Hey, athletes!
Episode 02 (new format) of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
02: Training to Live Longer (while being a badass), Fitness Pacing, and Sally’s Revenge
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
IN THIS 42-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- How to properly train strength with conditioning (and WHY)
- The “interference effect” aerobic work has on strength
- The effect of training at different intensities on your gains
- The main areas you should train if you want to live longer
- Why you need to focus on not frying your CNS
- How to be sustainable and repeatable in your training (and why it matters)
- The pitfalls of threshold training
- Our best tips for our workout of the week “Sally’s Revenge”
- 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
Workout of the Week
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to reply to this email and we will answer them on the podcast.
To becoming better!
Jerred
P.S. If you haven’t yet tried daily training with Garage Gym Athlete, you should get started with a 14-Day Free Trial by following this link.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Hey, my name’s Jerred Moon and I’m part of a group of underground athletes you’ve probably never even heard of before. Most of us don’t even have gym memberships. We don’t have every piece of equipment known to man, nor do we have a ton of time to train and we don’t need it because we’re achieving amazing things without it.
We are garage gym athletes. And these are our stories.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, Jerred Moon here and welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast. With me is Joe Courtney. What’s up Joe?
Joe Courtney: Hey. Hello.
Jerred Moon: How is life since the last recording of the new Garage Gym Athlete
Joe Courtney: episodes. Good. I did a Murph and it was painful and nauseated a little bit,
Jerred Moon: but it was good.
Let’s hear it. I want to hear about your Murph experience. Maybe I’ll give some update on my Murphy experience. [00:01:00]
Joe Courtney: so just add body weight because my wife comes, skated my vest and my other ones across the country. I think I drank too much coffee and water. They got too much going on on my stomach.
Cause when I would go from doing really fast squats to give me my pull-ups, things were slushing around and by around 15 of the calisthenics, I was like, Nope, no more good. Great. It was the first one I’ve done and even even an unvested in months, but still, yeah, decent time. I mean, people will probably see the time and I like it, but it was slowish for me.
Jerred Moon: See the time. Did you post on your Instagram. No. Oh, okay. If people were to see that,
Joe Courtney: because I didn’t post it on Instagram.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Yeah. It’s completely negated. Didn’t even take place, but my
Joe Courtney: wife did and she tagged on me. So that’s like a half credit.
Jerred Moon: That’s, yeah.
Joe Courtney: It’s like the research partner that only shows up and gets focused.
The grade.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. You, it counts. cool man. Well, so you basically weren’t feeling good and you called it quit. What?
[00:02:00] Joe Courtney: Oh no, I continue. I just took, so like once I kept up my, my normal pacing and then once I got around 15 I had to take like almost the entire amount of break
Jerred Moon: and some of the
Joe Courtney: routes, but I kept going even though I was like dragging me.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Before, not, not on Merck, but I remember there when I used to, when I wasn’t as conditioned for the mile and a half run on the air force PT test, but I really wanted to still max it out. I would literally be dry heaving while running like the last 600 meters of the mile and a half. And never pleasant experience to continue running at full speed while you’re actually dry keeping.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, and then our run is terrible because we live at the bottom of a really steep hill. So like, even after that, you gotta run
Jerred Moon: up this giant hill. Well, then you come downhill though, right? So,
Joe Courtney: yeah. So I’ll come down here at the end as I’m coming down Hill, I was starting to get a cramp and downhill is jarring.
And then you can’t really stop yourself in is
Jerred Moon: it was a good experience. Yeah. Well, somehow my house, I go up Hill on the way away from my house and [00:03:00] I go uphill on the way back to my house. I don’t know how I, how it’s physically possible, but, no. So my PR this week, I did post it on Instagram, so it definitely counts.
Was that. I hit a PR, or I call it a baseline because I did a squat and a drop of sweat fell off my head right at the top. And I was like kind of looking down while I was doing the squats and I came back down so fast. The sweat drop got back on my forehead. It’s recycling. Never done that before
Joe Courtney: in your mouth next time.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, that was, it wasn’t saying, but no, the, the Merck project has been going really well. What? I just finished number 11. I, within the first 10, I PR my no vest Murph, which was unexpected but awesome. And I came within 14 seconds of PR in my vested Murph and you know, now I think I’m getting closer to, it’s just not going to happen.
Be not, I mean, it’s not gonna happen to later if I, if I PR the whole thing, because the temperatures are rising and it’s, I’m going to be at this point where it’s just like. [00:04:00] It’s really just like get through the summer and then you start PR and everything in the fall and going into the winter here in Texas.
So that’s what I’m looking forward to in the summer. Just, just training. No expectation. but I did also PR my 40 pound Murph, so my 40 pounds in the vest, PR that by four minutes, which I was pretty happy about. Always fun. also since our last discussion, I’ve tried the Gatorade thing. I tried it in just a normal GGA workout.
I did not notice any difference. I’m not gonna lie. but it wasn’t, it wasn’t a workout. It was more of a strength based workout that I was doing because of the study that we just covered last week. So I did it in, in more of a strength training session. And I don’t feel that I struggle in any normal strength.
Training session any way necessarily. and so I didn’t notice anything. I do want to try it during Murph though. I want to like start adding some, some carbohydrate rinsing. I’ve got to just got to figure it out. How to do that without wasting time taking. I don’t drink any water. [00:05:00] When I’m doing Murph, like I take, I’m taking a break to have some Gatorade swished around, spit it out.
Seems like a waste of time, but I, I’m going to try it. That’s
Joe Courtney: also, or a cause like you’re, you’re doing endure. So some of the intervals, so like halfway through, like see what the pasting is on the intervals and then halfway through switching stuff around, see if the intervals are easier or, or what.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, I want it.
So I haven’t where it’s most proven, which is endurance stuff. I haven’t tried it there yet and I want to do that and, but another thing I realized or came to remember is Gatorade tastes really good. I haven’t had it in a really long time. And I was like. Hey, this tastes really good, and I just forgot about how good it tastes.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. I’m just wondering if just don’t slip up when you’re really tired and start judging
Jerred Moon: yes. Or chugging you off the deep end. No, I won’t. It’s like a not gonna happen, not gonna happen. all right, well let’s, let’s get into this meat week. This week. we’re going to talk about, I posted this in the five line Friday.
If you guys follow [00:06:00] along, I send out. We have a newsletter every Friday I send out, some information and sometimes I throw a study in there. Sometimes I don’t, and we’re not always gonna match the podcast up to the studies, but it’s just kind of been working out that way right now. And the study that was reviewed or I discussed was endurance training intensity does not mediate interference to maximal lower body strength gain during short term concurrent training.
Ugh. Like, I hate the names of these studies, basically. Let’s put it in different terms. We are going to discuss this week, you know, should you only strength train strength if you want to get stronger? What are the pros and cons of that? What happens when you do a train strength but also have some sort of moderate or high intensity conditioning program to go in conjunction with that?
And you know what. The overall effect of it is. So I’m going to start with what the interference effect is. so the inter interference effect describes, the relatively smaller [00:07:00] gains in strength and hypertrophy. So hypertrophy is muscle growth seen when combining strength and endurance training versus performance strength training in isolation.
so the interference effect is just a really cool term that says, Hey, if you train strength with. Something else like endurance or conditioning, you’re not going to get as strong or it’s going to interfere with your strength gains. It’s pretty well documented. but I think every time I’ve seen one of these studies, I get a little bit frustrated because I think the person who.
Wrote the study or did the study while they shouldn’t be, or the person who interprets the study, typically, let me, let me get, let me go off. The person who interprets the study, not necessarily the person who conducted the study has some sort of strength training bias. And so they’re like, this proves my point that you should not, you know, do them concurrently because, you know, spoiler alert, the results of the, the overall result of the study is that.
It is better to train a strength by itself to [00:08:00] gain more strength than to train strength with some sort of conditioning program attached to it. So that is the, the short of it. but there’s a lot more to it. And that’s kind of what I want to, I want to unpack. but first I want to just get your initial thoughts on training them concurrently versus exclusively.
and what you think about it. Joe.
Joe Courtney: I mean, since I’ve been doing this kind of program for a number of years now, I know you can get stronger with doing everything. And, I think even back when I did the, the bodybuilding bro sessions, I was still that kind of weird guy that was on base doing parachutes sprints on the field after my workouts.
so I think I, I personally always wanted to be well rounded because I was always athlete playing lacrosse and soccer and football and stuff. as far as. You know, when you see the those bros in the gym that just, you know, just going for strength and stuff. I guess if that’s all you want them, then they can probably get that faster.
But, yeah. I don’t know. I guess it just depends on how people go about [00:09:00] their conditioning aspect, if, you know, I think some people will think, that if they just lift or if they were to do conditioning that they’re just thinking of, Oh, okay, well, running for 30 or 60 minutes is conditioning. There’s no, like.
Middle ground, but that’s not
Jerred Moon: true. Yeah. And that’s everywhere. Everyone always looks at like these outer extremes, right? Like you, you either are the power lifter who can deadlift a thousand pounds, or you’re the ultra endurance athlete who can run a hundred miles, like, you know, in a day, super fast or whatever.
And that’s not normally the case. That’s not what a lot of us are trying to do. And so big, a few things. So just real quick results of the study. The, the people who train strength only, like I said, they got stronger, but the people who train strength with some sort of conditioning program, they tested moderate intensity and high intensity and they got stronger as well.
Just a few percentage points behind the purely strength athletes when all said and done, if I’m only a few percentage points behind you, I’m going to be okay with that if I’m a lot [00:10:00] healthier because I don’t know why they didn’t test it for, but from what I see in the study. Maybe they just thought it was going to be too obvious, but the VO two max increase for the people who had a conditioning program increased a good amount, a couple of percentage points, but then they didn’t even test the strength of people.
There was no baseline for what happened in their VO two max, I guess, because they didn’t, they didn’t care. Or maybe I, I don’t think I missed it. Like they just didn’t care about the VO two max increase and so. What you’re doing is they’re saying, okay, train a strength, but you know, don’t worry about conditioning if you wanna get stronger.
but what does that come with and what does that do to your health? Because if you’re not doing any sort of. Cardio, you know, there’s going to be a lot of other effects, affects from that. Like, how about not being conditioned, not being able to recover, you know, dying sooner like that one. That’s kind of a big deal if you don’t, have some sort of aerobic base in your fitness program.
It’s pretty important. And [00:11:00] I don’t know if you caught this in the strength thing, but, How are in the study, they only train strength after doing these really grueling endurance workouts and they weren’t easy and Durance workouts, they were harder endurance workouts. And so from our programming, we basically never do that.
You know, they, so why would you hit these like really hard intervals and then go train strength that just. I don’t know who programmed that. We’ll in the study, and I don’t, it doesn’t make any sense to me. but TIFF, have you ever done that? Have you ever gone like conditioning first and strength after?
Joe Courtney: There’s probably times I have. I can’t think of any, anything specifically. There’s probably times.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, not best. And this is for any athlete out there, and I’ll get, get around to some takeaways and stuff, but. Any athlete out there, garage, gym, athlete or other who wants to talk about programming and where you should fit in strength and where you should couldn’t fit in conditioning.
It’s pretty simple. What you have to [00:12:00] take into effect in your training order is the central nervous system and the coordination. Needed in further exercises. So what do I mean? If you fry your central nervous system with some sort of high intensity glycolytic conditioning session and then you move to say overhead squats or something like that, you’re not going to have the, you know, motor control to be able to perform that properly.
So that’s how you should be thinking about your programming. If you want to do something like an overhead squat, you should do an overhead squat after some activation activity and then move into that glycolytic high intensity conditioning after the fact. To keep you injury free and safe. And so this is just a really poorly executed, in my opinion.
But still the data is the data and they say train strength first. If you wanna get stronger. Now, the only other thing I want to point out, have you read unplugged? Okay, a really great book I’m going to kind of, so it’s called unplugged, evolve from technology to upgrade your fitness performance and consciousness.
by Brian McKinsey, dr Andy Galpin and Phil white. So we had [00:13:00] Brian McKinsey and dr Andy Galpin on, the better humanology podcast. And this isn’t necessarily their information, but they mentioned it. The four best predictors of mortality, mortality are unchanged from 50 years ago. This is from the book.
They say they’re still VO two max leg strength, lean body mass in grip strength. And so that’s what I think as an athlete, you need to look at. When you’re trying to be like, Oh, I want to get stronger, so I only want to train strength because that’s what this study says, but okay, you’re going to have, let’s say you’re just trying to live a long, healthy life.
You’ve got that leg strength, maybe some grip strength, but your lean body mass and VO two max won’t be as good as if you had a conditioning program. And I don’t think I need to argue or sit here and argue a lot about people having some sort of conditioning aspect. But we get a lot of questions in our strength track.
Sometimes even people who have quit the program because they’re like, why is there like conditioning here? You know, like w you said this is a strength track. Why are you doing some conditioning? It’s cause we want to keep you [00:14:00] well rounded without moving into that like actual endurance zone where you know, it’s kind of unnecessary to be trained with strength.
Like you want to be doing opposite ends of the spectrum all the time. but my main takeaway for the athlete is have some sort of training. If you’re going to be doing purely strength training, that is going to compliment that. What we do in the strength track is very low end, high burst conditioning.
So creatine phosphate, sound glycolytic. just to make sure that our athletes are seeing the conditioning they need to get better at the strength training. And that’s the biggest thing. You know, CrossFit exploded. And then after CrossFit started to die down, you know, it got really big. Olympic weightlifting, and that’s because CrossFit is really hard and it sucks, and Olympic weightlifting is not that, and it’s just, it’s just human nature.
Like we’re not going to want to do stuff that sucks all the time and conditioning sucks. In my opinion. Conditioning sucks way more than any strength workout I’ve ever done. Ever, and I don’t, you know, I, I, I’ll go to my [00:15:00] grave probably bleeding that I’m sure there’s some strength athletes who’s like, Oh, well come workout with me and I’m like, you come workout with me.
We’ll do some conditioning. And you know, it’s, it’s just, you got to have both in your program. You’ve gotta have both in your program. Don’t get lazy, don’t become, you know, the CrossFitter who turned into the Olympic weightlifter, who has no conditioning now and can’t walk up a flight of stairs or play with your kids.
And don’t become the strength athletes who quit all forms of conditioning and wants to be a power lifter now and have no conditioning and can’t do anything. That’s not, in my opinion, what an athlete is and not what you should be training for. So have some form of conditioning. Like I said, that’s my main takeaway.
It doesn’t have to be long and during space, but do it anyway and you’ll be better for it.
Joe Courtney: I think he’s also peeling back even those layers. that’s, that’s also how we build power. Sometimes. And which is a lot of things that, you know, it’s highlighted in a lot of your articles that’s missing. And people’s strength programs is building power.
And. Yeah. And that’s what people are missing sometimes.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. If you, I, I like [00:16:00] to, I have a video, a side by side comparison video of me lifting around 500 pounds. I think one was, I think one was 501 was five 15 actually, like they were actually different in the 500 pound dead lift is like kind of the iconic deadlift you see with a more intermediate to novice trainee who’s like super slow, like red faced.
Just this
Joe Courtney: I afraid for them to pass out.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Thank God he got that without dying. That was the 500 pound deadlift, because to be honest, I probably wasn’t 100% ready to pull it, but through. Sheer brute force and willpower. I managed to do it. And then fast forward, like a year or two later, I started to train what you’re saying, a little bit more power working on the speed of the bar, things like that.
And I just like rip 515 pounds off the ground, like twice as fast, you know? And I’m, I am, I was stronger but not like significantly stronger. I was more powerful and there’s a big difference and you’re gonna be a lot safer and see a lot. More results in feel better as an athlete if you are more powerful, [00:17:00] which involves a lot of the conditioning that we’re talking about.
And then also just like more speed lifting, dynamic effort lifting.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. I think we need to make that video a resurface again. I think months ago I tried to find it because I don’t know where it came up, but.
Jerred Moon: let’s see. I think the actual, if memory serves me correct, the name of the article is something along the lines of taking your strength from Toyota to Lamborghini.
So very, I got creative with that article title, but if you want to Google that and we can link to it or whatever. But yeah, that’s, that was, has the side by side comparison it pretty cool. little video considering I have that very limited video skills and I somehow did that.
Joe Courtney: And, just other.
Hit points on training, not just strengths or whatever, is that if you’re trained a little bit more, add a little more intensity, probably going to be training less time. So you’re not going to be spending two hours in the gym because you have the rest between your, your sets. And then there’s always the guys that are in there cutting phase or bulking phase.
But like if you [00:18:00] keep your body weight at a relatively fair percentage, then that is also going to help you in the long run well as well. And you know, . Normally the guys that are going for the bodybuilding, I’m just lifting strength anyway, are doing it for aesthetic purposes as it’s, so why not be more efficient that way?
Jerred Moon: But some guys are just trying, they don’t care what they weigh or necessarily look like body fat percentages. They just want to be strong, you know? And they tried the conditioning model for a little while, but it was uncomfortable. And so now they just want to lift weights in their garage or basement or whatever.
And I guess I’m going so far as to say that’s not okay. Like, you know, how, you know, some people were like, no, you do your thing and you’d be happy. And that’s cool. I don’t, I just don’t believe that because the, the literature is saying you’re going to die sooner. So I’m saying that that’s not okay cause I don’t want you to die sooner.
So I think it’s okay for me to say it. Like, just have a little bit of, you can just walk, walk your dog in the evening. That’s honestly enough for a lot of people, but have [00:19:00] some conditioning element to your program no matter what.
Joe Courtney: And I, I keep saying bros, but. Females are much more goal-driven whenever they get into a program.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not at all
Jerred Moon: as well. I mean, some of the most dedicated athletes that I’ve worked with personally, garage gym athlete, have been females and people who have crushed their goals. so I’ve definitely seen that, but I’ve also seen a lot of males in the same boat, so, yeah.
Yeah. Alright. I think that’s it, man. I think, you know, just just a big one. You know, looking at these studies, the main reason we want to do it is give you some sort of takeaway. The takeaway today is always have some sort of conditioning, like the type of conditioning I mentioned. You could research that stuff a little bit more.
We could do future podcasts on it. Talking about creating phosphate, glycolytic conditioning, energy system training. A lot of stuff that we do at garage gym athletes. But sometimes you have to look at these studies and then contrast them with another study. And that’s what I did last time. That’s why I did this time.
I won’t do it every time, but it’s like, okay, yeah, getting stronger. You just do a strength program. It’s like, well, you can still get stronger doing both, but then let’s zoom [00:20:00] out and look at these mortality rates. Okay. Can we improve VO two max leg strength, lean body mass in grip strength, and that is the biggest predictor of, you know, if you were to have to sit down and write a program.
If you focus it around those areas, you’re going to have one really well rounded human being who’s going to, you know, barring some unforeseen circumstance live longer statistically than, than other people. So it’s just good, good training.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. I actually wanted to flip it around too, because I know we’ve youth justice before that.
Strength training and endurance. programming as well. So flipping the whole thing around is just as beneficial. So like, whereas shouldn’t just do strength. We also shouldn’t just do endurance.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Dude. Like I wish, I wish I could. Well, I mean, you could, you could go check out our sample programming and take a look, but the endure, endure track right now, like, I just trained today and did nothing but strength work today.
There was no conditioning element today. And you know, it’s. Well, [00:21:00] my take on this whole thing and, and, improving someone’s endurance is very different than I think a lot of other people out there. and it’s often missed in most endurance community. They, I mean, they might involve some lunges. Like I looked at, I did a lot of research and checked out a lot of other people’s programs and preparation.
Really like a year leading up, like we’ve been talking about in deer forever. And I’ve been, I wasn’t like, to be honest, I wasn’t, I didn’t feel as proficient in programming that. So I just did all this research and reading to make sure I was good to go. And people would have like this really solid, like intervals at these given heart rates and these given intensities.
And I’d be like, okay, that’s great. But like. And then they’d be like, okay. And then after that, just, do, do a couple sets of pushups in a couple of sets of squats to end of the day. And I’m like, that’s the strength element. Like that’s what you’re doing. Like I just disagree. I think you could, you could do it better and so have a lot of strength training if you’re doing endurance only.
All right. Now this week kind of topic of the week kind of goes into some endurance aspects, but [00:22:00] just. Metcons endurance. Really everything in general. We are going to discuss, just pacing. So pacing in general, when it comes to fitness and why that’s important. And I had a video and I, it was like a very short video cause I’m just, I, I’m trying to beat all of our athletes over the head with a very simple concept and the half for the last several years.
And that is a sustainability and repeatability. So I have a video on YouTube called chop, chop, fitness pacing, and it has me outside in my old backyard where I, I take. an ax and do a really shitty job at trying to cut this log. I’ve just like banging it all over the place and like doing all this stuff.
And then finally, finally I split the lock, you know, like a minute into video or whatever. And my, the whole reason for this illustration, the reason I did that is cause that’s how a lot of people. Do their conditioning work, no matter how it’s prescribed or written. [00:23:00] Like I can write you the perfect interval.
I can write you a Metcon, a more CrossFit style workout or whatever. And what you’re going to end up doing is exactly what I just explained and illustrated in that video is you’re just going to beat your head into a wall over and over again and not find any real pacing. Therefore, not seeing any real results in all this.
I’ll talk about that a little bit more. but I wanted to, you know, start with you and see, cause I. I dunno. I feel like you’ve gotten, you’ve been very strategic about your workouts like ever since I’ve known you. But I think you’ve also gotten even a lot better at pacing, and some of your endurance stuff.
So I just want to hear kind of your take on, on a pacing.
Joe Courtney: yeah. I’m, I’m the King of pacing that I’ve found a lot of the longer workouts. Like I don’t know how I can just dissect and be able to like set a goal for something not cause at first I, you think about what you can do and your reps, I was like, okay, I think I can do those reps in.
35 seconds. So I’m going to calculate, it’s going to take me 45 seconds because you’re not always going to be able do that in 35 seconds. And then you just do that with everything. And then [00:24:00] usually I take that I kind of round up and have that as my, whether it’s intervals or rounds or whatever goals, and have that as the goal.
And then I keep it at that goal. And then once you get to a certain point, at least, at least for me, if you maintain to like an 88 or so percent. intensity. Then after you get to about halfway, you can usually find another gear. Once you see, OK, I’m over the hump, I’m getting toward the finish line.
Now I can maybe turn it up a little bit here and there. Versus if you start off hot out the gate at 90, then when you get halfway through, you’re going to be doubled over and it has to get, dial it back down to like 65 and you’re just going to be fighting for yourself to work out or to, to finish the workout.
And then you might have some peaks and valleys and I don’t really know if that’s doing as much for you versus. Sustainability. So a lot of times I will start off a lot slower, but if I were to be going side by side with people, because I know to start slower because, because of sustaining that, you know, stay on 80% or so.
I can keep going and then I’ll [00:25:00] pass the people that go ahead out the gate.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And that’s, I mean, that’s exactly. So you, you learned that just on your own in being an athlete, cause you, you know, you realized what was more, more applicable and what seemed to work better. And. You know, that’s, that’s awesome.
And, you know, I think if you do train and use your brain a little bit in your training, you’ll come to that conclusion. but if you just look at, you know, moving away from just your experience as an athlete like that is. It’s perfect. That’s how it should be done because what, what you’re doing or what not you, what other people are doing when they don’t pace it out is threshold training, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not something that you want to be doing every day.
Every time I prescribed intervals or every time I want you to do some sort of a Metcon, I’m not telling you to go as hard as you can, and I’m having to erase that mentality from people, especially if they come from like a straight. A CrossFit prescription where it’s just, okay, you’re going to go as hard as you can [00:26:00] for until this workout is over.
And that’s not what, like almost every time we do even do a Metcon, which is that more CrossFit style looking workout, you know, multiple different movements, you know, in there. We always are, most of the time prescribed rest in there. So it’d be like, do these three movements, rest three minutes, do that 10 rounds.
And then I want to see the sustainability and repeatability across those 10 rounds. That’s your fitness, like how consistent you are across those 10 rounds. That’s your fitness. And it throws a lot of people off. But the opposite of that. And so, you know, say you were doing some sort of Metcon and you. You rush out the gate and you, yes, whatever the movements are.
Say you finish it in 35 seconds and then the next time is 45 seconds, then it’s 55 seconds and then 65 then your last, you know, six rounds are all a minute 10 you finally found some consistency, but it’s like twice as long as if you would have just had some pacing and normally if you just actually mathematically worked that out, you’re going to end up doing [00:27:00] more work.
If you were to have pace it out faster, and it’s going to be better for you. Cause the opposite, like I said, is threshold training where you’re just training. What you’re doing with threshold training is you’re training for this. Like. Upper level gear in pain that doesn’t actually build like you’re a robot capacity or anything like that.
It’s just, it’s really just teaching your body how to suffer. there’s not a lot of benefit to it other than the movement and sweat and calorie burn involved. But if we’re talking about moving an athlete forward in their fitness, it doesn’t do a lot for you unless you’re starting from. let’s say suboptimal standpoint.
So you’re like, if you’re really a obese and like just getting into fitness, do whatever the hell you want until we get to, to a baseline. But then after that baseline, the, the quote unquote honeyMoon honeyMoon phase of fitness is over. You really have to start doing these sustainable and repeatable [00:28:00] exercises, to see results and to continue to see results.
I think. Anybody can write an effective program for four, six, eight, even 12 weeks. But can you, can you effectively program for another individual for 12 years? And that becomes a lot more challenging. And that’s more what I’m looking to do versus what, you know you’re doing when you do these non pacing style workouts.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Cause it’s, we’re not really working toward quick, quick fix goals. It’s more of a, after these 12 weeks you’re going to see gains all across the board of this, that, and the other. But then we’re just going to keep on doing that. So, you know, the people that do want the quick stuff, it’s not going to be, it’s not gonna to, we’re not going to keep that a, a longer over time.
and then with the patient, I mean, for muscle endurance, you’re, you’re probably going to be doing more reps as well. So,
Jerred Moon: yeah. And you know, what’s interesting is you, you mentioned like, muscular endurance, and this is, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people about this, who are in the coaching program.
And. The ability to turn [00:29:00] muscular endurance. So muscular endurance is typically everyone’s a weakness. Like if I were to have you do, if you knew you’re kind of new at it and you do rowing. Maybe your bicep to burn out before your lungs because your biceps aren’t very trained. You know, that happens to like some new trainees are pulling too much with their arms, you know, and, and, and then same with almost say we have kettlebell swings and devil Anders in a workout.
Well, you know, the kettlebell swings, you’re going to get these burning sensation in your muscles that’s going to stop you before you ever get to your aerobic threshold. But after you train long enough and your muscular endurance catches up. It can withstand a lot more and it can turn a lot of activity into aerobic activity.
And the reason I’m saying any of this is because people wonder how I’m getting, or how I’ve gotten so fast at Murph is because Murphy’s no longer, like I, the volume doesn’t even calculate anymore. Like my body doesn’t, is not affected by the 100 pull-ups, the [00:30:00] 200, Pushups in the 300 squats. Doesn’t matter if you put 40 pounds in the vest.
It doesn’t matter if I do it strict, doesn’t matter if I do a kipping, doesn’t matter. My my, the muscular endurance I’ve built up is so far ahead of that. Now that Murphy is purely an aerobic workout for me, it actually feels like a, so, you know, whatever my fastest Mark takes me around 30 minutes. It honestly feels like I’m running.
For 30 minutes for max meters. That’s what, that’s how uncomfortable it feels. It’s like, okay, run as fast as you can in the next 30 minutes. Get us, you get as far as you can, you know, like your life depends on it. That’s what Murphy feels like to me every weekend. Now there’s no like, Oh, you know, I’m sore from the pull ups or whatever.
And cause that’s, that’s like the next phase, you know, once you can kind of click over to . getting your muscular endurance surpasses or catches up to your Rubik, capacity. You can start doing some really fun stuff and things aren’t as difficult as they were before. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: That actually might be, you know, circling back to the very first thing we talked about was, my Murph.
And when I was first, you know, for the longest time doing Murph, I would always do [00:31:00] my pushups in size. And like, one of the biggest limiting factors were, where it was the pushups, and that was slow me down. So I knew I had to pace it and do five reps. From, from the very beginning. And I would able to keep that pace for awhile and I’d still get great times.
But now I’m doing them and I guess doing enough of the pushups and stuff, I can do them all. Some in sets of 10 I can do just do 10 straight through, but now I’m going through them a whole lot faster. So it’s, it’s definitely at what way more intense is possibly why the squats got to get him a little more tense.
Cause that’s usually the hardest part because I can just blow through the pushups now.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And that’s what, and to be honest, so when I restarted this, the project like that’s, I had to a lot of catching up to do, like the, my, my pushups had like kind of fallen off. They weren’t where they were before. And so I kept hitting that as my limiting factor.
Now everything’s kind of caught back up. but to your point on squats, like that’s where everyone gets slowly. Like, I watch everyone on Murph, like I see these videos, like people. In my opinion are basically resting on squats. You know, [00:32:00] they they might be moving the whole time, but they’re still resting cause they’re like there.
You’re not doing them as fast as you can. You’re like three seconds per squat is a lot of time. So that’s just a side note on Murph. All right man. So we hit up a pretty good study. good topic. So okay, so take away four. The study always have some sort of some form of conditioning in your strength workout no matter what.
And we kind of gave you some ideas on where you could go without, if you ever want to program for yourself. A takeaway for kind of our topic of the week is make everything sustainable and repeatable. You know, if I didn’t make that clear enough, make everything sustainable and repeatable. I don’t care if you’re doing a CrossFit Metcon.
And it’s a, you know, a 10 minute am rap or whatever. Whatever exercises you’re doing, try to keep it in a similar time frame. Like, Oh, that took me three minutes and one second. So I want the next round to be three minutes and one second plus or minus three seconds. You know, something like that. See how sustainable and repeatable you can get.
Across everything, and that is going to be such a better way to, [00:33:00] even if you’re doing someone else’s programming, you try and make it sustainable and repeatable in our programming. We build that in there for you and we brief on it and all this other stuff. But if you’re following something else, try and make it more sustainable and repeatable and then let them know that they’re programming it wrong and that they should, they should, you know, take into these things into account, but make it more sustainable, repeatable.
You’re going to see more results for a longer duration. Then just running in your head into this wall with this a threshold training all the damn time. So those are my two takeaways there. Now we can get into more, you know, close it out with the, the fun workout. Sally’s Rindge have you done this one? You, I’ve done.
Have you
Joe Courtney: did? Yeah, we did it. We did it once. Okay. Let’s not do it at once. Months ago. I’m not sure
Jerred Moon: that’s going, it came out months ago cause this one is relatively new, like within the last few months. And so it is a run one mile. Sally bring Sally up, oops. And then Sally up. Push pushups in Sally up squats and you rest three minutes in between.
[00:34:00] Each of the exercises are the, the two. And then after the squats, you immediately go to a mile run. so kinda like a I S I actually say in the athlete brief, it’s like Sally and Murph had a baby. and it’s kind of true. So you, I’ll let you explain what, what Sally is just in case someone hasn’t. Been indoctrinated.
Joe Courtney: so Sally up is a song, I don’t even know who the song is by, but
Jerred Moon: it’s Moby.
Joe Courtney: Okay. Yeah, it is. yeah. So you bring, you do the, all of these movements to bring Sally up to the song. Now it’s, you’re not alternating or anything like that. You’re doing the entire song to pull up some and the entire song to pushups and then squat.
So you’re listening to the song three times, and by the end, you’re going to
Jerred Moon: hate the song. Yeah, and they’re all, it’s all really crappy. Like it’s all, it’s so hard, that that workout was so much more brutal than I thought it was going to be when I executed on it. Like. The pull-ups were near impossible.
the pushups [00:35:00] we’re at, cause after your arms are blown out, like basically blown out from the pull-ups, the, I thought the pushups are going to be easy part, but because your arms are so fried from the pull-ups, believe it or not, like a bicep pump is going to affect your pull up, your pushups. And so then I couldn’t, you know, the pushups were really crappy.
And then actual barbell weighted squats, it depends on what level you’re at. Like. what weight you put on the bar, you just use body weight, but they’re all gonna suck. and I don’t remember what I use. I don’t know if I did one 35 or 95, but it was just crappy. It was so crappy.
Joe Courtney: Well, YouTube videos as air squads.
But yeah, they definitely stepped up. Version would be with weight.
Jerred Moon: It says air squat. Yeah. Why did I do barbell?
Joe Courtney: Well, cause typically you just do one Sally up and you just do, you do one, one movement with a barbell and then you’re done. Because it sucks. And I’ve done it with a barbell before, but it was just the squads.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. So yeah, that’s what, that’s where the workout kind of. Came from, I don’t remember where it originally originated exactly. But yeah. So bring Sally up every time. So, yeah, I think so. And every [00:36:00] time you say up, you go up every time you go down, down, so it’s like a big tempo workout, but doing it altogether, search Sally’s or vans, you can go to garage gym, mathlete.com forward slash M Y S.
And you will see all of our meet yourself Saturday workouts there. You’ll see salaries or vans. You can check it out, watch the athlete briefs and a lot of other videos, other really hard meat yourself, Saturday workouts. so before we go, man, tips, tricks, strategies on this workout that I was thinking.
Joe Courtney: this is one of the few workouts where you don’t really have any,
Jerred Moon: there’s no, there’s nothing you can do. There’s nowhere you can run.
Joe Courtney: The reps and tempo are made for you. This song is there. I guess be smart with your scaling. If you and you feel like you’re going to fail something, you’ll try and I don’t know, you know, or maybe scale as you go.
So like with popes, for me, I was able to do them for a while, but then my bar is just tall enough that as I go all the way down, I can kind of, get on my tip toes and, and take some weight off. So I did that a little bit. just to make the pull ups, push ups, I guess you [00:37:00] just really start to fail. Go to your knees.
Yeah. It’s really just scaling that. Not really. Not really many,
Jerred Moon: and it’s not really like, so that’s really solid advice for. A good attempt at advice for a workout that’s very hard to give advice on. And because what’s going to actually happen is you’re not even going to have an option, you know, it’s not going to be like, you know what?
I think I should scale it. What’s going to happen is you’re not going to be able to do another pushup, and so you’re going to, you’re going to be doing, you’re just going to have to end up on your knees or doing whatever. Like it’s, it’s a pretty brutal workout. I guess the only advice I could give is, and I don’t normally say this, Especially, not like Murph workout but paced mile cause those are going to, those are going to factor it in there. That’s the only thing you can control. And so, but you know, paste that first mile to where you’re going to have a little bit left in the tank. But I never, I never think you should pace the last mile.
There’s never any reason to try and pace it. Like you’re just, you’re going to keep the pace at which your body will allow from the workout. And so push the maximum pace that you can there. It’s the same in [00:38:00] Murph. but that’s it. That’s it. for this week study, topic and workout of the week, I’ve got some more cool new workouts coming up in the next coming weeks.
Now, if you are one of our athletes, one, you’re awesome and hopefully you’re getting a lot out of these tips, tricks, and programming information and getting a little more behind the scenes. Now, if you’re not one of our athletes. Go to garage gym, athlete.com, you can sign up for a free trial and you have a 14 day free trial that you can get started at, and check out our programming, even if it’s just something that you want to look into.
And, and you know, we have six different tracks now. I don’t even know if I can name them all. We have, we have, we have six different tracks, all geared towards different goals. Which track are you on right now? Arctic. You
Joe Courtney: never switch.
Jerred Moon: You’ve never been off of it. Yeah. So this is, I’ve actually,
Joe Courtney: only time I switched was to do the test programming for hard to kill.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Witness for hard to kill. It was like, yeah,
Joe Courtney: it’s basically pre hard to kill.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, and I’m actually, this is the first I’ve ever switched, so I have been on [00:39:00] garage. The mathlete hard to kill tracks since. The beta test started in 2015 beta access started in 2015 and it wasn’t called hard to kill track back then.
It was just garage gym, athlete programming. You know, when we had one track, we named our
Joe Courtney: cycles.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, yeah. We used to just name the cycle and we’d have one cycle and now we have, it’s getting a little more difficult cause we have six cycles with. Are technically, I guess, yeah, six cycles, all the different programs and everything.
but it’s getting crazy. if you want to check us out, you go to garage and mathlete.com see what we have going on, in the programming world. And I think that’s, that’s it in anything else. She
Joe Courtney: don’t know how to do. Your patient will do the pacing for you.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, I, Hey, I’m not gonna lie. We, I truly believe that we have the best programming on the internet.
And if that were to ever change, I would shut down, the whole website cause I wouldn’t think it is worth, worth doing or putting all the work into anymore. and if anyone thinks that their programming is better. Shooting my way. Let me see it. I’m not saying where, you know, w w there are no flaws and there’s always room [00:40:00] for improvement. But I am, that’s like my, my mission in life to make our programming better and continually sharpen that spirit. All right.
Thanks for listening to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast. Do you want to learn more? Go to garagegymathlete.com. You can learn about our training. Let us send you a copy of our book, The Garage Gym Athlete, or you can even get featured on the Garage Gym Athlete podcast.
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