’s just fantastic study that has, I think that I feel like that one study is add one of the hugest effect on program in general for us.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, and there will be overlap. So it’s kind of ruined, because it’s not my number two. So Oh, my number two is Episode 22. Or number 22, cardio respiratory fitness and long term mortality. I just thought this one was really cool, because it made a very, very strong case for a lot of cardio respiratory fitness, even if you’re a strength athlete, and this study was massive. So the study was over 122,000 people that they looked at. And they said Carter, the ultimate takeaway was cardio respiratory fitness is inversely associated with long term mortality with no observed upper limit of benefit, meaning they were taking people who were a little bit fit, moderate fit, very fit, elite fit. And it was just the the bar always changed if the the better your cardio respiratory fitness was the longer you lived it out of 122,000 people, a lot of the studies that we’re looking at, are 13 people, 65 people, sometimes when we get into a meta analysis or systematic review, we’re looking at hundreds of people. This may be the largest study that we ever covered on the podcast, like I said, over 100,000 people. And cardiovascular fitness is inversely associated long term mortality and no observed upper limit of benefit. So if you want to live longer, do more conditioning. conditioning is very, very important. And I don’t think I really need to sell the community on conditioning in general. But I just think that this is pretty cool to see the actual science behind it. Because there can be a lot of arguments for different types of fitness and nutrition and all these other things and it’s all important, but how well your cardiorespiratory fitness is from zone 1234 and five, all those different zones is going to help you live longer. So I think that just really stapled that in my brain and that was a that was a good one. All right, Joe, drum roll noise. I’m just gonna pretend like you have
Joe Courtney
one day. All right,
Jerred Moon
Ashley, what’s your number one?
Ashley Hicks
All right. My number one shocking. And it has to do with nutrition? No, I mean, it just falls in line. For me. I think nutrition has, you know, I’ve done I’ve used nutrition as medicine, I’ve used nutrition to help help heal my body. And so this one is if it fits your food quality, it’s Episode 20. And I loved it because it debunked the whole If It Fits Your Macros thing. And we I think we had a whole bunch of people that came as clients to us, or at least I’m speaking from experience and a lot of it they wanted to my macronutrient count. And then when I would dive a little bit deeper and say like, Hey, what are you actually eating? They’d get a little frustrated because they’re like, well, it fits my macros, so it doesn’t really matter. And I’m like and so basically they gave they had two groups, they had an ultra process group and a unprocessed group. And then we even listed a chart of what the ultra process was and it was, you know, sugar drinks and chips and all kinds of stuff. And they controlled the diets for the subjects for two straight weeks. And it was proven that the ultra processed shocker gain Wait, and had an excessive calorie intake and it? I don’t know, it just shows that if you have a macronutrient count, or if you’re trying to hit some sort of goal, just eat real food, like get away from the crap food and yeah, that was my favorite mess my number one out of the 100 or 99. I guess that we’ve done? Yeah,
Jerred Moon
that was a really good one. Yeah.
Joe Courtney
It’s hard to have a number one, I don’t know if this is like the most groundbreaking but I just I liked it a lot. And I think because of application wise, I mentioned before that it’s great to have a study where you, you hear about it, and you can apply it very easily. And it’s not that big of a deal. You know, we’ve done studies about muscle fibers and much more technical things, but one that I really like, and I still do a lot of and that’s tart cherry juice, than just learning that tart. cherry juice is fantastic for you. It has awesome antioxidants that reduce inflammation and oxidative stress in your body. It has helped with recovery and conditioning. I believe the study that we looked at helped in sore muscle soreness, and I think we’ve also looked at some that has helped in conditioning as well. And I’ve learned recently that it helps produce melatonin, which wasn’t covered in the slide that we talked about, but it does that as well. So it’s just just a tart cherry juice, whether it’s the concentrate, or the actual tart cherry juice. She’s got a drink some. It’s fantastic for you.
Jerred Moon
And do you have the number on that one?
Joe Courtney
Oh, yeah. 43 and I guess I had to be another one that was just super easy. That was I’ll just say the carbon scene, which was Episode 01. on carbon sand, we just did notice you’re in a category of
Jerred Moon
liquids.
Joe Courtney
God, yes. Liquid supplementation.
Ashley Hicks
He needed it after what was it your Murph or something that you got really nauseous or something like that?
Joe Courtney
Yeah, I’ve learned that I actually need carb rinsing or a little bit of something halfway through if I’m working out fasted because my body’s just completely depleted.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, tart. cherry juice is another one that didn’t make it way into my daily life. I don’t take it every single day. I took it a lot for a while. And then I stopped.
Joe Courtney
Yeah, that’s really good. Like, yeah, I’ll get like halfway through a bottle I concentrate then it gets on the door on the frigerator that’s just kind of blurs into the background.
Jerred Moon
Yeah. It’s hard for me to there’s a good amount of sugar and tart cherry juice. And so it’s, it’s hard for me to know when to put that into my
Ashley Hicks
diet. It just depends on what, like if you get the concentrate versus the like,
Jerred Moon
I get the concentrate that you take shots up, but it’s still I mean, it. It’s like it would be like liquid IV I guess there’s probably like 12 grams of sugar or something.
Ashley Hicks
But it’s coming from fruit, which I mean, it’s still sugar. You’re not wrong.
Jerred Moon
Sugar sugar’s the devil. Okay.
Ashley Hicks
I mean, we’ve covered some studies, and books. And books. Yeah,
Jerred Moon
yeah. I’m basically keto. again after that last one went from bickman.
Ashley Hicks
Oh, no, there we go.
Jerred Moon
I actually, I’m just really low carb again, but I ordered some keto test strips just to see if I’m actually dipping into ketosis unknowingly again, which has happened to me before. So to see because I slipped in an update there, didn’t I?
Ashley Hicks
Yeah. Alright, Jared, what’s your number one?
Jerred Moon
All right. My number one is the was Joe’s number two, so 28 How to burn fat. I do recommend any body and everybody listening to this, go back and listen to that episode. So it was a big introduction and breakdown of zone two training and the importance of low intensity exercise in general. And like Joe mentioned, it has really transformed garage mathlete programming. It’s helped the community better understand the science behind what we do. Because some of the things that I’ve programmed over the years have been almost intuitive and theoretical, but not necessarily science backed like sustainable and repeatable efforts and conditioning. When I first started doing that many many many, many, many years ago, like when we first started I was I’ve been talking about sustainability and repeatability. I didn’t really know why. I like the the science behind why things should be sustainable and repeatable. It just made sense to me that if you’re doing 10 intervals, and you know, the first one was twice as much, as far as the last one, that just didn’t seem like fitness. To me, that seemed like hard efforts to failure. Like it didn’t make any sense. And then I started to find the science to kind of back that up. And same with us programming occasional, you know, 30 minute runs or longer runs. But I didn’t when we first start programming was things we didn’t have, like, I just knew that like conditioning is good. Like you you learn these things like it’s good, but I didn’t have all the science behind the that to be able to communicate it to the athletes and all the science that has come out around zone two has really proven that and actually given us really strict parameters around how our conditioning should be performed. And so the actual name like Joe mentioned, the name of the episode is how to burn fat. But the name of that study is nowhere close to that it’s assessment of metabolic flexibility by means of measuring blood lactate fat, and carbohydrate, carbohydrate oxidation responses to exercise and professional endurance athletes and less fit individuals. And so they’re just they are talking about fat burning, car burning, they’re talking about blood lactate. But it also was a big eye opener to me, because once I so many rabbit holes, you have no idea I’ve journals and notebooks pages full of breaking down this study and other studies that were mentioned in this study of how this all works. Because what I pulled out of this, if you really dive into it, is high intensity exercise mimics unhealthy met people unhealthy with metabolic disease. So when you’re unhealthy and you have metabolic disease, you when you’re when your body starts to work hard, it immediately switches to carbohydrate oxidation, because it doesn’t know what else to do is trying to burn the sugar that you have. That means you’re very unhealthy. And in fit individuals, when when we go to do moderate work low intensity, we immediately start burning fat. We’re not burning carbohydrates. We don’t start burning carbohydrates until we get into this moderate high intensity. And that’s the opposite. And so it just kind of was like an eye opener for me because I’m like, why would we mimic what in our training what is proven to be metabolically unhealthy? And that’s to burn sugar. And that’s all high intensity exercise is doing is burning sugar constantly never burning fat. And so that was just a big eye opener for me. And, you know, it really answered the question how you burn fat and how to be more healthy with this stuff and what elite athletes do and what fitter individuals should do. So that one was a really big one. And yeah, very impactful here at garage mathlete. And I’m just gonna go to my honorable mentions real quick. If anybody else has an honorable mention, you can knock those out. But I’m just going to not really talk about the why as much as mentioned them. So Episode 101 was carbohydrate carbohydrate rinsing was an honorable mention for me, Joe mentioned it 22 how cooling can increase both aerobic and anaerobic performance. And I’m pretty certain that was a study where people were like cooling their arms in between sets and stuff. Oh, yeah. And I just found that one very interesting. I’ve never done it. And I probably never will. But I just thought it was cool. And then I think it was the same one that you mentioned as low intensity training. The Next Big Thing number 27. So a lot for me on the conditioning side takeaways for stuff. So any any honorable mentions for the two of you?
Joe Courtney
Like it’s funny that none of us on our lists, I mean, I think I’ll just be our mentioned, but any of them about concurrent training? And pretty much all of them were just like a See, this is
Jerred Moon
Yeah, that’s all the words. Do you need to hear it anymore?
Joe Courtney
Yeah. So we’ve slice and dice concurrent trained as we wanted that compared concurrent with strength. And with endurance, there was the one that we just did the huge meta analysis that looked at, you know, different level of athletes. So all the concurrent training ones is I feel like we just once a quarter have to like just toot our own horn a little bit and be like, Hey, I see concurrent training. It’s cool.
Ashley Hicks
Um, I don’t know if I have any honorable mentions that are necessarily like within the 99. I mean, I loved multiple studies that we’ve done. I really like the clusters. That’s one number 60. But I actually some of the stuff that I’ve taken away a ton. And I’m really excited. You’re that you are opening up, like interviewing people again. I really love Dr. Allison brager, and I chant you interviewed her, I think you did it twice. And
Jerred Moon
I want to say times, to be honest, that she was on quite a few times. Yeah,
Ashley Hicks
she was great. And a lot of our sleep routines for me and Scott started with her and like how to like dim stuff and how to stay away from screens and blue light blocker glasses. And even like, she talked about cold drinks versus warm drinks, like be mindful of what you’re drinking even at night to kind of help you decompress and really have a good downregulation practice. I really loved that kind of stuff. So I’m excited for what’s to come with the different podcasts and whatever and and even some of the books that we’ve read, like not just studies like the books reviews that we’ve done, it’s been really cool. Like the why we sleep book was super eye opening for like sickness and whatnot. And I know we’ve covered a lot of nutrition and stuff too. But yeah, it’s been it’s been a lot of fun in what you said like we’ve been not just studies but you know, we read a book once a month as a team to try to like You know better ourselves but also like tried to give the athletes to like, what are some takeaways that you can you can get from this book too. But
yeah, it’s been fun.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, another thing I big takeaway for Alison breaker, I think about it almost every time I am going to consume alcohol was she’s like never consume alcohol on a training day. And so and the fact that I trained almost seven days a week now, like, kind of removes my ability to to drink alcohol because I really try and stick to that rule to the best of my ability. And so yeah, that was a big takeaway I had from her and then we’ve done studies. Since then, on the podcast, I talk about how, you know, alcohol, blunts, muscle protein synthesis, and all these other things. And so yeah, you really aren’t seeing a lot of results from from it’s almost like taking your anti histamines if you drink a bunch alcohol after you after you train, it’s gonna be bad for you. So yeah, I do enjoy interviews, you get to learn a lot from from different people. They will be a little bit more sporadic in nature, because because what happened on the better human ology podcast is sometimes you’re just like, trying to get an interview, right? So you just interview somebody, and you’re like, I don’t, okay, whatever, you know, and not not to bash any guests. It’s just like, maybe, maybe that person wasn’t a good fit for what you’re trying to do. And he interviewed him anyway. And so I’m going to be really selective and bring on certain people. And anybody who I think is doing doing something cool, or people who are really smart, maybe maybe combination of the two. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it as well.
Joe Courtney
Another honorable mention for me, it would be Episode 36 on supersets, I believe this is the same one. That’s the one that compared the agonist antagonist. Yeah. And then the other two, proof. Yeah. So how best to program your super sets for strength gains, and wise and how and when, why? Just how awesome super sets can be and how it doesn’t really interfere. And but the best ones to program together with that, and you know, sexy Saturday, that’s a game changer. Yeah,
Jerred Moon
hashtag my life now. All right, well, those are all the studies. If you go into your podcast player, or as actually mentioned on the blog, you can search and the easiest thing to do is search by number, because we have a lot of episodes we published. So if you are like, okay, I really want to listen to Episode 28, which is the one I mentioned, just type in 28. And you it should be, you know, pop up there because all of our all of our science podcast episodes have like a number colon, the title, so you should be able to find them that way. So anyone who wants to dive into any of the ones we just mentioned, go ahead and do that. But now we’re gonna get into answering these questions. We’ve all answered these questions over the years. And I don’t know I don’t ever I don’t even remember, I never remember what I answered previously. And so really, you get when I answer these questions for me, it’s always how I was feeling that day is my response to these
Ashley Hicks
are your season of life first, yeah,
Jerred Moon
season life, like whatever it is like.
Joe Courtney
So I would love to know what I’ve said over the years. I don’t even really remember. But um, let’s start with the hardest workout you’ve ever done since Ashley went first, last Joe, hardest workout you’ve ever done. So I’ll agree that all these questions pretty much changed depending on the seasons, this one hasn’t changed, and probably never will change. I don’t know when if it ever will. But it’s Kalsu. It’s across Kalsu that I did the full version wave or scaled weight version and half Kalsu and that is one that is typically a program tip RX is 100 thrusters, heavy thrusters. So 135 for guys and 95 for females, but every minute on the minute you’re doing five burpees. So there is no rest. If you take a minute off, that’s one more minute you have to do burpees if you go faster, then you’re just going faster, and you’re doing thrusters into burpees. And it is terrible. It really is bad. And because it there is no pacing, there is no strategy. There’s it I mean, there’s so much strategy if you just want to die quickly or die slowly over time.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, I I started CrossFit in college. And at the very end of college and I was like, I just immediately googled hardest CrossFit workout ever. Because I wanted to just do that. That’s what’s the hardest thing I want to do it and someone had posted calcium, and I was like, Fine, let’s do it. That took me so much longer than I thought it was going to like everyone has a game plan going in that I got was five, five thrusters every minute, and I’ll do and I’ll be done in 20 minutes. Hmm, it’s not gonna work out that way. And it’s gonna be brutal. So if you want a challenging one, and you want that to be your answer to this question, just go do the workout. Yeah,
Ashley Hicks
well, I think to start is a 13.5. And it was a repeat. I think it was 16.5 or something. It was thrusters and burpees over the bar
Joe Courtney
as well. It was like 1815
Ashley Hicks
Yeah, and lots of people got rhabdo after that bad boy. So It’s
Jerred Moon
not gonna programming
Ashley Hicks
thrusters and burpees are not a great combination.
Joe Courtney
I don’t go fast enough to get rhabdo,
Jerred Moon
which is a funny behind the scenes story. I wrote an article on rhabdo rhabdo years and years ago, like a long time ago, like probably one of the first 50 articles I wrote. And I could always tell when there was bad programming and the CrossFit open, because that that article got picked up by like the Huffington Post and a bunch of other big news syndicates. But the industry fitness site traffic would spike right after the CrossFit was open people googling rhabdo. And so because they would find it on our website, so I was like, oh, there must have programmed some pretty crappy workouts this year.
Ashley Hicks
My hardest one is also a CrossFit one. It’s called under the kitchen sink. I think I talked about it, um, my episode that y’all interviewed me for, but it’s 20 reps of all these different movements. And it’s literally every movement you can do. It’s wall shots, box jumps, push ups, cleans double unders thrusters, pull ups, I mean, front squats, you name it, kettlebell swings, snatches, and you have the same weight on the barbell, it’s 95 for females, 135 for men, and then 53 for men on kettlebell 35. for female, I do not suggest you do this. It took me over an hour to do it. I was a newbie crossfitter. But still, I remember, there was a ton of us that were going into the next class time, because we were not finish. And our coach was like, you will finish. Okay, I will finish. So it took me over an hour. And I just remember I was Oh man, I did not feel good after that one. So that was definitely
Joe Courtney
one of the hardest ones I’ve ever done. It’s like, every 12 Days of Christmas workout that everybody ever events. Like every gym has their own variation of what order you’re doing things in, but all of them are gonna take you forever, and they’re gonna suck after about six or seven.
Ashley Hicks
I see. I think there’s a way to do those, though. I don’t know. I like 12 Days of Christmas. I’m weird like that. But
Jerred Moon
you Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we’re like that, in general, with hard things in fitness, which is a good thing. Okay, so I’m gonna go to recent history here, because I just tried to think of like when I’ve actually met myself for so I’m at that point where I’m like, this is horrible. And I don’t want to do it. And I’ve done so many meet yourself Saturday’s over the years those some, a lot of times, they’re not meet yourself for me anymore. It’s just like a hard workout that day, you know, and normally, it’s the weather that makes me meet myself not so much the the work itself, but recent history was the BCT track. So when I started VCT, my squat was at 405. And then I capped out about 465. And I don’t know where I’m at now, I’m probably To be honest, back, I’m probably back down to like 415, because of how much time I had to take off from heavy squatting. But we did these sets, and I programmed it twice, or we would squat two to three times per week starting out in the beginning. And there was a 10 sets of three at 85% and three sets of nine reps at 75%. So that was the 10 by three was on a Monday, and the three by nine was on a Wednesday. And when my squat Max was like at 405. That was challenging. But then I progress very rapidly. And so I got to 450 pretty fast 465 took those that extra 15 pounds took a lot longer, but the from four or five before 50 came really fast. And then I program those again. So a 10 by three at 85% of 450. And a three by nine at 75% of 450. I just remember both of those days being like, I hate everything about every one. And I was taking like five minute rests in between sets because I just couldn’t bring myself mentally to do another set. And so that was my most recent history really heavy. even higher up high percentage, that three by nine was probably worse than the 10 by three was very, very challenging and definitely met myself. So that’s the hardest workout I’ve done in recent history.
Ashley Hicks
Probably longer for you to get your heart rate back down to I mean, if you think about it just depends. Because that’s kind of where I’m at now too. It’s like I don’t even care about time I just wait to my heart rate comes, comes back down and then I go again. But shoot. Now I want to do that.
Joe Courtney
self guided rest time we did that as a study
we did.
Jerred Moon
I was I was self guiding the hell out of that workout. I think it took me like two hours that day to finish everything. All right, next question. In your opinion, what’s the best activity for building mental toughness?
Joe Courtney
So mine’s going to be uncomfortably long workouts or events. So these are like the workouts that are pushing 5060 minutes or more. You know heavy load long distances 60 minutes of carrying an object But something like a, you know, hypothetically, a Spartan Race and freezing weather in the rain is you know, it’s up there for building mental toughness and things like that to really test yourself, especially these hard events because you’re more likely to not back you can’t really quit on an event, especially if you’re like on a course. It’s a lot harder to quit, wait. Yeah, it’s, it’s more of, you’re more likely to Okay, I need to just I need to go down. Unless you’re like actually injured, you know, you’re like, Okay, I’ll just get out of this part of your job. Or if it’s, like, if you’re out on like a long run or carrying something like you have to come back. So you can’t really quit. And that’s when you’re really trying to fight with yourself. So you know, iron mile, things like that. Are the longer uncomfortable events. Our model isn’t that long, like timewise. But either way, I think. Yeah. Long endurance. What’s your father’s terrible?
Ashley Hicks
You mean when you’re borderline hypothermic? Yeah. Oh, we got real close real fast guys. Oh, I will segue into mine is always do the hard things. So it’s kind of along those same lines as Joe but mine is not necessarily it doesn’t have to be fitness. I think we talked about it, obviously, in a podcast, but we talked about, try to do the things that you don’t want to do. So we talked about like folding laundry was mine doing dishes with somebody else’s and whatnot. And even I think jarrods calendar has something to check that off every day. But I think it is great mental toughness, if you can find something to do every day that is defined as like a hard thing, something not necessarily that obviously comes easy. I think it builds character. And it maybe then becomes not hard for you. And then you move on and you do something else. And so yeah, that’s my
Joe Courtney
hormesis. Right.
Ashley Hicks
I think yeah,
Jerred Moon
it’s one of those. So how I define hard thing in the book killing comfort was pushing forward against your own desire plus daily over decades. So doing something you don’t want to do for every day for years, is a hard thing. And that goes in line with with my answer as well. So, but I put too, so I’m gonna start with my more tactical one. And I’m just I will always say cold exposure. Because, yeah, there’s no like, I’m sure you can get used to it. I never have. And, you know, it’s just funny. I was thinking about this when I was writing this stuff down is like, everyone thinks of like, David Goggins is like the super tough guy. I don’t see him in a lot of ice baths. You know? Like, is that the line for David Goggins? Is it? Maybe, I don’t know, I’m not like, I’m not a fanboy, who like knows everything about David Goggins? But like, I always see him doing videos running down the street saying he’s doing 15 miles, like, how about 15 minutes and 30 degrees? Let’s see, come on. I’m sure he’s very capable of doing it. I’m just saying like, it’s, it’s a different stimulus. That sucks. And it’s very, very, very challenging. So cold exposure, I think, forces you to learn how to basically meditate in a very quick way and take control of your thoughts. So I think it’s a good way to build mental toughness, just kind of like within yourself, like how to control yourself when things aren’t getting hard. But my bigger picture, one is very similar to what you said, Actually, it’s just this consistency over long periods of time, with things that you don’t want to do, or just things that you know, are going to make you better because sometimes, you want to do it, but you don’t want to do it, you know, like you desire the outcome that this effort is going to provide, but you just don’t want to do it every single day and making yourself do that. So I think consistency in any way, shape, or form, whatever it is that you’re doing, keeping any sort of streak 100 days in a row, 200 days in a row 1000 days in a row of almost anything, builds a lot of mental toughness. And that’s that’s where I’ll go with that one. All right. If you don’t have one piece of equipment to train with for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Joe Courtney
This is when the the whole seasonal thing comes into play. Yeah, I was like yours was rings or something last time. Yeah, it rings usually circles back I go, I might go to something else real quick. Then I come back to rings but it’s just dumbbells because I have rings here. But all I have is a sandbag. But it’d be nice to have adjustable dumbbells because I don’t have my barbell. I don’t have my rack. I don’t have anything like that at my house here. I have the bike and the rower and the sandbag and the rings, dumbbells would be fantastic. And I think and there’s also dumbbells in general, I really want to add, it’s just their prices are ridiculous right now and who knows when they’ll come down but it’ll be something I’ll be watching when I get back to the States.
Ashley Hicks
Yeah, mine will forever be barbell. My. I love a barbell. I love what you can do with a barbell and those are my favorite days. The barbell days so
Ciara go,
Jerred Moon
I kind of revealed this on a recent podcast and I’m going with the pull up bar. That’s just kind of where I’m at right now, with in my season in life, this, this answer could change within like three weeks, but with recently hurting my back, and just never wanting to be in that level of pain again, like, you know, I didn’t really talk about the details of that too much like, I am getting better. But when I couldn’t like play soccer with my kids, or like, stand for long periods of time, I was like, EFF this, like, why the hell am I squatting heavy? Why? Why am I doing any of this at all. And when it gets, when the rubber meets the road, I’m perfectly fine with just running, like some zone to and doing some pull ups and push ups. Like I could do that stuff for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy. And so that’s why I think right now it’s a it’s a pull up bar.
Ashley Hicks
Welcome, welcome.
Jerred Moon
Alright, last question. best advice for garage gym athletes, Joe,
Joe Courtney
focus on you, and what you want, and then tailor a day a routine, and habits to do that. So this is all about building habits. And structuring your day to that every single habit you have, becomes a lifestyle to either live the life you want you want or are the goals that you want. So, you know, really making a effort on sleep and nutrition and things if that fits your health goals. And it’s not just like Monday through Thursday, kind of thing, it’s every single day, practicing this working toward it. And you know, because things still count on the weekends. So focusing on what you want, and having that be your your habit forming point and form those habits. And then, you know, kind of the daily over decades make did you make yourself 1% better every day, or as you go to build the habits. I like that.
Ashley Hicks
Um, mine is figure out your why. And I just said it’ll sustain you through the ups and downs of train as well as life. And we talk about it. I think we have talked about it in previous podcasts. But even with our athletes, if we’re working one on one, or you know, me with women’s health track, or Kyle with probably his concurrent training elite group, you have to have a depth there, it can’t be a surface level. Why? You know, so just being transparent right now, you know, if mine was I just want to aesthetically look great, I would have stopped, you know what I mean? Like, I would have stopped training, like, there’s so much more depth into, like, I want to be the healthiest version of myself in the different areas of my life. And it may look different than what it looked 10 to five to whatever years ago. But I feel like if you can find that depth and understand, like, why you’re doing this, like I said, it’ll just make you do the daily do the hard do the grind and continue through. Not and not just training even with life too. So yeah, really examine like, what’s, what’s your why and why it is that kind of thing.
Jerred Moon
That’s great. All right, for me, I could just say kill comfort, but I will say that my actual best advice for all the garage mathlete is always go small. And so I think that we can get wrapped into trying to achieve really big goals or wanting to do this, that or the other. I mean, this works in, in training, you don’t feel like training today, you know, we’ve said these kind of tips before, go small, do the warm up, see what happens after that, you know, and you don’t feel like doing your, whatever work you have to do today and your job, okay, just get just get started, do do the first task that you can, and then see where things go, you know, and I think I the guy, I’m just a product of always doing that, because I don’t want to do a lot of things. And I think that’s like human nature, you know, and because a lot of things that I want to do are hard. They’re not easy things. And so I always have to just go to the smallest piece of that puzzle because if I get too overwhelmed with how many pieces there actually are, or hitting wow, you know, tied up into things wanting, wanting them to be perfect. All this crap, like I got to remove myself from those things and just go small with this thing that I’m doing. But I always make sure that that going small is connected to something bigger that I’m looking to achieve. Because I can work on a lot of small things for a very long period of time as long as those are going to be equate to something much bigger down the road. So whatever you’re trying to achieve, like in fitness, you know we have literally told people to stop drinking coke before and they lose like 20 pounds, then we dive into deeper things within like we’re always going as small as we can. So the change or the habit will actually stick. And this goes all the way up to advanced athletes, it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to achieve, you might think that you can do it all. But you probably can’t you still have to go small on the little things in progress, you know, one step at a time, so always go small. All right, good episode 100 for the studies in the topics. Really cool to recap all that, unfortunately, couldn’t be here. Would love to hear some of his answers to those things. But uh, you can higan phone it in. Alright, we’re gonna cover the meet yourself Saturday workout real fast and then bounce. What do we have this week?
Ashley Hicks
burpee saved me.
Joe Courtney
This is on your list, actually, I think.
Ashley Hicks
Yeah. Yeah, I love burpee, save me. It’s 2000 meter Time Trial row. And then you get to rest for Oh, man, I don’t have to pull that. But I think it’s seven minutes.
Joe Courtney
Am I wrong in that? I think that sounds about right. Yeah.
I’ll pull it up.
Ashley Hicks
Okay. And then after your rest time you have to do. How about you pull it up, Jared? And you tell us the exact amount of burpees that we have to do?
Jerred Moon
Yeah, it’s nine minutes of burpees and seven minute rest between the 2000 meter row and the nine minute max burpees.
Ashley Hicks
Right. But what’s the number you have to hit
Jerred Moon
109 reps or higher, and then burpees have saved you.
Ashley Hicks
Yeah. And then if you are not saved, you then have to do another 2000 meter. Which the challenging fact for that one is you try not to sandbag then try to sustainable and repeatable, just like what we said if you, you know, have to do another 2000 meter row, which it stinks after you’ve done as many burpees as you possibly do for nine minutes. But I think Jared revealed a little something spicy the last time like he separated the workouts like you didn’t even do it together. That’s where it came up with a number. But it’s I think it’s kind of cool that the community steps up. And I mean that we have tons of people who thank god the burpee saved you kind of thing. But
Jerred Moon
yeah, I, I did not cheat to work out. Maybe I’m
Ashley Hicks
not cheating. That’s when I met you tested one and then tested another differently.
Jerred Moon
Sorry, because I do remember when this is actually programmed. And I’ve told the story multiple times, I was on a family vacation in Colorado. And we were staying at like, I think the hotel was at like, right at 10,000 feet. And I just remember a 2000 meter Time Trial row and nine minute max burpees that you’ve been there for 48 hours and you’re at elevation. This was a very memorable and bad meet yourself Saturday for me. I did it though. The 109. I did it at elevation. And it was it was awful. And tips, Joey, you had a chip on this one.
Joe Courtney
He like I said this in the past, and that is calculate what it is to get those burpees in that time, see what that is per burpee per second burpee per minute.
Jerred Moon
Yeah. And then once that doesn’t work out, just start doing burpees until the timer.
Joe Courtney
Basically, try and game and so you have a little bit of wiggle room and then yeah.
Ashley Hicks
Yeah, always opposite of that. Mine is just keep moving. Not saying go balls to the wall, you know, obviously, but just get down and get up and don’t stop in order to hit that, especially after that 2000 meter? Because you think that seven minutes is? Oh, that’s a lot of rest time. Oh, it goes by so fast. After if you did the 2000 meter row the way you’re supposed to do to do that. But yeah, this is one of my favorites. That’s a good one.
Jerred Moon
It’s a good test tips. Do you have a challenge? I don’t think I have a challenge. I mean, other than actually make that 2000 meter row a time trial, and not just like what you’re doing. But this one is, it’s just so difficult. I remember when I was at elevation, what happened to me was exactly what I just said to when Joe was talking about as I was like, Alright, I’m gonna do this many burpees per minute, on the minute and then I’ll rest the rest of that minute. And then I got to like, minute five, and that plan wasn’t working out. So it was just do burpees do burpees until you feel like you can’t do burpee anymore. And then and I just barely made it, um, when I was at elevation, so that one, just just get it done. I think don’t feel sorry for yourself when you get into the burpees burpees to me is one of those like, times where you have to ask yourself when you’re doing a lot of burpees and you’re stopping you really need to ask yourself why are you stopping? like is this absolutely necessary? Or are you just feeling sorry for yourself? Because that’s, I feel like that happens to me anytime I do 100% That number right there, like 50, burpees, whatever. It’s that 100 number. I get up into the 60s and I’m wanting to like stop or like, not go as fast. And I’m just like, Is it for real though? Like, are you sure knee her? Like, why are you stopping? You know? So yeah, just ask yourself that question while you’re while you’re doing the burpees. Hmm.
Ashley Hicks
One other tip for burpees for me is like, I get down, get back up. And then I touch my feet together, one, two, down, get back up, one, two, and it like gives me that like, extra second, I don’t know, to just kind of, yeah, you’re moving.
Jerred Moon
Don’t do the burpees as fast as humanly possible, but kind of like what Ashley saying, like, there’s a cadence to burpees when I’m doing this number, I just try to keep them consistent. But never like, you know, squatting down or staying on the ground. That’s what I mean by resting, like, you can go slower. If you want to take like, like a ladder, almost, you know, like two or three breaths at the top, you’ll be fine. But cool. That’s it for this week. Really fun, guys. And we are changing up the podcast a little bit, you know, you see ama’s shifting interviews coming. The structure of the Monday episodes are gonna change a little bit here in the next couple weeks. So we like to shake things up about every 100 episodes, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna do that now. And if you want to be part of our training, the most well educated well read scientific study team on the planet, then you can sign up for garage gym, athlete training at garage, gym, athlete comm sign up for a 14 day free trial. Now the community you guys are awesome. I just talked about how much money we raised for the special operations were foundation that would not have been possible without all of you. So you are awesome for so many reasons. And I just want to thank each and every single athlete for being a part of the community and I’ve enjoyed all of these episodes and can’t wait to do at least you know, 100 200 300 400 500 more episodes. So thanks for listening. And that’s it for this one.