Hey, Athletes! Want an easy technique that will require not much time but increase your performance? Then make sure to check out this episode of Garage Gym Athlete to learn about this and more!
Episode 114 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
Visualizing Training Increases Performance
In this week’s episode we have Jerred, Joe, Kyle and Ashley! The coaches go over a study about visualization and how it can improve your training. The coaches break this one down and give you their ways on how to kill comfort! This week’s topic is about mobility. The team goes over their favorite mobility exercises and how they utilize them. This week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is Old MacDonald. It’s a spicy one that will challenge your grip!
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 56-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Old MacDonald
- Visualization
- Blue Angels
- Mobility
- Visualizing Training to Help Performance
- Tips For MYS
- Updates and Announcements
- And A LOT MORE!!
Diving Deeper
If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you:
Study of the Week
Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week
Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
- The Secrets of How Your Brain Can Strong-Arm Your Brawn
- A Ridiculously Awesome, yet brief, Guide to Mobility
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Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Jerred Moon 0:02
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast here with the crew today Kyle Shrum, Ashley Hicks, Joe Courtney. How’s everyone doing?
Joe Courtney 0:13
Hello? Good. Just going, that’s how good we’re doing.
Jerred Moon 0:20
Yeah, well, let’s, let’s get straight into the science here, I won’t beat around the bush, I actually really liked their title, I give the scientific community a hard time, at times for their lack of creativity. They’re just like, yeah, reverse Plank with the blah, blah, like just all this normally what the conclusion is, is what the title Yeah. And there’s kicks off with ain’t just imagination, exclamation effects of motor imagery, training on strength and power performance of athletes during the training was done in 2021. Very cool study. If you’ve read killing comfort, I put similar studies in that in the book that kind of talk about what we’re going to be talking about today. And it’s how you can use your brain, how your brain alone, you know, and how that can equate to actual muscular and power increases. And so I think it’s really cool to go over this stuff. And the first study I came across with this type of thing was a long time ago, and it had to do with, like training like the finger muscles. And so it was kind of like, that’s really cool. But your fingers got stronger, I don’t know what you want me to take away from that this one much different. So there are 30 male basketball players that participated in this study. And all of the subjects had at least six years of high level basketball experience, and at least five years of resistance training experience. So that’s good, we had a pretty well season for the most part group of athletes. And they ultimately, they ended up doing six weeks worth of motor imagery training. So they would visualize themselves going, you know, kind of doing the the workout. And there were two different motor imagery groups. So they’re the groups that were, I’m just gonna call it pretending or visualizing, visualizing lifting heavy, and the other one visualizing lifting fast without getting into further detail. So more power output, which we talked about, I think on a recent podcast, and Brees podcast, one that’s more strength based, and then they kind of had the control group. And they didn’t really do anything. And to get into all of it, there was like a three week familiarization period before the six weeks of this motor imagery training. And they would do that. They did that for six weeks. Yeah, blah, blah. And they were doing sprint training. That was my other point, that so they were it wasn’t like there was no exercise. But they were definitely in a D training period, because they were doing only sprint training, they would do three sessions and motor imagery training per week. And I already talked about the groups, and overall at what you would expect to happen, or maybe not, depending on how you how powerfully the brain, how powerful you think the brain is. The motor imagery group outperformed the control group, and the one that wanted to get stronger, got stronger, the one who had more favorable strength outcomes, the one who wanted to get faster, more power, they had better power based outcomes. And the control group actually was D trained to some degree. And so the ultimate takeaway from the actual study, I’m just gonna read that very last line conclusion says during periods of forced D training, mental imagery practice seems to be a viable tool to maintain and increase physical performance capacity among professional athletes. So this is really cool. I have a lot of details I pulled out of this. That’s why it’s kind of hard for me to go through my notes, because if I, like went through everything that I actually typed out, we would be here for about 1520 more minutes. So I was picking out the parts that I liked, big overview here, of people just doing mental imagery, visualization training, not really exercising. The test was done on a Smith machine. Which I get it like, I know, we pick on people for these things at times, but it’s science, right? Like that’s such a
Joe Courtney 4:44
rather than single knee extensions,
Jerred Moon 4:46
a Smith machine can only go one direction, right and so that’s why they do it because if you had like a freeway benchpress there could be a factor of a person not not going straight up for like they didn’t have they had poor form or something like that. So I’m not going to get too into those kinds of things. But what did all of you think about this? The result? I want to actually ask you guys? Did, were you surprised at the results of this study? And what other things did you find interesting?
Joe Courtney 5:13
Or was that mind blowing more so on the strength side? I think and that’s this because you didn’t think the normal, you would have to actually work on muscle to get stronger. But the power side, I, as I was reading more and thinking more about it, I think it kind of makes sense. Because a lot of times power exercises require a lot of coordination and coordination is coming from your mind a lot in mind, mind muscle connection, and just visualizing yourself doing it by actually helps you to think of the sequence that you have to do to be explosive, to fully extend to do things in the right chain of events and sequence so that yes, you can be more powerful. So I think the power part really makes sense. And it also had the largest improvement, like way more improved than strength, strength was like, a minimal one, but it was pretty mind blowing that it did at all. Power, though. Yeah. 100% I think it’s, it could be something that people should or could use more often. Than you want me to keep going or just
Jerred Moon 6:17
Well, yeah, I mean, Kyle, and Ashley, how did you get? Did you? Were you surprised by the results of the study overall, without getting into all your takeaways and points?
Kyle Shrum 6:26
I mean, we we talked about how powerful the, the mindset is, when it comes to training all the time. So I wasn’t, I wasn’t super shot, but kind of like, kind of like, Joe, you know, I didn’t expect such a good such a, it wasn’t like they, they added a whole whole lot of strength, you know, to their, to their maxes or anything, but they did improve. And so just improving, simply through thinking through the motion. I think that’s really, really powerful stuff.
Unknown Speaker 6:55
Yeah, I wasn’t shocked by the results at all. I think you can do a lot with your mind. And I’ll go over it a little bit more on my takeaways, but
Unknown Speaker 7:04
yeah, I, I wasn’t shocked at all, but I was glad we were covering something like this.
Jerred Moon 7:10
Cool. I, Joe, what else? Yeah.
Joe Courtney 7:13
Yeah. So I think I’m starting to realize that my favorite studies are the ones where they’re taking teams like sports teams, people that are already organized in athletics together, and just being like, hey, coach, can I just borrow your athletes and give them a trading protocol, and athletes are just gonna follow it, they’re gonna follow it better, and the fact that they’re going to be experienced, they’re already on a training regimen. So I think just seeing that in these studies, too, there’s some of the better ones out there. This is just kind of like on a side note, outside of the study, but Well, I
Jerred Moon 7:45
mean, the coach to agree that hey, we’re gonna we want your players to not work out for six weeks.
Joe Courtney 7:50
Yeah. Like that’s, and it’s quite an ask. There was an other ones I know, we did one on rowing, that did something with strength on rowers instead of like conditioning. And yeah, I guess they just trust trusted enough for offseason training, they think they can make it up. Yeah. Yeah, the main one that I just wanted to highlight, which already did was on power, and that is just visualizing for power could be a mixture of coordination. And this kind of goes right into my killing comfort thing. And that is like, you know, we have fit, we coming up. And we have power metrics there. And I know plate jumps is something that so many people struggle with, because it’s such an awkward movement, and you’re trying to be good, you need to be really explosive. But you also need to be somewhat coordinated to be explosive, and then talk and all that. So my killing comfort thing would be you know, the night before, anything powerful that you’re doing explosive than to do your own little 10 minute visualization of doing it. But not much else to say, so I’ll pass it on to Kyle.
Kyle Shrum 8:56
Yeah, like I said, I thought it was really interesting that they improve performance, just straight through visualization. Like if I, if I read this correctly, they’re not going through the movement at all. But it’s not like they’re doing it on air. It’s not like an air squat that they’re doing or, you know, they’re not laying down on the bench and pushing their arms out with no way during it. Like they’re literally just visualizing themselves doing that. They’re not moving at all. They’re standing still just visualizing it in their mind. And so I think that’s really, really cool. what not, I tend to use visualization the most like in between sets, just during my training. Like, especially if something felt off. Or for some reason I was kind of wonky on like, Oh, my back squats or something like that, like I had a little bit of trouble standing it back up properly or something, just a little tweak that needs to be done. Like I’m just doing my rest time in between sets. I’ll just think about you know, the right way to do it. But it really made me think about the free solo movie. You guys ever seen that free solo? It’s unbelievable. But it’s a it’s about this guy for it. So free Solo is just it’s rock climbing with no ropes, and nothing holding you to it. Yeah, literally just you got a bag of chalk around your waist. And that’s it. And so, but it’s about this guy, Alex Honnold who, free solos this? I forgot, what’s it called?
Jerred Moon 10:20
What’s the place called El Capitan?
Kyle Shrum 10:22
Yeah. So anyway, fascinating movie, just unbelievable. But one of the things that he does, obviously, he’s doing training runs up through there, just trying to get really, really familiar with the route. And he has ropes for that, and all that kind of stuff. But then he just goes and he just doesn’t know ropes. He just gets up one morning and just goes, but you see, during the film, where he’s like, in his van, like his, his camper van that he has, where he’s taking so many notes on all the training runs that he’s done. And he’s sitting there thinking about how he’s going to turn his hands and how he’s going to turn his feet and just, there’s exactly this amount of space between this hole and this hole and I had to move to this place and you just see him sitting there in his van just visualizing this whole route of this mountain. And and so that just kind of made me think of that of just how how, how powerful visualization really is. And you know, this guy goes up there and just he climbs this freakin mountain that a lot of people can’t come with ropes and he just climbs it. Just just him. Just him and gravity and really stressful watching it but it just a really cool concept about how powerful visualization is.
Jerred Moon 11:33
That is an awesome movie. And that was like probably one of my biggest takeaways when I saw the movie too was like how dedicated that guy was in this
Ashley Hicks 0:06
So I can’t attest to the Thunderbirds because I don’t really know. But the Blue Angels, when they go through their, their flight plan or their show, they afterwards debrief with no tapes, they don’t look at anything, they just close their eyes, and they go through what they’ve done by flying. And they talk it through and they’ve got like, their lead guy that helps them. But then they also have to, like visualize it. And then if they were just like a millimeter off or something like that, they’re like, you know, they have to, basically, I forget what the word is that they use, but they basically like have to say, you know, sorry, I was a millimeter off this time, I won’t do that. And it just helps them get better. And they’re just doing it all through their mind and all this visualization. So the mind is powerful. And if you don’t think it is, it can definitely, I mean, I’ve heard of people talk about like, I, if I feel like I’m getting sick, I tell myself, I’m not getting sick, stuff like that, like, I’ve heard some crazy things of people doing just with could be visualization or just training your mind to do different things. My calling comfort for this one is practice visualization for things that you might want to get better at that is not just training, stuff that maybe I don’t know, that you’re trying to work on, maybe for a job or something like that. But anything that you wanted to tackle that you think that you want to get better at potentially, you know, use this technique, and maybe even for what I loved that they did was they visualized it all the way through. So they didn’t just start with a lift, right? They visualize themselves walking up to the rack, on racking it, then squatting and then all the way through to racking it back up. Right. So I think that has something to do with it too. Like don’t skip steps. Visualize the whole process of whatever it is that you’re trying to do.
Joe Courtney 2:07
So just two things on yours. This team has actually done. I think I think I saw that this team’s actually done visualization before, but with free throws, so they specifically just did it for three free throws and other basketball teams have done that as well. So I guess they already had some practice individualization and then the second one, you know who else did visualization? Cool Runnings, bobsled team.
Unknown Speaker 2:29
All right. Sorry, I
Jerred Moon 2:32
own Ashley had some some awesome examples. And Joe, just bringing the average down with that one. If I don’t know which one is it?
Joe Courtney 2:42
That’s great reference. Go ahead
Kyle Shrum 2:44
and come in and take his jab at me.
Jerred Moon 2:47
How does Cool Runnings make it into our conversations? as often as it even does?
Kyle Shrum 2:52
Go? I’m gonna go watch the movie today. That way, Joe can never mentioned it again.
Jerred Moon 2:56
No. Yeah. As soon as you watch that movie, I’ll ship you your shirt. Yeah. All right, that was a have some deep inside jokes there. But um, yeah, so to Ashley’s point, I actually put this in the book. I do think that anytime we’re doing physical, something physical visualization is huge. I feel like it’s a little bit harder if you do a lot of your work on your computer, like what you’re going to visualize. But I know in pilot training, you know, that’s probably where I got introduced to visualization the most and they didn’t really call it visualization necessarily, but it just we call it chair flying, right where you and I thought it was so funny when we started with Okay, we’re in the most advanced pilot training on the planet Earth. Here’s your poster board. You know, your your roll up poster to put on the wall. You like
Ashley Hicks 3:44
put it in your office? Yeah, just drawers out. Yeah. Yeah, I’m
Jerred Moon 3:47
like, Okay, this is this is it, guys, this is the best the government has to offer. I mean, not all jokes aside, they did have multimillion dollar simulators. And like everything else available, but that’s kind of where you start is just basic visualization. Even at there used to be called initial flight screening. I think it’s initial flight training or something like that, because it can’t be screened anymore. But the you go, and then they have these, like, they’re just fake cockpits, like made out of wood. And I thought that was funny, too. When I showed up there, I was, like, what we’re just gonna sit in this pretend to hit buttons. But after you do it, you realize how helpful it is, you know, you’re like, wow, I basically, I knew everything I needed to do this entire sortie because I’d already practiced it in my in my brain. And so these things are really powerful. I think that’s what got me sold. Not necessarily on the power of the mind, but visualization in particular. It’s just it can help so much until you’ve done something I feel like kind of walks you through how powerful it can be. You know, maybe people will be a little bit more resistant. I think this group here we have is very kind of open to these things. But I know a lot of people are resistant. I know I was kind of resistant to you know what That would seem more woowoo. But now I’m probably way more that direction than than I am resistant to any of it. So other things that I pulled out from this study, let’s see, overall, the author’s thought that motor motor imagery would enhance the performance compared to control condition. But they weren’t quite sure how this would work. And I think the interesting takeaway is they were kind of kind of trying to trying to come to conclusions on strength, first power, and like, what exactly would happen, but if you actually look at the data, like, without getting into the numbers, the strength people improve strength and the power people improve power, like they improved, what they focus on? Yeah. And so I, my, my thinking is, like, what if you just did all of it? You know, what if you’re like, Okay, here’s a dynamic day, I’m gonna visualize that, here’s a strength day, I’m gonna visualize that would the results be that much significantly? Higher? You know, I think that that would, that would go a long way. I’m trying to see if there’s anything else I want to pull out that you guys didn’t hit on.
Joe Courtney 6:13
I thought of that. I wonder if, like, if you’re injured, if this is something that you would do in in replacing of something that you can’t do, just so that you don’t lose what you’ve had as much if this, this would be a good practice for you as well.
Jerred Moon 6:26
And that’s kind of what they’re saying, like when you go into these time periods. Like if you have an injury that’s actually prevented, like, I didn’t do this, and I should have when I my back was hurt and I wasn’t squatting, I should have just been sitting there every day, visualizing heavy back squats the entire time. And I think that would have been helpful. But here’s the big thing that I want to take away. And I don’t know if any of you looked into it. But I was trying to get, like, how much time are we talking? How long are these visualization sessions. And I think it was reported in seconds. You know, I think that that’s what the the outcome here was, for some reason, it wasn’t like, you would think that this is like everyone would want to know this, but it was hard to pull out. And I think it was reported in seconds. And it was anywhere basically from 400 to 500 seconds. visualization. So we’re talking about six to nine minutes, something around there. Like, that’s how long these people were doing it. Because these are also things I look at is like, okay, we’re proving through science is proving over and over again, how helpful these visualization exercises are in basically every area of our life. But if it’s a new habit I need to pick up, I actually have to ask myself, do I have the time for it? Is this a new thing I can actually do. And if they’re like, yeah, these people spent three hours a day visualizing, and they got a little bit stronger. But we’re talking about six minutes on the low end, like eight minutes on the high end. If I’m looking at this correctly, someone else pulls up the study. And I’ve for some reason have read this wrong, but it has like a little s in parentheses. So I think that that means seconds. But they didn’t get into it any further. That’s the only reference of time that I could find. And so anyway, if that’s how long it is, that’s something we could all pick up, we could add to our warm up, right, we could, we could add to the our morning routine, whatever it is that we need to visualize, it doesn’t take a lot of time. And if you think about that, it takes you an hour to work out, you know, it takes you a long time to actually put in heavy sets. But if you add these five or six minutes of just visualizing those sets on top of actually doing the work, these your results are going to compound. And I do think 100% if you can’t train, it’s a day off, whatever. And you got time, I would say go do it. So that that’s kind of my feeling comfort too similar to what we’ve all said, is make this a practice, like go do it. Because the I actually put this in the book as well as like, I there’s no one I can’t really talk to anybody and say hey, do you believe the mind is a powerful thing? Everyone’s a big Of course. Yeah, it is. Yeah, that’s amazing. Like, okay, what is your daily mental training practice? If you believe the mind is so powerful? What are you doing every day to kind of harness this power? And that’s where we all get lost, right? A lot of people are like, well, I don’t actually doing I believe it is, but I don’t really do anything to make myself better at it. And so that’s where we could kill comfort. And if an entire chapter of the book dedicated to this is like, Okay, if you believe this to be true. And now we have all these studies saying it’s true. Why don’t you spend an extra five minutes per day trying to make yourself a little bit better with a visualization practice, and it doesn’t have to be just in the strength training world. Ashley’s talking about Scott’s doing Scott doing affirmations in the morning like this is very similar to things that I do in my morning routine. Like you can do these things in different areas of your life. You know, you can visualize being a better parent. That’s something you can actually visualize, you can visualize being a better spouse. You can visualize getting a better back squat but I If you’re I feel like visualization and all of our other areas of life are probably way more important than fitness because I do feel like at the end of the day, if you’re putting in the work with fitness, you’re gonna see some results, if you want to really, like compound those results, okay, let’s put in the work and let’s do visualization in the fitness world. But if we’re lacking in other areas of our life, let’s throw some visualization, five minutes of visualization there to make that area of our life better, and it’s going to be better. So that’s my, my killing comfort is, is use the power of the brain and then harness it and make your life better in doing so.
Joe Courtney 10:34
Starting habits to
Jerred Moon 10:37
what would you say? Sorry,
Joe Courtney 10:38
starting habits, like if you want to go to the gym, like if somebody hasn’t isn’t going to the gym, maybe just start visualizing it first, at least, like walk yourself to the gym. Visualize yourself doing something. I mean, it might sound silly, but yeah, until you actually do it. Yeah. If somebody really needs to start like, you know, we’ve always said, build the habit with with working out any way you could just go to the gym, do nothing and leave just because you’re building the habit of going so visualize that as well.
Jerred Moon 11:05
Yeah, cuz it’s always those little tiny things that make people not take action. And I’ll say myself as well, it’s not people out there listening, like I’m perfect. It’s these these little things of like, the, you know, the the garages is messed up, or it’s not organized. And we have to deal with all that first, before I go out and train or like, what clothes Am I gonna wear? It’s all these small decisions, like when you’re waking up at like, 5am. And you’re like, I don’t know, what the what am I going to do. But if you visualize or at least plan for these things, you’re going to have your brains already rehearsed it and knows what’s about to happen. And that what I found to be true, is it reduces a lot of that resistance that you face when you are trying to develop new habits or do something because your brain has already. There’s no real energy expenditure for the brain when it comes up to this problem. Because your brains thinking, Okay, we’ve already done, we already know what to do here. So we’re just going to work around it and get over it. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s great. All right, getting into the topic for the day, Joe, what are we discussing?
Joe Courtney 12:11
Yeah, just wanted everybody to talk about some of their favorite mobility exercises. I know, there’s everybody kind of, or at least most people will have ones that they need specifically for what, whatever your body needs. And I know I have two or three that I kind of incorporate regularly because I know what by binding is and what my deficiencies are and things that that might hurt here and there. So I just wanted to go over, you know, what some one of the some of the exercises that we do and why we specifically might do them.
Jerred Moon 12:40
I go first. I call it
Ashley Hicks 12:42
Whoa.
Jerred Moon 12:44
Well, Joe already called last before we started because he is the mobility guy around here. So my, my top three are my my, my three. So if we added a question to the garage mathlete podcast, you can only do three mobility exercises for the rest of your life. What would they be? This would be my my answer. So it’s the saddle, which is where you’re kind of sitting on your ankles. That makes sense.
Ashley Hicks 13:11
On your ankles.
Jerred Moon 13:12
Yeah, like your knees bent, sitting real quick, I would totally demonstrate it. Camera would allow, okay. And you can either go back to like your hands, or you can go back to your elbows or you can lay all the way down. And when I first started doing it, it was hands and then eventually it was elbows, and now it’s fully laying down, I could lay down in that position, my knees bent for like 10 minutes. And it’s been a long time to get to that spot. So saddles the first one, I feel like it opens up hip flexors and your quads to a level that you never thought possible. Seated forward fold the same way. For me, I used to get in the seated forward fold position, which is just legs out in front of you and you’re bending over, you can touch your toes or your knees wherever, wherever you’re allowed to your body allows to touch depends on how flexible you are. So that one, when I did that one. Several years ago, ROM WOD had like it, it programmed for like 10 minutes, it was like, like, okay, we’re gonna do the seated Forward Fold. And then he normally tells you the time and I was like for 10 minutes and I was like 10 minutes. And it was so painful. I get hurt the entire time. And it was like hurting my back like it was hurting and my hamstrings like everywhere. And so that’s when I was like I’m gonna do this a lot more. And so I kind of do these, these stretches just in the morning, like as a part of my morning routine is when I get them done. It’s not like a mobility session I’m not being guided through an app or anything like that. It just I do these three basically every morning so seated forward fold, holding out for long periods of time. Again, for me it was I could barely been forward think I was touching my knees to being able to touch like reach my shins. And now I can hold like the bottom of my feet. I can’t lay my face on my knees yet. Like they we have a gym illustration in garage, a mathlete app, I’m not at that level. But maybe maybe by next year, I’ll be at just being able to take a nap on my knees in the seat of fourfold. And then the last one is the pigeon pose, which I don’t even know how to describe. If you don’t know what it is,
Joe Courtney 15:18
but one leg straight back, and the other one is bent kind of 90s degrees across from you foot pointing to the opposite side. It’s kind of what it is.
Jerred Moon 15:27
Well, he said, and it really helps, really helps with your glutes and lower back like a lot if those areas are getting tight. And the reason I like those three is because I feel like it covers some massive lower body muscle groups, we’re talking lower back, we’re talking glutes, we’re talking quads, we’re talking hamstrings. And that’s where you’re going to get a lot of your problem areas. I mean, upper body stuff, I don’t do a lot of upper body mobility, I don’t really even know what that is. Like I do some things. But for me, movement is always better, like crossover symmetry, things like that is always helped so much more with like shoulder problems or upper back issues, more so than like, trying to stretch out my shoulders or something like that, for some reason that doesn’t mobility doesn’t seem to be as helpful there for me. And so I like if I if I’m not doing these, at least these three, though, I’ll start to get really tight, hamstrings, but everything else, and I got to not have that happen, because that’s where I’ll start to get injured. So yeah, those are my three favorites, and why I like them. Kyle,
Kyle Shrum 16:38
also want to point out with the pigeon pose, we’re helping you with your visualization. So if you can try to visualize what it was that Joe was talking about, then there you go. There’s time everything here computer,
Ashley Hicks 16:51
gracious.
Kyle Shrum 16:53
So the ones that I’m going to say, are ones that I incorporate pretty much every day with my warm ups. Because it kind of like kind of like Jared said, it’s mostly lower body stuff, just with the track that we’ve been on for the last year, it’s squatting and running. So I need a lot of help on the lower body. But I do have one that’s upper body. So we’ll do that one, too. So the first one is been a good morning, I don’t know if you guys consider that a mobility movement, but I do yeah, helps me out a whole lot. Actually, I just I really like using bands for mobility. They’re just, they’re great. I mean, it’s resistance. So some people might be like, well, it’s technically training and like Well, whatever. But being a good morning, firing up the lower back firing up the glutes, the quads as well. And just kind of getting that good stretching, and trying to stay trying to stay in good position with that as well. Not just because it can be, especially with a good morning, it can be really easy to just kind of round over. And then try to work your way back up. But just kind of helping me stay in that good position that I need to be in for squats. Also monster walks. So I do lateral and forward. So you just put a band around your knees and you go, you can just sidestep, laterally, bring your feet back together. And so that’s the lateral master walking forward master walk is just walking forward, just moving one step at a time walking forward keeping tension in the band. And so that keeps tension in your legs the entire time. And so all of that right there just kind of warms me up for whether I’m running, whether I’m we’ve got conditioning that day, and we’re doing running, or whether we’re doing Lower, lower body resistance, like doing all the squatting and dead lifting and all the other things that we do. So no matter what I’m firing all of that stuff up in the warm up. So those two, I guess technically the monster walks or two by themselves. So the band a good morning and then the monster walks the lateral and the forward monster walks. And then also the dead hang, I do dead hangs from time to time. Just literally just grabbing the pull up bar and just hanging there for typically that’s about 30 seconds at a time, do a few sets of that just making sure that everything’s nice and stretched out and that’s and I can you can also warm up for pull ups doing that just kind of start the pull up, not go all the way up with the pull up motion but just kind of start that initial movement with your lats just getting those nice and warmed up nice and fired up as well. So the bandwagon morning, the monster banded monster walks and the dead hang. Those are the ones that I would say also caveat, not necessarily my favorite mobility movements. I don’t know that I have favorite mobility limits, because mobility can be kind of tough. It can be it can be hard, especially like getting in the mindset of warming up and I know a lot of people don’t like to warm up and things like that. But these are things that that you need to do. And so I wouldn’t say they’re my favorite movements, but they’re ones that I do all the time because I know that I need to, I know that I need to do.
Jerred Moon 20:09
And monster walks are no joke, they can get pretty painful pretty fast. I’ve actually had the idea of doing a mile of monster walks for me until Saturday. But I don’t actually know what would happen to the human body. I would have to like test it a few times first, because that would be painful, right? Like, it normally starts to burn after like, 30 steps. Yep. is we’re talking about a mile.
Joe Courtney 20:35
You might start with a quarter mile. I’m gonna say that would be up there with the quarter mile lunches, so you might need to do a quarter mile. Yeah,
Ashley Hicks 20:42
come come down.
Jerred Moon 20:44
I might try it. Okay.
Kyle Shrum 20:50
Yeah, that would be tough. Um, okay. Go ahead and try that. And let us know that
Jerred Moon 20:56
you helped me test it. We got at least two. All right, already do them. Yeah, Marco. Marco, how can we make this worse, we’re gonna bring it down to a quarter mile. And I said a mile mark is going to try and bring it up. So it’ll probably be right.
Kyle Shrum 21:15
in there, we’re also we’re also going to drag a tire, we’re just going to wrap a rope around a tire and around our waist, and we’re dragging a tire while we’re muster walking. I’m gonna go with Ashley
Ashley Hicks 21:26
Jones going last. So by default,
Kyle Shrum 21:30
okay, what I did well, I didn’t actually pick you, Ashley, like, okay, I didn’t actually pick you, you can go. Thanks, by default,
Ashley Hicks 21:38
for me too. Um, so these are just the ones that I go through daily. Like I said, it’s not that I don’t like mobility. I do like mobility like doing Thursday’s first day, I do a longer mobility or I do like a yoga session. That’s not like a power yoga but like actual flow, which just means like, you’re maybe holding some poses a little bit longer. But so for my I have a lower body routine and an upper body routine, I’m going to try to give as much detail on what it looks like as possible. So I have a hip opening stretch that basically do how you have one leg, one knee on the ground and one knee up kind of for like kettlebell bottoms up when that we do. And then I have opposite arm from with a leg is up, up. So I’m also stretching this out, and I lean forward, and I hold that for anywhere from 30 seconds to 660 seconds. And then with that same leg, so I go one leg at a time. So let’s say my left leg was up. So I’m going to keep going on my left leg, I then skip that thing like up and I put my hands down on the ground next to it, which really works like your hamstring. Sometimes I can even feel it like roll if it’s super tight. Yeah, it’s it’s kind of a weird feeling. But it’s like if you sit there long enough, and you kind of relax and you breathe through it, and you get deeper into that stretch. Again, like what you were talking about Jared, I was on my hands first. And then I worked my way down to where my knees again, want me to make sure your knees out, you don’t never want your knees coming in. I was able to get down on my forearms. And now I even twist a little bit with it to try to open it up even more. And then I straighten the leg out I have the toes pointed up. And then I lean forward and get a calf hammy stretch that way. Again, you can start with your hands on the ground. Or you can actually grab opposite arm opposite leg and even twist a little bit and get deeper in the stretch. Then I go to pigeon. And I take actually 60 to 90 seconds in pigeon. And I start up actually first and work on that glute more. And then I work my way down and get all the way down to work with the entire whole like their switch legs. That’s my lower body routine. And then sometimes I’ll add like a seated forward fold like Jared was talking about. And then I’ll add a quad stretch, whether that be like I put my leg back and I lean back or I like to do where I put my knee on a AB mat and put my leg up against a wall. And that one really gets for my upper body. I do like arms across, I do a tricep behind the head, my pool, my elbow for some tricep stuff. And then I do some banded arm stretches where I’ll have a band hanging from my rack. And I actually sit down in the bottom of the squat and have just kind of worked my shoulders a little bit and I’ll turn around and actually pull it from behind and walk forward. Put some resistance in hold. And then Charlie Child’s Pose is my favorite to work kind of like some shoulders, you’re in a child’s pose and then instead of being just in the middle, you walk your hands. So if I’m going to have my left arm over here, I walk my right arm over and kind of Stretch out this whole side and then go over and do it on the other side too. So those are my mobility stretches, Joseph, give us goes.
Joe Courtney 25:09
So I’ve had a lot of bad mobility for a very long time, and it’s just progressively gotten better. That’s how I’ve gotten to know mobility because I’ve had to do it myself. So that’s kind of legit journey. And, you know, I’ve did PT for a very long time, if you were if you listen to the podcast two years ago, my hips are fairly tight and tilted. My like chronically tight quads, and my shoulder, I’ve always had overhead my shoulder mobility, especially my left shoulder, like big, big time, to where I either like, can’t press overhead or pull ups or just really, really bad. So to the areas that I mostly focus on are the hips and the lats. And I’ll start with the lats because nobody’s really done upper body. And I know I know, with watching a lot of athletes videos and like front racks and things like that lats are, can be really, really tight on people. And if they’re there, they’re so big, that they can also give you the most place. So like if you have a hard time with your front rack hold and you’re knocking your elbows up, turning your lats maybe a big thing or, like on pull ups, if you if you are kind of you don’t really go to full extension on the pull ups, you kind of just like stop and there’s still a little bit of bend, you might come up it might be your lats as well. So one of the ones I do that is really, really painful is I’ll there’s a lat smash, I’ll roll on a foam roller. I know what sometimes on a cross on the lacrosse ball, but I’d rather roll on a foam roller, I’ll go up and down on it. And then I’ll start at the top and I’ll get to a spot and then I’ll lay out lay on it clearly. And I’ll wiggle side to side on that spot, like 10 times or so and then I’ll move like an inch. And I’ll wiggle 1010 times on that. And I just worked my way down and it can be very, very uncomfortable and painful. Like nauseous kind of Billy’s pain for me on my left side is just so bad. But when we just did Murph burner because of all the pull ups that I did, I was having really bad lat issues at that time because I was just the for the first half the year I was just having issues. But after all the pull ups and then doing that let smashed like three times a week or shoulder basically cleared up and was much better after that because of a mix of mobility smashing and strengthening at the same time. A banded lats lat stretch, I do this one sometime not quite as much. But I also wanted to address this because I see people doing this and they kind of do it wrong. And like when you loop the band over to do a lat stretch, a lot of times people just grab onto the band, hold on to the band for dear life and then just like bend over and lean into it. And you’re not really doing that greatest stretching, you might feel somewhat of a stretch, but you might actually be like feeling it in your pecs more. Because you’re you’re you’re clenching, you’re clenching the band, and you’re not really stretching anything you need to like loop the band and like, jam into it. So that yeah, basically jam your hand into it, turn your palm up, and your fingers are just there to like to like kind of keep it in. And then you go overhead and then you kick that same leg back so that it stretches all the way down inside of your body. Because the lat basically runs all the way down to your hip.
Ashley Hicks 28:16
Wait, so you have your leg back too.
Joe Courtney 28:18
So like the arm that’s up that’s in the band, I keep that leg like strike back so I’m basically making like a straight line with the entire side of my body. And then after that when I’m bent over if it’s if I need some more I will lean completely into the into it and that just really getting tires on the YouTube side. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 28:39
yeah. People are gonna ask us for
Joe Courtney 28:43
it hurts independent but he’s on your band resistance and your barbell high or your bar height you might be able to drop down to a knee but sometimes you just just lean into it Yeah. So that entire side of it it’s it’s fire elevated pigeon was on my list I do elevated versus regular pigeon because I have tight hips and it is extremely excruciating Lee painful if I do you’re
Ashley Hicks 29:06
saying like you’re one of your hips is up is that what you mean by elevated? What do you mean? So
Joe Courtney 29:10
I will so if you like like, like you go to a box of for me 24 inch boxes perfect. And I will bet
Ashley Hicks 29:16
you’re not on the ground. Okay,
Joe Courtney 29:18
I will do 24 inches on. So I’ll put my the side of my like calf across perpendicular to my body and then I will kind of scooch my leg, the opposite direction and then I’ll just kind of squat down with my other leg and lean forward and it is a little bit more glute heavy versus hip flexor heavy. But if you scoot your leg back enough and depending on how you work your body, you can still get the flexor in there but I mostly do the elevator pitch in to target the glutes. Because my absolute I guess favorite and one that I do probably two to three times a week now because my quads are so tight and because my quads are so tight, it causes my Hips to like tilt forward, as my hips are tilted forward, I noticed that it was I was getting some pinching pains in either my back or my hip flexor. And that’s the calf stretch, catch phrase I do all the time, because it’s super easy, because in the evening when we’re watching TV, is when I do it, I just put on TV, put a put a pillow down on the ground, under the couch stretch, because from there, I can sit back and lean back and I’ll try and squeeze my glutes so that my hips stay forced forward. I’ll lean back and I’ll get my quads and then for like 2030 seconds, and then I’ll lean forward and really deep into that lunge, and get hip flexor and do like, a rotation back and forth two or three times, both ways. And then I switched legs, and I feel so much better. And I can tell when I’ve done it if I have especially have to squat The next day, because I’m just so much looser, and my hip flexors don’t get don’t get tight at all. But couch stretch, big time lat lat smash, and then the banded lat are our big ones and the elevated pigeon. Have a question for you? Yep. Have you ever gone to a chiropractor? I feel like a PT
Ashley Hicks 31:04
you might have you might have great benefits. And sounds like you’ve got a lot of alignment issues.
Joe Courtney 31:12
It’s possible I it’s always murky with chiropractors, because there’s just so many and sometimes they’re, you know, it’s always hard to find a good one. Yeah, yeah. And even with PT, I know I was lucky enough to find a really awesome PT back in San Diego salt to figure that out when I get back. Because Yeah, out here’s, I don’t even know how the hell it works. But chiropractor might be interesting.
Unknown Speaker 31:38
As well, but I got
Jerred Moon 31:40
awesome. And look, it’s a mobility and vegetables, all right. They’re both not graded, on a percent necessary. I like them. I don’t enjoy it. I’m like, Kyle, I don’t enjoy it. I do it basically, because it keeps me injury free. Because I’ve I’ve done it, this is exactly why I think I got injured on BCT to begin with. Because my training volume increased significantly. And it was taking up, I was taking longer time in the training sessions. Just because they were a little bit longer. I wasn’t trying to keep them within five blocks or anything like that, because it wasn’t a public track. I didn’t really care about anybody’s time. And so I it made me have less time at the beginning. And so I was like, You know what, we just won’t do any mobility. And so I kicked that right out the window almost at the start and like, boom, behold back injury, you know, a couple months, and with not doing I think I was doing it periodically, but I went from like almost daily or at least a couple times a week to like literally not doing it at all. And then my back was hurt. And then what did I go back to as soon as I had an injury, injured lower back mobility every damn day, you know, and just making sure I was checking that box. And now my back is back to 100%. And I’m doing great. So for me, I know it’s true. I posted on the Instagram world that you should stretch. And we we covered that in a study, right. And I don’t know how many physical therapists got mad at me, like I was the devil. And you know, what I was saying is not factual. And I think it’s really funny that this is an argument. And the reason I tell people to stretch and do mobility is because every time I don’t I get injured. But there there are some studies out there that say you don’t need to stretch, and then there’s something to say you do. And so stretching is kind of becoming like nutrition, it’s like in some parts of the world, but I don’t, I think you should stretch just Just do it. Like everything is becoming like that. And the last thing that was on my list that I didn’t mention was full range of motion with load is a great form of mobility. So just doing the barbell back squat but making sure that you’re getting all the way to depth holding that position. And you know, that goes along to so good form for range of motion with load. Alright, let’s get into Old MacDonald had a farm kill me.
Joe Courtney 34:20
Okay. So all McDonald so there is a buy in of 100 meter plate, pinch dairy with a 45 or 25 for you know, whatever you got, and I can’t remember if there was as one each side I believe. And eight and then after that 18 minutes max distance plate carry. So two hands on the plate and you can’t like so it’s not a farmer’s carry and you can’t carry it on your shoulder or above your head has to be you know, within shoulder and waist. So bear hug if you want, but two hands on the plate for 18 minutes max distance, then, so that’s part a, I guess kind of, then you have 18 minutes as many reps as possible of 10 burpee over the plate. So put that plate on the ground burpees over it, then 10 ground to overhead. So with the plate, so you can do a tap the plate and then all the way up overhead. And then 10 Russian twists each side with that plate. And then one for extra credit plate flip, if you are feeling safe, and don’t want to break your feet or hit yourself in the chin. Yeah, whatever it is extra credit, get
Jerred Moon 35:43
some steel toed boots.
Joe Courtney 35:46
So 18 minutes, as much as possible of that for things. Once that 18 minutes finishes, you will do basically the reverse of what you did before that 18 minutes max distance plate carry and then cash out of 100 meter plate pinch. So believe it is just the one plate pinch, because everything we’re doing is just it’s just wait. I don’t remember if there was a stipulation of changing hands, it was just 100 meters and it was
Kyle Shrum 36:13
you can change hands as needed during the 100 meters.
Jerred Moon 36:16
Yeah. And I think that’s part of like our tips like what should you do? How do you bring it up? Yeah, this one, this one’s hard. As far as I don’t have a lot of tips on this one. I like and I normally say this every time we do talk about his workout. Just go the full plate, pinch carry distance. Don’t break it up, you know, like, and just ruin your grip and have fun the rest of the workout. You’re gonna push yourself, you’ll meet yourself if you do that. That’s the point here, right? It’s not we’re not trying to get a we’re not trying to Hey, just trying to finish so I Other than that, the grip. I don’t have a lot for you other than just go fast. And try not to game it make it hurt. Does anybody else have anything? I’m not, I’m not gonna pick.
Kyle Shrum 37:17
I said, Just don’t stop moving. If you stop moving, then the pain catches up to you. So just go faster than the pain and you’ll be fine. This one is a grind though. And it’s deceptively a grind. I think I think some people and I like it because it’s one of those kind of objects thing. You’re doing things that you’re not typically doing during a training session and most of our other meet yourself Saturday’s don’t have most of the things that we have in this in this workout. So I like it. It’s different. And but it is a grind and your grip will go very quickly. And did you mention the stipulation Joe for the playcare? where it has to be?
Joe Courtney 38:01
Yeah, so don’t be on your shoulder and you have to have both hands on.
Kyle Shrum 38:04
Right. So between your chin and your knees and both hands on it at all times. So that makes it that makes it tough that ups the the difficulty of the workout so, but this one is a grind and so just just keep moving through it. Listen, listen to some angry music for this one. Good Yeah, go go to that dark place. Actually, oh,
Ashley Hicks 38:29
I said this is one of the few I’ve never completed one. No, I don’t think I’ve ever done this one. But I just said pick your plan accordingly. For us people with corny hands I’m thinking like for like the plate pinch. I don’t think I can plate pinch. Even a 25 pound plate. I don’t know. Well, we’ll have to see but you’re
Joe Courtney 38:46
not like you’re not like pinching it like with pincers.
Ashley Hicks 38:48
I know but you have to hold on to it.
Joe Courtney 38:51
Hello, you’re doing this I’m like really hope you’re not just like pinching. No one Yes. It’s going to be hard. We just found a challenge. There we go. Just do
Unknown Speaker 39:03
fingers
Unknown Speaker 39:06
Well, my music
Ashley Hicks 39:09
recommendation was EDM or some rap. I think rap would be good for this. Like, I could just listen to some NF while I was doing this.
Joe Courtney 39:18
This was intended to be done with like bumper plates. Obviously if you had steel ones and that’s that’s okay. But uh, if you have like, that suck if you have the plates with handles don’t use the handle because you’re not supposed to use farmers. So just I just want to kill someone’s vibe right now. Because there are the especially if you have like the Dick’s has the ones that handle a lot of his iron ones will have handles so yeah, meant to be done with with bumpers. But, you know, if you don’t have bumpers, then just use a different part of it that doesn’t have a handle. Disclaimer don’t do a frickin plates throw flip metal might be easier to catch specifically like a really fat bumper Oh,
Ashley Hicks 40:01
I don’t know. That sounds dangerous.
Kyle Shrum 40:03
Yes. See, my options for this one are either a metal 45 or the 25 bumper because like, my like, I have the fat 45 pound bumpers, so like I am trying to try to grip that thing like trying to pitch that thing is it’s impossible.
Jerred Moon 40:20
Yeah, I think my 45 they gotta be like four inches wide. Yeah.
Kyle Shrum 40:23
Yeah,
Joe Courtney 40:24
there’s a huge takeaway, because
Kyle Shrum 40:29
we can get so much
Jerred Moon 40:31
paper Mashie?
Joe Courtney 40:35
Yeah, not really a whole lot on this hourly many. That’s all I got for this. I guess I’m the Blake airy. If you can bear hug. And just like switch off locking your forearms. We can have your hands on it as long as you’re Yeah. Just crashed your hands underneath I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I think that wraps it up. wraps it up. Let’s do it. a fun one.
Jerred Moon 41:05
Yeah. All right. So go visualize, do a hard workout and eat your vegetables and mobility. big takeaways for today If you only made it to the to the end. But for all of our athletes, we’re nearing a new cycle it is coming up so that means testing is coming up. New cycles coming up. Always a great time around here we have the webinars You can learn more so get on the email list if you’re not on the email list go to currently who knows when it’s published just go to into three fitness comm Don’t worry guys, all that’ll be fixed in the coming weeks. But you can go into three fitness.com and sign up for five on Friday. If you’re wondering how do I become part of this webinar, I know we normally publish the webinar as a podcast episode so you’ll be able to listen to it. But actually the visual is really helpful on YouTube, we’re garage gym athlete now. Don’t worry, it’s all gonna get all going to be handled. And so you can watch the webinar, their new cycles, testing is really important. And we’ll talk more about that as it gets a little bit closer. But good luck and try hard on all those things. Maybe throw in some visualization this fit week. I think that was someone’s recommendation here. I think it would be really helpful. If you want to get involved in a new training wave or cycle just sign up now. You know, don’t you got a two week free trial free trial that you could do it’s 14 days and you hop in you could do do our testing get some benchmarks done go into week one. And then you know really see if you like our training so do that if you want to support we’re doing but that’s about all I have for this week. A lot of actions to kill comfort we’ve given you between just doing mobility, visualizing, and this very hard workout so do it because if you don’t feel comfort, comfort will kill you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai