Functional Fitness...Fad or Methodology?

Hey, Athletes! Functional Fitness...Fad or Methodology? - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!

Functional Fitness...Fad or Methodology?

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IN THIS 30-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Jerred and Joe discuss the term "functional fitness"
• They give the Mayo Clinic definition of the term
• They give their own definitions and takeaways 
• And A LOT MORE!!

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• Functional Fitness...Fad or Methodology?

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] Is functional fitness a fad that has run its course or is it a proven methodology athletes should be adopting into their training program no matter what type of training that they enjoy. That's what we're going to be diving into today. All things functional fitness. Is it an overused term or is it actually something that science has backed up and that you should be using in your training every single day?

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 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. [00:01:00] So let's dive in.

All right, we're going to dive right into what functional fitness is. So Joe has it from the Mayo Clinic. What is functional fitness? According to

Joe: the Mayo Clinic, they define it as functional fitness, exercise, train exercises, train your muscles to work together and prepare them for daily tasks by simulating common movements you might do at home, at work, or in

Jerred: sports.

What do you think about that definition? You agree with

Joe: it? I think it definitely paints it in a rosy picture because it says it's preparing. It's saying that Functional Fitness is preparing you, not only for daily tasks, but it also says things you might do at home, work, or in sports, but daily tasks does not necessarily happen every day in sports.

Uh, people that are doing sports don't necessarily need more function than people that are just daily tasks, washing the dishes, moving around the house. So, it definitely paints it in a rosy light, and more of a broad audience, which is kind [00:02:00] of... Kind of the whole terminology of it. Anyway, why kind of what we're talking about it.

Yeah,

Jerred: so functional fitness for me I'll give my definition and then you can kind of dive in if you think if you have a different type of definition But functional fitness for me is similar to what they've mentioned like it's kind of preparing you for for life and to be honest if we just define Like, what is function?

What is functional? I think functional fitness is going to be different for every single person. Because, just like an athlete, like if I were to be an athlete who plays soccer, versus an athlete who plays football, you know, an athlete who plays football, like American football, they need to be good for short intervals, like 12 15 seconds.

That's kind of like their max, right? So, functional training for them, beyond like the strength elements, have to do with time domains. Soccer, you just have to be able to run like constantly. You're almost like an endurance athlete. So function different, definitely changes for the athlete. Now, if [00:03:00] we translate that down to the garage gym athlete, and so we have a garage gym athlete, what are you doing on a, on a daily basis?

Cause we have a lot of people in the community who are military athletes, law enforcement. We have some people who are just sitting at a desk all day. That's us. So no, I'm not throwing any shade on anybody there. Uh, so what is your function? I have three kids. I want to be able to play with them. I want to be able to exercise with them So function to me in functional fitness has everything to do With kind of reverse engineering who you are and what you do Then you can kind of start to create a program around that But it definitely, you know, I look at it very literally.

Is it helping you function more in your daily life? But then the second way I look at that is, okay, I'm looking at an optimal human being. How do they, how should they function? And that's where we really get into the programming side of this. And that's what we do at Garage Gym Athlete. We take what we think a human should be able to do, right?

So the hard to kill track are 13 different areas that we train there, the strength track, the shred track. So within garage gym athlete, [00:04:00] we kind of have a concurrent training that we follow and that we think is important. And that's how we, we execute it. And if you want to be a part of what we're doing at garage gym athlete, you can go to garagegymathlete.

com. You can sign up for a free trial and you can see what we think. The perfect human being, uh, or not necessarily perfect human being, the perfect training program for human being, what it looks like and how you should, uh, you know, transition from different movements, different energy system training, different strength modalities, all that kind of stuff.

If you want to see that, go to garagegymathlete. com and sign up for a free trial. But having said that, what is kind of your definition of functional fitness? So,

Joe: yeah, I think the term functional fitness is a bit too broad. It's a bit ambiguous, subjective, because what it comes down to is the functional part.

What is, what is function for you? For me to function, I need to be able to run. I need to be able to, like, actually lift weights to move, uh, in every sort of way that I can. I'd like to be explosive, you know, so that's... function to [00:05:00] me, like bare minimum, I need to be able to run and do other things and lift weights.

Other people, they don't care about running, they just might just need to be able to do the yard work. And so that's why I think function, functional fitness is such a broad, ambiguous term, because it's going to be subjective on whatever your function is. So all these programs say they're functional fitness, they are, you know, they have these broad terms, you know, it's to catch as many people as you can under their under the canopy of functional fitness.

And to me, what I think we do is performance fitness because we actually want to perform, we want to do more than just function. We want to, you know, kind of excel in functioning, uh, if you will. So that's, that's kind of why this topic was, um, interesting for me because for the longest time, it's like, yeah, we do functional fitness, but then.

The more you dive into it, the more you see other programs that say they're functional fitness, other things that might say they're functional fitness, and it's like, well, we're way better than that because we want to perform and excel, not just function.

Jerred: Yeah, and I do think functional fitness [00:06:00] was a fad.

I'm going to say... I don't know if you think CrossFit kind of ran away with that terminology at the beginning.

Joe: I think it helped launch, I think, I definitely think it was there before. Um, I'm not trying to think of other programs that might have, I don't think like Taibo made themselves functional, they were just like high intense hit.

Um, but I think CrossFit definitely, because it was in their definition, functional training or whatever, um, I think that really launched it. And even people will see functional fitness and think automatically may even think CrossFit, but it's so much more.

Jerred: Yeah. And the argument for me, like I know that, um, whatever the definition of CrossFit is, I've kind of forgotten.

It's like functional movements performed at high intensity done on a daily basis, something like that. Right. So they definitely tried to coin or like dive more into using that functional term. But then some of the movements that they're. And this isn't going into the CrossFit world, it's just like trying to define more what, what functional is.

Because what Joe and I are kind of both in [00:07:00] agreement on is, what do you need in order to function? And I remember CrossFit, and especially in the early days, I don't know if they do this anymore, they would, they would just absolutely take a crap on like bicep curls. They'd be like, that is the least functional movement on the planet.

And if you are getting groceries, you have grocery sacks in your hands. And you need to put them on your kitchen counter, you just did two bicep curls, you know, those are bicep, that's a bicep movement. You need, it's not, doesn't make it not a functional movement. Now for people like you and I, that might not matter, right?

But for a grandma who's 94 years old and who can't do that anymore, maybe she just needs a couple bicep curls, because I know what she doesn't need is a cleaning jerk. Like that's, you know, and that's kind of where I think it got. Got a little bit skewed was functional fitness got to this really like, I don't know if you're not doing like sprints at high speed or, you know, Olympic lifting and all that kind of stuff.

It's not functional fitness. I think hypertrophy [00:08:00] is functional fitness. I feel like I think that you only get, um, You start to lose functionality when you go down, really, if you go too far down the fringes of anything, like if you want to gain 80 pounds of muscle mass and be a bodybuilder or whatever, I think you start to lose a lot of functionality.

Like we know the bodybuilders who can't. Can't touch their back, right? They can't like because they can't actually reach around their muscles They can't wipe their ass like all those kind of things, right? So I think you start to lose function and the same with the endurance athlete who's running 100 mile races Like those are some of the stiffest like they're not mobile.

They just horrible. So you start to lose function So for me function is more of how does your body actually operate? How does it function? And I think that you can accomplish that in a lot of ways. But if you start to specialize in too many different areas, I think you start to lose a lot of the human being

Joe: functionality.

Yeah. I think the two [00:09:00] most, like, if you want to break down to me, what the most, if you want to think about functional fitness and the best. Function for you. It comes down to, um, simplicity and, um, I guess practicality. I what was I just thinking of definitely simplicity of over movements and and how you would do it.

Because if you're over complicating things and you, you know, you need so much, you need so much, um, coordination to do a snatch or muscle up. That's not really that goes beyond function. So you need just simplicity of it. Is, is when, uh, and then the, oh, simplicity and variety. So you still need all the variety.

You need to be able to move different ways. You need to be able to, um, use all the different muscles and different planes of movement. And so you need the variety, but you also need it to be simple enough so that you're not overcomplicating it. And there's a lot of functional, um, I know one of the, uh, criticisms with functional fitness is that One of the biggest crazes when they get into functional fitness is that they'll take bodybuilding or other movements, but they'll do it on a BOSU ball.

And you're doing all [00:10:00] these things on these balancing platforms, and it's like, well, you're working strength, but you're also balancing, so it's function it's more functional. It's like, well, are you overcomplicating it, though? So you can just still take normal strength movements, or you can take a normal some balancing.

You don't need to combine everything. And you see these things on Instagram. People do, like Three or four different movements and like I'm balancing them with a band and all that's like, okay, you're over complicating it Simplify it but keep the variety.

Yeah,

Jerred: and I think that's where functional starts to lose its uh, Lose its power right function.

I think if you're strong and you're aerobically fit That's functional. That that'll get you through 80, 90 percent of life, to be honest. And then if you want to be an athlete, there's that 10, 20 percent where we need to focus a little bit more on top in energy systems, a little bit more speed in our strength training, and that's what we do in garage gym athlete.

We add a little bit. We focus a lot on that 80 90 percent but we add in that 10 percent that keeps you athletic. Because if you start to lose that athletic edge, you get a little bit [00:11:00] slower, you're not as explosive, right? And you can do all these things with just regular lifting. Lifting for speed, adding some speed work in here and there, training, uh, you know, that glycolytic energy system occasionally.

All those kind of things keep you athletic. But that's, even what we do goes just a little bit past functional. You know, like, it's unnecessary. But most people want it because it keeps you in that like athlete level shape where you can, you can ask me to go play a soccer game today and I can play a soccer game.

I don't have to worry about it. I can run a sprint today. I don't have to worry about it. And that's, that's ultimately what I want, but that's where it gets ridiculous. And what I've seen like people running three miles backwards on a treadmill, you know what I mean? Like Maybe it has a purpose, maybe it doesn't.

But they're claiming some sort of functionality. Like you're saying, yes. Connecting five different bands that are pulling your knees in different directions while you, you know, do a squat on a balancing ball. I don't, I don't see how that's functional at all. And in what capacity would a human being ever be needing to, uh, you know, perform under that kind of a process.

So I do [00:12:00] think there, there's been this wave, in my opinion, of functional fitness and it kind of follows Just also like what's happened in the the garage gym revolution, right? And I talk about this in the introductory podcast to garage gym athletes One of the first ones I ever talked about but what happened was you see this trend going from you know Kind of 60s and 70s with Jack LaLanne.

He you know, he's talking about Working out at home exercising that transitions us into Arnold and the bodybuilding phase which really lasted for a super long time into the 80s and 90s. Uh, and then around in the 2000s, that's when let's say functional fitness starts to take over and we have, uh, P90X was kind of the first on the scene.

You mentioned Tybo with Billy Blanks. Yep. Um, and then, uh, right after, right around there is where CrossFit starts picking up. That's where everyone starts to get involved in this functional fitness, because everyone's kind of realizing maybe I don't want to just, you know, be a bodybuilder. And [00:13:00] I don't know.

I think everyone realized all those guys are taking steroids anyway. And if they didn't want to take steroids, they weren't ever going to look like that. So then we get into functional fitness, but then it gets overdone. So I think we're definitely, I'd have, I would say functional fitness. Is more of a fad that's kind of died out to where now it's getting into a little bit more though There are people who know how to do it.

It's not like functional fitness is going anywhere I'd put us in that category of people who know how to do it. Like we're helping build functional athletes and human beings but Not at the expense of doing ridiculous things that are completely unnecessary. Yeah.

Joe: And for people that are just inactive, that want to be more functional, like simplifying and doing anything will make you more functional.

Honestly, going for more walks, just doing push ups and sit ups will make you more functional than anything kind of crazy that you do. But then you have the hyper focused athletes that Maybe you know the bodybuilders that are only lifting weights, but they still can't go for a run or same with like power lifters They might twist a certain way or or if they have to jog half a mile there They'll be they'll be completely dead.

So there's there's two different sizes [00:14:00] and that's why I think you know It is it is super broad and subjective And why I still put us in the performance fitness category. So it'd be, you know, as you narrow it down more and more, get more specific or more, more focused on, on goals versus just trying to function.

Jerred: Yeah. And if we go through, uh, the hard to kill continuum, which is something, you know, it's part of our methodology and our programming, if you just want to. You know, for the listener right now, if you're like, okay, what can I do? What are my takeaways at each one of these levels? We kind of simplify it into three strength methods, three different ways to train energy systems.

And so if you just kind of want to be healthy, that's our first category. Our first category is healthy. What you need to be doing is the oxidative energy system. and the sub max strength, uh, method. So all that is oxidative aerobic conditioning, do some zone to do some runs, do some walks like Joe's talking about traditional cardio, traditional cardio, anything like traditional split, to [00:15:00] be honest, is kind of what bodybuilders do.

This is what most people who are going to the gym are going to do. So you have that aerobic base. And then you're also sub max means You're not lifting anything super heavy, uh, you're doing three sets of 10, five sets of 10, might get a little bit of a muscle burn, but that's it. That, that puts you solid in that healthy category.

I mean, if you can get just that as your base of something that you're doing on a weekly basis, multiple, let's say three to five times a week, you're crushing it. But then the next category we have for us is fit. And so the fit category for us, You have those two bases, but then you're going to go ahead and you're going to add two more.

So the additional energy system is going to be what we call the gain energy system. And this is just being a little bit more explosive. So you're adding, you know, 10 second bursts here and there, you're getting a little bit more explosive. You can do this in a lifting as well. There are a lot of different ways.

Uh, to, to train that energy system. And then on the, on the strength side, you're going to be adding [00:16:00] the max effort method. So you'll be operating at a slightly heavier, it doesn't have to be absolute max, but you're out of this like, Oh, I'm just doing 10 reps for muscle burn, maybe doing four reps, three reps, five reps.

It's a little bit heavier. You're feeling like you're super taxed out. So if you can do those things, now you're, you're fit. You're doing really, really great job. Now the last category, we call it the hard to kill category, is where you're doing three and three. You're training all three energy systems, and you're training all three strength methods.

So the last strength method that you would throw into that would be the dynamic effort method. So you're doing things explosively, you're doing things, you're really building a lot of power and speed here. Uh, you don't have to overcomplicate it. It doesn't have to be snatch and clean and jerk. You can do a deadlift, 30 40 percent of your one rep max, you just lift it fast for 2 3 reps.

It's not high rep stuff. It's just speed. It's as fast as you can for 1 3 reps. And you can do this with any lift out there. So squats, you can do with that. You can just do some jumping, uh, anything like that. So that's [00:17:00] the dynamic effort. And then the last one, super crappy conditioning, glycolytic. So nobody wants to do it, but glycolytic is where you're training.

You know, let's just say, yeah, pain zone, your two minutes all out effort. It's like past the comfortable level sprint. You know, if you, if anyone's ever done a sprint, you know, you feel awesome. for like the first 10 seconds. You're like, wow, I'm so fast, this is great. That's because you're not using any oxygen yet.

Your body is just burning through what you have, your anaerobic. And the second that starts the transition between anaerobic to aerobic, you're in that glycolytic zone, it's just super crappy and you're trying to hold that for 90 seconds, 2 minutes, maybe up to 3 minutes. And it's a super crappy zone. We don't say that you should train it all the time.

A few times per month is all you need. You should just see it every once in a while, go into that pain zone. Now you're hard to kill. You're, you're an athlete. You're really knocking it out of the park. But that's kind of the continuum. I, you know, we like to work people through just to say, hey, where, where am I at?

Like, Hey, I just want to be healthy or, you know, that fit [00:18:00] category sounds good. No, I absolutely want to be hard to kill. You got to think about all those things for your own training and how functional you want to be as a human.

Joe: Yeah, that healthy zone of just straight, you know, active traditional cardio and some lifting is also great for, you know, coming back from injury, getting back really back into fitness.

You go, stay in there for a while to get your base. You don't have to, you know, join these programs that are like, You know what? This is, this is gonna kick my butt. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do all these things. And you're gonna get burned out pretty quick. You could hurt yourself again. Or it could just put you off of fitness because it's just, it's just way too much.

You don't, you, you don't need to be in that fit category yet. You can just, you can work within the healthy end. Even I... You know, after, you know, we go on vacation for a week or two, I'm not going to jump into something super, super powerful, dynamic, super heavy. I'm probably going to do some sort of sexy Saturday bodybuilding type slits, or I'm going to do Zone 2 on my first day back, or something of that sort.

Or if like... I'm sicker coming back from sickness. I'm probably going to start in that [00:19:00] first fit zone for a day until I feel up to what I am. And then, you know, so take that for wherever you are, stay in the fit zone until you think you can or stay in a healthy zone until you think you can go up to, okay, you may be, maybe I, I feel I have enough base I can go up to and do be, be more, be more explosive, be more powerful, be more intentional.

Jerred: Yeah, all right, so let's kind of recap here. So if you're looking to get into functional fitness, definitely has gone through some bad stages. Definitely term that's been overused and some people like just in different marketing and programs and different methodologies feel like they've owned the word.

Whatever, you know, ultimately you do want to be a functional human being. You don't want to veer too far off in any one direction. Like I said, too much endurance, too much strength, too much strength, just too much strength can get you hurt. Too much hypertrophy is going to just make you less functional.

Too much endurance will probably get you hurt and also make you less functional. So you kind of have to define, okay. As [00:20:00] I am a human being, what is my function? Start there. What do you need to do on a daily basis? What do you want to be able to do? So that's step one. Define it for you personally. Step two, take everything that we were just talking about with that hard to kill continuum and start to look at your program.

What do you have in your program? Are you in the healthy category, the fit, hard to kill? Do you want to start dabbling with some of these different modalities, different energy system training, and then start to decide, because maybe you do land, you're like, you know what, I just need to be in that healthy category, but I want to add some dynamic stuff, or I want to add some max stuff every once in a while, because like Joe's saying, like.

Those things are harder and you don't want to just like start with them and to be honest They're kind of like playing with fire if programmed incorrectly Uh, you know going if you have a desk job and you go run sprints today Chance of you pulling a hamstring really high if you have a desk job, you haven't been moving that much and I say hey Oh, you want to start a new program?

Let's start with a one rep max [00:21:00] today. Probably not the best idea. You need like a warmup period. You need to get into all these things. And that's why you follow that continuum after you've been following it. That's when you can start to add different modalities and everything else. So that hopefully we answered your questions on functional fitness, how you can get into it.

Uh, and what you want to do, you know, next. Now if you want someone else to program it for you, you can go to garagegymathlete. com, sign up for a free trial. We follow all the methodologies that we're talking about. We even have in doc programs that you can follow to get you warmed back up. Ready for our type of training because our training is not easy.

Um, I've never claimed that our training is easy. It's definitely difficult. Um, it's nothing worth doing is going to be easy, but it is something that's definitely gonna be worth it and worthwhile, and it's going to turn you into an athlete and so go to garage gym athlete. com sign up for a free trial.

And all of our current athletes who are doing our programming. You're awesome. Keep getting results. Keep trying hard. But I did want to talk about kind of wrapping up the podcast today about our current training and what we're doing, [00:22:00] maybe what we did today, because we're in person today. Uh, Joe and I are in the same spot if you're only listening and not watching the video, and that's because we were doing some, some testing today.

So We'll talk about that. But first, Joe, what is your training look like right now? Are you just following a track? Are you doing anything specific different than normal? Lots of traveling

Joe: happening. So I'm getting in whatever training I can, but I am on hard to kill. So I'm getting in at least my four days, three or four days this week.

I already got my three days in and I'll get another day. Later on and I am really trying to up my mileage more even though I'm still fighting my heel injury I don't know how that's gonna It's just not getting better So I need to get more help on that so that I can get on running but I still like to run I still want to run so I'm going to keep running or doing I might you know I was doing sprints and intervals I wanted to try and get my speed up but I moved those this week to the rower just to kind of change it up and Every time you neglect the rover for a while and you get back on it.

It's not good. It sucks. Um, so that's, that's kind of where I'm at. I have some ideas for some programming that if I [00:23:00] want to start writing myself something from scratch, um, I'm not sure if I will, but I'm definitely wanting to get in as much strength in now because in two months we're moving and we're going to be sans garage gym for Probably another two, probably two months.

So I'm getting as much strength I can now because I'm already forecasting running a lot and doing body weight stuff in the future and like banded work. Nothing

Jerred: wrong with running and body weight.

Joe: No, I just need to get my heel better so I can actually run better

Jerred: Yeah, that sucks when you like want to start something in your case.

You can't just do the rower because you won't

Joe: have it Yeah, I won't yeah, like that's just

Jerred: that's rough Yeah, so today my training today we tested My mile time. And that was the big thing that I was looking to do. Uh, so my training just to, to catch people up, I've been doing what I've, I've been calling the rebuild coming off of injury, uh, you know, trying to get back to where I was [00:24:00] performance standards.

And I'm getting closer and closer each month. I'm, you know, some metrics moving in the right direction. Uh, but I've been logging a ton of miles and I've been doing the hard to kill track. Uh, but I think I'm actually about to switch that. And, uh, what I'm going to be doing is, uh, you know, more running and a different type of strength training.

Before I dive into that, I'll talk about this mile. So ran a mile today. The goal was ultimately sub six. I said, I think I said, I'd be happy with a six 30. You also broke one of your rules. Oh yeah, new, yeah, I said don't, don't change anything up on game day, but I got some new shoes in the mail yesterday.

And then Joe showed up today and I was like, well, I'm running in the new shoes. But, uh, it didn't, it didn't hurt me at all. Like, they're, they're super comfortable. Um, I really liked them, but. I end up running a 5. 53 in the mile, which is awesome, not a PR, not my fastest mile, but sub 6, which I'm really, really happy with.

That means I'm moving in the right direction, even though I've been neglecting some of my speed work. I've been doing mainly zone 2 stuff. So [00:25:00] this zone 2 stuff really works, even when you're neglecting the speed work. Um, You know, I'm getting a mile back down to sub six. That feels really good. Uh, it didn't feel, it felt hard, but not, not crazy.

I feel like when I used to run miles, my aerobic base wasn't as high. It just sucked that much more, you know, like my heart rate didn't get as high today. There were just a lot of, a lot of great things about it. Like I wish I could have ran a little bit faster, but I think the only way I'm going to be able to run any faster one, I can continue to increase my aerobic base.

I still have a lot of room there. Uh, but just. Being really consistent with my speed work. I need to make sure I'm hitting that every single week, uh, to get, actually get faster, get some of my speed back. I think

Joe: we had that study this week that we published, I guess it would be last week, on doing... 30 seconds?

Yeah, speed, speed endurance, raising your, uh, improving your running economy and everything like that.

Jerred: Yeah, because I don't like, I mean, to be honest, I don't like logging a ton of miles, even though that's what I'm about to do. I might just go back to like, what, [00:26:00] what's the minimal I could do? So anyway... I've been talking about on the podcast mentioning, I want to do a longer race.

So I am going to be doing a 50 K in April of 2024. So I'm starting training for that really kind of now this weekend to next week is the beginning of that training. Uh, so a lot more running. I'm going to actually probably come off the hard to kill track. Now that this is my goal and I'm going to be doing body geometry, uh, training, which is something that we, we have, you have access to if you're a garage gym athlete, uh, with our human program, kind of our in doc program.

It's very similar format to what I follow. Um, so I'm gonna be doing. Body geometry three days a week running three days a week taking one day off for recovery Probably still doing a walk or something like that But that's what my training is transitioning to Because i've done a lot of different endurance events over the years and i've only ever really survived the endurance events Meaning I had a minimal aerobic base.

I signed up. I finished it That's all I've ever normally cared about. [00:27:00] But I want to go into this one, not to compete. That's not the level of preparation I'm looking for, but not to survive. Like I don't want to just survive. This next race. I really want to do I want to finish it and feel good I don't know what that feels like i'm sure they're i'm sure they're endurance athletes You mean

Joe: you don't want to walk backwards to the car?

Like your hip is just locked

Jerred: up Yeah, and like I remember when I finished there's the one that you came to that was probably my worst one the 100 mile bike race hmm, that I was one of my worst ones because I uh I was just so dead after I remember just sitting on the ground and like eating chick fil a sandwiches like they're slowly bringing me back to life And I did everything wrong in that race.

Like was I on the single speed bike when you were there? No,

Joe: this one you actually did pretty good on this is your your your better time I think this was like your seven hour six hour

Jerred: six. Yeah. Yeah Uh, so i've i've i've done it. I think i've done three or four times now. My last time was the best And I knew how to fuel.

There was one time where I just didn't know. [00:28:00] I didn't know the fueling strategies. It wasn't, it wasn't the time with the, the bike, the, the heavy bike bike in your hand. Yeah. Like it, it wasn't that time. It was just, I didn't know fueling strategies. I didn't know what I was doing. Long story short, a lot of pain, a lot of recovery from even just doing that bike race.

And so now I don't, I don't want to do those things. I've experienced those. I've proven my mental toughness to myself, which is the only person I'm really trying to prove it to. Now I want to like do a race and be like. That felt good. Maybe there's definitely some pain involved. It is a longer distance than I'm accustomed to, but that's what I'm working towards.

We'll keep you updated here on the podcast, uh, with our training. We'll see what Joe's training is looking like as he bounces around the world, uh, does different things. Always, always. All right, we'll wrap it up. Thank you so much for listening to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast. Remember, you can go to garagegymathlete.

com, like I was mentioning earlier in the podcast. If you want to see what functional training looks like, Concurrent training specifically. We honestly don't use the term functional training that much. We use concurrent training where we're combining [00:29:00] different modalities to make you the best human being possible.

So you can go to garagegymathlete. com, sign up for a free trial, and we would love to have you experience what, you know, really good, smart training and programming looks like. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Joe: Recorded the whole time,

Jerred: 30 minutes into the garage gym athlete podcast. If you want to learn more, go to garagegymathlete. com. You can learn about our training. Let us send you a copy of our book, the garage gym athlete, or you can even get featured on the garage gym athlete podcast. Thanks for listening.