Hey, Athletes! How long do you rest between sets? This week’s episode is about rest and how long you should rest for!
Episode 61 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
Rest Between Sets and Breath
In this week’s episode, Ashley is back with the guys. They go over their updates on life and announcements before going over the study. This week’s study is about rest between sets. The study goes over how much rest is optimal for recovery, efficiency, and maximal effort. For this week’s topic, the coaches review this month’s book: Breath by James Nestor. They go over what they liked from the book and some takeaways. Lastly, this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is a good mental challenge: Zone 2 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 54-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Ashley’s Back
- Rest
- Zone 2 MURPH
- Breath by James Nestor
- Sweet Spot On Rest Time
- Joe Can Officiate at Weddings Now
- Updates and Announcements
- And A LOT MORE!!
Diving Deeper
If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you:
Study of the Week
Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
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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:
Episode 61: Rest Between Sets and Breath
[00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. I’m your host, Jared moon. The garage team athlete podcast is a result of my desire to build better humans, unequivocal coaches, and autonomous athletes. I’ve spent the last several years obsessing over program design nutrition in every other way, you can optimize human performance.
This podcast is stills. The lady scientific research with what I’ve learned and blends it with the not so scientific field of mental toughness. We are here to build you into a dangerously effective athlete. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find out more about our training@garagegymathlete.com. And if you want to pursue more into the field of coaching and programming, head to end@threefitness.com.
Thanks for listening.
All [00:01:00] right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Joe Courtney. What’s up, Joe. Hello? Ashley Hicks. How are you doing good. She’s here. I’m here. I’m back. Finally. It’s a big deal. And then we have Kyle Schrum. Hey. That’s what, that’s what you do. Yep. I’m gonna start Ashley since she’s been gone, updates how’s life.
Life is good. My fear is getting somewhat normalish. but yeah, well, especially with training, that’s what I’m going. That’s what I was shooting for right there. so I can, I’ve finally been cleared to like, Do basically garage gym athlete workouts, harder to kill if you will. I was cleared to do it high intensity, but only a couple of times a week, a few weeks back.
So I got to basically do meet yourself, Saturdays. but I was still taking things down and kind of doing my own stuff. So this week I’m. Back on, harder to kill 100% and it’s been good. I was not excited about the pull up ladder, but you know, [00:02:00] one, one’s got to get better at pull up somehow we’re going to post to come back to you.
I know, but I ran today and it was fabulous. It just, I love running and yeah, that’s my, I know Kyle, it that’s Kyle can do it. That’s right. Anyone could do it, but yeah, so. No. Did he actually create it? I haven’t seen it. I think it’s on special order. Like you have to like ask Trampas for it, but he has to make it specially for you.
I don’t think he wants him public. That’s awesome. But yeah, officially off my elimination diet, I’ve added stuff back into my diet and now I know what triggers me, which has been really cool, like certain things that I never thought. True triggered me, triggered me if that makes any sense. like bell peppers.
I have to have them. I can’t have them raw, but anyways, so it’s been a, it’s been a process. It’s been a journey and it’s still going on. but it’s now I’m kind of just tracking my macros a little bit just to like, see, now that I’ve added things back [00:03:00] in, I just want to make sure that I’m getting a good amount of protein, fat and carbs.
So yeah, that’s pretty much my life. Awesome. And every bell peppers, Raul, I just can’t do it like an Apple. Just that’s how you would dive into it. I didn’t mean like that. Like if I made like a mango salsa, I would have like raw red bell pepper in it with mango and like jalapenos and stuff. And yeah, I like bell peppers.
I’ve never eaten it. Apple style. But I think I could, I don’t think I all right, Joe, how’s life very busy getting in our staycations where we can, just as just over the weekend, I, as you get this wording right. To make sure I officiated one of my best friend’s weddings. So I did that over the weekend.
That was fun. what good. And then we had, did you have to do any special training for that? Yeah, you go online and say, I want to be ordained and then [00:04:00] click enter, and then you go, here’s your certificate? And that’s what I thought. Yeah. So it was actually my second wedding that I’ve done in my life. that was a good time.
And Liz forced me to do yoga and she will tell you otherwise that it was, I was okay with it, but she’s not here to defend herself. So it’s her fault. And I do yoga all the time. Yeah. It was very uncomfortable though. We had some good laughs about it because it was just going through after awhile. It just, things got funny, like, Oh no, that’s not happening.
Not doing that. And then while I shared you shared you guys, my awesome dad joke I had at the end of it. So I just made it all worth it. It was good. And yeah, she’s been getting very antsy and restless here, which is totally fine. So we go on walks and somehow we went to a park with like just a park by the water.
It had a 300, three and a half mile loop and we somehow turned the 300, a half mile loop into five miles because that’s just, [00:05:00] you know, wrong turns in a loop happen. I guess I’ve had that happen before with three children. Oh no, but yeah, let’s do the mile and a half. Trail walk with our kid and we ended up doing five miles.
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, it’s about it. So nothing big besides the enough that the wedding was kind of cool and different. It is cool. Shaking it up and glad to glad to know people are still getting married and COVID situations. Yeah. Luckily we didn’t have to wear a mask during. Kyle. Well, it’s funny that, you bring up hiking.
I have a, an irritating hiking story that happened on Sunday. did you have to run? No, I did not have to run. No, I didn’t spoil it.
anyway, so we took the kids on a hike on Sunday. It was just a. Little like [00:06:00] in and back thing on a really, really easy trail obviously. Cause our kids are three and one. So, they’re not gonna walk very fast or very far. And so we went in, stopped by Creek, threw some rocks, came back out anyway. And let me preface this by saying I’m not one of these guys who just.
Absolutely hates like the whole mask thing, you know, with COVID and all that. Like, I just kind of do my thing. I keep to myself, I’m not really like passing judgment on other people, but this kind of irritated me on the hiking trail. we were coming back and this is a really, really easy trail. it’s over six feet wide.
I mean, you can walk like four people. Side-by-side down this trail very, very easily. And so we’re walking back with our kids. We’re carrying one of them. Like we’re not taking up very much space on the trail. And these two women are walking towards us, go in the opposite direction. And one of them reaches up and puts her mask on as she’s passing by [00:07:00] us.
We’re not even close to six feet. Like within six feet of each other, but, and we’re outside and we’re outside, but for some reason she felt the need. When she looked at us and made eye contact with us to put her mask on and it, for whatever reason, it just really, really irritated me that I think it’s funny that it irritates you outside.
Like, I don’t even have a mask with me because we’re outside. She looked at you and saw Rona that’s. That must be, did you, did you feel offended because you felt like she thought you were dirty? Well, I do now. I didn’t even think about that. Mean, I don’t know. I don’t see why else that would be a trigger point because you obviously had to take the, you felt grimy.
Yeah, I guess that is, I guess now I’m just now settling with what it was that bothered me about it. But yeah. Anyway, just whatever people are dumb, maybe I’m included in that I’ve actually [00:08:00] had that happen. So walking by somebody and then putting their mask on when they didn’t have a mask on. And I was just, I was more like, good idea.
You don’t know what I could have. That’s got to cover all your bases. I don’t know. I just, I wasn’t anywhere close to him and we were outside. I don’t get it anyway, whatever you’re about to take the podcast political. Nope. I’m not going, I didn’t know a pandemic could ever get political. I didn’t think so.
But it happened. So for anybody who wants masks posts, or any, any comments on that just direct them tag Kyle, nobody else. No contact support about, about your mask opinions. Kyle, Kyle directly just put me in there and I will ignore you. Richard has a sauna outside sauna that is taxes. And then the inner sauna that is like just increased Texas.
And then the actual sauna that might not even be used. So the actual sauna [00:09:00] is not hooked up yet. It’s being hooked up in 36 hours. So it was very hard to find an electrician to hook it up, which was it wasn’t hard the first time. It was hard. The second time, I don’t know. It’s just like a different setup at my house was a little bit more complicated.
Hmm. but that’d be set up soon. The outdoor, the garage that is a sauna has been, has been good. I’ve been actually doing at first. I was like, I’m just gonna work out all mornings, but it was almost too cool in the morning. I didn’t like it. I was like, I mean, it could be like upper seventies, low eighties, and I was just like, I want to, I want to sweat a little bit like a good kept temperature.
It was too good of temperature. Yeah. It was not what I liked. So now I’m splitting it up about 50 50. So about half of my workouts, are going in the morning, half in the middle of the day where it’s a lot hotter. So that’s been good, a lot more sweat involved than the later, later temps. But it’s funny how much it affects my performance, like so much so [00:10:00] that I think that I’m like regressing in fitness.
Cause there’ll be like 115 degrees and my warmup will get my heart rate to like one 60. And then anything beyond that, you know, like doing intervals or whatever, like it’s like the slightest little thing, like spikes my heart rate up because your body’s trying to cool itself. So, so much. And you’re sweating so much.
It’s, it’s the same with a sauna, like in a, the actual sauna. I can sit there and get my heart rate up to like, I forgot what the, you know, I can get up to like one 40, one 50, you know, just sitting there doing nothing cause of how hot you get. So that’s been fun. just experimenting with that. other updates for me, I I’ve locked my diet up to 100% strict.
I was like, I used to say 80, 20, it was more closer, probably like 90 10, 85, 15, but I locked it up a hundred percent because I just want to see if I can, you know, Like, yeah, it’s a slip. It’s a slippery slope, right? [00:11:00] Complacency is a slippery slope. You you’re like, I just got hired, just go this 80, 20 route.
And then you’re having an occasional beer on the weekend. You, you don’t care about certain types of carbohydrates or food and you, and I’m like, well, okay. Let’s just part of it is that this transition period, I just went through of moving. It’s hard to keep the diet really good during that timeframe. So I just, I felt like I got a little too out of whack and now I’m like, okay, let’s just lock it up a hundred percent.
and that has been good. I forgot how hungry I get when I don’t have, like grain carbohydrates, that, that I can eat like easily. cause it was a very filling, right. Just, and even basic stuff like oatmeal and things like that. I’m not, not around eating. No burgers every day or something like that, but just those things are a lot more filling.
And so I’m kind of just a hundred percent strict paleo right now and had to like significantly increase my fats and everything, but that’s been, that’s been good. I haven’t done a, you know, strict diet in a while. I’m going to do it for at least 30 days and just see how things go. Like whole 30 [00:12:00] parameters.
yeah. yeah. Yep. That’s cool. Yeah. I always get the wheel. I like to make some that too. Yeah. I’d also like to blame my transition period on the alcohol consumption. Well, that’s what I was like. I went from like not drinking at all. And then my dad bought me a 12 pack of beer. When I moved, when I moved in, it was like the move move in day.
And he was like, you know, it’s been a hard, you know, moving stressful, like have a beer. And I’m like, all right. Yeah, I’ll have a beer. I thought he’s gonna take the beers with him. He left all 12 with me and I was like, well, what am I going to do with these? I was like, okay, well I’ll only ever drink wine. I tried to follow my rules.
Right. And then I did follow my rules, but it was just still not my normal. And I was like, okay, just gotta, gotta lock it up. So I did. and then the last thing is just funny story. And this happened just like a few minutes. I just finished training. If you’re on hard to coatrack, then you did this, workout today.
This is the day we’re recording it. It’s where we did 30 thirties, [00:13:00] 60 sixties, 90 nineties. And then three minute, three minute, work, dress ratio and the. I was on my second set of intervals in the three minute ones. So the worst one trying to go hard on hard for three minutes. I’m on my bike in the garage and a wasp comes in.
Oh no. And this is not, he’s not like on an exploratory mission. He was on a search and destroy mission. He was trying to get me. But I want it to maintain my pace. And so I kept moving. Normally I have a hat on, or like a shirt I can take off and like kill these things. Cause I’m, I’ve been a garage gym athlete for a long time.
This is not my first bout with a bug. You know, these things happen. You’re swinging hats, you’re swinging shirts, whatever this today, my shirts already off because of how hot it is. And I don’t have a hat I’m clipped in. I’m peddling as fast. He’s like. Come like taking shots at me, like dive, bombing me. I’m like swatting him while trying to keep my pace on [00:14:00] the, on the biker.
He like hits my back, but doesn’t like sting me, I guess. And then I’m like, you know, just going crazy back and forth. And this happened, I looked when it happened. It happened. I had, I was a minute in, so two minutes left. I hadn’t looked at the screen again. I’m I’m over here fighting a wasp and then he finally he’s like, okay, look, I can’t get this guy.
He leaves, I have like seven seconds left for this interval. And I was like, well, how did I do? And I actually kept my pace the entire time. Somehow I match that pace too. The other, the previous one and the next it’s to, I somehow match my pace. But what’s interesting about the reason I’m telling the story.
I did not feel like I was suffering or tired. Like I did the other three intervals of those three minutes where it was just absolute hell. Exactly. So how do we just like, is this something that we should like bottle up and sell like a wasp, a very angry wasp, just. People are still in their [00:15:00] garage, release the loss.
Exactly. Murder Hornets. I’ve heard, those are a thing, something like that. you mean, can you pretend like it’s a murder Horner, but you know, just maybe don’t have one of those, but then defendant, sorry. I hope Emily was like in the bushes hiding and like video this, it would have been funny. Cause I was like, You know, my feet would have come off if I wasn’t clipped in.
And that’s the best part about it. It’s like my body’s like rotating perfectly because my feet are locked into the pedals, but then to end it all off, I was on my last three minute interval. There’s no Wasserman ball this time and I’m trying to go fast. I’m trying to go hard because keeping that pacer above my heart rate is extremely elevated.
I’m in a zone five going fast. And then I see my neighbor. Walking from his house directly to me. And I’m like, Oh, this is not good timing. This is not, I’m not stop. So you’re gonna be standing there awkwardly for awhile. And, but he’s a slow Walker and he finally got there, but I had already in my [00:16:00] brain mapped out.
Okay. The second this interval is over. I want to go corner and die somewhere because that’s just kind of the type of workout. It was. That was my plan after the workout. I didn’t know what dying in a corner looked like, but that was my plan. And then he gets, he shows up there. It was almost like the same with the watch.
There was like 10 seconds left in the interval. I finished real fast, got off. And then he wanted to have a conversation and somehow I managed to do it. And I was, I was like, had I talked to him and then it was over. And so I, and then after that I was fully recovered by the end of the conversation. And so then I just went inside.
So all of this, like. You know, things being hard or whatever, we just need more distractions in crappy monitors. Structural intervals is the moral to that story. Read the room, dude. I did. I’m sitting there with like, yeah. I mean, I’m a Relic. This is, I’m a new neighbor, right? So I’m there with my shirt off.
You’re walking onto my property into my garage. I don’t know it was a brave move, but he’s a cool guy. [00:17:00] He’s a cool guy. All right. Well, I hope somebody took something away, but were awesome stories. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when they do like that, I think I haven’t had a good story since salt biscuit guy.
Yeah. That was a good story. And if you want to hear the salt biscuit story, good luck. I have no idea where it’s at. Yep. No idea. What episode that was. That was a long time ago. That was before the beast. Yeah, we kept making jokes about bringing salt biscuits to the beast. Then that might narrow it down to how many podcasts that was almost a year ago.
So. So, which number is this? This is 62 61, 612. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. No one cares. Here we go. Let’s get into the study. We’re finally talking about rest times. I’m excited to be talking about rest times. Because of that one podcast we did where we looked at all of those recovery methods, that’s where [00:18:00] the laying down in the fetal position came out.
Yeah. As like a really good way to recover, but also was in there was just mentioned these autoregulation rest being a good idea. And the title of this study is the effect of different rest intervals between agonist, antagonist, payor sets on training performance and efficiency. this was done in 2020.
And what did they do? we went over supersets antagonist, agonist, antagonist, in the super sets podcast episode. I think it was just called super set. So if you guys want to check it out, we already talked about that. That’s kind of also our solution. We call it body geometry. but what they did here was they wanted to look at different restaurants times in really the efficiency of the.
The workout, which efficiency to them was how many pounds or kilograms they lifted. I think it was per minute. and then also total volume in the sets. So they were doing what they have. They had 18 men who were members of the Brazilian [00:19:00] military, which is cool. and they had one year of training experience and the frequency of at least three times per week.
And they had them do, basically. Did they have, four conditions. They were, they each had to do the one minute rest, two minute rest, three minutes, or the self selected time of rest. And they were doing all of these like push pull type stuff. So they would do Tim, a 10 rep max load on row bench, press superset.
And then they would do the condition specific precedent row, which was either that one, two, three, or self-selected rest. and then they would look at the. What I was talking about earlier, they would look at either the efficiency or total volume and kind of see which one was better. Now, the first thing that you have to take away or believe going into this is that efficiency, total volume per minute, or whatever, how they calculate that is a good thing or higher volume is better.
It’s something I think that is like, you have to believe to think this is a good [00:20:00] idea, but ultimately, it seems like. The winner was self selected rest. And depending on how you look at it, the three minute did pretty good job in some cases, depending on how you look at these things. but the, the lower, the better, like the one minute rest was, was no bueno.
and that’s kind of the, the results of the study. I’ll tell you what my takeaway is, but I want to hear what you guys have to say about it. It’s awesome that we got a rest time. Study because probably ours second most asked question apart from like, what are blocks or what’s blood zero it’s how long do I rest?
So a lot of people want to know this and it was really cool to see broken down to it. Okay. One minute, two minutes, three minute, or you pay it. And the fact that people were, I guess, the day they were just watching whenever they would stop and then start again, the fact that like people were naturally resting on average two and a half minutes means that if you’re not actually like timing your minutes, your, your timing, your rest are probably resting.
Sufficiently enough, you don’t need [00:21:00] to worry about it unless you’re actually like talking on the phone or doing something crazy. And two minutes was really good. two and a half minutes was better, but three minutes was only Martin, certainly better than two and a half minutes. So it seems like after you rest a certain period, you’re going to cap out and it’s just, you’re just going to flat line.
It seems like three minutes is probably the extreme max and you probably don’t need three minutes. So two to two and a half minutes. I think it was really good to see. And that you’re not getting reminds you less efficient, right? It was like, yeah. Take taken to, yeah, because it’s taken up too much time.
So even if you’re resting an extra 30 seconds, you’re going to be fitting less into your, you know, for us, it’s for our, our blocks, it’s going to take too long, but two to two and a half minutes is that sweet spot. And like it, I think it’ll, it works out good. So, so I think it comes back to. Why are you training?
What are you trying to get out of your training session? So one of the things they talked about was how. The, the self selected group, which we said rested in an [00:22:00] average of two and a half minutes. That’s not the hard stop that everybody was going to, but that’s just what the average was. so they actually were able to, keep a sustainable effort across their rounds, but the three minute group was able to do more total volume.
So to me, it’s kind of. What is the aim of your training? Are you looking for sustainable and repeatable efforts, sustainable and repeatable, performance, or are you looking to maximize the volume that you’re getting out of your training? And so that’s, to me, you gotta to answer that question before you kind of interpret this for yourself or decide which one you want to go with.
If you want more sustainable efforts, then the tuna or the self-select degree, which was resting for about two and a half minutes each time. And the self selected group, just kind of going based off your own feeling, when you feel rested, then go again. That’s going to help you be a little more, a little more sustainable and repeatable versus [00:23:00] just having a hard stop that’s longer than other, other intervals.
So that’s what I got out of it. For me, I was excited because I, Jared and I have talked about this multiple times. I rarely even if there is prescribed rest within our training, I really adhere to that. I. Basically figure out when my body is rested or when my body has recovered, if you will. Now, if it’s a shorter time of rest, like for example, today’s workout of, you know, 30, 30, 60, 60, you know, for conditioning, then obviously I adhere to that.
unless it’s something. It just depends. So if, if it’s a lift and we’re like maxing out, I think I will not go any longer than two, two minutes as what I typically adhere to. I find that if I rest longer, for some reason, Joe, kind of what you were saying, that I just, it just takes too long, but also I find that.
[00:24:00] I, my body is still is it’s like cooled off too much. Does that make any sense? So, so I like having my body still warm, so that way I can continue to, you know, do the heavier lifts or whatever that is for training. So. I would be interested to see for like a max, cause I know it was a 10 rep max and it was super setting with agonists and antagonists, but I would be interested to see like one lift, I guess, and then even take it a step further of conditioning.
But I guess conditioning is different because it’s depending on the target goal, you know, like, so there’s multiple times where we’ve got, you know, 10 seconds sprints, but then we rest like. Two or three minutes, but there’s a, you know, there’s a reason behind that. So I guess conditioning is kinda tricky on that, but yeah, I liked this study.
I think it’s pretty cool. This, I say maybe all of my athlete briefs, unless it is something like an interval say rest as needed. And some people are [00:25:00] like, cool, got it. Rest as needed. They were like, what the hell? Like how long do I rest? And I don’t know if I just need to link this study. The reason I say rest as needed, just because I know everybody a long time ago, I used to calculate that out specifically for people.
I’d be like, Okay. We’re at this percentage. I want you to rest for three minutes before the next one. or where this percentage rest 90 seconds. And sometimes you’re doing, time-based lifting, but most of the time we’re not. And so all I calculate is, Hey, if we’re doing four sets, we have one block to do this.
That gives someone, you know, max two and a half to three minutes to rest. If they absolutely have to, we want to max out this block. But if you’re like Ashley and you want to go, Hey, I only want to rest 60 seconds. Cause I’m good to go. then that’s fine too. It’s you got all the volume done in the block that we provide in our training.
And that’s what I think is really interesting. They’re looking at two things here. They’re looking at total volume completed and the efficiency, and we kind of force [00:26:00] efficiency with our blocks and you’ll notice if you can’t fit everything. Now we want you to end the allotted book walks. Sometimes that’s intentional.
Very rarely. I do it. Maybe like once or twice per cycle, I’ll give you a workout. It’s absolutely impossible to finish and tell you to, to yourself. And that’s just some of the, it’s like a meet yourself type. A mentality. I’m just trying to piss you off a little bit and see how you, how you deal with that.
but otherwise, I, I know that you have enough time to rest in there. So we, we force that efficiency on you to be more efficient in your workouts. by having that volume fit into like 10 minutes or nine minutes or whatever it is. so I think resting as needed when I say that, I think it’s very applicable because you could, if you want to figure out.
This autoregulation rest thing. I wanted to try and give the garage athletes, some sort of takeaway. you can just go completely off field and be like, okay, I think I’m ready to hit another set and go, but [00:27:00] you got to look at how long that’s taking you. and maybe time it just like, think first. Hey, when do you feel ready in time?
You know, time after your last set. Okay. I feel ready at two and a half minutes. Oh, wow, cool. Perfect. Or I feel if you don’t feel ready for five minutes, Then you are just going to have to force yourself to, to push a little bit harder. the ultimate takeaway I had from this study though, was, rest as needed, but don’t rest too little.
They seem like from this study specifically, so rest as needed seems to work, but if you do rest too little, it could be as a detriment to your. Later set performance, like you just might not have as energy or as much energy. You might not have as much in the tank, to pull off what you want to, and to Kyle’s point, if it’s, you need to know what you’re training for, if you are doing some sort of energy system specific thing, and you need to try and adhere to that as much as possible.
But again, some of these, like the published literature on energy systems, and we covered this in the [00:28:00] last podcast, it might say one to five work to rest. But Ashley might actually only need three, you know, like a three times the amount of work that she did to be fully recovered. Like we were monitoring her heart rate, blood lactate, everything is like, no, Ashley’s ready at three.
And it’s like, well, Jared is ready at five, you know, based off of his heart rate and his lactate. And I think it’s gonna be different for everybody. So we, we try to adhere to what’s published when we’re doing energy system specific work. But if you are like, you’re, you’re a thousand percent recovered and you know, it.
You could probably go again without having to wait for these longer rest intervals and energy system training. But yeah, that’s it. I think it’s a it’s we finally answered that question and we can point people to the rest times podcast. And this is specifically about strength and suffering, not conditioning.
Cause those conditioning conditioning intervals, we actually specifically have those set up for a reason. Yeah. And, and more importantly, it was [00:29:00] super sets, which. And there are some other studies as well. I looked at, where people did, barbell lifts and things, and they had self-selected rest. And the results weren’t that much different, to be honest, it, it was all in lifting.
It seems like self-selected rests is okay. I do. I do think with maxing out, like, you know, moving to fit week or whatever, I will rest longer periods of time between max out attempts. That’s the only time I, I rest more than I think that I need to. Cool. Anything else on a resting? No breadth by James nester.
So this week’s topic, what’d you guys think of the book so fascinating. Can I help you? You liked it. Yeah, I’ll give a thumbs up. Okay. Okay. Well, and I like it. I saw your comment on Slack five seconds after you started reading it. Oh, well, that was not out of, [00:30:00] that was not out of, I guess, just reading the book.
Well, listening to the book for those of you who don’t consider audio books, reading, listening to the book and yeah. Being more conscious of breath in general was making me yawn more. So apparently it was boring. according to some people, but no, it was just being conscious of breathing actually. And actually I need to mute my microphone so I can yawn right now.
Cause we’re talking about it. So, no, I just, I was just more conscious of it. And so, Oh man, I thought we were coming into this and like you were going to. I knew Joe and Ashley liked it. So I thought you were going to be like the hater. Oh, Oh, that’s unfortunate. I’m sorry to disappoint. Yeah. We always need that.
That person when we’re reviewing books, I can, I can throw out some stuff that I didn’t like about it. Yeah. That damn mask I can, I can breathe as well with a mask on. I’m not going [00:31:00] there. I said, well, what were some, what were some takeaways on, on this one? It makes you more mindful of your breath? I think.
Well, I know just because I feel like after reading the book and. Listening to, so I listened to it too. I didn’t actually read it, but listening to, most importantly, I guess the guy that was a vocal training coach, which made me think back to my. singing days and he talked about, you know, breathing through your diaphragm and all sorts of stuff, as well as breathing in through your nose and not mouth breathing.
That was the biggest thing for me. So now, so I am a. Night guard where I have to, cause I grind my teeth at night. And so I haven’t done the tape like Jared has, but I just make sure like, as I fall asleep that my mouth is 100% closed. And so the first night it took me. Like, I, I didn’t get [00:32:00] very good sleep cause I was just so self conscious about it.
I was like, I will breathe just through my nose. Cause you, you know, you probably mouth breathe a little bit in the middle of the night. So I, I am interested to try the tape, but the one thing that I thought was crazy was the South American culture that taped their kid’s mouth shut big to basically train them to only breathe through their nose and.
How much it changes your mouth shape. The guy who wrote the book, his mouth was. The size of his mouth was shrinking. He talked about, he had to remove, you know, not just his wisdom teeth, but then like there were other things that were going on with his mouth and only through breathing through his nose and working with someone, he actually was able to get, you know, basically his soft pallet raised like so many things had changed for him as well as he was no longer having allergies and no longer having all these sicknesses and colds.
And so how breathing actually. Contributes to [00:33:00] health as well, which that is what blew my mind with this book, because I had never thought of, you know, we just breathe every single day and you don’t really think about it. And then how, the way you breathe can actually change your health and actually be either detrimental.
If you’re breathing straight through your mouth or it can actually help you. If you’re breathing through your nose. It’s far as actually something that I found kind of funny and awkward because they said that like, that it was a native American group or something like that. But like after they would feed their kid, they would close their mouth and then put them the, a, the standing over them while they slept, like they would watch their kids sleep and then they open their mouth.
They would shut their mouth was just like, alright, this is that’s awkward. Yeah. but it, it was pretty fascinating still. Started implementing that in my home. Yeah. Just watching your kids sleeping well, or when they talked, it was just no close your mouth. Mostly just closing their mouth in general, but it’s for science now.
[00:34:00] Yeah. I actually listened to this while running dah. I did an hour run and it was while they were doing their testing of running. I was trying to do the breathing during, and it was uncomfortable. It’s hard. Yeah. Like it was, it was fine for a while. Cause I was doing zone two for a lot of it. I was like, okay, cool.
You know, sometimes I’ll look at my heart rate and it would, it would kind of regulate and go down some, but then I would get to the point where I’d have to stop and start walking. And when I was starting to walk in and starting to recover, that was when I was breathing like, Oh my God, this is uncomfortable.
I don’t like it. I just wanted to breathe. yeah, it’s I can definitely feel it’s uncomfortable, but. I think this is one of those really cool books to where it’s super fascinating to listen to and all of this stuff. And then it’s like super easy to implement. It’s not like a lot of these nutrition books, you get a laundry list of like, Oh, I can’t do all of these things.
I need to do all of these things, but how am I going to start? Where am I going to start with this? This is literally just do controlled breathing every day. Like take a couple of 10 minutes or something, but I think that’s something that’s cool to [00:35:00] implant in. I don’t meditate. I don’t think I can, I can meditate at all.
I don’t pray. I don’t do anything like that, but I can sit around. I can sit outside and read and do, do breathing exercises pretty easily enough that I’ll probably try and be more conscious about doing more nasal breathing and also not breathing too much was also really cool to hear about. So it’s not like getting more oxygen, but eating the right amount.
And with deer carbon dioxide and stuff was pretty cool. Yeah, the carbon dioxide thing kind of threw me for a loop in, like there was, there were multiple uses for it that he talked about in the book. Like part of it was, therapy for people with really bad anxiety, right? Like they were using carbon dioxide to.
treat people with anxiety, but he also taught something about performance. Do you remember what it was performance like people who are performing better by doing some sort of carbon dioxide, there was a, the high, some sort of hyperventilation training that like swimmers and [00:36:00] marathon runners and stuff would implement there.
And then they started to break some record. I forgot what the exact phrasing was, but was like pseudo hyperventilation. So I think it was something like tree. Teaching them training them, how to hold their breath more and hold that carbon dioxide in and actually training your brain to not need to take another breath.
And, and that actually improves your, your breathing during performance and improves your performance in that way, where you’re not having to breathe as much while you’re, while you’re competing or while you’re training or something. I think that’s what, and he said the, it wasn’t like when you hold your breath and you need to.
You feel like you need to breathe. It’s not actually your body’s need for oxygen. It’s your bodies. Your body’s angry about the carbon dioxide in there and wants to get rid of it. That’s and that’s why I think if you could grow more accustomed to that, you will be a better athlete and, and you can handle these things a lot better.
Cause if you [00:37:00] think about it, if you, if you hold your breath, as long as you can control the environment and. I’m not a doctor and don’t recommend that you do this, but maybe you just don’t ever take that breath. You just will not let yourself do you try to hold your breath as long as you can. You will not let yourself take, you got breath.
You’re you’re just gonna pass out. Right? Like your body’s going to shut you down. Right. And then start breathing again. So you can push that limit. Hypothetically. I’m not suggesting anyone do this. you can push that limit pretty hard. if you want to and see. How uncomfortable you can get and how long you can, you can withstand that, this discomfort just in your bed laying down.
That’s, it’s pretty simple thing to do. Yep. Free divers. They’re not taking huge breasts. They’re just reading out really hard, getting rid of everything before they go down. So my takeaways from the book, I absolutely love the book. the subtitle I think is really cool. The was in the new science of the lost art.
I just think that’s a cool, cool subtitle. I’ve been breathing or have had some sort [00:38:00] of breathing practice for a long time now. And, I’ve been breathing for a long, long time, but the first step reading practice part of it is probably been about five, five years. I think, and it started when I went to like this camp and you could go back to the better humanology podcast.
Hear the full story where I was introduced to, basically all the breathing methods, the crazy stuff that he’s talked about. Like I did, holotropic breathing had some hallucinations during it, you know, it was just some crazy stuff. So basic moved from there to basic box breathing, Wim Hof method. I’ve had done a lot of the Wim Hof method and now I’ve just kind of settled on doing.
Box breathing. And I’ve been using this app. I have recommended to a lot of people it’s called Breathworks. I think it cost money. Now. I like found it when it was free and now it costs money, but whatever, I think it’s worth the price. It has a lot of different breathing exercises, which is cool because you get a little more, more variety.
initially I started reading practice, due to anxiety just from being an entrepreneur, especially in the early days. And it helped me, it [00:39:00] helped me a lot. And what I realized early on is. If I would do a simple box breathing. so let’s say five seconds. Inhale. Five second, hold five second, exhale.
Five second. Hold. That’s the basic box breathing pattern. You can do that in different methods. When I first started doing a breathing practice, I would feel very lightheaded and like I was going to pass out. When I would do these very simple breathing practices just for a few minutes. And to me that was like a trigger that you, the more you feel like that the more you needed it.
and I, cause I don’t feel that way anymore when I do these practices, unless I do something really crazy, like Wim Hoff can start to make you feel really crazy, but. I think it’s really good for people to get into this. Just breathing in general, a breathing practice. Also, I think fasting, I think these are kind of like missing elements in the health field.
You know, everyone’s all like you gotta be a vegan. you know, if you’re, if you’re following the mainstream, it’s like, well, there’s a lot more to this health picture. And I think James nester did a phenomenal job of kind of highlighting that. This is one of the missing elements that we need to [00:40:00] put back and dates back for a very long time.
Now, if I had anything critical to say about the book, I could have done less, on the skulls and the teeth straight, straight teeth. So he, he goes through this very long in depth thing on, on straight teeth. I thought it was cool. It’s cool information, but he went deep, like really, really deep on why people’s teeth are not straight and stuff.
so if I had to find something critical about it, just so people know we’re not sponsored, by, by mr. James nester here, that would be my only, my only negative thing, but other things, any, otherwise I thought it was a phenomenal book and he ends with such an. Easy takeaway on like, this is the perfect breath.
Here’s what you should do. And I’m not going to tell anybody what it is because I don’t want to steal his thunder. He wrote a book, go buy his book and let him tell you what it is. But at the very end, he kind of just like, I’ve done years and years of research, and this is basically the perfect breath, go do it.
And I was like, that’s okay. And that’s the best takeaway ever from a book because a lot of times they don’t do that. Like you, Joe, Joe was mentioning. [00:41:00] These health books where they’re like, yeah, here’s just, don’t eat these 97 things do eat these 114 things and you’ll be fine. It’s like, well, that’s hard to memorize.
so anyway, go check it out. I think it was a great book. It’s funny as I was going through some of the, the mouth stuff that you just mentioned, I was almost sent you a message and asked if like you went to examine your kid’s mouth. Like, hi, let’s see what we’re going on here. I talked to Emily about it that she told me to back off.
So I was like, Hey, this seems like it should be, it’s really important, but just something that’s interesting. Yeah. Like, do you think, Oh, and I did do that. Just. I had as an update a few podcasts ago, I tried the mouth breathing, but I only did it once. And it was during this limbo period. And there was no effect for me.
I didn’t notice good or bad with putting tape on my mouth and sleeping. I might try again now that things are way more like normalized and I have a better baseline to go off of. So I might, I might try it again, but it didn’t, it didn’t have a positive or negative effect, which probably just means I don’t.
I don’t snore or break through my mouth that much. during the night, since [00:42:00] I wasn’t, I never woke up and was like, Oh my gosh, I can’t breathe. It was just, it was just fine. but to your point with, with kids, they see me doing breathing practices all the time. When I first started doing all this stuff, I used to feel real weird about it.
And self-conscious like, I didn’t even want to do it in front of Emily and be like, I’m just going to like, go hide and do this. Cause I feel like it’s working. Yeah. And, but now. I mean, I’ll do it in the middle of the day, sitting on the couch or like, whatever, whenever my kids see, they know they’ll come up and watch, they’ll try and like do it too, you know, just whatever I’m doing.
And so I, as far as getting children involved in a good practice that might be helpful for them later in life. It’s more of just monkey. See monkey do approach is what I’m trying to do as a father in general, just like I’m just going to try and do a lot of good things and hopefully they pick up one or two of them and, they definitely see me breathing.
Okay. All the time. Right. It’s funny. Right? Cause we read all the time. We’re laughing. We’re laughing. Okay. [00:43:00] All right. Work out. Who wants to brief it? It’s super complicated. It’s Murph, whatever Murphy is, but it’s zoned two. Alright. Call it a day. Yep. Goodbye. So is everybody Murph? If you’re unfamiliar with workout?
Run a mile 100 pull-ups 200 pushups, 300 squats, run a mile where 20 pound vest. If you have it partition, partition, the reps, however you want. And in this case, keep your heart rate in zone two for the entire 60 to 70% of your max. There you go. not many people should wear a vessel in this one, even if you do vested Murph, but it’s.
Really hard to finish, even unvested on this one. I have a pretty decent Murph time and a good heart rate stuff and I could not finish the first time I did zone to bear. And by first time, I mean, cut at an hour, right? Or yeah, [00:44:00] 60 minute cap. Okay. Yeah. So this is probably the most upsetting of all of them.
mentally it’s a lot, a lot of people angry. I’ve seen. A lot of angry posts about zone two Murph, trying to keep your heart rate within that, parameter. But what’s cool is if you stick around long time and you keep doing zone Murphy, we’re going to see improvements. So one way, one way I would say to progress through this, Joseph don’t wear a vest.
I think that’s good advice. don’t wear vests. See if you can maintain in zone two, but then that next time say you accomplish it under 60 minutes, throw a vest on. But take it off when you can’t keep the pace anymore. So, and then your new benchmark will become, how long could I still wear the vest? So if, if you first accomplished his own two Murph, no vest under 60 minutes, now you can graduate to the vest and say like, okay, I made it through mile one and you know, 20 pullups before I just could not keep my heart rate in zone two.
I had to take the vest off. So your new benchmark is where you have to take the vest off. That’s how I progressed this workout. if you could not fit it. A zone two, [00:45:00] merfyn under 60 minutes with a vest on. So that’s my advice for progressing the workout, new, a new take here. Wasn’t there. Somebody who did a whole bunch of them tumors and, the thing that results in how it improved.
There was a thing. His name is bill Westchester. Pretty cool name. he, I think you find him on Instagram. So he was doing Murph know, everyone’s just doing Murph, like all sorts of crazy ways. And I don’t remember what he was doing. I think it was. Murph every day for 30 days or 50 days or a hundred days, but every day, every day, but he was doing a lot of zone, two Murphs.
And so he wasn’t, you know, in our program and you’re going to see his own zone to Murphy every couple of months. So it’s harder to see that progression. and you know, your fitness you’ll see the progression, but like he was seeing it week to week and he got. Just doing it on an almost daily basis. Most of his bird zone too, which I think is a good recommendation for you to do Murph that often.
And, yeah, he just got better and better at completing the workout much faster. And in zone two [00:46:00] with a vest on it, he, he might have the PR to be honest on the fastest sound tumor, if I’ve seen, I don’t remember what it was, but his results were pretty significant. I still just don’t listen to music on this one.
I have not finished this yet. And I’ve done it. Unvested I think twice now I think we’d done it or maybe three times. I don’t remember, but I have yet to finish. and I actually, I think it was you, Jared that said maybe you should listen to an audio book. So I listened to an audio book last time and I was super close.
I think I finished in 62 minutes. Yes. I just finished it, but I need to, I. Yeah, I want to get it under 60, but my funny, we talked about breasts. That is the one thing that I focus on when it’s, it’s the air squats that get me, which kind of cracked me up. I hate pull ups and pushups, and it’s actually the air squats that really get me.
And I have to really slow those down and look down at my watch, which also [00:47:00] is a mental thing. And I absolutely mate. And it’s like, okay, you have to slow down. You’re peaking here. And unless you have the Apple watch that doesn’t turn off the display, right? Sure. Yes I do. But the first time I did this, this right when I got this watch and no, it wasn’t this watch.
It was my old watch, but my, remember how my old watch failed me and I was, yeah, I was cursing, but it’s okay. Anyways, I focus on my breathing on those air squats as well. I’d make sure that I take good deep breath in good, deep breaths out. And I noticed that my heart rate goes down a little bit faster when that happens.
So that’s my don’t listen to music. Focus on your breathing. Slow down. It’s okay. Yeah, that’s actually something I forgot to mention. All of my zone, two stuff. Now I’m trying to do nasal only breathing after reading mr. Nestor’s book, because I, he was talking about cyclists having this like huge increase in performance with lower respiratory rate and the same power output, just so you know, I tested almost the exact little test he set up and that was not true [00:48:00] for me breathing only through my nose.
maybe in his own too. It’s fine. When I’m in zone two, breathing through my nose. No big deal, but if you get me outside the zone too. And I just can’t, I can’t do it. I don’t know if I need to practice it more anyway, didn’t work. so all my zone, two stuff, whether it’s when we’re doing a de-load week or zone to Murph, I try to breathe through my nose only.
And that seems to help a lot.
My only suggestion here is have a good heart rate tracker. Every time I’ve done zone two Murph have been very, very frustrated by my, Well, it’s not a sponsor so I can bash it. My Fitbit, it’s not very good when it comes to this or it doesn’t seem to be very either my heart is jacked up or my Fitbit’s checked up.
And, I’m definitely laying in Fitbit and there’s no plans for me to have any thing different by the time we do this again. So I’ll be doing it with the Fitbit again, but those of you that, you know, have the ability to go get one or don’t have one yet or looking for [00:49:00] one, get one that’s that’s going to be.
Really accurate and really good for you. because that’s the only way to do zone two Murph. You have to know where your heart rate is in order to know if you’re in zone two or not. So you need something that’s dependable and grit. So, and I, based on my experience would suggest not using a Fitbit. I almost brought up the heart rate thing too, because garments risks.
Hooray is not very good. So you’re going to need the chest strap if you don’t have one yet, not telling you to go out and buy one, but, yeah. So if you find that you’re working pretty hard in you’re, you’re still in zone two, if you don’t have a decent tracker and that’s probably why, and then the only.
Partying shot I have is I, you mentioned heat and heart rate at the beginning of the podcast. You’re going to have to take that into account. depending on if you’re trying to benchmark this one, it doesn’t benchmark the same. It just doesn’t. And that’s true of a lot of summer workouts. They just don’t benchmark the same, but I know for a fact, [00:50:00] I probably won’t complete this one.
I normally do get zoned to Murph under 60 minutes. I probably won’t this time because my garage I’ll do it on a Saturday. I’ll do it in my garage. The garage will probably be in the middle of the day, just cause that’s how Saturdays are. So sometimes it’ll be 115 degrees in there. Yeah. I might get time capped halfway through Murph.
I don’t know, you know, but you have to really take into account. I know the first time I did it, it was not very challenging, but it was also like. It’s like winter time. It was, you know, it was much colder and it was fine, but now the heat throwing in there. So just don’t get frustrated if you, if you move backwards in a mid summer zone to Murph, I’ve been going to the, the gym on base on Saturdays.
So I might do it on the printer and see how, see what happens. But yeah. That’s very controlled environment. Like that’s my dream. I want to do fauna [00:51:00] on a truth. Just come visit us again. We’re going to be playing with fire. Has that, has that episode been published yet? Where I make that public claim? It’s fine.
Not till like very last of September, early October, I think. Yeah. Okay. So even if it happens to us soon, I don’t have, I have several months. Okay. Well, you guys will get it soon enough. All right, that’s it. we’ll get out of here quickly today. I just will say, if you are one of our athletes, the new cycle webinar and new cycle, right around the corner, make sure you sign up for the webinar.
Very important. We, we hash out a lot of information and I’m going to be talking about the new standards, which are going to be really cool to go over. So start asking questions about how to sign up for that. If you don’t know how to sign up for the new cycle webinar, you’ve never attended one sign up and you will also get the replay.
and if you are thinking about joining our training, it’s a great time. Cause we’re, we’re, we’re going to be ramping down and then ramping up into some testing and then a new cycle. And I think it would be really fun for you, to get [00:52:00] involved now into, yeah. Get your feet wet in the middle, towards the end of the cycle.
It’ll it’ll just like kick your ass and then, de-load. Then a little bit of testing, which is basically a de-load come on and then a lot of fun for the cycle, but that’s it guys. That’s all I have for this one piece. Thanks for listening to the garage gym athlete podcast. You want to learn more, go to garage, gym athlete.com.
You can learn about our training. Let us send you a copy of our book, the garage you mathlete, or you can even get featured on the garage gym athlete podcast. Thanks for listening.