Our 6 (Fitness) Hills To Die On

Hey, Athletes! Our 6 (Fitness) Hills To Die On - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!

Our 6 (Fitness) Hills To Die On

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IN THIS 25-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Jerred and Joe discuss what is the most important to them in fitness
• JOE IS BACK!
• The guys go over the 6 Fitness "hills they will die on"
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here is a link to the study for you: 

• No study this week

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Don't forget to watch today's podcast!

• Our 6 (Fitness) Hills To Die On

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

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: [00:00:00] Alright, today on the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, we're taking the gloves off. We're getting serious. We're talking about the six hills we will die on. Or is it one hill with six things? How does it, how does that work, Joe? I don't know. Things that we just believe so strongly. We won't change our minds on.

And that's it. That's the garage gym athlete podcast today.

This is the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, and we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage, basement, and spare bedroom out there. I'm Jared Moon, and I'm with Jill Courtney. We are strength and conditioning coaches who have turned over 20, 000 people into Garage Gym Athletes over the last decade.

And we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today. We're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but from our years of experience. So let's dive in.[00:01:00]

All right, Joe, welcome back. It's been a minute. I think people thought you were dead. I mean, honestly,

Joe: I mean, I don't know why they would go to dead. I could have just like quit.

Jerred: No, there's only one way out of garage gym athlete. All right. There it is. You have to die. That's fair. Joe's back. I'm glad that he's back.

Always fun to podcast with another. But we'll get into it, man. So today we're going to be talking about hills we will die on in the fitness world. Things that we believe very strongly. Um, I'll go first. You want me to go first? You have more than I do. Yeah, so there's six. I have four. Joe has two. So we'll get into it.

So the first one I have I'm going to start with a banger, and it's, you shouldn't have a hobby until fitness is a habit. [00:02:00] Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts, Joe?

Joe: I'm going to need you to extrapolate a little bit more on this, because hobbies are, range all kinds of things, and they can be non physical and like

Jerred: Yeah, no hobbies.

You're not allowed to have Okay. Can't read books. You can have a hobby. You can have as many hobbies as you want, but you can't have a hobby until fitness is a habit. Fitness is one of your hobbies after that. You can, you can pick up guitar or photography or whittling, whatever hobbies out there that people do.

That's when you can have a hobby golf, even I think some people would call hobby cause it's not a sport. No, I'm kidding. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to throw all the, uh, all the shade, but that's just something I believe so strongly. Um, a lot of people I hear, um, you know, just talking about not having time for fitness, not having time for themselves, um, and to be honest, I just.

There's only so much of like hacks and time hacks and [00:03:00] productivity hacks we can talk about in all reality Health is incredibly important. Fitness is incredibly important. We all know it. We're all short on time Everyone's busy to some degree Most people are really busy. And so my my take is like hey Yeah, if you only have one extra hour in the day to do something, it should probably be fitness And I'm not even going to go with probably it should be fitness.

It should not be whatever hobby, learning a new language. Um, all these other things, because. I just think fitness is that important. So that's the expanded version. What are your thoughts now?

Joe: So thinking of, I mean, I, I, I could put it a different way and you might not like it, but thinking of like, if you have time to have these hobbies, then You have time to be healthier.

So like in general, because you know, if you're, if you have time to binge Netflix, if you have time to, like you said, play guitar or do anything like [00:04:00] that, then you have time to eat a little bit healthier, cook something instead of eating fast food, you have time to go for a walk, do some fitness instead of sitting on the couch and doing Netflix.

So, um, I, I, you may mean it in the more extreme way, but I, I would say if you have time for. Like if you have time for hobbies, then you can't complain about not being healthy, not being fit, not being able to cook, eat right, or anything like that.

Jerred: Exactly. Because again, and I'm not saying fitness should be your only hobby.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying, well, after you've checked that box, then it's like, okay, I can pick up other things. I can do other stuff. But I just know, I know in my life right now, I am pretty busy. I have a lot going on. Um, just between facilitating all the things with, you know, having three young kids running a business, um, and just doing all the things that we're doing.

And sometimes I feel like about the only extra thing I could do in my life is work out like that's it. That is, [00:05:00] if it wasn't built into my day, like I couldn't, um, I don't really have time to for for another. Hobby, unless it's like something I can do while doing something else, but that's not normally how we learn new things.

Um, so anyway, I have had some conversations recently where I just started to feel more and more strongly about that, because again, I really, I like to help people out. I like, you know, meet you where you're at and say, you know, I get it. But if you're not doing it. You shouldn't be doing anything else. It's that important.

I mean, what's, what's your, uh, what's a hill you'll die on?

Joe: I will say, um, I don't know if this is a great hill to die on, but I will say fitness is very, fitness is subjected to the individual. So, what I mean by that is the term fitness is not going to mean the same thing to you as it means the person that you're going to ask fitness about that the next person is going to ask fitness about.

So, when [00:06:00] somebody's talking about, Or when somebody asks, Hey, you know, I want to get fit. I want to get more in shape. What somebody says is not your, um, definition of fitness. You have your own definition of fitness. You shouldn't seek elsewhere to for somebody else to tell you what fitness is, what getting in shape is, what you want to do, because you should think about what you want to do, not.

an influencer, not a friend, because they're just going to tell you what they, fitness is, what they, what, um, they would want you to do.

Jerred: Does that make sense? Yeah, I think so. Don't let, um, you know, outside pressure say that, yeah, you need to be doing bicep curls and like, whatever, like, whatever you enjoy is ultimately going to be fitness.

And the way I really look at fitness and define it is like similar. You know, in like politicians, they'll be like, is, is this person fit for office? You know, they, that's like a, yeah, they're, they're kind of talking about, are they, are they fit for office? Like, can they, can they do the job? [00:07:00] Um, it's kind of the same thing.

You, and, and it's specific for when they, when that phrase is used is, are they fit for office for the job? And so I think fitness has a lot to do with what's your job. And I don't mean like your actual. Like profession, I just mean like your day to day and so are you fit to handle your life if you are, then you're on the right track, right?

If you're not, then maybe some sort of definition pops up, but you're right. There is no like, there's no way to go about it. Um, I mean, I, I do have a strong opinion and that's one of my hills about like how you should do it. But ultimately, um, I think you don't have to do what influencers say or what the most popular thing is.

It's like you just. You do you to some degree.

Joe: Yeah, I think a little bit of reframing if they're, you know, for the newer people that might be like, Hey, I want to get in shape. I want to get fit. I want to go to this fit this person. I, you know, instead of asking such a open ended question of, Hey, I want to get fit, you know, maybe you could [00:08:00] specifically think of, okay, why or what do you want to get fit about?

And then it's, um, yeah, just a couple of layers of specifically thinking of what you want to do. And then. Saying that to somebody versus like, how do I do this specific thing versus Hey, tell me what you think is best for fitness.

Jerred: What I should do. Yeah. Like a defined modality, a defined end point. Like it's goes back to that performance versus aesthetics.

Like if there's something you can't do, fitness can probably get you there. But you have to define what it is that you want to do. If that's being able to hold your kid over your head, or do a Spartan race, or balance on one foot, like fitness can help you do all of those things, but you have to define the end point first.

Joe: Yep. All right. What do you got?

Jerred: All right. My second one would be just on diets and nutrition. I just have gotten so fed up with this stuff over the years. There is no diet that is the best. There, it just [00:09:00] isn't, there's no set of rules. That's all a diet is. It's a set of rules. What you can and can't do.

There's no can and can't do that's going to be optimal, be the best. Um, you know, there are all these like Netflix documentaries trying to push a vegan. Uh, veganism on everybody or being a vegetarian, um, just like following these rules, don't eat meat or, you know, do eat meat or all this kind of crap. I don't think any of that matters.

And really what I think the main thing that you should focus on is just food quality. No matter which diet, if you are following a diet, no matter which camp you're in, whether that's, you know, you want to be more paleo or you want to be carnivore, you want to be vegan or whatever, there's a terrible way to do all of those things.

Like, you could be a carnivore, uh, you could follow the carnivore diet, and a lot of people have seen great results from that. But you could get all of your meat from McDonald's and not eat the bread, right? And [00:10:00] you could have the cheese with it, and you, you're carnivore, you know? But that's really low quality, probably not gonna be that helpful.

Same with, uh, vegan, and this is actually way more common in the vegan world, is instead of being vegan how vegan was meant to be, which is like, Really just not eating animal products, a ton of fruits and vegetables and all these healthy things. It's now just packaged crap, right? It's like, how do I get the hamburger that I actually want?

But I need the hamburger to be made with things that aren't meat. And then it's frozen and sent to you and process and all that crap. That's, this is where everyone's missing the point. It's like, no, I'm, I'm vegan. I checked all the vegan boxes. I I'm not doing the things that I've been told that I'm not supposed to do.

I don't think any of that crap matters that much, to be honest. I think if you want to move the needle, focus on food. food qualities, everything. We actually did a study about this where they put people, uh, I don't know if you [00:11:00] remember this story, Joe, or this study, Joe was several years ago, I think 2021 ish, maybe we did it, maybe even 20 could have been 2019, 2020, but anyway, they put people in a metabolic ward and this is very hard to do.

They don't have very nutritional, very many nutritional studies like this. Most nutritional studies they do. Have to do with people surveys. Yeah, just doing a survey They actually put people in a in a ward and I forgot how long it was It was maybe like three weeks and they basically had processed and non processed food And you were allowed to eat, I think, as much as you wanted.

Um, they would just give you more food. And the people who had the whole food diet, is what they called it, which is where there was nothing processed. It was either like you're eating fruits or vegetables or, or meat, clean meats, all those kind of things. Or they had the, the processed food people who were eating everything basically packaged or processed.

Uh, the people who ate the whole foods diet. Just came out better and in every way. And, and, um, we can link to that study in the show notes. If you want to check it out at garage gym, athlete. com. [00:12:00] But ultimately that's where I think things are most important. Like if you are going to be vegan, cool, but do it how it was meant to be done with a bunch of whole foods.

Um, you know, fruits and vegetables, not all these packaged things that say vegan on it. And then the same way, if you go, um. Paleo or carnivore if you're if you even want to follow a diet, um, I don't feel like I follow any kind of diet I think um, but I think it'd also be like misleading to say that with how much nutritional information I just have in my brain over the years, but I don't really follow a diet But I do try and focus on food quality as much as I can in my life And so I think food quality is is the main thing in diets A list of rules don't really matter that

Joe: much.

Yeah, this is probably why I can only think of two, because the third one, whenever I was trying to think of, um, nutrition, it's pretty much what you covered, and it's just such a huge one. Uh, guidelines over rules for sure. I know I was pretty strict paleo a long, long time ago, but after a while, you, you kind of, we find [00:13:00] other things that, that work best or that we want to do.

Um, overall, when we're planning what we're eating. We've, we think of it from like a macro view first. And then when we go shopping, we're reading labels, we're seeing, looking at, you know, what's the protein content, what's the fiber content, is there not added sugar, soy, stuff like that. Um, and, and that's kind of how we, how we go about it, but we're not like, Oh, it had like the only thing like.

Very rarely are there things where I'm like, Oh, it has this. We cannot have that. That's like soy, vegetable oils, high fructose corn syrup, like the big ones. But other than that, we're not dogmatic about eliminating a lot of things. And yeah, definitely people get hung up on that. And, um, when they, like people would, I remember for a while, people were really big into the Mediterranean diet.

And that was like, it's like a whole lot of vegetables and, you know, very little bit of meat, or some people would take that to very, like no meat, almost vegan. And they would try and emulate it, but they were doing it wrong. Cause they were thinking, okay, well, this has vegetables. This is not. It still falls within the parameters, but it still has all this process stuff.

[00:14:00] And I'm like, okay, well, yeah. And people always say, oh, well, the Mediterranean diet's best. Look at everybody that lives there. Okay. Well, look at the people that live, they live there. They're probably getting all local whole food, like fresh produce. Their meats are fresh. Their fish is fresh. They're not driving everywhere.

They're walking a ton more than you're walking all of these things. And they're also not eating that much because they're not like. He didn't eat giant, not giant meals. They're just kind of like picking and smaller plates and stuff like that. So there's a whole lot of extra factors other than like, he will focus on this little like parameters, like the rules.

There's all, a lot of other factors that people just completely ignore or, or don't think about. So, you know, the getting strict rules when it comes to diets, I think it's, it's definitely just flawed because of just logic and how humans used to eat a long time ago, they didn't go by and be like, no. Can't eat that unless it was like straight up poison.

They didn't like, they weren't picky. They ate what they could get. And it might be extreme to think of [00:15:00] it that long ago. But like, that's just how, that's just how the body came about. So like, you shouldn't just go to the store and just have these super, super strict rules. It's more about guidelines and figuring out

Jerred: what works best for you.

We're in agreement, man. What do you have next?

Joe: This one is more so for a lot of the athletes and the people that have been working out for a while that always try and find a little bit of like, try to get better, but they overthink things. And that is specifics are for the 1%. And this comes down to like, when people talk about eating windows, like I just worked out, I need to hit that my, you know, X amount of grams of protein within that 30 minute window, or else I'm going to not get any of my gains.

I need to, you know, not do cardio. Within 48 hours of this lifting session, or else I'm going to lose all of my gains. I need to have this in this specific window, like that little specific of the 1 percent timing or [00:16:00] things to just over, over think about and you'd be anal retentive about, uh, because you think it's going to magically make you so much more fit so much more gains, but really it's, it's not, it's, it's only the people that are really competitive in the 1 percent that are like really need to have like fractional.

Gains that, uh, to get to the next step, versus you are just working out to be fit, to get stronger, to be healthier, to, to do whatever. Even if you do have, um, some lofty goals, you're still, it's still, you're, you're overthinking it.

Jerred: Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. We talk about that kind of concept a lot, just with a concurrent training in general.

You know, people worried about the interference effect. Yeah. Like if I'm doing cardio too soon, uh, too close to strength training, is that gonna affect my gains? Um, and I've, I'll admit I was kind of in. That camp that you're talking about, and I don't consider myself like. That top 1 percent of like like competitive athletes, obviously, right?

I'm not like competing in anything And I've gone [00:17:00] against that I'd say the last couple of years. I'm like, ah screw it. Like what's it? What's it gonna do? You know, does that mean I gain a millimeter less of muscle on my quadricep? Like I don't know. I'll probably never actually know what the difference would have been.

So yeah, I I completely agree with that I think people do Like, we can get into science and talk about what's optimal, and I think to a certain degree you want to follow that with like, big picture stuff, but when you do get into the weeds, um, you realize You might be fighting for a lot of very marginal improvements at best, if, if it even does anything, um, because you do, it's, it's kind of like what we talk about with supplementation, um, you know, a lot of supplements are really like only good if you have everything else dialed in, you know, it's like if you have all your sleep dialed in your diets kind of dialed in, you're hydrating well, you're exercising, you know, you're just doing all the things, but then, yeah, yeah.

There might be the supplement [00:18:00] that can increase your performance. But if all those other things are not true, you sleep like crap. You're not really exercising very consistently your diet's awful. And you're like thinking that you're going to take some supplement and it's going to. Really help your performance or results.

It's not going to happen. You know, it's just not, not worth focusing on. So yeah, I agree with that in a lot of different realms.

All right. My next one is that concurrent training is the only fitness worth doing. I've, I've danced around it. I've danced around it for a while. I try to be like, you know what, if you want to power lift, power lift, that's great. If you want to run, run, that's cool. But, um. I just, I can't do it anymore. You concurrent training is really the only fitness worth doing.

I think the world is starting to realize that slowly, but surely you should have some sort of resistance training. You should have some sort of, uh, aerobic training VO two max training. Um, you know, some zone two stuff, like you, you just need to be [00:19:00] combining them both. And I think. Everybody's waking up to that fact because, um, if you just look at every, if you kind of like pull the thread all the way on all these different, um, forms of fitness and you like pull the thread all the way on, like, okay, what is the craziest aerobic athlete look like in their maciated and they just don't look that good or healthy and like, you know, it's just doesn't seem that that great.

And then the same with power lifting. If you pull that thread all the way, um, Probably a lot of surgeries in your future, a lot of, uh, back problems, most likely, uh, shoulder problems, another big one in that world, uh, powerlifting is also known for, or notorious, should I say, for just not having the best diets, people being extremely overweight because mass moves mass, uh, you don't really want to head in that direction either, so I just think that the blend of the two Which is the sacrifice of performance.

And any of those top end spectrums is the ultimate, [00:20:00] uh, way to go about training. Now you can have, you can have any kind of bias you want. You can buy bias towards endurance. We still need to have some strength or you can buy us for strength But you still need to have a little bit of endurance training.

You don't have to split it like 50 50 But I do think that concurrent training is the only only fitness worth doing everything else It it's okay to do but it's like not worth doing if it's not if it doesn't have something else to balance it out You know what? I mean? I just think that you I don't want to say you're wasting your time but over a certain amount of time you're Going against what you're trying to do in the first place, which is just being fit and healthy.

Joe: Yeah, if you're playing the long game, then it just makes sense. Um, what's, what's, I guess, the disadvantage of concurrent training is that it's not exactly a catchy name. It's not one that is uttered about very much. I think it was Nick Bear that's trying to coin hybrid athlete, which is basically a different version of concurrent training.

Which

Jerred: he didn't even coin, man. It was like used like I just think it's funny that's even a [00:21:00] conversation. I think someone, uh, was it Rob Orlando, you know, I think started that 15 years ago, 20 years ago, something like that. Um, But anyway, I'm not that in touch with the fitness. Oh, I'm in touch,

Joe: man. Um, yeah, so like it's, it's just not a term that concurrent training is going to come around with, but people are still doing it.

Um, I'd venture to say a lot of the top CrossFit athletes are doing sort of an extreme version of concurrent training because they're not just doing your, the high intensity stuff. They're doing a lot of strength and a lot of sustainability training, not just High intensity stuff. So, and you know, endurance athletes know the important, a lot of the serious endurance athletes know the importance of having some strength training on top of that.

Jerred: Awesome. Are you ready for my last one?

Joe: I think so.

Jerred: I don't know this one. Yes. This one might be a little bit controversial. So buckle up. Electric powwow drum [00:22:00] is the best workout song ever created. There is no better. There is no better training song than electric powwow drum. The band was called The Tribe Called Red, but I was just looking 'em up on Spotify for this podcast, and I guess they're called the Halluc Nation now.

So that's the, and then H-A-L-L-U-C-I as a word, and then nation. So the hallucination, electric power drum it. I mean, it doesn't matter what you're doing. You could be doing Murph, you could be running zone two, you could be running VO two max intervals. You could be doing. Anything, weightlifting, yeah, any, any workout, electric power drum, there's no better song.

Joe: There, there are segments of it that I will agree to get you up, but then when you first listen to it, you're just like, what the fuck is on right now? What? Because I, I think you, you had it on a playlist or [00:23:00] something, and I, and I listened, and I was listening to the plays and went to the next song, and I was like, um, we do have, speaking of, we have a Garage Gym Athlete Spotify playlist, and that song is on there.

I made, I put a whole bunch of songs on there, but that one is on there. I think there, we've had some athletes that have played it and it's came on and it's throwing them off, but I didn't, I think they listened to it.

Jerred: It's not your normal. Okay. Like if you're, if you're into like a certain type of music, yeah.

The first time that comes on, you're going to be like, what is this? But just give it a chance. Just give it a chance and you'll realize the motivational powers behind electric powwow drum. You gotta try it out.

Joe: Mine, mine, uh, I mean, this will be a, uh, an unlisted seventh, but, um, headbands make you 5 percent faster or stronger.

So wear headbands when you work out the sweatbands. They're, they're just key.

Jerred: I think it's like. 5 percent was, that's, that's, uh, being generous. Maybe

Joe: two. Maybe two. Maybe the longer. You can't just [00:24:00] like put it on and it's not like an instant boost, it'll, it'll add 5 percent as you wear

Jerred: it longer. Yeah, I mean if you want to like take 5 seconds off your mile time today, headband might be all you need.

Awesome. Well that's it, ladies and gentlemen, hills we will die on in the fitness world here at Garage Gym Athlete. Let us know what you think. If you agree, disagree, it doesn't really matter. We'll fight you. These are the Hills that will, we will die on for everyone who is a part of the community. Thank you so much for being a part, being around, doing the workouts.

Really appreciate you guys. Now, anyone who wants to be a part of what we are doing, you can head over to garagegymathlete. com and start a free trial. We would love to have you, but that's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.[00:25:00]