What Is The Goldilocks Zone To Exercising?

Hey, Athletes! Want to learn more about the Goldilocks zone for training? Then don't miss out on this week's episode of the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast!  

Episode 124 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!

What Is The Goldilocks Zone To Exercising?

This week the guys are back and eager to dive into the study. The study goes over how much is too much exercise and where the sweet spot is!  The coaches give their takeaways and how to Kill Comfort with this study. This week's topic is titled "where's the line." The coaches talk about when to give yourself some slack vs. when you should hold yourself accountable. For this week’s Meet Yourself Saturday we have Grog Bowl. This one may tax your grip so make sure to listen up for good tips on how to tackle it! 

If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:

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IN THIS 55-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Grog Bowl
• How Much Is Too Much Training?
• Where's the Line?    
• Slack vs. Holding Accountable 
• Goldilocks zone
• Tips For MYS
• Updates and Announcements
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper… 

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you: 

Study of the Week 

• The Goldilocks Zone for Exercise: Not Too Little, Not Too Much

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:

• What Is The Goldilocks Zone To Exercising?

— 

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

Jerred

Transcript: 

Unknown Speaker 0:03
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast Jerred moon here with Kyle Shrum and Joe Courtney, gentlemen, how's it going?

Kyle Shrum 0:12
What's up? What's up?

Joe Courtney 0:14
Fantastic back in the land of the US.

Kyle Shrum 0:19
And it's already having an effect on your accent.

Unknown Speaker 0:23
Yeah, he's back. And he's actually in EO three HQ right now, in the, in the nest, we call it the perch.

Joe Courtney 0:33
I got, I got the top floor corner office. So I'm moving on up in the world.

Unknown Speaker 0:38
With A View no less. Yeah, a dead limb and some, some brush. Alright, well, let's get into it. today. We are covering a study called the Goldilocks zone for exercise, not too little, not too much. This study was done in 2018. And I really think everyone should just go read this. It's it's much more of a scientific paper than it would be a study, I couldn't actually even determine what it was like we do meta analysis, we do systematic reviews. And if I had to guess this would be more along the lines of a systematic review, like it's going over a bunch of other studies that they pulled up. And so it's really, really interesting, big premise here for the study is they they did look at a bunch of observational studies to try and draw conclusions about dosing for exercise. Specifically, they looked at age related stuff, and cardiovascular. And I saw the notes you guys had. So I'll let you pull out a lot of little details, but big picture, they're looking at so many different studies. So if you check out the show notes, you might want to just check out this study in general read it over it reads very easily. And so what they were looking at was really just all these different relations between exercise and you know, the the dosing before you get a problem. And and we all know, if you don't exercise at all, it's going to be a huge issue. And we've talked about this reverse J shaped curve when it comes to specifically upper respiratory infections, that people who don't exercise get sick, you know, a certain amount, and then people who exercise that say the right amount gets sick half as much as sedentary people. And then the people who exercise too much, let's say get sick twice as much as the sedentary individuals. And so this is kind of like looking, it's not looking at that specific study, but it's looking at a lot of those things. And this is going to something more serious than a upper respiratory infection, a lot of these things are looking at cardiac problems. And so arterial fibrillation, like all these different things, like I think you'd have to be like a heart doctor to cardiologist to basically understand all the different things that they're looking at. But a lot of these things are, are pretty serious. And I thought that we should go over it. We've talked about age recently on the podcast, and how when it comes to your metabolic health, there isn't much of a difference. But it turns out, if you're hitting it hard and heavy on the endurance side, after the age of I think I pulled kind of 45 you can have a lot of a lot of different problems. And so we'll get into some of the details. But that's the, you know, the big picture of it is like there, there is a certain amount of exercises that you should probably hit, there's too little, there's too much. And if you just think about your heart as a muscle, if you're operating like in zone four, zone five, for an hour, oh, you know, five days a week, that's just a lot that's like that says you're maxing out that that muscle, right. And so this logically, it makes sense that there would be there'd be a dosing, that's too much. That'd be like, if you wanted to, you know, back squat at 90 to 100% of your one rep max back squat, every single day of the week with really high volume, as many as you could do. Like, you would think that that would be bad for your body at some point. And so it really shouldn't come to surprises people even though, you know, we're basically pulling a study that's like, hey, exercise in the wrong dosing can be bad for you, which is really interesting. But I honestly think more more of our athletes lean this direction. Like we're not podcasting to a bunch of people who are probably sitting around doing nothing, and we're trying to urge them to get off the couch. We probably have more athletes who are in the zone of doing too much and could be detrimental to their heart health. So I'll just throw to you guys like what you think overall about the study.

Joe Courtney 5:01
Yeah. So, again, we're really helping out our older athletes who, it's not time to ask for a little bit more guidance. But I'm going to kind of skip ahead, because one of the things that really, really stuck out to me is, even though you just mentioned that most of our athletes might border on the line of too much, depending on what what they're doing is something extra on top of our programming. But one of the things that the study mentioned is that even though the U shaped curve had people past it, if you do too much, that you'll have all these bad effects of cardiovascular or coronary and all and all that is, on average, 20 times more adults don't do enough, versus doing too much. So. But before we get into, you know, telling people not to do too much, don't don't hear, we're not saying and say oh, maybe I just need to do less, because I'm getting older. No, it's only if you're doing like marathon training above for four to five hours of intense high intensity stuff each week. So it, then that's another point VEDA that this study kind of made was like, yes, you shouldn't do this craziness. But you should still be active all of your life just still be low activity you should still be doing at rest. And that lifelong activity found an increase of six years, at least on your own longevity. So yeah, that's the main, the really the biggest one that I or the interesting thing that I wanted to bring up is that even though we're talking about people doing too much, and overtraining, when you get older, you're still 20 times more likely that adults nowadays aren't even doing enough. But I will pass on the car, because there's a lot of us the takeaways are fairly fairly similar paralleled throughout these different studies.

Kyle Shrum 6:44
Yeah, and they talk a whole lot about just about longevity. And so really, it's, you have to, you have to frame things properly of like, what is the goal here? What is the goal? What are we talking about, right? Or do we want to obviously, we all want to live longer, right, we want to lower our risk of things that could kill us, right. But at the same time, you go through periods of training for for various goals, right? Like, if you have an event coming up, like you do this kind of stuff, right? You do this kind of training. But we're talking about, like doing this kind of training for the long term, over a long period of time there. And that's what they're talking about, as well, they're not talking about people who train for one marathon, right? They're talking about people who train for marathons, multiple marathons a year, for a long period of time for a number of years stacked on top of each other, and especially the effects that that has on your body over time, as you get older. And it's not necessarily just because you're getting older, right? But it's simply because if you've put your it's just like what, what Jared said, if you've put your heart through this much training, and especially this much high intensity training, for a long, long period of time, your heart's just going to wear out, that's just what's going to happen. And so the longer that you go with training like that, the more your risk goes up of things, that that could kill you, and especially kill you. Suddenly, they they talk about, especially for running especially for for cardio longevity improvement plateaus at five to six miles per week. So if you're running five to six miles per week, like the benefits that you have to longevity to literally living longer, they plateau at five to six miles a week. So if you're putting in five to six miles, that's it. That's that's as much as you can do to improve your longevity. Obviously, not talking about any other type of goals, we're talking about that one specific thing, but putting in five to six miles a week. That that's as much as you need to do in order to maximize your longevity. When when it comes to this. They also talk a lot about people who sit too much, right. And I think exactly what what Joe was talking about, I don't think we're really worried about are really talking to people who, who are doing too much, we might have some people in the community that are doing too much, but it's much, much more likely we're going to have people maybe not in the community, people who know other people around the community that that are doing too little and maybe just sitting too much. Even if you're training even if you're following our training on a weekly basis. You may have a job where you're sitting all day. And honestly, even for me as a member of the team here like I work for digital businesses, I work on a computer like basically all the work that I do for my job is on a computer. So if I want to, I could outside of my training, right? I could sit in a chair all day long if I wanted to, you know. So they talk about that as well about like getting up and moving and and how important that is and, and things like that. So anyway, pass it back off to back off to Jared what what are some things you get?

Unknown Speaker 10:02
Yeah, so I mean, just diving in kind of what we, what you guys are hitting on, definitely, there's gonna be way more people who are sitting on grass and not doing enough. And the reason I didn't I didn't cater towards that side is just I don't, you know, there are athletes who are in the community, yeah, they follow our programming, but they do other stuff, you know, I know a lot of athletes who are like that, they, they're plugging in extra aerobic training, and maybe they're getting for race. And I feel like you just have to make this decision at some point of, you have to know that you're chasing performance at the detriment of something like that. And, and that's just the truth of the matter, like, and I've always had these kinds of thoughts, I guess more of a philosophical type view of this performance. stuff is all kind of new. Like, I just finished reading the book, The Perfect mile. Really great book, trying to get the team to read it. It's about very subtly. And it's about the kind of the race to break the four minute mile. Because there are a bunch of guys three specifically that were like, primed to do it. And they, they just kept race after race doing it. But if you look at it, even then in the 50s 1950s, it was like, performance based stuff was like kind of new, like Roger Bannister, who broke the four minute mile was a full time medical student in trained about as much as we do now, as far as timewise. Like, and he broke the four minute mile, you know, he went sub four. And that was just coming online, then that people were like, Oh, well, we could train more, and we could do more. And so we I don't think we've seen how this plays out. You know what I mean? I don't think we've seen how these elite performance based athletes, you know, I'm sure everyone's gonna drop off at some point. But I don't think we we've seen what really happens. And I'm very interested to see exactly what happens over the years. But I also had the the thought of, you know, if you're going from vigorous or let's say sedentary to vigorous exercise, you know, that's, that's one thing that I thought the study may have overlooked. Because if you are haven't exercised in a while, say you're over the age of 45, and you want to run a marathon in the next couple of weeks, I can see that being incredibly stressful on your heart. I know, when I ran a marathon, untrained, like didn't know running and then ran a marathon. My heartbeat felt kind of erratic, you know, especially that night, and the next day, like I guarantee I did something that my heart had to recover from. And again, it makes a lot of sense when you're just looking at your heart as a muscle. But they there's this one little quote from the studies that veteran endurance athletes, meaning they've done a lot of endurance training, have approximately a five fold higher incidence of RTO arterial fibrillation compared with sedentary individuals, despite solid evidence, evidence that a routine of moderate exercise decreases the risk of AF. With excessive strenuous exercise, the AF risk rises dramatically particular for persons older than the age of 45. So they were even looking at not just people who going from sedentary to individual. So again, going back to my original statement of like, I don't think we've seen how all this all shakes out. Like I don't think we know what chasing performance does continuously and I think about this for bodybuilders, too. I think hypertrophy is a very safe way of training. But like when you have like 0% body fat, and you're nothing but like, solid muscle. Like we're you're forcing your body to do something weird, right? Like something unnatural. That is not the natural state for human being. It's impressive, like that dedication and discipline. Don't get me wrong like that those things are impressive. four minute miles are impressive three minute, mile, three mile, you know, whatever those things are impressive. But like, there has to be a cost. In my opinion, this is getting stepping away from the science, I just felt there has to be a cost to all of these things to chasing performance. And the reason I also don't think we've seen it like well, professional athletes, you know, could be the counter argument, like we've kind of seen how some of their career works out but I don't professional athletes aren't the same as

Unknown Speaker 14:31
performance based for like exercise. And I don't just mean CrossFit. I mean like a track and field event, or, you know, running these more mono structural movements. CrossFit would be included in that but, you know, if you take a professional basketball player, they're not the strongest person in the world. They're not that they can't run long distances like they have a skill sets very skilled thing. When you're talking about brute force exercise. I think that there's definitely something that goes goes Along with that, I mean, we did see what happened to what happens to NFL players who bang their head too many times for too many years, right? Like, there's a huge problem with that, too, just these things are not natural for humans to do. And this is kind of putting that in into perspective that it's just like spinach, like spinach is good, right? Like, it's good to have some. But if I were to have, you know, 10 cups of spinach every day of my life, I'll probably end up with some problems, some weird stuff that just wasn't intended because it's not natural for your body to to handle that much. And then I was gonna read some other stuff here, but I want to see Did you guys have anything else that you wanted to cover? Study wise or anything else?

Joe Courtney 15:39
Yeah, some like application wise just for for people. Um, one of the last things that they brought up was that just another part of the study that long term marathon running in men, was associated with increased coronary artery plaque as well. So increasing your black and black is not a good thing to have. But and this thing, talk to some talk about a lot about specifically running because I think it's just one of those main things that older athletes do activity wise and probably easier sample size for for running. But going back to your heart is a muscle, think of it as a muscle and advice for athletes and what they're doing training wise. So this is this was athletes doing six, seven days per week training, that sort of intensity running, but that's any sort of high intensity. So whether it's CrossFit or high intensity interval training, 567 days a week. So even if you're not running, if you're still doing some sort of high intensity training, where your heart rates, you know, 80 plus percent for a while for four to five hours a week, then you probably need to dial it back. And they found that having one to two rest days, compared to the people that only that only had like one, maybe zero rest days per week, had significantly less markers, or were better off longevity and cardiovascular wise and heart health than the ones that didn't. So basically, if you're doing this high intense stuff, you need to have a low intensity, just regular even just active rest days. And because there's one or two rest days, make a huge, huge amount of difference. And, you know, have your strength work. dial back that intensity on all those days.

Kyle Shrum 17:18
Yeah, something I pulled, it was just a just a, quote, one line from the study, but it said from a pure health standpoint, and again, we're talking about the difference, right? Of like, what is your goal? What are you doing here, but from a pure health standpoint, isn't necessary to perform vigorous exercise for more than 40 to 60 minutes at a time. So it's kind of like, it's like, if you're if you're training, because we ask people all the time, right? Like, why do you do this? What's your goal? what's your what's your why for training. And so if you're just doing it to be healthy, if you just want to be a healthy person, and you want to live as long as you can, you want to attenuate as much risk as possible, when it comes to, you know, all cause mortality and things like that. It, it doesn't take a whole lot, it doesn't take a whole lot. It takes intentional movement, takes intentional training. But it doesn't take a whole lot of vigorous activity in in high intensity activity. And I think that's something that we're dealing with in the in the fitness space, is there's a lot of influencers out there and things like that, who are doing some some crazy things, and encouraging people to stay hard and to go harder and to do more and all that. And it's really it's just a pure health standpoint, it's it the science just doesn't just doesn't make that up. You know what I mean? And so that, that's just something that I would say as well, like, understand your goals and understand what you're doing, again, training for performance training for a specific event, things like that. All this changes, this whole conversation changes, right, but just for being a healthy human being in trying to live as long as possible. It doesn't take as much as you think it does. For them to write.

Unknown Speaker 19:05
Yeah, and that's, personally that's where I want to live on the on the upper end of the spectrum. I think probably we all we all do, like I don't, I've never been an excessive exerciser. I've been in some some situations in my life where maybe I just had more free time. So I did more things that would be considered exercise, like in college, you know, like, I probably worked out three times a day in college and it was but like, they weren't like true like workouts is like I had to work out the Air Force for ROTC. I do like some sort of like bodybuilding thing on my own and then I play like racquetball in the evening or whatever, like so that that was a lot of different types of stuff, but not like some sort of obsession with exercise or just a very active person. And they mentioned kind of that kind of that thing in here. Like there's they don't see there was no detriment to like being more physically active. And so I want to make sure that no one gets that it's, it's when you're like pushing your heart to these, like higher levels. for prolonged periods of time, if you if you exercise in your garage or basement or gym or whatever, for an hour a day, and it's fairly vigorous, but then you also have an active job or like, you're out walking the dog or playing with your kids that is of no consequence. And then they point that out in the state is not going to be an issue. So don't look at it like that. It really just is this going too hard. And the, you know, the bottom end here isn't where I want to be like the minimum, I don't what was it 75 minutes per week, or 150 minutes per week for the CDC guideline was one thing that they recommended. I also don't want to be there. Like I don't want to be this minimum of 150 minutes, right? Like, I want to be closer to 300 minutes of exercise. And it seems like beyond that, if you look at some of the other studies, also published by O'Keefe, which was the guy who wrote this one. He has more stuff about, you know, specific, hourly, going too high, like going up to 250 minutes or are 300 minutes, five hours, six hours, seven hours I can and where those become detrimental as well. But when you're looking at professional or just say recreational endurance athletes who also have a job, there's still training like managing to fit in like 15 hours, 20 hours of training. And personally, I'm always at like the five to six hour per week mark, which is about mate probably one day off in about an hour the rest of the time. And most of those days are not vigorous. And you would know that if you follow the program, it's not always like high intensity stuff. But what I wanted to talk like this is really cool most most studies don't put a bow on on the on it at the end, but they did with a little like a little card at the end of the sick physician exercise prescription. So I'll just gonna read all those real fast because I think this this is gonna kind of be my killing comfort takeaway too. Like we can all do our own but I just wanted to kind of like read through these. So you can kind of gauge and plan your own personal fitness around it but the Goldilocks zone for physical activity or physician's exercise prescription. There are a couple of things here. So aim for the CDC physical activity guideline, 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity aerobic exercise, or 75 minutes per week of vigorous intensity aerobic activity. Try to limit doses a vigorous heart pounding sweat producing exercise, to not more than four to five cumulative hours per week, especially for those over 45 years of age. After 30 consecutive minutes spent sitting stand up and move ideally walking briskly for about five minutes consider a standing desk to reduce prolonged sitting. Changing from a completely sedentary lifestyle to one that incorporates even a modest amount of physical activity will confer substantial benefits to mental and physical health. For individuals performing doses of strenuous exercise above recommended levels considered substituting less aerobic li demanding physical exercise such as walking, yoga, stability, exercises, strength training, etc. There appears to be and they kind of our icon already mentioned that there appears to be no concerns about upper threshold for safety when performing leisure time low to moderate intense intensity activities such as walking at a comfortable pace. Housework gardening, basketball or softball, bowling volleyball, golf ball, double tennis, and other Racquet Sports dancing in croquet, take at least one day per week off from vigorous exercise. For very high exercises over 50 years of age consider consideration should be given to some cardiac testing. So going in for CT scanning, and all these other things so I just read all those studies don't normally do that, like I said, put a bow at the end of their study so perfectly. But that was that's basically every takeaway from the study they put. And then in a nice little recap there probably stole all your points too for your personal Kevin comfort things here. But uh, what do you guys have for Ken comfort Mike killing comfort is just kind of follow those guidelines, or just follow our programming, and you should be good to go follow our rest days follow our intensity guidelines and all that stuff. But uh, what do you guys have otherwise,

Joe Courtney 23:58
I think you have every killing comfort that there is on the list. But I, I'd say make sure you're being intentional with your the hours that you dedicate to training. So after your four hours of intensity, make sure those are your intensity hours, but then after that cap, your cap your intensity, and then and then what you're doing for throughout the week. Keep it low intensity, that's when you switch to zone two. And you should be thinking about that in the beginning of the week of Okay. Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, I'm going to be intense for 90 minutes. And then the other days for training, I'm just going to do some strength. I'm just going to do some zone two, but I'm not going to be intense every day consecutive each day. So be intentional with your intensity and then having to have some low intensity in between those intensities.

Kyle Shrum 24:46
So yeah, my killing comfort was one of those points. It was the after 30 minutes of sitting to stand up and move. So definitely do that one. We'll double tap that one. But I would also say I think Something that that you can do sometimes is follow the shiny object, right, I think it can get, can get easy to follow that shiny object, especially when you have people on social media or something like that, like telling you to, to work harder to do more, like, you know, like, like, stay hard, all those those kinds of things and, and be more intense. And so I would just say, it can be, it can be easy to do that and to bounce around to different ideas and try to implement a bunch of different things. So I would say, Kill Cover by staying the course, stay with one thing, and focus on one thing and be okay with that one thing being your thing, right? of knowing why you train and having your goal for training, and not letting other things come in and distract you from what it is that you're doing. Because there are a lot of people out there who are trying to prop up this idea of like, we all need to be harder, and we need to work harder and be more intense and those things and like, actually, you don't like especially just to be healthy, just to be a healthy person. You don't have to do those things. That you you do need to have a goal. And you do need to be purposeful with it. And so pick your goal and stick with it. That's what I would say.

Unknown Speaker 26:16
And I think this segues very nicely into today's topic, because there is a definite like, line here of okay, well, I don't think any of us would be here, if we were interested in just walking three days a week and calling it good. No, you're not going to look how you want. And that's kind of the that's kind of the difference there is like a lot of people do exercise because they want to look look a certain way. Like Let's not lie like that. That's truth. It's true for almost everyone involved in fitness. Even if you're not, if you're in it for more performance, you still wouldn't be happy if you have this high level performance, but you look obese, like so wouldn't be a cool thing. And so we don't want to be on that end of the spectrum where we're okay with walking. And so, this the topic today is where's the line? We've covered this before for episode 53. But when you should cut yourself some slack when it's okay to kind of take things to the back burner. Or when do you need to be a little bit harder on yourself and hold that line maintain some sort of level? discipline or standard. And where is that because it's a there is a lot like Kyle's talking about one extreme. He specifically calling out Dave, David Goggins. Let's not pretend like he's not, he's keep saying stay hard over and over again. That's like David Goggins. Like, no one else says that, but him. So Kyle is is straight up a little bit scared to call him out directly, so I'll do it for him. He's saying David Goggins is a little too hardcore. And a bit ridiculous. And we're not necessarily saying you need to only walk and be healthy, we're kind of in the middle between those two of like, you know, where's the standard. And I think that's kind of where this line comes from. Because the only reason I don't like talking about these topics sometimes is because I don't want us to sound too soft, because I don't feel like any of us truly are, like, we're all super consistent. And I think that takes a level of tenacity and discipline that most people don't have. It's just that daily over decades mentality, as opposed to a daily intensity. We're more like, Yeah, let's do this every day. For several decades, let's exercise, you know, for the next 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, whatever it is, that's kind of more our mentality, which is still really hard to me is one of the harder maybe the hardest thing to do from a mental toughness standpoint. But these other people are pushing more, let's be as hard as we can today. Let's do the hardest thing we can to do today. And so you have to you have to like know where this line is for you. So let's talk about where the line is when you should be hard on yourself when it's okay to cut yourself some slack. You know, let's kick it off with you. Joe, what do you think on this topic?

Joe Courtney 28:59
So you always have to keep your goal in mind but I think you're I think what I would like to do is thinking thinking back like thinking macro wise and your how you how you just came from for training. So three different types of phases are like okay, how would I do this week? How to do this past month how to do this past cycle and if you've dropped down to like maybe two training sessions you haven't been that intense this weekend past week. Okay, well, we like the week or the month before that. What about the cycle before that if you were hitting your five days a week up until the last two weeks, then it's fine to cut yourself some slack because it could you could be moving you could be traveling you could be sick, something like that. It happens you know, we just had Dr. Morsi on and he was like he was doing BCD and all doing all this training and doing great and then he got COVID and sick and he was basically grounded and couldn't do anything. So yes, cut yourself some slack there. And and like Kyle will have you think indicate vacations this year. And each time I went, I would only train for like once, maybe twice while I was gone, or I was doing something active, but I wasn't hitting training sessions. But you know, just two weeks ago, I was still able to hit by my back squat goal. And it's because like, Okay, I knew I could cut myself some slack this week or that week. But if you look back for the entire month or cycle, you're still hitting your five days, you're still hitting whatever your your process goal is, on from a macro view. Now, this is a habit that you're seems to be inquiring over like acquiring of about a month, and you're starting to go down to two or three days, and you're just going through the motions, then you may need to look at things. Okay, why are you slacking? Why is this happening? What do you need to change to get back to where you were process wise. So that's why it's good to look at process goals and have your, you know, training sessions or you know, what the study was talking about three or four intense hours a week, and then some low intense ones per week, you track those and think about those, look at it from afar. And if it's not a trend, then I think you're fine and take into account for what you're doing now. But if it looks like you've been doing it for several weeks, or a month or two, it's developing a trend, then you need to figure out, okay, why is this trend happening? How can I get back on course, to where I was previously, whether it's a training, shift, a goal shift, a mindset shift, you know, maybe it's, maybe you have a goal that you are getting burnt out on, or you might get discouraged from it, because it's unattainable. So you're just like, well, what's the point anymore, so maybe you need to change your goal. If you're starting to, you know, the slacking has been more more long term and habitual. So that's what I would say is look at your process across three phases, and see how they compare to one another and see if it is a trend and adjust or don't from there.

Kyle Shrum 31:55
So I would say, take a more macro view, and look at this as values versus goals. So what I mean by that is, when you look at something as a value that you hold, it's something that you it's part of your identity, it's who you are. So you look at this as, for instance, you look at this, as I'm a healthy person, this is what healthy people do. Healthy people train, healthy people have a program, healthy people eat, you know, eat a good, well balanced diet of whole foods, like healthy people. This is what healthy people do. And I'm a healthy person. So that's why I do this. And you can build goals. Within that that frame, especially like we talked about, actually, we just had some of our, some of our athletes go and run a Spartan Race Together this weekend, this past weekend. And we've had that we've done that as a team and you know, people do that kind of stuff all the time. And people do events on their own, you know, all the time or, or likely Joe Joe had a big back squat that he was chasing any hit it you know, and we had BCT had an entire year with an entire specific program, you know, Jason, specific goals and things like that you can build goals out, within within that structure. But to me, it's more about taking a macro view of this is this is who I am. And so this is what I do. And so to me, that's what helps me with making sure that I'm hitting my training and things like that I do have goals within that, you know, things that I want to do. But mostly the thing that keeps me coming back. And if I do wind up having some inconsistency or something like that, then I just look at it as I'm a healthy person, this is what healthy people do. And I want to be a healthy person for the rest of my life, you know, and I want to live for a long time. And just kind of going back to what we talked about with the study, right? Talking about longevity. But also with values is something that you can pass on more easily to other people, right? Especially like, Hannah is now on the pro and has been for a while but like this is something that Hannah and I share together now as as a couple. And it's something that we're now passing down to our kids as well. Like, this is a family value of ours. It's not just we have goals that we want to meet with our training inside. We're healthy people and we take care of our bodies, and we take our health very seriously. And this is what people who do that do. And so, to me, that's where it's all this macro level of this is what healthy people do and all the rest of this is wrapped into that. And so if you get to a point where well I was sick and I didn't train, that's okay. Healthy People get sick sometimes. So you didn't train do better, you know, do something tomorrow. You know what I mean? Take it taking take another day and do something better. You know what I mean? It's just what happens but it's all wrapped up in this values versus goals.

Unknown Speaker 34:48
Yeah, so I'm actually don't really like the the idea of giving yourself slack. Actually, I really struggle with that mentality anytime it comes up. Because I just, it's a slippery slope. You know, it really is, I think you when you lack discipline, almost anywhere, it is honestly like a disease. And that's why I wrote killing comfort, because it is the slowest creeping cancer out there, like you think that I'm just going to kind of like, I'm just going to not give it my all here, but I'm going to give it my all in other areas. And then then you start to slip and this like it just, it slowly degrades your life. So when we talking about this specific Lincoln, when when should you be able to cut yourself some slack? My answer is almost never. It's you shouldn't. But you should have a standard. And this is similar to what Kyle's saying. But just a little bit different in my own words, because I talk about this all the time of people having a standard. Once you kind of set your standard for yourself, that's where you should be good to go. Because if you a standard is not perfection, a standard is a standard. So if we look at like a PT test in the military, there's the minimum standard, and then there's the maximum. So like for the Air Force, last I checked, like the mile and a half run was our real big test. And I think the best you could possibly do is like, like close to nine minutes. And, you know, maybe maybe 905 or 908, or something like that. And the worst you could do depending on age, this is all age dependent was like I don't know, and a 13 and a half or even 14 minutes, something like that. numbers don't matter. But there's a standard, right where the Air Force is still like, Yeah, whatever, you're good, you didn't max out the standard, but you also you weren't, you're not below the standard. And so that's what I mean, when I talk about standard, I'm not talking about perfection, I'm talking about a range. So if you set a standard for yourself of, I'm going to train four days per week, that's that that's the standard. So some days, you might some weeks, you might hit six, that's awesome. You weren't above the standard. But when you do three, you're now going below your standard. Or maybe your standard is three, but you need to set that standard for yourself. I really feel like in every area of your life, or else complacency, comfort, these things will sneak into your life if you're not careful. And so taking the time to actually think about what your standard is in different areas of your life. I shared this exercise on social media, I do this a lot with people, individual coaching, whether that's fitness coaching, business coaching, whatever, and I call it building Superman. And it's where you sit down, shouldn't take more than five to 10 minutes, you pick the area of your life. And you're essentially kind of writing a job description for whatever it is. And for me, like an example I like to use that really resonates with other people is just like being a father. Okay, so if I if I die today, but in the only thing I'm allowed to do is write down a job description for who will replace me tomorrow, like this, let's just say that's how the world worked. Emily would get a new husband, my kids would get a new dad. And I had to write out the standard for what this guy had. Like he had to live up to these standards, right? A certain level of like, this is how he loves his kids. This is how much time he spends with people. So on and or with, with kids with the wife like all these things, I have to write out the standards almost like a job description that I'm writing. Now, luckily, and most likely, I won't die today. And so but I have that standard written out, right. So now my only job is to live up to the standard I would expect if someone else in the same position. And when you look at a standard for yourself as someone else is going to come do it. You're normally a little bit tougher. You we already cut ourselves some slack. But when you're like you need to come in and do this. We're like, oh, well, shit, you need to be perfect. You need to do this three times a week, this five days like, and that's what I like for like, the biggest revealing moment for people is like, if you were to hire this out, here's where your expectations would be. Just so you know. And you're not even living up to the expectations you would have if you were to hire this job out. Because I also like to do it in actual jobs. Like I do this for being the CEO of a company. If I were to replace myself, what would my expectations be? And if I'm like, Okay, well, Dan, that's a lot to expect of a person can I live up to that standard? If not, do I need to lower the standard? And so it really puts you in this like super, you know, clear mindset of having, you know what you can and cannot do?

Unknown Speaker 39:44
So I just want everyone to kind of think about that. And if we're bringing that down to fitness, you know, it really goes in line with what Kyle saying about how you know value like what do you let's just say as an athlete as a person who participates in fitness or maybe As a human being, what's your standard? If someone were to come replace you, in the fitness part of your life fitness and health? What would what would your job description be? And could you honestly hold the person to that? Or would you have to either lower your standard and now you have this range of what's expected, you know, and a realistic expectation for yourself. And so I think going through that, that exercise, building your own standards, that's why I really like in chocolate all the time, the garage mathlete standards, we have these standards. But then after you kind of get there, it's just trying to stay there. Like if you get to, and that doesn't mean getting to competitor, you don't have to be a competitor, like you just say a lot of people going for fully established, if you're fully established, then it's more or less just staying there. And that could be a game for the rest of your life, like even staying competitor, or establish that those could be games for the rest of your life just trying to maintain that. But we're not trying to do anything else, right, we're not trying to go for perfection, there's no like, there's no more, there's only, this is what I should maintain, I should always be able to run a mile this fast. You know, like having that standard, I think is is phenomenal. And then other than that, the only slack you should allow yourself is within the standard. There's no further slack, you should be hard on yourself, if you say my minimum is three days per week, and you do two days a week for four weeks, you're below the standard. be hard on yourself. Start some negative self talk, whatever the hell you have to do to get yourself back into it. Because this is where I think this giving yourself grades and all this other crap. It gets a little out of control, because it's too much like, Yeah, we all got shit going on. But it's getting things done, when we have all that other stuff going on, that makes you mentally tough that builds you into the person, you want to be not constantly saying, Well, I had this thing going on, it's okay. Just, you know, give yourself a little slack know, if the standard, if you have the standard, you stick to the standard, there's no not sticking to the standard. So that doesn't mean like if you're if you're going through something tough, cool, go, go walk for 30 minutes, you got your training session done for the day, you can, that you can lower the intensity, right, you don't have to do something perfect. You don't have to maintain the programming, you don't have to be training for an event. But you have to have a minimum standard of consistency, minimum standard in your diet, minimum standard of how you're going to perform and your job minimum standard of how you're going to perform as a father and as a husband and all these things, I think you should have this minimum maximum standard. So that's kind of where I land land on, on all this stuff with cutting yourself some slack when you shouldn't shouldn't. Anybody else,

Joe Courtney 42:37
not just thinking about when you were saying? How would you have somebody else's standards viewer to program for them, or we're giving them their role? Now we're thinking about being on strength on how I program for the people, but I'm on strength, so I have to do it too. And I'm just like, Man, I hate myself sometimes. But I programmed this for other people, and they're going to do it. So I'm definitely going to do it too.

Unknown Speaker 43:05
Yeah, and that's, that's huge. I think in in a lot of this, like me being on hard to kill now is just like, I'm always thinking of that, because people joke around, like I never programmed to myself, like maybe inadvertently with equipment at times big I don't have that thing. So like we like, that could be a subconscious mistake when I'm programming but I'm never like, you know, here's what would be my favorite thing to do. Because to be honest, it might be harder than it's even programmed. If I were to just program for myself knowing I'm the only who follows it, I might be a little bit more like, Yeah, let's see if see if I can break myself here. You know, I have that I have that in me, I have that tendency. But when I know a lot of other people are following same program, I want to keep them safe. I want to keep them healthy want to keep them optimal. And so yeah, I, I keep myself to that standard, and, you know, expect everyone to do the same. But we can, we can kind of move on here, hold the line. Now we're going to talk about a whole mixture of Miss Kalyan brief or the workout or who whose brief in the workout think just

Kyle Shrum 44:07
yet at this time.

Joe Courtney 44:09
So Godbole is a military thing if you know then you know there is I don't know if there's explained in the brief video but grumble so there's a lot going on this was a summation of you know, all the team kind of put their own two cents in starts off with a if you have a bike, a one and a half mile ride or a 1200 year row or run after that you will put on a weight vest then you will pick up a single plate. So single plate pinch for 400 meters. And when you set if and when you set that plate down or or switch hands, you will do 20 air squat penalty. Now you don't have to hold the plate during your squat penalty. But anytime you switch hands, set it down whatever rest you will do a 20 year squat penalty during that foreigner meters Once you get back, you will do the rep scheme is 10 987 all the way down to one. So like a reverse pyramid, single kettlebell deadlift and a lateral box step ups each side on those reps. Then you will do a suitcase carry for 50 meters after each set of deadlifts with using your kettlebell. So single to kind of a deadlift 50 meters, each set after each set of deadlifts and then you'll do your lateral box step ups. Then you'll do another foreigner meter, single plate bench carry same 20 air squat penalty for when you switch a rest. Then you can take your vest off if you're wearing a vest and then same thing of a mile and a half bike ride or 1200 meter row or run so essentially, it's a the same two things. Buy in and cash out with that 1010 987 All the way down to one circuit in the middle. Did you catch all that? I will try out a YouTube video. Yeah. Oh, the YouTube video on all to try and put it up on this podcast on the screen. So if you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see the description somewhere.

Kyle Shrum 46:14
Yeah, I LFO we all did that I'll participate in and people who aren't watching on YouTube have no idea what I'm saying no. All right. My one tip, I'm only going to give one and you can judge whether it's useful or not. My one tip is chalk up. The this one takes a lot of grip a lot of grip strength, especially for those 400 meter carries. That's a single plate pinch with one hand V switch hands you got to do you got to pay the penalty. So I would say chocolate you're going to be using your group quite a bit for this one.

Unknown Speaker 46:55
I don't know if I have a lot of tips for this one. This is one of those where I just want to say go fast. Like I don't know if I have like a cuz you're Yeah, you need good form. Yeah, you're the plate pinch carry. We kind of talked about being strategic with that time because when grip goes it goes and it's gone. It's not coming back without several hours rest or maybe even a day. So that's the thing. That's kind of like that. The iron mile it's like avviso down at first time. You're gonna keep sending down a lot. Yeah, you know and so if you're a little bit more strategic about especially if you've never done the workout before being a little more strategic I want to stop no matter what every 100 meters on this specifically or 50 meters or something be more strategic in nature even though there's that penalty which there's no real such thing as a penalty and fitness. It's all good for you and it's just squats so whatever you know, you just you just go for it. So that's about all I have. But if I would say go fast somewhere. When you're doing single kettlebell deadlifts and lateral box step up I prefer quality over speed on those two movements specifically. So I would say go hard on the buy in and cash out so the 1.5 mile or the 200 meters this is where my go fast advice comes into play. So just go fast, like what do you what are you saving yourself for like you're you you're gonna be fine, you know, just go fast. Because you don't need a lot of lungs to do single plate pinch carries or deadlifts or a lot or box step ups that this is the aerobic portion of the workout mainly and in a large part so just go hard on them and see where you end up.

Joe Courtney 48:41
Yeah, there's a like you said there's a lot of tips on this one. If you have to sub for the plates for some reason, for if you're gonna use a kettlebell, you don't have to like go with the heaviest kettlebell that you own because kettlebells are way easier to carry than a plate pinch. And yeah, make sure your box is not too high. Because you don't want to get a position on those I always like to say this in the briefs that when I do them because just be should be pulling with your top leg not pushing off your robot part of your bottom leg but I don't really have a lot of tips either it's just this kind of it's kind of a different very different one little bit of fun it's not just it's not it's not the most simple as a lot of ours are but it will still be very hard especially those those play ping carries Yeah, and do your squats fast if you get to that point. If you are whenever you have to do a switch or rest

Kyle Shrum 49:39
Yeah, I want to see the person who does the whole thing with no air squats in the during the plate pinches

Unknown Speaker 49:45
downs except to do it. I don't know if I can

Kyle Shrum 49:53
it's the same Yeah, no,

Joe Courtney 49:55
no change plates as in like, oh yeah.

Unknown Speaker 50:01
Yes, a paper way down the road.

Kyle Shrum 50:04
This is the hard one for me because like I have like, the the bumpers, like I have. It's either a 25 pound bumper for me or it's a 45 pound steel plate, you know, I mean, and so that's the that's what I'm, I'm working

Joe Courtney 50:19
on. steel plates are definitely easier to carry than the bumpers.

Kyle Shrum 50:24
Yeah. Yeah. But 20 pounds heavier on one hand. You know? That's the That's what you do it like that's the choice. Right? Which, which one are you going to do?

Unknown Speaker 50:38
So for Kyle, do what you're everyone's harder. Pick that one. It will be probably the fatter plate to be honest.

Joe Courtney 50:46
Good time to study fives. Kyle?

Kyle Shrum 50:49
No, no. 30 fives are useless.

Joe Courtney 50:54
Oh, no, this is a pretty good in between if you're just eating like a really fat bumpers because 45 really fat bumpers are like, terrible. But then 20 fives might just be too easy. So I might allow 30 fives here. I think that'd be

Kyle Shrum 51:06
the 30 fives would still be the steel plate. So it's a steel plate 35.

Unknown Speaker 51:14
Oh, well, at the best of all worlds there. Alright, so good luck on grog bow, everyone. And hopefully, we've laid out some good advice for when it's okay to back off on this rope exercise is over the age of 45. You gotta you got to be careful, you got to look at all these things. Like I said, everything. Everything matters to some degree, and you need to pay attention to how to do it. The dosing for it for everything is very important. And we don't look at that enough. I think Americans specifically have a tendency of the more is better mentality. And that's not always the case. And so be mindful that really I think everyone should go read this study if you are at all curious. I mean, heart health, is it number two or one, I think cancer, cancer and heart health, you know, heart disease are the two big killers right? over everything else on the planet. And so if you're serious about your heart health, I would dive into the study and look at a little bit more. Like, if you're kind of following our training already, then you're going to be good to go. And for those of you who are following the training, you know, thank you so much getting those green dots, you're holding yourself to a standard. And you're supporting the community. And we really appreciate it. And so thank you so much for being a part of everything that we have going on. If you have made it this far in the podcast, definitely go sign up for a 14 day free trial, try out the the programming and you know, sometimes people try it out. And then they're like, well, this isn't for me. And normally my answer is okay, well, I mean, it's built for it's built for humans, it to be optimal. So if it's not for you, then I understand that being an optimal human being might just not be for you, which is a weird thing. So you can try it out and not do it. But I mean, you are really saying you don't want to be an optimal human being for the rest of your life. Now, come on, if you try it out, you're going to stick around is my point. And so you can come try it out for two weeks, we do have a free trial, maybe some things aren't for you. But ultimately, I think it's all going to be for you and you're really going to like it. So sign up for that free trial. And, you know, see, see how you do like things. And then if you're listening and you haven't been getting uncomfortable at all, I want to urge you to do that. We talk every time we do a talk about a book review, we talked about how it's not important to just read the book, it's important to take something away and implement that from the book. Even if it's a small thing, big thing doesn't matter. And I want to urge everyone listening to do that. With a podcast, whatever we're talking about, like just see how you can implement that's why we added the whole killing combo how to kill comfort with this thing. Kyle's killing comfort is fairly simple. I read off 100 of them, because like, hey, how would you get off your ass and stand up? You know, how would you stand up a little bit more? And I agree with that. Like just try implementing something this week and see how it goes. See how you feel after doing that? Take some action because if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai