Hey, Athletes! Want to learn the minimum effective dose for training? Then make sure to not miss the newest episode of the Garage Gym Athlete podcast!
Episode 116 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!
What Is The Minimum Effective Dose For Lifters?
In this week’s episode we have Jerred, Joe, Ashley and Trampis! This weeks study is different than normal. It actually looks at 5 studies on the same topic, minimum effective dose. It specifically looks at power lifters, but what is the minimum amount one can lift and still see strength progress?. The coaches give their takeaways, applications, and how you can kill comfort with this one! For this week’s topic the coaches are doing another book review. The book for this month is called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard A. Thaler and Cass R Sunstein. They give their likes, dislikes, takeaways, and of course-give you a barbell rating for this book. Lastly, this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is called Heavy Load Long Distance. It’s simple, but definitely not easy!
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
IN THIS 54-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Minimum Effective Dose
- Nudge
- Barbell Rating
- 5 Studies
- Heavy Load Long Distance
- 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:
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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 a mathlete podcast. Most everyone’s here. How’s it going?
Unknown Speaker 0:10
What’s going on?
Jerred Moon 0:11
There it is. trampas got in there. Joe. Ashley. How’s it going? Hi.
Ashley Hicks 0:20
Hi. We’re not special anymore. We’re lumped into one.
Joe Courtney 0:24
Yeah. Yeah, try try.
Jerred Moon 0:32
be adding Ashley first and then Joe is really hard
Joe Courtney 0:35
or be like, hey, oh,
Jerred Moon 0:39
that’s the official new way. I’m going in every podcast. Neither one of you can ever miss ever again. Because that’s
Ashley Hicks 0:47
the ad Collins like kayo or something.
Jerred Moon 0:51
Wow. Just the whole team.
Ashley Hicks 0:53
There you go.
Jerred Moon 0:54
It doesn’t work. Sorry. trampas.
Unknown Speaker 0:57
Don’t Don’t even try to work my name in today. Oh.
Joe Courtney 1:02
TKO TKO? Yeah, if you
Ashley Hicks 1:04
follow us around there,
Jerred Moon 1:06
technical knockout? Well, we can talk powerlifting today, this is a pretty interesting study, the name of the study, and it was done in 2021. It’s called the minimum effective train dose required for one rep max strength in power lifters. And I, oh, first off just the study was was different than normal. I want to hit on that we were talking about a little bit before. It’s a study of studies, there are multiple different studies done like I think it was five total studies within the study. But it’s not what we would see previously, like a systematic review or meta analysis, because it’s not trying to just look at one thing. And a majority of them, I think it’s three out of five, were just conducted exactly how we’re doing it now, like a zoom meeting, or whatever, they had a set of questions that they would ask really elite power lifters and really elite powerlifting coaches, so I don’t want that to go unnoticed in the interview thing, because sometimes people will hit on, like nutrition surveys and stuff not being accurate, because it has to be someone has to recall something. And it’s a survey, it’s questions, it’s not actually like, you know, in a facility where they’re giving them their food, and this is similar with a lot of them being survey, but the people they’re asking, are really legit, and really elite level power lifters and coaches. So from that part, I think that that’s really cool. Because I would love to sit down with a lot of these people at this level and ask them questions. And to be honest, if you get to talk with somebody who’s far more advanced than you are in any area, you should take that, you know, into into consideration for your choices. And then there were two intervention studies. And I had a big takeaway from those overall, what you can get away with, and lifting but I think the overall study, what makes it cool, is it’s like how much can we not do you know, how much how much can we get away with and still get stronger to some degree. And so the purpose of this study was just that the minimum effective dose, and its practical use length of its effectiveness, appropriate timing around other considerations, and what it’s going to. Alright, so ultimately, we’re just looking at how much we can’t do, right. And I think that it’s a really cool study because I want to get into some other stuff that I pulled, but I’m gonna wait on how long it takes for you to lose strength, how long it takes for you to lose aerobic conditioning, because I think a lot of people don’t know these things. And I interviewed Jordan siat Do you guys know Jordan side is no is he was pretty big in the powerlifting world under like a lower class or lower weight class like he had a world record but he you don’t normally hear about the guys who don’t weigh a lot, you know, and then set a world record because they weigh 155 pounds. And so you just don’t hear about or whatever and then he ended up being becoming Gary Vaynerchuk trainer and then he kind of blew up but I interviewed him on the better human ology podcast A long time ago. Anyway, he was I remember talking to him on that podcast about how much he could not do in maintain his strength. And that wasn’t from a scientific standpoint and I thought that was really interesting. But I think it really like a lot of the takeaways I wrote down because I was looking at Okay, let’s get into sets, reps, let’s get into accessory work, let’s get into sessions per week. Let’s get it all these things. So those are my overall takeaways. And I want to go over and I also want to go over how this relates to our training. But before we do any of that, I want to hear what the three of you thought about this study.
Ashley Hicks 4:45
So I thought I really liked the study because just kind of what you’re talking about Jared like with him, this is kind of what I’m doing. Now I’m taking you know, I’m doing some strength but I’m not like I’m not one rep max saying I there’s certain limitations that I have with my training. With just what’s going on with me health wise, and so I thought this study was really cool for people who have to maybe tone it down. You know, I thought of, especially working with women and women’s health track like postpartum mamas, you know, moms that are pregnant, anyone with an injury kind of thing, but I’m just kind of looking at what they talked about overall, it looks like six to 12 weeks is what they thought was best was what works best. And in my notes I put, huh, you mean like a cycle. So, um, you know, I think if you needed to kind of like step back for six to 12 weeks, you know, half a cycle, a full cycle, this kind of proves that you can do that, um, it looks like the few mixing in like a few heavy low rep sets, you know, and I’m not talking like one rep max anymore, they said they’re heavy was like 75 to 90%, I think is what they used. And they mix that in with kind of their back off sets, I guess, or back off days, if you will. And that’s kind of what I’m doing, you know, I’m kind of doing like some strength, maybe to do three times a week. And then I do like some yoga and some zone two, and mitcon in there. I’m just like Jared said, thing that I thought was cool was that these power lifters had a ton of experience. But it shows you that you can still see results, you can still have strength and not lose the strength. If you’re not having to go full throttle every single time. So my feeling comfort is this is maybe change your mindset on what you think you have to get done. Like even if you’re able to get some sort of training in for the day, I think that’s a win. And consistency is always better than perfection, even if it’s not 100% all the time. trampas What do you think?
Unknown Speaker 6:51
Yeah, I agree. I thought it was a really cool study. I mean, it was what it was five parts, like two surveys, two experiments. And then another, like social media survey, at the end, I thought they did a really good job of covering the weaknesses that each one had. So like, you have so many weaknesses in just surveying people and asking them questions. And then they tried to try to firm some of that out with the experiments. And then from their experiment, they went and asked another general survey to a lot of people like through social media, I thought they did a good job of just covering their tracks. Just straight takeaways, it looks like the minimum effective dose does work. There are limitations to it. But I kind of, I kind of consider what we do at garage mathlete. And I may be wrong. So I’m not really programming, but compared to a professional power lifter powerlifter. Anyways, we’re already kind of doing the minimum effective dose. And there’s different ranges of that, of course, but percent, right. So we’re not, we’re not doing three hours a day, like a professional power lifter would do, we’re not doing it. five days a week, we’re training four days a week, generally a couple strength days, or, you know, what I call gym days, and there’s more like get outside cardio days, but but we’re already doing the minimum effective dose. And this study just helps just support what, you know what Jared and Joe and, and all these coaches or our programming, it just shows that you don’t have to go, you know, just balls to the wall every day, and go hard and heavy every day. Like it. And then there’s there’s so many other takeaways. And I’ll let Joe talk about someone too. I thought, well, what was cool in the experiments is they had the one group with the the back offsets, and the one group was amrap sets. And I feel like those get mixed in our training all the time that you go for the amrap, especially you go to the right before you think you’re going to fail. And basically that’s what they told these guys to do. And they saw results like they saw strength gains from that. So just just a really cool study a lot of great takeaways and just applications to what we’re already doing. Go ahead, Jeff.
Joe Courtney 9:13
Yes, even before the podcast we were going and when Jared mentioned that, we looked at a lot of systematic reviews, and I just want isn’t one. And I think it’s because there’s just not enough studies and data out there. And whenever we read about systematic reviews, and you know, they start with a whole bunch of studies, and then they set the parameters and then the ones that don’t meet those parameters fall off. Well, if there’s not enough for that, then you just have to work with what you got. And I also think sometimes I don’t know if this is I haven’t done it myself. But when you have those systematic reviews, I feel like they might set the parameters to find some sort of correlation. And correlation does not always mean causation. And while I’m saying like those are awesome, those are always some of the best studies to look at. I think having this limited view of only the five studies Gives it makes it much more open to interpretation. And it’s a little bit more of a subjective view toward it. But I think it was also really cool because the two surveys, they’re talking to really experienced coaches and really experienced professional like athletes. And it’s like very open ended questions. And when they had all those questions, then they pick commonalities from that, then you have the two application ones, the two ones with trading protocols that were very similar but had a distinct difference between them. And the two training protocols where they found like a heavy, heavy one, one part one group did and then the other group did a, from that heavy one, they did like three, set two or three sets of 80% of that one. And then the other, the other one did after the heavy one, they did a max rep sets of 70% of their previous max. So there was wondering what they have one, and then the other ones just added a little bit more volume. And from that they asked, again, professional coaches, what they think a max increases would be some substantial increases with that training protocol for a minimum load. And the ones with the just the Max was just under the significant progress versus the little bit of volume added were above what they would what they assumed would be a significant progress with that minimum dose. So both of them saw gains, but the ones with just a little more volume, the extra set or two added saw more gains than what they expected. And it took me a while to find this, but because I don’t know if it was actually like specifically laid out to see like, Okay, well, even with that minimum dose, what is their relative volume, and I think it was still estimated to be like, normal powerlifter volume is like 1,000% more than what this minimum load was, which is pretty crazy and pretty significant. So it’s really cool how they went about this just to get more kind of like outside of the box thinking. And, again, this can be very subjective, it still leaves a lot of gray area. But I think it’s still really cool to look at. and shows that you know, even professional athletes and big time athletes can and do need an offseason. 18 with an offseason, on off cycle, you can still do enough to stay gaining progress. So I think those but that was really cool to see. I mean, I I don’t even know that this was kind of a thing I’ve just always did typically every year at some point in time, I’ll take a month or so because either we’re traveling or moving, there’s always a time period within a year where I’m my training either goes down or there’s something significant that happened so that I kind of take a longer it’s longer than the week it’s more of a D load like month or month and a half. So this kind of segues into my killing comfort thing. And that is, don’t be afraid to take a D load cycle or a D load period of more than just one week. You know, if you see it coming, whether you’re moving, you’re traveling for a couple of weeks, you know, a lot of times, December holidays might be off doing a lot of stuff. If you see that coming, you do your normal training, have a plan for your, your minimum load, and then get back at it afterwards. So that would be my, just as long as you you know, this just proves that you can do it and you’ll be fine. You don’t need to stress about getting your your maximum amount of training all the time.
Jerred Moon 13:34
Yeah, and anecdotally, to kind of piggyback off of that, what I’ve noticed is especially hurting my back last year having to go almost no weight at all, initially. And I feel like as long as you’re still exercising, like I was, I would do the empty bar, or I would do bodyweight squats. And if you’re still doing those things, you will maintain your strength. Like when I came back to the barbell on my back was feeling better. I didn’t have these like 80 pound drops and my squat Max, you know, and that’s what you might think if you’re not going heavy. But if you’re if your body’s able to see this stimulus repeatedly, you’re gonna be fine. And ultimately getting down to my takeaway of what I was looking at, like I said, I was looking at where the percentages, RP working sets, reps all those things. But what I noticed is this just really falls in line almost perfectly with purlins chart. So we use purlins chart to program strength and fitness. A lot of times it’s not what we do, exclusively, but it’s something I look at, especially on the hard to kill track, because that’s what I’m always looking at is what is the minimum effective dose because a power lifter might look at this study and take it more of like, Okay, how much can I back off but still maintain or slightly gained strength due to an injury or due to something and I look at this more from a concurrent training perspective and I’m like, what’s the least amount of strength training I can put in my athletes training blocks, but still have them move forward while I use the rest of my blocks for other things like building the aerobic base, and so on and so forth. So I think that’s a huge thing. So if you’re not familiar with philippin chart, it’s just based off of certain reps and percentages based off of different goals. And it works out really well, you know, our athletes continually hit prs, when we’re using philippian shorten, we’re still doing a lot of other things. But to your point, Joe, there’s like 1000, more percent for like powerlifter these are also the people who are telling you that concurrent training won’t work or like you’re gonna get weaker, it’s like, Yeah, when you’re trying to follow this powerlifting schedule of, you know, 40,000 pounds of volume, every training session, and then go run five miles, yeah, one of those is going to suffer. But when you’re looking for the minimum effective dose, and both, it’s, you know, it’s very doable. And I what I’m starting to find, though, is that the minimum effective dose in aerobic conditioning is a lot higher timewise, there’s a higher time cost than there is in strength. And one thing I wanted to pull up, I will, there are studies on this, I’m just gonna kind of give generalities but as far as how much time it takes to like lose strength, so Joe, you’re taking your time we’re taking a month off or whatever. from some of the studies, some of them go back to the 90s, early 2000s, even up to 2015, they’ve looked at this a lot, and it could take four to six weeks before you even start to lose any strength. And this is what people just off, they’re just like, I’m not gonna do anything, so your body can hold on to strength for a long time. So imagine if you’re still doing something like I said, even just bodyweight squats, your body’s gonna hold on to a lot of that. And this is the one thing I’ve known for a long time, his aerobic conditioning is a pain in the ass to hold on to. So they say at two weeks you’ll have a noticeable impact and I think it’s at the nine weeks
at nine weeks you’ll be a 19% less via to max and then if you take for 11 weeks off, you’re gonna be 25% reduction in your view to max so you can’t take time off in aerobic conditioning and when you do you will you will suffer so it’s like this blowing up a balloon without a way to cap it off you know, you just you have to constantly be doing that if you want to maintain your aerobic endurance and it’s something that you always have to be doing we’re strength is something you can hold on to so if you decide to go on a strength cycle with Joe and you’re not doing as much aerobic conditioning just know what can happen I mean Joe doesn’t do that to you he’ll he’ll still throw in something you know in there but if you’re like, let’s say not even in our programming, if you wanted to go over follow a strength program because you want to get stronger and you don’t run for 12 weeks, it’s gonna be bad like a 25% reduction is that serious that’s like a you went because everyone has like a base level of vo to max of just because you’re a human being and so to lose 25% of like a top end vo to max is going to be like sucking wind running an 800 you know that’s that’s a pretty crappy that’s a huge reduction in your view to max So anyway, those are just things I wanted to hit on so know where you can cut corners and what’s necessary what’s not volume wise in my killing comfort is very similar to yours Joe’s it’s just don’t be so worried about you know, all the tiny little details of you know, getting in every single strength session or I feel like a lot of these things are mental and fitness, I think in in bodybuilding. I know this happens, this happened when I was into it. And it happens to a lot of dudes, they feel like they’re getting smaller when they’re not exercising, right, like in that that can quickly become, yeah, that can quickly become a mental disorder. And it’s no different in strength. You know, people are like, Oh, I haven’t trained in a week or haven’t been able to heavy in two or three weeks, and they think that they’re getting weaker, when in reality it takes to eight if you’re doing absolutely nothing, it takes four to six weeks. And if you’re doing something, you’re still able to gain some strength. So a lot of good takeaways of just how to kind of position your mindset around around fitness and training. And maybe this is could be helpful for some people being able to like lower their expectations of how much they actually need to put in and still see results. I think it’s funny that we’ve we’ve talked about this multiple times, too. It’s like in different
Ashley Hicks 19:30
kinds of different ways. No, do less.
Jerred Moon 19:34
do less be less intense. And you’ll still see results. It’s funny how that works.
Joe Courtney 19:39
More or less story. Always make room for zone two.
Ashley Hicks 19:42
Yeah, preach brother.
Jerred Moon 19:44
I want to I wanted to put that in the Facebook group this past week because this past week was the start of hard to kill track. Not easy, a lot, a lot of grapes out there and I was just gonna say to everyone, there’s never a bad day to substitute programmed work for putting in zone two. I guess.
Unknown Speaker 20:04
I’m not even hard to kill and I did it for indoor because because because whatever a year of BCT and then all of a sudden I’m going into a body geometry indoor cycle and that first day I’m still feeling it. It’s what is Thursday? Monday I’m filling so last night I did 30 minutes for zone two and stretching and
Jerred Moon 20:24
yeah, listen to your body that’s it. If three days of squatting is too much and you’re like I’m my body is broken. And I’m not recovering. Just do some zone to like I’ll as the coach and programmer, I’ll never mean be mad at you for doing that.
Ashley Hicks 20:37
That’s what I did. I skipped the five day Max and I did zone two yesterday. So there you go. There you go.
Joe Courtney 20:43
Every my fifth day, every week since evens has been on strength, I always do at least like run a 5k or four miles, or bike for like 30 minutes. So for zone two, so and because I’m still chasing my flow as down to five. Okay, well, earlier in the year when the weather weather was nice, I would actually run a serious 5k once a month, and then the other ones would be would be zone two. And we’re getting back to that weather. So I’m going to go back to increasing the those training days, but I’m still chasing by 400 pound back squat.
Ashley Hicks 21:14
You got it, bro.
Unknown Speaker 21:16
Plus? Well let us know. Yeah, this all falls into another conversation I was having with somebody the other day about like vacations and how people get so I’m just distraught that they’re not going to work out like they normally do or train like they normally do when they’re on vacation. And I’m like, it’s a week, it’s generally a week or you know, five days you’re, you’re not gonna lose that much fitness or strength. If you take that week off, and you can always run if you’re taking power wandering about it. Yeah, or
Joe Courtney 21:45
I want to export, just say you’re going to train for an Olympic sport and take a power walk.
Jerred Moon 21:49
Yeah. When I go on vacation, I’m not too concerned about keeping in line with the programming, but I am going to maintain, yeah, yeah, I can’t do nothing. That actually, I could probably do that for two days by day three. Not going to be around. day three, it’s not good for me. You give me the day for day five is not good for my family or anyone else around because I just like, I start to like, feel horrible.
Ashley Hicks 22:19
Very in line with that. Yes, Scott will even say go do a workout. Get out of here, like Okay.
Jerred Moon 22:28
Um, one thing that we pulled out of the study that none of us knew about, and this is kind of me announcing what I’ll be working on. That is the Wilkes score don’t even know about the world score before they plugged it in the study to the Wilk score you you guys. anyone listening can go just kind of Google it. There are calculators online for this. And you type in like you just put in your total for Powerlifting Total. So that’s benchpress squat and deadlift, and then your body weight. And it runs a pretty complex formula like that pulled up the actual formula, and it’s kind of ridiculous. And it gives you a score. And this score is whether or not you’re an elite level power lifter or whatever, like no garage mathlete is going to be elite level power lifter. It used to be at like 600 or whatever. So it’s crazy. But anyway, go check your work score, see where you’re at, and then get excited for the moon score. I mean, TBD. Where I’m going to put I’m just going to rip off the Wilk score and then put it in relation to some coefficient of mild time affecting that’s all I’m going to do. And make sure yeah. And so that’s what I’ll be working on. In my free moments throughout the day. Oh, man,
Joe Courtney 23:40
your
Ashley Hicks 23:42
score is tiny. I just did it right now.
Jerred Moon 23:47
What was your score?
Ashley Hicks 23:48
265.
Jerred Moon 23:50
That’s pretty good. I mean, thanks, Travis. Main says, VM I think.
No comment. No. All right. Well, should we get it? No, there
Joe Courtney 24:08
it is. Yes.
Jerred Moon 24:11
Just about to do
Unknown Speaker 24:13
it. Jared. segway just Yeah, you’re straight out took it away from Jared.
Joe Courtney 24:17
Sorry last last month. All right.
Unknown Speaker 24:21
got promoted to a woman sales track.
Ashley Hicks 24:25
Good luck.
Jerred Moon 24:28
Alright, so we did read the book for the month nudge improving decisions about wealth, about health, wealth and happiness by Richard H. Taylor. Pretty good book. I actually read it before it was updated. So I didn’t reread it the update but apparently there are things on COVID in there. Is that what you guys did you guys read some stuff on
Joe Courtney 24:53
I got the old version. We got original thumbnail. Yeah.
Jerred Moon 24:57
Well, Kyle who’s not here, talk to me about the book. And he was like, it was pretty interesting. And there’s stuff on COVID in there, it’s like, oh, maybe I should reread it. But luckily, none of us read the old version. So forget I even mentioned it, everyone. So it is a pretty interesting book. It’s really about how human being suck, okay? The whole book is about how human beings are no good at anything. And we don’t do what we say we say we’re going to do, and we’re basically incapable, and how we nudge our way through those situations, either how people, companies utilize psychological strategies to nudge us to do things or weaken, set up our lifestyle design in a way that we nudge our self to do do things. And I mean that in all honesty, because he talks about the book, like how we make bad decisions, we don’t analyze information properly, we trust gut decisions when we shouldn’t, and all these things. And I get, it makes me really annoyed. But it’s also true, because we’re not good at things. I mean, that’s why I wrote the book I wrote is because we’re not good at doing stuff. And you have to, you have to be able to make yourself do things you don’t want to do. But there are easier ways to go about and there are a lot of good takeaways. Some of them even reminded me of Was it the book, atomic habits by James clear, like similar nudge, tiny habits, all these these kinds of things? But yeah, I’ll get into more of some of my takeaways, what I liked what I didn’t like, and we can give it its official barbell rating, but I’m actually what do you think of this book.
Ashley Hicks 26:36
Um, so I’ll admit, it wasn’t my favorite book, I felt like he kind of made the same point and then just explained it over multiple subjects, like different subjects, which I mean, that’s what he was trying to gain up. Um, but basically, I’ll give like my little summary, I just said that he was saying that snap decisions or mental shortcuts, he believes that can mislead us and potentially cause us to make bad choices. And he talks a lot about this was towards the beginning, like the automatic versus reflective choices, like your automatic response can sometimes be a bad one, because you’re not thinking through things. And it’s like a snap decision, right? So that’s what he’s talking about when he says mental shortcut. And then your reflective thoughts are when you can actually like, think things through and then make a good decision because you’ve, you know, thought things through thought these processes through. And his nudges, are his definition kind of crack me up through this whole thing, because he called it libertarian paternalism. And I remember when I heard that, first, I was like, What in the world is he talking about? And it’s kind of like, he’s trying to say that a nudge is prioritizing an individual’s freedom. While constraining the choice to bring a better result is what how he kind of is how he kind of explained it. But his examples of nudges were interesting to me, he talks about, like, the setting can change how we all are nudged in a different way he talked about in a social aspect, he talked, he talked about finances, he talked politics, he talks like a lot of hot, crazy topics. But it’s almost as if no setting you’re in is a neutral setting. And I don’t know if I necessarily agree with that. I don’t know. And I think a lot of people handle nudges differently. Like I can honestly say, as a female, I’m probably more emotional with my choices, than you guys are probably a little bit more logical. That’s just kind of how it is in our marriage, at least with Scott and I. And so Scott kind of balances me out. So he can like nudge me towards that logical side. And sometimes I can nudge him towards a little bit. Emotional, empathetic side. So I do agree with that. But anyways, my takeaway for this book is, don’t just always maybe make a snap judgment when it comes to certain decisions, maybe take some time and be that person that can actually nudge other people into integrating this in a different setting, and can help those people out when, you know, you see that they’re, you know, kind of making bad choices that maybe they shouldn’t. Joe, what did you think?
Joe Courtney 29:24
I mean, I would kind of say that. I guess to kind of your point that there are no neutral things that I’d say that’s kind of true, because marketing is everywhere and everything that every decision that we make is somebody trying to influence you one way or another. And he is some of the things that he said they did do you think are kind of illuminated and cool to think or interesting to think about because whether it’s the company, he worked for making decisions you never even thought about or marketing I always like to hit on marketing with everything to do especially in food and stuff like marketing plays so much of a role and every Anything that we do so anytime that anything that’s going to take take a stab at or mentioned any sort of marketing flaw then I think is cool to talk about the automatic versus whatever the other one was. But the two differences of reflective sorry yeah automatic and reflective yeah makes those two I think so you tell you phrase it was like automatic is bad and reflective is good at times. But I think those can also be understanding which is which is going on with your life, you can turn those to that and make it good for you. So like, realizing what automatic decisions that’s going on, and that are not good for you, you need to turn those to reflective versus if you need to change in your life, whether it’s diet, nutrition, life, making something new, you need to make those habits those decisions that you make automatic so whether it’s rearranging your, your kitchen, your pantry, your lifestyle, your things in your house to make you make certain automatic decisions, to guide you to a certain way versus other automatic decisions that will guide you to something else, you know, so if you leave your workout gear out and your shoes like right in front of you, you’re most likely to have the automatic reaction to put it on versus if it’s put away you might automatically not. So just stuff like that, I think we’re kind of interesting in building habits and motivation and behavior. And that’s just kind of that was a common theme through everything and he went over a lot of the stuff that he went over it however I didn’t care about it went over my head, you know, some things were kind of interesting, but like, I didn’t need to know about these eyerman plans ad nauseum throughout. That’s kind of like just out of my realm. So if you like that, those kinds of things that whether it’s that or you know, insurance or other things, there’s there’s every single life factor, he talks about these, these nudges that we get, and it could be interesting to think about, especially if you just really want to get a handle on everything in life. You know, it could be honestly a great adulting book, if you just like, give these if there’s the high schoolers, or something like this, it’s probably a great book for high schoolers as well. But yeah, not every single section I was super interested in but it was it did help relate the common theme, and about what nudges you and how you can take nudges to be better for you or take away some that aren’t good for you.
Ashley Hicks 32:30
Yeah, I think you described that whole paternalism thing better I talked about like constraining the choice to for a better result when you talked about the kitchen thing that’s what I mean it’s like taking your choice and like making it smaller so then that way you choose the correct thing I guess sorry.
Joe Courtney 32:45
Yeah, I guess it’s like if you actually stop and think about what your automatic choices are and try and apply it i think is what he’s maybe we’re trying to get at so just being conscious of that I
Ashley Hicks 32:57
don’t know. Yeah.
Joe Courtney 32:59
Travis
Unknown Speaker 33:01
Yeah, so I think I like the topic more than the book because sort of to Joe’s point he’s there was a five to 10 minute section on Christmas accounts and how they used to help people used to use Christmas saving accounts and I’m okay I get it you just explained to us what it is and but there’s so many he uses so many examples throughout it’s hard to keep track of all of them I mean there’s just so many it’s kind of reminds me of a range like he tells you what what what the what the topic of his book is and then he just gives example example example example and it’s hard to pull out the nuggets there were good nuggets for and I’m still in a word and Joe’s notes nuggets but there he there were good. Like tips on starting new habits and and and ways to change your mindset from the to the automatic and or reflective but but there’s just so many I think the topic is interesting just from marketing perspective because I’m generally trying to market to someone you know to buy a T shirt or something like that so I was I was trying to look at it from a fitness perspective like how can I use this to get better or just a health and fitness How can I improve my life but then also I go back into marketing but then I think just like the social media influence because you’re getting nudged every time you open Instagram to like or follow or you know, go in these these echo chambers I think they’re called I think he talked a lot about conformity in there one point and you’re you’re conforming to what you think is a you know, a large group of people are are saying and agree with so if you get into some of these echo chambers, you know, I saw I experienced a lot of it like during the presidential race last year. And about two weeks before I was like, I’m just tired of this. And I unfollowed any political viewpoint whatsoever, just because I was so tired of hearing the same thing over and over again, but not actually seeing a big change. When I was out in the world, it was just, it really frustrated me. So I was tired of those nudges and but it’s almost like you’re you’re influenced literally every bit of information is an influence to you that you’re, I mean, for my wife, and her tone when she asked me to pay her more attention, or when I go to the grocery store, and you know, the candy bars are right there to I’m scrolling through Facebook, and I see jarrods ads for garage gym athlete, I’m getting nudged everywhere. And I’m, it’s almost like every piece of information that comes your way is a nudge in one way or another to get you to act on an impulse, good or bad. But you just have to be cognizant of it and and just know that that stuff is out there. Sure,
Jerred Moon 36:05
yeah. And you got to use those nudges in your favor. Like if I need to buy a new mattress, I’m just gonna say to my phone over and over again, I’m in the market for a new match. That way, I don’t have to sit around do the research, I’ll just start getting ads for new mattresses and I problem solve, I don’t have to
Joe Courtney 36:22
hope you do after this. What I hope you
Jerred Moon 36:25
do, that’s what I do. I mean, I honestly I don’t want to do the research, I don’t wanna sit around and like, and that’s the thing going back to this nudge and like insurance, people will sit around and do 17 hours of research, making sure they made the best purchase decision possible for something that costs, let’s say, $2,000. I’m not saying that’s not a lot of money, but they won’t come anywhere close to that level of research when examples he gives like they’re talking about a retirement plan, or they’re talking about insurance. People are like that, whatever the cheapest, fastest, like, I trust you. But when we’re making these smaller decisions, we’re like, I’m an expert. And let me show you how I got this deal. It’s like who cares, man? Like, why don’t you focus your efforts on something that’s a little bit more important. And so this is why I think people suck, and I’m in that book boat, I think that I suck too. I have to, like, do all these nudges to make, trying to make myself a little bit better. But we have all these things that do not just in these different directions, trash talk about like social media, I did the same thing when presidential election and now COVID. Basically anybody publishing information on those things, I just unfollow, and I have no issues with you. But I’m just currently not interested to hear your viewpoint on a vaccine or the lack of a vaccine, or whether or not you’re Republican or Democrat, don’t care. And so if I could just unfollow you. And now all I see in my Instagram feed are people lifting weights, waking up early, doing cool stuff, I’m nudging myself to a happier version of myself, because I don’t have to worry about what other people are concerned about. But to be honest, it’s a lot harder these days, like everybody, everybody has an opinion. So you have to go on, like this massive rampage of unfollows if you truly want to get out of all political and political discussions, let’s say because I guess COVID is political now. has been for a while. Anyway, that’s a that’s a rabbit hole. We can go down,
Ashley Hicks 38:13
you and your tangents.
Jerred Moon 38:15
What’s all it tramp is brought it up? Because I do think that he’s right, like these, just these social influences, right? They can push us in a certain direction. Those are, those are nudges. Right? Yes, like Instagram influencers, and we’ll just refer to a previous webinar about that. So anyway, let’s just get into the book and what we thought before I go off on 1000 different tangents and how we’re, we’re nudged. My ultimate takeaway was design your life for how you want to be nudged. Because he does mention that successful people take advantage of these things. And I really don’t think successful people are more powerful than anyone else, not necessarily smarter than anyone else. But they have set themselves up with really good habits, like I know, people, mentors of mine, they make millions of dollars per month. And I would not call them the smartest people in the world. And this is no offense to them, I would just call them, like average, but they have some of the most disciplined habits I’ve ever seen for the things that they do. You know, they don’t they don’t let themselves outside of doing certain activities. And I think we’re all capable of that. Like we think that people who are doing things that we can’t do that they do have some sort of like, super power or discipline was born like in their DNA, things like that, but it’s not they’re just taking advantage of these nudges in these situations to set themselves up for a better lifestyle, better lifestyle design. That was my ultimate takeaway from the book. But you want to get to barbell ratings.
Ashley Hicks 39:56
Sure, I was gonna say it reminds me of like a Have you ever heard like you were the sum of the top five people that you hang out with or something like that? Jim Rohn? Yeah, yeah, that just reminds me of that time. Yeah, my barbell rating would be like, you know me in fractional planes. It’s like two and a half.
Jerred Moon 40:16
Wow. All right.
Ashley Hicks 40:17
I thought it was gonna be low.
Jerred Moon 40:18
Yo,
Joe Courtney 40:20
this is tough.
Jerred Moon 40:22
my calculator out for the average.
Joe Courtney 40:25
Yeah, I think I’m leaving either two and a half or three. Because I mean, I don’t think it’s better or I don’t think it’s that much. It’s not worse than what is a range because range is a little bit more repetitive. So I guess I’ll range worse. Yeah, I think I’ll side with the three on this because I think I may have given range two and a half or three. Just I mean, there’s a lot of good nuggets information. There’s some cool good stuff with the the automatic and the reflexive ones. But after a while, there were just sections I just didn’t care about
Jerred Moon 40:56
Krampus
Unknown Speaker 40:59
I didn’t like it necessarily. But like I said, the topic to me so interesting. I think it kind of carries the carries the book. I just didn’t like how he set it all up. So I’m gonna give it a like, somewhere between a three and a half to four. You can pick
Ashley Hicks 41:20
it up, what’s yours? I’ll give it a four. Whoa, that’s kind of high kind.
Jerred Moon 41:25
That’s three and three and a quarter. I’m nice. I don’t know, I
Joe Courtney 41:28
he’s a busy guy. He likes numbers.
Jerred Moon 41:31
I thought it was cool. And I don’t know. I think that if you write a book, I automatically give you a two. Because I’m like, Alright,
Ashley Hicks 41:41
you’re better than the average human can just read a book.
Jerred Moon 41:44
Well, and it depends on like, if I got any good takeaways, this is what it was. And I think I think the takeaway is just for me, you know, and why rated at a four is just because I think that if you can actually set your lifestyle up to nudge yourself towards you know, what, you guys are talking about this automatic, like making good things automatic if you can execute that. Your life’s gonna be a lot better. Oh, and I did want to mention another book. The Road Less stupid. Everyone’s read the road less stupid. Maybe we should even cover it. I’m sorry. Kind of hard to cover. Yeah,
Joe Courtney 42:21
let’s let’s if it’s too much related, together.
Jerred Moon 42:25
Not too much related at all. But the one thing, the biggest takeaway from that book is that, basically, you should sit around and think about things. It’s called thinking time, and I do that, yourself that time. Yeah, and people don’t do that. Period dot like, does not happen to sit around and just, and not just sit around. Think about whatever I want to think about, like pick one topic. And think about it for half hour, 60 minutes. And it doesn’t have to happen every day. But especially if it’s important. And I realized that in myself, like when we get into really busy, very important decision making life where it’s like we’re buying a house. It’s like, what happens is I just go throughout my day, like weighing pros and cons of things. And then yeah, like a couple days later, my subconscious conscious in conjunction with the conscious mind might come up with some sort of decision, when in reality if I would have just sat down for 30 minutes and thought critically about the one thing I would have come to a decision I would sleep better at night I won’t have to worry about it anymore. Like it would just be there but these these big decisions. Think about for a long period of time, so maybe we will cover that book. It’s
Unknown Speaker 43:33
You told me to read that book and I’m as geeked out about it as you were just because of that thinking time we’re always on our phones. There was another book or a podcast I listened to was about boredom. I think it was Art of Manliness, but the I think it was a lady and she said we’re never bored anymore. Right? We’re never bored and being bored gives you that thinking Tom just sort of naturally but you know his his whole idea in the book was to purposefully sit down no distractions and think through a problem and it’s just we never do that anymore.
Joe Courtney 44:11
You know, in my thinking time is with no distractions on the toilet. No one I’m trying to fall asleep.
Ashley Hicks 44:17
Oh my gosh. toilet. toilet.
Joe Courtney 44:23
Toilet that long.
Jerred Moon 44:27
I guess we could get into digestive health or Oh gosh, or speaking of heavy loads.
Joe Courtney 44:33
No, no, no in my segue. JOHN, is that what you said he tried to set up your own site with that
Jerred Moon 44:41
I did what I worked perfectly.
Joe Courtney 44:43
Oh, bleep that’s no okay.
Jerred Moon 44:47
pretty much set up on the fuck yeah,
Joe Courtney 44:49
I am the editor. But I was going to say is, uh, you know, we have 60 minutes of time to think for you with heavy load long list.
Ashley Hicks 45:00
Yeah, that’s a lot.
Unknown Speaker 45:03
So PG, I like Jared rate.
Joe Courtney 45:04
Yeah, I’m sure. Give us a barbell rating on that one. So heavy load long. This is the mat as the use of Saturday for this Saturday. And it’s simple, not easy it is for max meters, you are going to bear hug a sandbag or a med ball or a slam ball or a child. Hopefully it’s yours. And is maximum you’re just gonna bear hug it. So the levels of recruit recruit are 20 to 30 pounds established 30 to 40 to 40 to 50. You can do whatever you want. I did this with a 60 pound slamball. I’m just saying it’s competitor plus. But so that’s workout 660 minutes, Max meters bear hug.
Unknown Speaker 45:53
He’s not flexing either.
Joe Courtney 45:54
Not at all. Not at all. So tips, tricks, strategies, thoughts, UPS downs.
Ashley Hicks 46:04
The last time we talked about this, I just remembered what Jared told me because I told him I was like, I don’t think I could hold something like that for an hour. Jerry was like, Alright, just imagine Connor. And you got to carry Connor. And he’s like, out of something crazy, that’s harmful, and you need to get him away. But you need to carry him for an hour for some reason, and just don’t drop them. So This to me is like a mental thing. Because I feel like your body, your mind is going to tell you you want to drop this before your body actually really needs to write. So this is definitely a lot of the mental aspect of it. Yeah, I like the challenge of no music like why don’t you just like see where your thoughts take you on this one. But there’s not really too many tips from this other than get out of your head and tell your brain to shut up when it tells you to put the thing down and keep going kind of thing.
Unknown Speaker 46:54
So speaking of segways I don’t think I’ve ever done this workout for a garage gym athlete. But there was a time I was in a department store with my wife and we had Nicholas and I think he was two or three. And he weighs about 35 pounds and the only way he would stay asleep and not scream to the entire time was I held him and we were in there for at least an hour. So I have done this workout. But I haven’t done this workout if that makes any sense. But I have done Karis two, I think the best tip is to not set the weight down at all or as few times as possible because you had to clean it to get back going every time and that’s going to get taxed on a
Joe Courtney 47:40
barbell.
Unknown Speaker 47:41
It sounds like it’s just a sandbag or a ball where you still got to hoist it from the chest.
Jerred Moon 47:46
Whatever I think clean was fine. Yeah, I don’t know how you’d get it off the ground and keep it up.
Unknown Speaker 47:55
So don’t set it down as my tip.
Joe Courtney 47:59
This is the one time your barbell bicep curl training can actually pay off your functional barbell curls.
Jerred Moon 48:05
Okay, do we need to talk about it? Oh no, no,
Joe Courtney 48:08
here we go. Your tips.
Jerred Moon 48:11
bicep curls are so much more functional than a snatch. Alright. Okay, anyway. Yeah, I say don’t put it down is the biggest challenge and it’s kind of it’s a lot like the iron mile is like once you break the seal, you’re gonna keep doing it, you’re gonna keep putting it down. So go as long as you can. And what starts to hurt the the most is just your upper back, your upper back starts to feel pretty uncomfortable. And when that starts to happen, I want you to just really start thinking about in my uncomfortable or in my on my way to injury and really answer that question like, think about the pain focus on it where it hurts. Do you think you’re getting injured right now or there’s slight discomfort and so you’re going to set something down and decide what you want to do from there. If you if you’re not on your way to injury then maybe you should just keep carrying the damn thing about that. And keep going. And so that’s that’s how I’m going to push you on this one because it is very uncomfortable. If you do not set it down. It makes us work out unbelievable. Unbelievably hard. I remember the first time I did it right after we first rolled it out and that’s the way I did it in a camera or if I was using a sandbag or my medicine ball I don’t remember which one it was but I’m in my upper back which is on fire and I had to keep keep going back to that conversation with myself which is what meet yourself Saturday is all about like, are you just uncomfortable or do you really need to stop you know are you is this Are you hurt. And if you don’t know the difference, okay, maybe just set it down because I don’t want you to get injured to try and find out but if you do know the difference. Then just make sure that you’re making the right decision and pushing your As hard as you would like to and what I’ve found in these situations is the pain will go away, like something will happen. It won’t. Like if you’re not actually on the way to injury like that pain will go away like your, your body will become accustomed to it like it goes away. It doesn’t just like oh, that hurts and it’s gonna hurt the same, like you will grow tolerance to it, and it will fade and it won’t be so bad. And so if you can get to that point, you probably finish it out without having to set it down. But if you can’t get to that point, you’re gonna end up settling down a lot. This one’s a huge mental game. I mean, I think we know right, like if I always said if we ran better human events or garage mathlete events, this is all it would be like pick up something heavy and carry it. I’m not going to tell you how far or what your sandbag weighs. But we will tell you when you’re finished. And that would be the test. No one will sign up.
Ashley Hicks 50:50
I think too, with your back step. Like maybe just focus on like your form to write like readjust. And then that way like you’re working not to towards injury as well. So if you’re feeling that pain, maybe readjust, maybe try to shrug your shoulders keep that chest up. And sure your core is engaged. Not saying it’ll take the pain away. Maybe that helps you from actually injuring yourself on this one.
Jerred Moon 51:14
Yeah. And trampas do the do the workout this weekend.
Ashley Hicks 51:19
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 51:19
it’s in the plans
Jerred Moon 51:23
alright anybody have anything else?
Unknown Speaker 51:26
I mean, I I finally can do it because basically are indoors and scheduled six days a week.
Jerred Moon 51:34
Yeah, I’m actually glad to be off BCT still trying to get stronger on my squat but we’ll save that for for next week’s
Joe Courtney 51:44
strength obesity, right if you run on the fifth day, like I
Jerred Moon 51:47
just stole your programming and modified carefully that first 12 week wave and BCT if you do touch that, Joe, it’s dangerous. Yeah. All right, well, we’re going to get out of here but if you are not one of our athletes and you’d like to be go to garage, gym athlete comm sign up for a 14 day free trial for all of our athletes, listening, getting the green dots, getting the patches, getting the PR shirts, doing awesome things becoming better. Thank you so much for staying consistent, being a part of the community and making it what it is. And for my weekly reminder, if you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai