New Program, Weight-loss Study, and Garmin Suggestions

Hey, Athletes! Injuries! New Program, Weight-loss Study, and Garmin Suggestions - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up! 

• New Program, Weight-loss Study, and Garmin Suggestions

  • Subscribe on any device HERE 

IN THIS 38-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Jerred and Joe discuss weight loss
• First they give some quick updates
• They dive into a study that weight loss 
• They quickly go over the new training cycles at GGA
• 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: 

• Which resistance training is safest to practice? A systematic review

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Don't forget to watch today's podcast!

New Program, Weight-loss Study, and Garmin Suggestions

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] 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 Jerred and I'm with Joe 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.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared Moon here with Joe Courtney. What's up, Joe?

 

Jerred: How you doing, man?

Joe: I had a strong run today.

Jerred: You had a strong run?

Joe: Pretty good, at least. Well, I tried something new, but we'll, we'll get into that.

Jerred: Yeah. Okay. Before we get into that, I just immediately wanted to hear about it.

Um, but just for anyone listening, [00:01:00] I want to let everyone know what we're going to kind of cover today. Of course, we'll start with some updates, uh, training wise, just what's been going on with us. Uh, then we will get into a study and this isn't like a typical study to where Joe and I have like researched it really just, I researched it and I want to surprise Joe with the information.

Uh, and then also surprise all the listeners. So we're going to go over a study. This study specifically is about how science says weight loss doesn't work or exercise for weight loss. Doesn't work. Sorry. Weight loss is a thing is not Santa Claus. Um, and then we're going to be briefly talk about cycles for, uh, garage and math because we're right at the start of a new cycle, uh, per this recording, and I'm sure people want to know a little bit more about what's going on.

So, uh, we're going to be talking about that, um, and what we're doing there. So let's start with your run.

Joe: I want to hear all about it. So have you, first I'll ask you a question because you have a Garmin

Jerred: and

Joe: whenever you [00:02:00] go to run, it always comes up with those suggested runs. I don't, I don't know if you can

Jerred: turn those off.

Joe: Have you ever done tried those?

Jerred: Uh, I mean, maybe one, like one in the years I've been wearing a Garmin, but I had an idea if I, If we weren't obviously doing what we're doing with garage mathlete, I wanted to just try that as an experiment and be like, I'm only going to do what Garmin tells me to do every day and see where my fitness ends up.

But, uh, no. So is that what you

Joe: did? Yeah. So, I mean, if you only do what they tell you to do, you're running every single day. I, I had it

Jerred: all. There is.

Joe: Yeah, well, I had it hooked up to, um, if you have a certain on depending on your concept to bike or monitor, it'll connect to that. And then after I did that, cause there was one at the gym, it started giving me bike suggestions.

So that was kind of, that was kind of cool. Um, anyway, yeah, I was just like, I'm going to run today and I turned it on. I was like, okay, let's see what this workout is. And I saw it and I was like, all right, whatever, I'll, I'll just do it. Cause Liz said she did one last week and she, she, um, she liked it. It was way different than mine, [00:03:00] but today it was essentially like run a mile.

As like a cool as like a warm up and then go straight into what turned out to be a 5k at like 85 percent and then a cool down mile and so it's kind of hard, but it was good, I guess,

Jerred: and I think I think it would actually work out. So if I feel like we just like, can you reach out to Garmin, send him an email and let him know like we will officially become sponsors.

Um, they could, they could sponsor down for a while. Yeah. So, uh, but one thing that's cool about the Garmin, uh, and we are not sponsors. We're not paid to talk about Garmin, but they, they like monitor your training load, right? And then they, they see how much, uh, base training you're getting high aerobic threshold and like sprint interval.

They have like these three, it's almost like they're tracking your zones over the course of 30 days. And I think that's why, how they're suggesting workouts. So like, if you're lacking. That top end zone for work, then it's always going to be suggest suggesting threshold runs for you. And then if you [00:04:00] have too much zone for work and not enough zone to it's going to be suggesting a bunch of base runs for you.

So it's actually a really cool like system that they have. But yeah, I've always considered following it, but I actually look at it every time because every time I hit run to go on a run, it's like, here's our suggested workout for you today. And they look nasty most of the time. It's like, we want you to do thresholds with like nine minute runs at zone four.

I'm like, I don't, I don't want to do that. You know, I want to, I want to do what I have

Joe: programmed today. Yeah. That's pretty much what mine said. So it was a, it was definitely, it was definitely hard up there. I was, I was in, I was in the red for a good chunk.

Jerred: Yeah. And I know when I was in the thick of the ultra marathon running, it'd be like, We suggest a 28 minute base run today.

And I'm like, well, I'm running for an hour and a half. So your suggestion sounds way better than what I'm actually doing. Um, cool. Um, training for me, same old, same old. Um, you know, we were talking about your hot basement. You have a hot basement and you're worried about your [00:05:00] electronics. And you know, what's crazy is I've been a garage gym athlete for a long time.

I mean, like over a decade now. And, um, My equipment has been fine being in the garage. Like I've never really gotten like stuff that's like super rusty or like nothing's been ruined from like heat as far as I know, like, but for some reason, the last year in my, so I just moved, but the last year in my last house.

Everything just went downhill, like I, my barbells started to rust, even the stainless steel one, um, and then my like concept to some of the machines, the bolts on there were like rusting. I don't I think I lived in this weird like bubble of humidity at that house because it's not like I'm new to Texas, right?

It's not a new and I've had all this equipment in Florida, uh, you know, by the beach. So. That it can take its toll, you know, like being a garage gym athlete, like [00:06:00] at some point, can a garage ruin your equipment? Is that, is that a concern? Is that a concern you have?

Joe: I I've had mine all kinds of places. When I first had one, it was out, it was outdoors in San Diego.

So, I mean, there was community was okay there, but it was still outdoors the entire time. So it's still kind of got rained on and I was. Um, putting like corrosion control on and I got a brush. I haven't brushed mine in a while and then it was in storage for two years. I don't know what the conditions were for storage unit that it was in for two plus years.

Um, I didn't notice the other day. Climate controlled storage unit or just like out? I have no idea. It's, I, I, I assume it was climate controlled. It's, uh, whatever the military puts it in. We didn't actually put it in. It's probably not climate controlled. I, I think it is because we also had like TVs that went in there.

And I just noticed the other day that mine's starting to get a little bit rusty because I haven't done anything with it. All I got to do is brush it and then spray it. But my barbells are good. I've [00:07:00] never cleaned my rower, which I probably should clean it and grease. Yeah, I think

Jerred: I've cleaned the chain like three times.

I used to be way better about that stuff. And then I don't know, at some point. You get so many responsibilities with three kids and like everything. And it's just like, well, something's got to go. It's like, you know, uh, it's going to be cleaning my concept to chain. That, that might be the thing that I'm not doing today.

Uh, yeah.

Joe: Yeah. I, I meant to look up like how often you're supposed to clean it. Like, oh, there's, you read the concept to manual.

Jerred: It's probably like every 30 days. They're like, yeah, disassemble. And like to maintain manufacturer warranty. Yeah. Yeah. Like Yeah, anyway. Well, anyway, I gotta, I gotta knock the rust off.

Uh, no pun intended of some of these, uh, some of these machines, try and get them in tip top shape because a lot of them can be stored inside now because I have a indoor gym and outdoor gym. So, yeah, so if you just clean your chain once now and then put it [00:08:00] inside. Yeah, I don't have to worry about it anymore.

And the amount of things that had just like cobwebs, spider webs, like my last garage was, I mean, it was, it was basically outside. It was not like animals lived in that garage. It was just a crazy, crazy situation. But, uh, We can move on. You want to, you want to hear about this study?

Joe: Just kidding, yeah.

Jerred: He's like, no.

Because I

Joe: think I saw something about it on social media not long ago, and so, um.

Jerred: Okay, I want to talk, anybody who's trying to lose weight, or knows somebody who's trying to lose weight, so there, there was a study, and I like to link, link stuff, um, And the title of the study published June 21st, 2024. So that's pretty recent.

Says no evidence for metabolic adaptation during exercise related energy compensation. [00:09:00] Okay, so half of the participants, so this is a 24 week study. Hold on. I'm not going to get into all the details there. I just want to kind of cut to the chase since we're not doing our typical thing. Um, so this study found that exercise related energy compensation.

Often counteracts the calories burned during workouts. So in the study, half the participants didn't lose the expected weight because their bodies became more efficient, conserving energy elsewhere. So for example, your body might compensate by reducing spontaneous physical activity, or what we like to call in the industry, non exercise activity, thermogenesis, NEAT.

Most personal trainers or coaches know what neat is and so think fewer fidgeting Less walking around and generally becoming a couch potato when you're not exercising. This is something your body is doing subconsciously Just think about how annoying this is. So if you have a pretty good workout this morning [00:10:00] Subconsciously your body is going to reduce Neat.

So this, like, if you're normally sitting at your desk and you're fidgeting your leg, or like you just want to get up and walk around, these are things that your body's doing to try and burn a certain amount of calories every single day. This is, this is subconscious activity. And what the science is saying is that when people exercise and they burn 300 calories in the morning and their, their body's not accustomed to it.

Their body will be like, that's fine, but now we're not going to do all this other crap that we had planned for you today. You know, it's like that, that's how annoying your subconscious is and how much your body wants homeostasis. It does not want things to rock the boat. And this is true when we've talked about fat loss in the, in the past.

So there's other studies that state our bodies do the exact same thing. Like with burning fat specifically, it says Bernie, like burn, if you burn fat during a workout, so like a zone two workout, we all know is kind of that fat burning zone. And say you just crushed it. [00:11:00] You did a two hour zone to work out.

You burn all this fat, your body will then try and conserve fat for the rest of the day. It'll be like, wow, you just burned a lot of fat. Your body doesn't know what the hell's going on out there. It's like, it's like, uh, you know, uh, you're in a dark, it's in a dark closet. Like it doesn't know what's going on.

And so then it's just like, all we know is you took a lot of our fat stores. We like having fat stores for energy, uh, reserves when we need it. So for the rest of the day, we will conserve fat. We won't let you burn any of it. We'll make you burn more carbohydrates when you move. So this is, I mean, a little bit disheartening, right?

Like this is like, it's saying you can try and to, you can start to try and do all the things that you need to, but you're. Body is going to counteract you, even at a subconscious level, to try and keep homeostasis and keep things the same. Now I have some, some ways around this, some ideas, so don't worry, I'm not going to leave you with like, Yeah, basically, if you are trying to lose weight, you're screwed.

Um, [00:12:00] we'll talk about like getting into it. But what are your thoughts on that? Just hearing that Joe, like your body is really out, doesn't want to work with you. It wants to work against you to conserve what

Joe: the typical is. Well, from a lot of the studies and books and nutrition things we've read is that the human body adapts and is very efficient and is going to try to do, I guess, the least resist, the least resistance path as possible.

So it's going to be trying to be the most efficient that it can. So it's going to, uh, adapt with you or, you know, Overcompensate or whatnot. Um, did the study say that they were untrained? I might miss it if they were untrained or trained or how, how many people they, they looked at for that or I believe they were

Jerred: untrained, um, to a certain degree.

These were not like athletes. Um,

Joe: let's see. Yeah. So I'm just curious that like, if, if. You have people that I guess since the goal was weight loss, it's probably untrained and it's for people that are looking to get on this weight loss thing so that when they do work out in the morning, they're sort of tipping the scale on the other way that [00:13:00] they're going to be much more sedentary or things are just going to work a bit slower.

I wonder, I wonder if it changes people's digestion, like if they are going to digest slower or. Like, cause usually when you, I don't know

Jerred: how, how much does your body change, like at the subconscious level?

Joe: Yeah. Like if your metabolic rate is going to change, like at that as well, like if it fluctuates to what you're, what you're burning and like, maybe if it, and if that changes the longer you train so that like, if, um, you train a lot, your body's probably adapted to be more efficient that it may, maybe it does run somewhat normally, but when you're first working out, maybe it's going into like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second.

We're going to back down because. We're not used to this.

Jerred: Yeah, well in the title of the study is no evidence for metabolic adaptation during exercise related energy compensation So it's saying that you're it's quite a bold study in all honesty I mean, this is not a systematic review or [00:14:00] a meta analysis So like, you know, everybody keep your pants on like it's not that crazy But at the same time it's we're not headed in the right direction and I think in all honesty It just shows you how stubborn it can be to lose weight.

Like I had a family member reach out to me recently. Um, and they were like, Hey, I stopped, uh, basically stopped drinking calories. Uh, I've been in exercising every single day and. Drinking nothing but water, like really paying attention to my diet and they've been doing this for two months and they're like, I lost like two pounds, like what's going on and, um, it's a, it's a stubborn thing if you need to lose weight, like it is very, like the reason people find it so hard is because of how much change I think to actually induce metabolic change or adaptation is so much harder than people think.

Um, so it's not actually just exercise. So exercise. Is amazing. And I try to talk about this anytime, but like exercise is very beneficial [00:15:00] for all these other, other things. Like we could talk about blood flow. We could talk about mental benefits. We could talk about, um, like the cognitive benefits, like mental health and cognitive.

Like there are all these other reasons that you should exercise, but then there's also the weight loss side of it. Like we're staying in shape, but even to your point of trained versus untrained athletes. I bet if you or I at this point wanted to make a significant change. In our body weight, it would be very, very hard to do so, like, cause I've been at this like 190 pound range for a long time now, if I was like, you know what, I think I'd rather sit at 180.

That, that sounds better to me. I bet that'd be incredibly hard. Like I bet I could get to 180 just because of my knowledge. But then I think just like sticking at one, eight, I think I bet my body would like force hunger signals and like all these things to where I'm like naturally creeping back up to that one 90.

I'd have to get down to one 80 and then maintain that for probably a [00:16:00] year, year and a half before my body's like. You win, we'll stay here like this is it. This is the new change. Um, and the opposite too,

Joe: of like gaining five to 10 pounds. Oh yeah. Gaining muscle is incredibly hard and keeping it low up.

Jerred: Yeah. Um, I actually was just talking about that with some friends last night. Um, cause we were talking about. They were really big into fitness. And I was talking about how I used to always bulk and like do all this stuff. And they were asking like, what's the heaviest you'd been. And I was like, I think I got up to like 210, 215.

And that was in college right before I went to basic training for the, for the military, like, uh, when you're an ROTC, you go to basic training in the middle. Of college. So like after your sophomore year, you go, uh, and, and so I went and, um, I went from, uh, so I wasn't at my heaviest then I think I was at like 205 or something like that, all muscle.

I was just like, All I ever wanted to do was bulk, but somehow I could still run a nine minute mile and a half. Like, it was insane times. Really enjoyed college. But I, I, uh, [00:17:00] I came back from basic at like 172 pounds. Just think about how much my body was like, Thank God you're not force feeding yourself.

And it just shed muscle, water, like everything. I came back and Emily was like, Oh my gosh, like, what happened to you? You look like, Emaciated almost and that that's not long. This is not it's not six months of basic training. It's like 12 weeks or weeks Yeah, I don't know. No, it's it's I think it's 10 weeks.

It's 10 weeks something like that. Um, it's nothing crazy Um, and so that's an insane amount of weight to lose that your body just doesn't want let's let's get out of the hey Your body's uh out to get you like what can you do about something like this? And I just want to help anybody who's trying to lose any weight whatsoever because it's not as complicated as you think You So first thing you need to get away from this mentality of like, I did a really hard workout today.

I deserve anything right? [00:18:00] Like if, if you didn't Murph this morning, it doesn't mean you get to sit around on your couch and do nothing for the rest of the day. You have to. It like in your best attempt, maintain what a normal day would be. And then also train, never make any sort of like concession because you trained because I trained today, I will sit down more or I will not do something else.

Like you can't make those decisions or if you used to go on a walk every day, but you weren't really training and then you start training, you're like, well, I'm not going to do the walk anymore because I'm, I'm exercising in the morning. Again, you're not going to lose weight. You have to be doing more.

And so my best recommendation for people is if you have a step tracker, whether that's a Garmin, uh, I don't know if whoop does it, Apple watch, whatever you need to look at, like your historical baseline for like the last six months. So, for example, let's say every single [00:19:00] day of your life for the last six months, on average, you got 8, 000 steps per day.

I think that's pretty decent for most people, just fairly, whatever, active 8, 000 steps a day. Say that was your average over the last six months. And then you're like, I want to lose weight. I'm going to start an exercise program. You need to do the exercise program. And then you also need to get 8, 000 steps per day or more outside of the exercise program, because I've had really hard workouts, like in gym workouts.

And still finished my day with like 3000 steps before I've done that, like incredibly hard training session, but it's like a strength session. Right. And I feel dead, but then I look at the end of the day and I'm like, how did I get 3000 steps today? That's like nothing. And it's because I was so tired from that workout.

My body did that exact thing. He like compensated subconsciously. I didn't even know I did it, but I started to pay more attention to that. I'm like. No, I, if I do a hard workout, I still need to get like 10, 000 steps. And so I'm actively trying [00:20:00] to get those things. So building a little bit more activity into your day, going on that extra walk that we, we talk about in the EO three elements or doing a pushup grid or like, you know, just adding more activity.

So point being get your baseline. If it's 8, 000 steps per day or last six months, add the training and then never get less than 8, 000 steps. So what you're doing is you're maintaining that baseline that your body wants. has been accustomed to over the last six months, and then you're adding something new.

Now we're adding on top of that. We're not, we're not compensating. We're not saying, okay, big workout. I can take fewer steps. It's no, just as many steps as you've always been taking. Plus the workouts, then the weight loss will probably start to work for you. So long as like the diet and calorie, uh, caloric deficits there.

Your numbers are pretty much spot

Joe: on. I looked at by one, the past year, my daily average is 8, 500. And yesterday was just a regular strength day and I was at home and I only got like 4, 000 steps.

Jerred: Exactly. Yeah. And so I, I, [00:21:00] I pay attention to those things. I try to like, I mean, I don't like, I'm not like at the end of my day, I'm like, Oh, I didn't get 10, 000 steps.

I'm going to walk more. But I am, I am more mindful of those things. Um, and I got my, my oldest son, he got a garment and now he like challenges me, like step. Step goals all the time. So did you know you could do that in Garmin if you have, like, if your friends in Garmin, see again, just please email Garmin, let them know.

But then, um, anyway, you, you can like challenge somebody to a step goal just for that single day, just for like a day. And he'll like normally ask me, he'll be like, are you, are you running tomorrow? I was like, no, tomorrow's a strength day. Then it'll be like. He'll send me a request to, to uh, challenge me a step goal.

But if it's running, he's like, nah, I'm, I'm good. 'cause I'll have 10,000 steps before, before 7:00 AM Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah.

Joe: Yeah. I, I, I, I would challenge you, but like, so like Liz and I, 'cause we've gone on so many hikes or just whenever we travel, we're always like, throughout the day, how [00:22:00] many steps you got, how many steps you got.

'cause just 'cause here's about how much it's counting for the distance that we're walking. And she's always gonna be a thousand, a couple thousand ahead of me. 'cause she's, she's tiny. She's got little, she's got little strides. That's what I tell my

Jerred: son all the time, like this isn't fair. This is like you, you're taking four steps for my, my one step.

Like you can't, it doesn't, it shouldn't count, but I still, I still challenge him anyway. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. So just something to know, because I saw a lot of people were like, yeah, I saw people post about this on show social and everything else, but I feel like the solution is a lot more simple than people thought.

It's not like, oh, exercise doesn't work. There's something wrong with exercise. It's all diet. It has to be all diet. It's like, no. Yeah. I mean, diet's a huge part of it. Yeah. There has to be a caloric deficit. I'm just saying, it's not like, don't let anybody else use this as some sort of scare tactic to think, make you think one way or the other, all that's happening is your body loves being in balance and you have to force it to be out of balance.

For three to six months. And that's where change really comes. And that's where weight loss will happen. So that's a very simple [00:23:00] equation. Um, we've, we've been able to calculate these things for people. Um, but this isn't like not even getting into the weeds of doing all these kinds of calculations or going into and doing, um, uh, uh, calorie calculator, like how many calories you burn a day.

Cause those can be wildly inaccurate. Like we've talked about that over the podcast. So I think putting it down to like. How many steps are you doing? I'm doing 8, 000. Okay. Start working out. Still get 8, 000 steps or more. Now you're actually going to lose some weight. Just don't let any compensation happen.

Joe: Yeah. My takeaway was definitely there's, there's just no free passes. If you want to, you know, even if you want to indulge in something after a really hard day, a really hard workout. Cool. But don't think of it as, Oh, well, you know, I did this hard workout so I can eat this donut. I deserve this donut. No, just if you want it.

No, that it's not that great, but you know, it's going to happen. This coming from like, whenever, listen, I would do, go, go hiking all the weekend and do like a hard hike. We would come down and we'd go out for burgers and like, that was our thing. And like, it w it wasn't like, Oh yeah, I earned this because we just [00:24:00] burned those calories.

It's Hey, I enjoy a burger and we just did something fun. So we're just going to have it anyway.

Jerred: That's what is so funny, man. When I first did a Murph, the very first time I did Murph for a year, I started off the first, I'd say four to six weeks. I'd have a beer right after that Murph, like after Murph. Um, and one beer would turn into like three beers.

I don't really drink anymore, but like back then I did. And it was like, I'm like this, I only did it for about a month. And I'm like, I can't like have three beers after every Murph. Like that's not, that's not gonna work out like long term. But it would just felt like such a reward, right? For like having done such a hard workout.

And then, um That was that was a mistake. But anyway, I corrected that one pretty fast. But another thing, this is another funny like story. I was hanging out these friends and like she actually has, uh, she's a trainer. She's trained lots of people. She trains women primarily. Um, and she was just talking about how some people come [00:25:00] into her training and they have like their, their non negotiables right of like what they won't And one, she started working with this one woman and she was like, well, my non negotiable is wine and nerds.

And she's like, well, like, what are we talking about? She's like, well, two to three glasses of wine and like a giant box of nerd candy every night. And I was like, what are you talking about? Non negotiable. Like, how, how's that? Like, we can't help you. Like if these are like your, your flags, your stake in the ground, that's like, just, you're not going to get what you want.

So like what you're saying about the no free passes, it's like hilarious. People hire coaches and they're like. Okay. I hired you now become a magician. I want to drink three glasses of wine every night and eat a family sized box of nerds, but I still expect to lose weight in four weeks. So that's that, you know, [00:26:00] so it's just, it's crazy what people think.

So listen to what I said, go lose some weight or tell your friends about it.

Joe: Yeah, it actually kind of reminds me of just the other day. I saw and uh, since you are, you read Peter Tia's book, you're kind of a fan of most of what he does. It was somebody quoting, I've never read anything, Peter Tia put out, but, um, it was kind of quoting his nutrition advice and how there was like three different rules or three different Ways to go about it.

And it's either, either, um, restriction calories, restricting your feeding window or restricting what you eat. And I thought that was pretty cool. It was like very simple, but I thought that was pretty cool.

Jerred: Well, then he, yeah, he says either pool always pull one, sometimes pull two. Like if you're, if you're trying to make a change, pull two or three of those levers, so like, and then he said, you should always be pulling one of those levers.

So it's, yeah, it's either calories time. What was the other one? [00:27:00] So like fasting.

Joe: Like, um,

man, you just said him, you know, limiting, limiting what you eat. So taking out certain ingredients or certain types.

Jerred: Um, all right, cool. Well, hopefully that was, that was enough for everybody. Let's, let's move on to the cycle. I want to kind of talk about what we're doing. Um, couple of things. Did you want to start talking about strength?

Joe: Yeah, I got it all already. So strength this one, uh, it just seems like this a lot happens after spring going into summer, it's going to be a lot focused on, um, power and being explosive for the most part. I think it starts off with a little bit of lighter weights and then the accessory with that's going to be, uh, like a lot of cleans, hand cleans, uh, regular, uh, Barbara cleans the other of those movements, but I've also [00:28:00] taken a little bit from this past, um, hard to kill cycle and thrown in some IWT.

So not as much as hard to kill did because this is still strength. So if you were looking for some sort of a transition going from that object, IWT to okay, I want to focus more on strength. They're still going to be, you know, one day of this, um, IWT type, uh, That couplet to where there's a lift and then the two minutes of sort of high, high effort with the longer rest that's going to be a part of it.

And it's only gonna be one and not two. So it's still, well, it's gonna be on two different days because the two main strike days, but it's only gonna be one set of that versus two sets of that, like what hard to kill just done. So I'm looking for a sort of transition from that. That's gonna be the first sort of wave.

And then we go into emails, which yeah. I always have to program it once a year of a wave of straight up emoms of like 20 something minutes of a strength emom that the load progresses as you go through and that's sort of the theme for strength. [00:29:00] That's awesome.

Jerred: Yeah. Uh, so we are starting new cycles just so everybody knows.

And you know, we, we have the hard to kill track. We have the strength track, shred track, and gear track. Um, you can hop on any of these. There's three block, uh, which is like a modified version of hard to kill. Um, but big picture here is, you know, You got to go in knowing what your goal is. Like, do you want to get stronger?

No string strength track. You want to build up a, you're more like functional endurance. Go into your track. You're looking for some body composition, go shred track. If you're looking to be incredibly well rounded, go hard to kill. Um, and I want to talk about a little bit what I'm doing on hard to kill.

And this is my favorite cycle. I've almost done repeats. I've done like, um, I've done versions of it, variations of it, but this comes with a story. So in March, 2018, my daughter was born my third child, and I made a decision. [00:30:00] Um That this is my third kid, right? Like I'm not like, I'm not ignorant to what's about to happen to sleep and everything else.

And like what a kid can do just to your life in general, like for first year. So, and so I was like, you know what, I'm going to be perfect. This cycle, cause she was born right at like, Right at the end of, uh, cycle one for the year, we're going, we're rolling into the second cycle of 2018. And I was like, I am going to hit every training session in, in this program.

And I did. I hit every single training session, um, for that full cycle, even with the newborn and And two other toddlers and no joke in the entire history of my training at garage gym athlete. I have never seen more PRS across all the different domains that we test than this cycle that this post [00:31:00] Eleanor being born cycle.

So I'm just going to call it the Eleanor. That's what this cycle is going to be called. So it is an old one and it is a repeat and we don't ever normally do repeats, but I was really looking at the programming and I was like, sometimes like, you know, you, you want to think that you can make it, you can make it better, you know, it's like, well, I, but like, I was just, I reviewed it all and I was like, yeah, it's a, this is great.

Like, this is exactly what I need it to be. So we're doing that cycle again. Um, and I mean, it's, it's everything that you should expect on the hard to kill track. Be like, if, if people are wondering, Hey, what's the focus? Well, we did like, we had IWTs this last cycle. So, um, and Q2, like the second cycle. And, uh, I mean, it was all good.

Like I, I mean, I absolutely love what we were just coming off of and I'm still doing it right now. Uh, but. It's not as strength focused. And so I'm going to try and balance [00:32:00] that out now. Like I'm always thinking like big picture over the course of the year, there is a lot more of a strength focus on this hard to kill track, not as much as the strength track, but more in hard to kill, like keeping you incredibly, incredibly balanced.

So there's still 50 minute runs. There's still, uh, you know, 30 thirties there's endurance stuff going on in there. But then there's going to be a lot more focused strength days that don't have, um, you know, necessarily an IWT and guess what was programmed back in 2018? Like it's in the first week. I just saw it right.

I was like, I W T there's an I W T and they're like, we've been doing it forever. Um, and so anyway, that's what I'm doing this next cycle. Um, or that's what's being programmed at hard to kill, but I've gotten a lot of feedback on this current cycle that we're just rounding out or just have finished, I guess, as this is published, uh, for the hard to kill track.

So this is more of like a team meeting, a recorded team meeting. Can we take that cycle Joe and [00:33:00] turn it into a program? In the program library, that is that easy to do? Is that something that's like you can do?

Joe: I think so. I remember when we just made the program library, Gregory, it all happened like within a couple of weeks.

And then it was just like, cool, we're good. And that was like six months ago. But yeah, I think now that we have how we have it set up. Um, and everybody's added to having the program library. I think I can just I think I can just add it to whoever has access to all of that. Yeah.

Jerred: I think so long as we go and I don't get too into the weeds on the podcast, but I think if we save it, save the 12 week cycle, then I think it can become in the program library.

So

Joe: the reason I'm saying that it refreshed to 2024, not 2018 layouts is

Jerred: I'm talking about the cycle. We just finished the one we just the IWC cycle. Yeah, the IWT cycle. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's the one that I've been getting all the feedback on. So what I want to do, and this is for everybody [00:34:00] listening, cause I want people to be able to partake in that.

Cause a lot of people like that style of training and I kind of love it too, but it's almost like this isn't exactly what the hard to kill track has been, but a lot of people love it and I kind of love it. So what I want to do is I didn't want to program it again. Maybe I'll look at that for the fourth quarter and like make some changes of like what's happening this cycle with what happened last cycle.

And maybe kind of do some sort of hybrid approach, but I'm just like not sure where I wanna land there yet. I need more time to think through it and, and look at things. So we're gonna take that IWT program and we're gonna put it, the one that we just finished. We're gonna put it in the program library.

So if you are a garage gym athlete, if you didn't know this already, we have a bunch of programs in the program library that you can go access right now. And so you can go in there and you'll, this was one that's gonna launch with a new cycle. So if you're like, I'd rather do that, IWT cycle. You're talking about, you can go do that, but also we're going to be doing this.

Eleanor cycle from 2018 [00:35:00] as a repeat for kind of the third quarter here in, uh, in 2024. So that's now we have to have a name, a name for it.

Joe: The

Jerred: IWT one, um, VO, VO

Joe: two maximum effort.

Jerred: Let me, let me think it through. I can't do this on the fly. I gotta, these things get, they get, they, they have to come to me. I don't want to, I don't want to rush it.

I think something like VO two maximum effort would be a good on Brandand. Yeah. Tentatively. Yeah, tentatively. Um, alright, cool. Uh, I mean, I, I'm not gonna dive into Shred and, and Jira as much because Shred. Um, are you, you already, you're good with that one. Um,

Joe: I mean, so, so even with talking with vd who, who writes, uh, shred, he, it's pretty much, it's always the same sort of goal of, you know, body.

Body composition, uh, with some performance in there. So it, it's sort of, if you're still going to be in the hypertrophy, you're still going to be getting the, the shorter sort of, uh, somewhat intense [00:36:00] muscle taxing circuits, stuff like that. Uh, and deer also is fairly similar. So that's what it normally is, you know, endurance focused.

If you run motor two cycles of endure in the past, it's Marco sort of has a style to how he, how he programmed muscular

Jerred: endurance. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. But I, and a lot of like longer, um, Circuits or some really high intensity like efforts. I will remark on the strength because that's the main thing that he changes cycle to cycle.

It's looking like the start of the cycle. You're gonna be lifting pretty heavy, like 80 85 percent plus. So if you wanted to do some endurance stuff but still get some heavy lifts in, he is doing that.

Jerred: Awesome. Yeah. And so everyone go look at the, uh, the sample programming. Like we'll post it in the community, but also, um, you can, uh, go check this out.

You just go to garagetomathlete. com. We'll put a banner up at the top of the website this week. If you want to go check out the same programming, you can download it. Um, and the main thing [00:37:00] I like for people to know, because getting into the weeds of like, Oh, what, what lifts are we doing? All this stuff.

You can check out the sample programming. If you, if you are that type of person, he's like, I really want to know what's going on, go check out the sample programming, but really, I think you should just think about what are you, what are you trying to accomplish? What do you want to do? I like hard to kill track because it keeps me super well rounded.

If you're like, Hey, I want to get really strong, go strength track. If you're looking for muscular endurance, you have like a, some sort of Spartan race, something like that in your track might be perfect for you. And if body compensation stations, your thing, like, Hey, I'm looking to look a certain way I want to grow some muscle, my biceps need to be bigger, or I want to trim down a little bit, shreds going to be the option.

So that's typically my, my like, uh, overarching advice for everything. Um, on the garage gym athlete, you know, training. Cool. Well, uh, got anything else for you to get out of here, Joe?

Joe: Nope. Um, no. Cycle three, you know, but I got nothing.

Jerred: Well, if you want to be a part of Garage Gym Athlete, go to garagegymathlete.com. Sign [00:38:00] up for a free trial for all of our athletes doing cycle after cycle, staying consistent and seeing results. We really appreciate each and every single one of you. But that's it for this one. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.