When You and Your Partner Have Different Goals | ETP#115

[Aaron Straker]: 0:27

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today, Brian and myself are going to be discussing when you and your partner have different goals. This was a question that came in, I believe to Brian specifically, and we thought it would be great to have the explode out and do an episode, because Brian and I have, I will say Brian has a spouse, I have a long-term partner, that our goals don't always align, and it's an interesting part of the relationship dynamic. And we are fortunate, I would say, that we happen to navigate it quite well. And I think we have some interesting insight that we can provide to the listeners on this. Before we jump into today's topic, as always, Brian, kick us off with some updates, please.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:09

Yeah, I think at least our first update here is definitely going to be about some of the training we were able to do while you were here in town. So as I understand it, you're back in Virginia right now, but you spent about seven to 10 days or so in the Denver area. And I know you got to train at a number of different gyms, which is super cool, including Armbrust. I've been there before. So excited to hear about that experience. But before we jump into that, let's Let's recap our awesome experience at the gym at Prospect. So essentially, when Aaron arrived in Denver, one of his kind of dreams or wishes was to be able to make it to the gym at Prospect, which is a gym in Longmont, Colorado, just outside Boulder. And it's actually the place where N1 Education was housed as their headquarters during the pandemic and before the pandemic. when, before CAS actually opened up the N1 HQ that we all know and see on the internet right now. And so yeah, we had an opportunity to go to the gym and we got to train with the owner of the gym, Dan Greenbaum. He's also a big N1 supporter and uses N1 protocol for most of his clients. And then Aaron was there, his girlfriend Jenny was there. and my business associate, Laura Savino from Paragon, also came and trained with us. So we had a really cool group and went through a back and hamstring session. So I'll let you jump in with any thoughts and we can take it from there.

[Aaron Straker]: 2:53

No, it was it was a really cool day right to I haven't seen Dan in about two years Ironically Dan was in my and one practical and I had in I had stumbled upon that gym like years ago and when Jenny and I spent a few months in in in Denver We were just like driving around because we were contemplating like hey Maybe we'll go look at some suburbs to see if we like want to move here sort of thing and we just like showed up at that gym randomly like oh that's an interesting place to have a gym because it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. Didn't really think anything of it and then like lo and behold meet Dan at the practical like oh you run this gym that I happen to like stumble upon and it's a very very well outfitted gym like full of a full prime kit. The Atlantis you know hack squat pro like it's just done really really well. Dan's done an amazing job you know hand selecting equipment there and It's just really, really cool to find some of these gyms and talk with the owners and stuff of their approaches and putting it together and then having the opportunity to actually lift with Dan and yourself and Laura as well. It was just a really, really fun day.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 4:06

Yeah, totally. So we had to kind of all curate our training a little bit and change a little bit of our split approach in the days preceding it so that we could all have hamstrings and back be the thing that was next up on our program. So usually I would have back with upper body pressing, so it would be like a full torso day. And I know you had back on its own day, maybe with biceps, a pull day, right?

[Aaron Straker]: 4:36

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 4:36

Yeah, and then Laura has upper lower days. So everybody had to kind of maneuver things around a little bit and create this cool day where we had the opportunity to do this. So each of five movements that we did, starting with hamstrings, we went lying leg curl, 45 degree hip extension and RDL. And then we did two different movements for back. We did a rear delt style pull down. and at the prime handles. And then we went over to the prime row machine, which was kind of the thing you coveted the most and the reason you wanted to come to this gym in the first place. This really cool prime row where you can adjust the height of the seat, obviously, as you can with any machine, but it also has a chest pad that adjusts. So you can make it like, you know, you can lean back more, you can shift the chest pad forward. So you're kind of in more like back flexion to help you target the lats a little bit better. And on pretty much every movement except RDL, we did one set to basically concentric failure at the short position. And then we did one set that was either, if it was a prime piece of equipment, we would just set it lengthened or mid lengthened and do a set to concentric failure there, maybe with a partial or two. And then on movements that were conducive to it, like the rear delt pull down uh, don't have the prime machine and the ability to like overload the length and position per se. We did our, our one concentric or our set to concentric failure. And then the second set we did kind of my length and sets as, as I call them, where you add about 20% weight to the weight that you did prior and you try to match the reps. So as an example, if you did 10 reps on the first set with 200 pounds, then you would essentially go to 240 pounds for the second set. and you would get 10 reps again, understanding that obviously you would get maybe three to four full reps and finish the last six or seven reps with partials. So was that your first time trying that exact style of lengthened sets? Have you done that before? What were your thoughts on it?

[Aaron Straker]: 6:54

I've, in the capacity that we did them on Thursday or Wednesday or whatever day it was, like yes. There's some like back movements that I will add like one length and set after I do like my two, my top set back off and then I'll like jump back up to above the top set weight to do some length and partials. But in the capacity, how we did them like kind of across the day, yes.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 7:19

What'd you think?

[Aaron Straker]: 7:21

I mean, I liked it.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 7:22

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 7:23

I think if I was, for me, like the hamstrings were kind of smoked off of what we did there. And I think, however, like my back personally, I felt like I could have used a little bit more back volume. And some of that's just my ability to create a stimulus there, like not as well as you could, which I think was highlighted by the fact that on that upper back. pull down, you did like four weight stacks more than I did,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 7:55

Hehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 7:56

which was really, really wild. But it was, I mean, it was a great day. I loved, I loved just showing up and like turning my brain off and like Brian steering the ship, I'm just lifting sort of thing. So I did really, really enjoy that.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 8:10

No, I love that, man. That's awesome. That's good feedback. I'm glad that we were able to do that too. And yeah, it's kind of funny looking at the spectrum of kind of our strength output across different movements in that you were like five reps better than me at the same weight on the leg curl. I couldn't believe it. I got like 10 reps and then Aaron went and got 15 of them. It was insane. And then we were pretty similar. I think you were slightly stronger on the 45 degree hip extension. And then we were the same on the RDL. And then I was load stronger on the rear delt

[Aaron Straker]: 8:42

loads.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 8:42

pull down. And then I think we were again about the same on the lat prime row. So it was cool. We had like a really solid kind of mix of strength there. And Dan was like really close to me on pretty much everything. I would say Dan and I are quite equivalent across the board. It'd be interesting for us all to do a workout of like quads and upper body pressing and kind of see how that plays out with like the anterior side of the body versus the posterior.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:09

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 9:09

Um, but, uh, I will say I got a ton of comments in my DMS about how large you're looking. So I figured you would be pretty happy about that. But there's that one picture of us and everyone was like, dude, you're looking good, but what in the fuck is going on with Aaron?

[Aaron Straker]: 9:30

I'm just, I'm big right now. Just, yeah,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 9:32

Yeah, he's bonked up, man.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:34

I actually, on that, I, today, this morning, May 16th, I have my highest weigh-in. I beat it by 0.1 pounds. So I was 211.1 today. And it took me 23 days since the last time I was 211. So it's been not

[Bryan Boorstein]: 9:51

Dan.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:52

the most productive, like, past almost three weeks, to be completely honest.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 9:57

Well, you are not good at, like, your natural inclination when left to your own volition is to lose weight, at least

[Aaron Straker]: 10:03

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 10:03

if you're bulked up. Like, you

[Aaron Straker]: 10:05

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 10:05

have to really force yourself to continue gaining, whereas I think I am generally the opposite, where if left to my own volition, I will probably gain weight, or at least, you know, maintain on that side of the spectrum. You really have to work to keep that weight climbing up at this point.

[Aaron Straker]: 10:22

Yeah, I've been really relative to today's topic. I've been having some conversations with Jenny about it because I've been frustrated since being back. I don't like wasting time. I don't like feeling like I'm wasting time and I don't like not achieving my goals and stuff. And I have a coach right now and I've been submitting what I would consider shitty check-ins and it's frustrating. And for me, there's kind of two parts to this. One, I came to the conclusion, unless I bully, our travel situations, when I am in this gaining periodization, it's not going to happen. It was nice having that conversation because she's like, I'm fine with you bullying them. It's like, okay, we get off the flight, we land, we go right to the grocery store sort of thing. I get what I need, but I can't just chipotle and we go out to dinner sort of my way through. It just doesn't work. It's not enough frequency unless I'm going to eat garbage foods just to get calories in which... at where I'm at, it doesn't really work that way. So that's the first part. And then the second is like, this is more of like a longer term thing, but I'm really overeating food, to be completely honest. Like I was, we were talking about like, Jenny was like excited to meal prep and stuff. And I was just like, I'm just over it. Like the past like 15 years of my life, like I've eaten so much food and it's been like a constant. And I think that's why I kind of almost like dieting because I just don't

[Bryan Boorstein]: 11:52

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 11:52

have to eat as much. I'm a little bit burnt out. I'm literally just eating fucking food all the time.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:00

Mm-hmm So have you talked to Jackson about that you guys have a plan on you know cutting this this bulk here so shortly

[Aaron Straker]: 12:06

No, I mean, not really. I'm committed to it. And I think what's been really nice is I have someone I've taken a really new liking towards he's someone I'm not. I've only been recently kind of familiar with him is I mean, I'm probably gonna botch his name, Jeffrey Joffrey, Verity, Sheffield,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:25

Scofield.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:25

Sheffield,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:26

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:26

Sheffield,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:26

Scofield. Scofield.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:28

Schofield. Okay, yeah. I was like, fuck man, all three of these names, I feel like I could fuck up. He's just like, he was like, hey, I'm gonna get a little bit overweight. He pushed his bulk to like low 220s. We did a little bit sloppy sort of thing. But now the dude is large at like 194, 195.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:51

Yeah. He

[Aaron Straker]: 12:52

So

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:52

looks

[Aaron Straker]: 12:52

he's

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:53

insane.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:53

like.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:53

I've been talking to Abel and Dave about it. And he's starting to resemble like somebody that might be on a little bit of gear, even though I'm like 99.9% sure that he's not. He just, he just like, he has the delts and the arm separation thing that like you look for and you're like, Oh, that, that looks interesting.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:13

Yeah, he's someone that has really kind of grown on me because he just like marches to the beat of his own drum, right? He's like, I'm not tracking my food. I don't know what my macros are. I'm training everything to failure and past failure and stuff. But at the end of the day, it's hard to argue with results. And he has loads of them right now. And then I've definitely been enjoying like watching his showcase on his stories and Instagram and stuff.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 13:41

Yeah, dude. No, I agree completely. He's actually showing up all over a lot of conversations I've been having recently. So that's, that's interesting.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:50

Rightfully so,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 13:51

So

[Aaron Straker]: 13:51

yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 13:53

yeah, yeah, totally well-deserved, right? So I guess moving on to additional updates here. One thing that's been super cool throughout the last few months specifically, and then the last, you know, seven, eight, nine months since I started doing all this cardio is that I'm still seeing strength progressions in the gym on movements that I've had in my program for really long periods of time. And so the one I just want to really quickly discuss here today is the hack press sled. I guess you would call it like a compact leg sled that I have at home. And so it's like at the end of my last messo. I'm doing these with like a three second pause at the bottom and I hit a 540 for two sets of six with a three second pause at the bottom. And the last set, the first set was like a one RIR and the second set was, it was zero. I almost got stuck in the middle of the range of motion. This was six or seven weeks ago. And so now I'm in my next messo. And just this past week I was progressing through and I put 540 on there and it was very clearly a two RIR on the first set and a one RIR on the second set. And I know that that doesn't seem like a lot of progress, like, Oh, dude, you gained one rep over seven weeks. Um, but I think, you know, considering where I am in my journey, considering that I've been hammering cardio five to six times a week for a number of months. Now, um, I am just really amped on all this and I feel like it further kind of solidifies my belief that. Muscle isn't going anywhere when you do cardio as long as you're eating enough food. And I just think that that's kind of an important message to pass along to people here. And not that cardio isn't gonna be detrimental for many other people. Like I'm sure in many ways I've probably figured out a way to do this via ensuring that I am in fact eating enough food. And I think other people maybe would subconsciously be eating less or under-fuel themselves in a similar situation. But... When you combine the DEXA that I had showing that I gained small amounts of muscle over the last seven or eight months along with continued strength progress in small increments, it's reassuring. And I just wanted to kind of pass that along to everybody. And then,

[Aaron Straker]: 16:21

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:22

yeah, go ahead.

[Aaron Straker]: 16:23

No, I was just agreeing with you there.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:25

Yeah. And then the other update I have here is continuing kind of on this theme, but I was on Dr. Mike Nelson's podcast end of last week, and I know Aaron fortuitously actually ran into Dr. Mike Nelson at the wedding that he was here in Denver at. So I was able to talk to Aaron about that, and then Dr. Mike and I had a good laugh about it as well. I want to say Dr. Mike. We're not talking about Dr. Mike Izzertal here. But we had a good laugh about it too, that he just ran into Aaron and suddenly, you know, you're talking to somebody in the industry that you realize you follow. It's kind of cool. But I was on his podcast and the point of my podcast appearance was actually to discuss my one-arm training experiment. And so we did that for the first 20 or 30 minutes. And then the conversation naturally steered itself into the realm of cardio a bit. And Mike Nelson had some interesting input on it, because I was complaining a little bit about how, despite all of this time and energy that I'm putting in, I'm just not seeing a ton of specific VO2 max improvement. And obviously, as I've stated on prior episodes, this is based off of the rudimentary Apple Watch number that shoots me when I work out. But it's been going up slowly and backtracking and then going up a little slower. It's kind of like a two steps. one step back, two steps forward type thing it seems. And so Mike Nelson told me that he very reliably sees VO2 max not increase significantly from zone two work and more so that you need to be doing very specific kind of zone three, zone four, zone five ascending protocol kind of similar to what Peter Atiyah recommends. And so I told Mike that for my zone five work, I'm mostly doing these intervals where I'm going 20 to 60 seconds of hard effort and then backing off for two to three minutes and then going another 20 to 60 seconds hard effort and doing that over and over. I'm essentially getting my heart rate up into zone five briefly for each of those intervals. And he said that, yeah, that protocol is not really going to increase VO2 max much either. And essentially the protocol that does, which I think I knew in the back of my mind and I just didn't want to accept is that you need to do these much longer sustained intervals. And so in the track world or in the CrossFit world, you might refer to this as 800 meter repeats with the specific time zone being something like three to six minutes of continuous hard, basically maximal effort given the time period. So obviously if you're going for five minutes, you can't maximally output. for the first 30 seconds or you won't survive the last four and a half minutes. It's what you can maximally output consistently four or five minutes, but then when you reach the end of that four or five minute interval, you should essentially be dying and ready for your rest period. And so that seems, he sent me a study as well that showed people following a similar protocol went something like from an average VO2 max of 43 and a half, which is where I am right now, up to 60. And he goes, This study is so insane that it's like not believable. He's like, you know, it's just kind of an outlier study, but he goes, this protocol has been shown across multiple different studies to be the effective protocol to increase zone or to increase VO2 max. So he suggested that I skew some of my cardio training from five zone two sessions a week in one zone five to two to three of these kind of ascending VO2 max style sessions, and then leaving like three. more specific zone two sessions in there. And so to be honest, I'm not very excited about it. I did my first one of these sessions two days ago and it was about as awful as you'd expect it to be. And that was a sweating mess everywhere and just panting. And it was really, really not enjoyable, but I'm hoping that over the course of time, I get better at these and that maybe we will see some increases in VO2 max along the way. And so. He sent me a really cool follow-up email with links to studies and some reminders on some of the topics we touched on and said he's very interested in this individual case study that I'm running. So kind of a cool experience and I guess now I have a new endeavor with my cardio pursuits.

[Aaron Straker]: 21:04

Yeah, it sounds like the suck is about to increase in terms of the effort in kicking the nuts sort of feeling there.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 21:14

Yeah, it's just, it's, I agree. It's really like, I guess my small concern is that doing these more intense cardiovascular protocols are going to have some sort of negative ramifications on my strength training. And so that will, you know, to be determined, but I had gotten to a point where I could do five zone two sessions a week and have obviously, as I was saying, no impact on my strength training performance. So yeah, we'll just see if this has any sort of attenuating issue as well.

[Aaron Straker]: 21:44

Question for you, what cardiovascular modality would you be using, like the

[Bryan Boorstein]: 21:50

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 21:50

bike?

[Bryan Boorstein]: 21:50

I'm going to be doing all primarily biking. I mean, I think it's possible that I would maybe will once a week try to run because I'm definitely as I've stated before, I got injured twice doing all out sprints.

[Aaron Straker]: 22:02

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 22:02

But this is very shy of an all out sprint. It's probably something where I could run and do three to five minute intervals running. And I think it would suck just by the fact that I'm running, it would be really hard.

[Aaron Straker]: 22:16

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 22:16

And I think that I would probably see him a lot faster as well. So I'm probably gonna stick with bike most of the time just because of the lower impact but I think that probably once a week I'll run and then I do think I will see rapid improvement running just because I'm such a

[Aaron Straker]: 22:36

Yeah, I'm interested to hear about on the podcast, I'm sure you'll update us as this progresses. That's something that, obviously, what is it? There's something effect that's typically talked about, interference effect, that's

[Bryan Boorstein]: 22:50

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 22:50

it, with like the cardio and the resistance training. I, and granted this is purely subjective and anecdotal, but going into my Thursday like hit. bike session, like my legs or my quads specifically are still like pretty beat up. I performed that session like two, three hours later, my legs feel way better than they did. And granted that's probably just from like a massive amount of blood flow, like shoving into the quads again. But I'm interested really, what I'm getting at to see what you find personally coming out of it.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 23:26

Yeah, dude, me as well. So I will make sure that I keep everybody updated. And then my last really quick update is that due to weather here in Colorado, lots of rain, I have had to use the Peloton the last three days for my cardio instead of being able to go outside and use my bike. And so I was finally able to hit 182 watts for my zone two session the other day. And that is over. two watts per kilo. So for this was literally my goal. If you go back and listen to ETP episodes from like August, September, when I first started talking about all this cardio stuff, it was literally like, hey, I'm currently at about 1.5 watts per kilo for my zone two work, and I are slightly above that. And the goal for me is to get to two watts per kilo. And because I don't have a power meter on my outdoor bike, I had no idea if I was actually really getting better or not. I was just using time and distance. and heart rate, but there's so many variables that go into time and distance, like wind resistance and the path you take, whether there's hills, all these different variables. So getting back on the Peloton and hitting two watts per kilo the other day was really fucking sweet. And it makes me feel like I am in fact, making progress on my zone two work. Even if my VO2 max isn't going up, it seems like the mitochondrial efficiency does seem to be improving. And so I'm really, really happy about that.

[Aaron Straker]: 24:55

Cool,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 24:56

That's all

[Aaron Straker]: 24:56

anything.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 24:56

I got.

[Aaron Straker]: 24:57

All right, let's dive in. So I guess I'll kind of tee this one up and maybe we'll kick it over to you first if you're cool with that.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 25:05

Sure, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 25:07

So the question in the topic really comes in around like when you and your significant other have different approaches or goals or importances or priorities is really the best term to use on things like lifting weights, tracking your food, eating healthy, et cetera. So... Brian, as the question initially came into you, let's go ahead and start us off with it, please, and then I'm sure we'll have some banter and some interaction as we go through.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 25:34

Yeah, I think maybe the best way to start this is to go back in history and talk about, you know, when we first met and where we were. So when we were young, I was 22, almost 23 years old, Kim was 21. And we met for a weekend of drinking in the DC area. And basically we spent four days just drinking mostly. Uh, we did work out once over the course of that period of time, and we did have some discussions about it. And so at the time, uh, Kim had just gotten out of a off and on relationship with a guy that was into lifting. And so she had had some experience lifting with him, like he would take her to the gym and stuff like that. But for the most part, she was doing cardio. Um, she spent a six month period abroad in Spain. and didn't lift at all. She just would go for runs three or four times a week. And that was kind of the thing she did even when we first met was she was much more into the cardio thing. And then, uh, when she moved away, so we met that weekend in DC and literally like four days after we departed or she departed, uh, she moved to San Diego. And so our first year of our relationship was this kind of long-term, her long distance relationship. And she obviously knew that I was big into lifting and stuff. Like Anders and I talked about it a lot during the weekend that she was there visiting. And so she, as we kind of continued our long distance relationship, she continued to inquire about resistance training with me and you know, how to best go about it. And she actually asked me to write her a routine. And so before I even moved to San Diego a year later, she had already began embarking on this style of training, like she was super into it. And, you know, much of senior year of college, at least the end of senior year, I know was really centered around drinking. I think at JMU, Anders and I were part of this group. And the goal was to try to drink for the last 40 days of senior year every single day. And I know that Kim did a similar thing. You basically are wrapping up senior year and you just try to get drunk every single day for 40 straight days. I think Anders and I made it 37 or 38 of the 40 days. I think Kim probably made it every single day, would be my guess. But when I met her, she was at the heaviest that she said she ever was. She was, I think, 140-something pounds. And you know, she was doing mostly cardio. So it wasn't like she had a ton of muscle at that point. And then over the course of the year, after I initially talked to her about training and got her routine and you know, she got settled in San Diego. Um, it completely reversed. I remember by the time I moved out there a year later, she was like 123 pounds and she had been lifting and eating much better. And I mean an 18 pound loss on a 140 pound body is a drastic change. And so she ended up going from one end of the spectrum kind of to the other. And then after that CrossFit started. But we can kick it over to you and kind of curious to hear kind of the initiations of y'all's story. Because I know Jenny and you actually met at the CrossFit gym. So your story is maybe 10 years behind or so from where Kim and I were.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:19

Yeah, and when I was thinking about the planning for this episode, what I really didn't want it to do is turn into like Aaron's philosophy on relationships.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 29:30

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 29:30

Although I think that will kind of bleed into it, but like Brian kind of just initially alluded to, like Jenny and I's relationship started in the gym. And I think that was, it's something that's always been there. And something that, you know, is what I think was really, so we were like 26, I believe, when we met. And that was a time where people were kind of going to two separate paths. Like a lot of friends and stuff in the gym were like, yeah, you know, I'm starting a family, work's getting a lot more serious, like, and they stopped, and they started like going to the gym less per se, or like leaving, you know? Like, I don't work out anymore because I don't have time. And for me, it was a time where I was essentially doubling down. and I was feeling more, I would say firm in my positioning in the world and things that were more important to me. And I was like, okay, now that I'm like out of like the heavy drinking phase of my life and just like the lifting with your bros phase, like I still enjoy this more than work and all these other things, I'm doubling down here. And I think that's just kind of been something with us, you know, from the start. And I will say, Now, you know, seven, eight years later, I think I've doubled down like two or three more times.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 30:52

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 30:53

And now it's like my absolute favorite thing in the world. Jenny, I would say, has taken like other interests, like she's into surfing lessons and things like that. It's still there, but not to the level of priority, you know, it is for me. Like Jenny's always going to take that. Oh, my friends are getting together, you know, that I don't see that much. I'm going to go get dinner with them. my same friends that I don't see that much will get together. I'm like, oh, I got fucking likes, so I'll see you guys after, sort of thing. And I think it's, for us, it's just, it's a understanding of each other and the priority for each other, and then us being very accepting of the other as an individual and knowing that the priorities are not always the same in terms of that and just being. okay with that. Like we're very much okay with parts of ourselves that are very independent, that are not the relationship sort of thing. Like we often make decisions independent of each other, but we check in and be like, Hey, are you cool with this? And they're like, yeah, I'm good with that. Or no, I really, you know, don't want you to do that. For example, like I go back to Bali in like seven days. Jenny doesn't come back to Bali for like 20 days or something like that. like two weeks apart. A lot of people wouldn't be like cool with that, but we're like, yeah, that's perfectly fine sort of thing. So I think that's like my biggest kind of route in it is like we just openly communicate about it and then have like individual priorities and a lot of times they align, sometimes they don't, but we just communicate that and then accept, you know, the other's position on it.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 32:39

Yeah, I think the cool thing about the difference between, you know, your relationship with her and my relationship with Kim is that Jenny is actually in the fitness industry. So like, when you guys

[Aaron Straker]: 32:51

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 32:51

talk about the differences that you have or the priorities shifting and stuff like that, like it's all still based in this idea of, hey, the way we make money is through eating and fitness and coaching and kind of these these different parameters that at some level dictate that you embrace this lifestyle, right?

[Aaron Straker]: 33:14

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 33:16

And so Kim and I are not in that way. Kim, she started her own public relations communications company in 2014. She was working at Qualcomm as a PR rep prior to that. And so her professional life is completely unrelated. And therefore, her priorities have to be set in a manner that... reflect how she needs to make money. And so one of the biggest things I think that's different is that when shit hits the fan and we feel like we are limited on time, working out is one of the first things that goes for her. She has to take care of kids and handle her business and stuff like that first. Whereas for me, it's like... being in shape and living this lifestyle is kind of baked into what I do. So it almost like is a higher priority on my list. And I think that reflects in the amount of time that she and I each individually spend on our fitness in a sense. So that's, I think one kind of interesting in difference there, but quickly kind of backtracking on my story a little bit. After I moved to San Diego, we had about two or three years where I was still working corporate America before I started the CrossFit gym. And we actually made it a kind of date in the evenings where she would come to this 24 hour fitness in Kearney Mesa. And I would come to the 24 hour fitness in Kearney Mesa cause it was kind of equidistant between our two jobs at the time. And we would get together at, you know, 6 PM and we would do our lift and our cardio and it would kind of be like. some really cool time for us to make a priority for something else, which is crazy. Cause now looking back, I'm like, man, how did I ever prioritize working out at 6 PM? Like, how was that ever a thing? Because I cannot imagine right now working out past 1 PM, 2 PM at the latest. I know you're more of a night owl when it comes to stuff like that. But for me, I like to knock that shit out in the morning or late morning at the latest and then. kind of ride the wave of, you know, knowing that I completed what I needed to complete for the day. So that I think is one huge difference as well. What about you? Like, do you and Jenny have similar, as far as the amount of time that you work out and when you work out, is that aligned or incongruent?

[Aaron Straker]: 35:56

The amount of time I would say... I'm much, much more of a time investment thing. I think with being so much further along, like, I mean, Jenny started lifting when she was like 26, you know, so she's essentially six, seven years in. I'm over 20 years in. I think like the time I need to dedicate to continue to further facilitate progression is just more, right? That's really, really simple. The timing, yes, we are both more like morning, like late morning, early afternoon-esque. I would say like I'm personally one of my like, not like a pet peeve, but like a personal pet peeve is like sometimes I let my work get in the way and I like, I won't get to the gym till like three, even though I wanted to get there at like noon. I will be there out of principle, but I fucking hate it. When I'm there at three, four, five PM, like I am miserable. And I think it's just like, too much of the day has like kind of frustrated me and I've put it on the back burner and now I'm there like purely out of principle, not because I even wanna be there. And that's something that I've been much more like putting an emphasis on now that we've been back. Like we'll be at the gym today at like 11. And that is like a good for me, like 11, 12 starting to get going. I do like that. We used to do. Like a lot of dates at the gym, especially on like Saturdays and stuff when we both still had our, when I still had my software gig and when Jenny was still working in corporate finance, we would do like a Saturday gym date and live together. We haven't done that in a number of years. And it was something that I kind of didn't really think much about until you brought it up about how like, how Kim is not in the industry, but the majority, I mean, I can say the overwhelming. majority of relationship arguments between Jenny and I are work related. They're discrepancies on philosophies on training and nutrition and stuff. And so much so that we just now know this is Erin's professional work, this is Jenny's professional work, and then the relationship exists outside of that. And we really don't, when Jenny has training questions or something like that, and I'm like, go ask Brian. I'm not even joking, I'm like, just

[Bryan Boorstein]: 38:14

Hahaha.

[Aaron Straker]: 38:15

ask Brian. She will push back on me in a way that she wouldn't with you. And I'm like, I know where Brian and I are gonna give pretty much the same answer, but she's not gonna question Brian. She will question me and then I get frustrated about it. So I'm like, just go ask Brian. I'm not sure, go ask Brian. No, that was basically wrapping up.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 38:39

Yeah, this is actually one of the directions that I wanted to take this was this idea of coaching or prodding your significant other. I don't know what the right way of saying that is because

[Aaron Straker]: 38:53

suggesting.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 38:53

I know like suggesting. As Kim and I entered the CrossFit space together and we she transitioned as well into, quote, competitive crossfit, if you want to call it that. And so she was at the time, this, you know, skinny, lean, more like model-y type body type, but with like a little bit more muscle, you know, the low to mid 120s at 5'7". And then when we got into crossfit, it was relatively quickly. She put on about 10 pounds of muscle. And so she was then sitting in the low to mid 130s, but a completely different body comp than she was when I first met her. And she was just slightly bigger than that. And CrossFit, I think treated her quite well for body comp, but it was very difficult on her. She, much like I think what you've stated, Erin, has the propensity to... hold a lot of stress in her upper back and neck area. And so all of the dynamic movement of CrossFit and the overhead movements and the heavy thrusters combined with the burpees and all of that stuff, she was constantly complaining of upper back and neck tightness. And it was, I think, a pretty big negative on quality of life. And so while CrossFit treated her body comp quite well ventured into competing for a little while. She qualified for the OC Throwdown in 2013, I think, and she finished at least one open workout a year, like in the top 50 or 100. There would always be one open workout that was just like right in her domain, whether it was like box jumps, deadlifts, and something else, like she would just destroy those types of workouts. And so, in that vein, the things she struggled with were the technical side of Olympic lifting and the technical side of gymnastics. More so like her work capacity was her strength would be the way of saying that. And so I would try to coach her on these things. And it every single time ended up in a fight. Like it would literally be like, I'd give one suggestion about how to improve snatch technique. And the next thing I know, one of us is like storming out of the gym and we're like not talking for an hour. And so when you say those things about, you know, sending Jenny to me and stuff, it reminds me of kind of similar sentiments. And I think that this is pretty pervasive across most relationships where the couples train together. It's very difficult for one to coach the other. What do you think about that?

[Aaron Straker]: 41:53

I mean, there's people who do it, right? I mean, look at Alex and Sue Bush, right? Alex takes her through her comp preps and stuff like that. And I'm like, like, I'm like, hey, more like all the power to you guys. Like I would rather pay a coach, I would rather pay Alex out of my own pocket to coach Jenny than

[Bryan Boorstein]: 42:11

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:11

to me coach Jenny. You know what I mean? Like it's, I feel like they're just arguments in relationship rockiness waiting to happen that. I just don't see the benefit in it. I think everyone's relationship is different, right? And everyone has their own different levels of level-headedness and that sort of thing. But to me, I'm like, what I do professionally and what Jenny does professionally both happen to be the same thing. Our relationship exists outside of that, and I like to treat it as such, especially from our history of, this is a place where arguments and relationship troubles, I could even say, arise from, let's just not put ourselves in that position anymore. If we have questions or whatever, we'll bounce ideas off of each other, but we treat them separately. And with the whole suggesting thing, which you alluded to, I think that's a huge potential area for relationship troubles with people rooted in the base of the episode when you and your partner have different goals and what often happens, especially when someone like... This is like a really good example. Someone goes vegan, right? They start suggesting to everyone else around them that like they should do it too. And it just eventually frustrates people. And that could be with like anything, like the example of, hey, like one partner happens to get really into like going to the gym or something like that. And then you start suggesting to your partner that they should too, even though they may not have like interests. Great example. I quit drinking about three and a half years ago. Jenny still drinks, I'm never like, oh, you're having too many today or anything like that. I'm like, I don't care, I'll drive for us. I will happily drive everywhere now, but I think the accepting of like, you and your significant other partner or whatever are in an agreement that like, hey, we like each other to whatever capacity, let's do this relationship thing, while we're still in this agreeable kind of commitment relationship, but not. every single facet of our lives needs to be the same. And that's where I think a lot of people run into issues is like trying to bring too much, or trying to like reduce each other's individuality into making everything the same for both people.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 44:33

No, that's a really good point. And it actually brings me to kind of one of my final points on this topic, which is that I feel like in recent years, my perspective is that I just want both of us to prioritize health and longevity in some manner and exercise is a crucial piece of that puzzle. And so at no point in our relationship ever did Kim just like stop exercising and be like, I don't need that shit or whatever.

[Aaron Straker]: 45:05

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 45:05

Because I think at that point, we probably would have had a serious conversation. It just it never it never came because she prioritizes her health and her longevity. And then recently, she and I both read through the Peter Attia book, Outlive. And I actually started reading it. I was 60 pages in and then she comes home from a trip and basically stole the book from me and read the entire 400 page thing in like five days. And she was like obsessed with it. Like she was obsessively reading through it. And it was cool because it brought us back together in a common theme of things. And like I was saying, it's not that she stops exercising at any point. It just maybe put it into a perspective and into a form of organization where she could kind of understand how the different exercise piece puzzles or puzzle pieces fit together to create the effect of longevity. And so it's incorporating, you know, a little bit of cardio of different intensity levels. You have your zone two and some of your zone five stuff. you have your weight training, you have a little bit of your stability work, balance type stuff, you know, which is more important, obviously, as you get older. But when you look at those two buckets, primarily of like resistance training and building sufficient strength and muscle mass, and then you look at cardiovascular and its impact on health and mitochondrial function and stuff like that, and then you look at nutrition, those are really the three big buckets that are going to move the needle significantly. on health and she prioritizes all of those. And so I think we've really come to a point in our relationship where, man, I guess if I were to backtrack back to the CrossFit days real quick, I did feel in a sense that she should be training this way. And I think part of that was this cultish way in which CrossFit seems to impact people. where

[Aaron Straker]: 47:14

Huh?

[Bryan Boorstein]: 47:15

you want everyone to be doing what you're doing. Like you said, the vegan thing has that kind of same appeal. But you do, you kind of end up in this like echo chamber where everybody that you surround yourself with is touting the same thing that you are. And so you somehow find yourself believing that if people aren't doing the thing that you're doing, that they're somehow missing out or they're doing it wrong or they need to be corrected. It's like this weird like... like uber cultish thing, right? And I feel like kind of the Peter Attia approach of looking at these things in buckets and just making sure that you're checking these boxes is much more relevant. And so you look at the question asker who said that her partner only trains three times a week and basically does the same thing all the time. And, you know, she's following this progressive overload plan and all of this stuff. And so, I kind of think that I would have struggled with that maybe 10 years ago to have differing approaches. And now I look at it as, hey, you know, you're checking the boxes for the exercise portion of your life. And, you know, as long as what you're doing makes you happy and is helping you emotionally. deal with things, you know, the psychological side that training provides, which is obviously huge. And then you're also, you know, getting resistance training, you're getting the health benefits associated with that. Like I, I think that, um, at some level there really is no need at all to, to have you guys training in the exact same manner.

[Aaron Straker]: 48:56

Very, very well said. And I think to kind of wrap this one up from my standpoint, I have kind of two avenues or two streets we'll cover. The first being that what you essentially just alluded to is like you guys, while your goals and stuff are different, health is still a priority for the both of you. And health is a very broad kind of term, but there's many ways to kind of skin that like proverbial health cat sort of thing, which you guys are both doing. This one is one that I'm speaking about kind of purely from conjecture. I think you can weigh in a little bit here. Once that relationship partner thing spans the bounds of family, and you have now children that you need to raise and provide examples for, I think this is somewhere where it can be a little bit more harder conversation-esque. Like if you have a spouse or partner that does not prioritize their health. and is just always drinking beer, eating pizzas, and that sort of thing. You're a role model for your children in what they are going to grow up learning around nutrition and that sort of thing. And I think that is the time where you may need to be a little bit, maybe firmer or even voice your opinion of like, hey, we have the next generation that we are raising and I don't want them doing X or learning how to live their life. in X way sort of thing. And that's where I think the, from my standpoint, and again, I'm speaking purely from conjecture here because I don't have a family, would be where I would probably get a little bit firmer with the line in my perspective.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 50:35

Yeah, I agree. I think that perspective changes over time. Like in the beginning, before kids and stuff 10 years ago, it's like, man, fitness is the center of my life at that point. Like I run a CrossFit gym, CrossFit is what I do. It is my life. And, and I am indoctrinated almost into this system. And I expect everyone else around me to be part of this system as well. I mean, that's how you hear these stories of people being like, yeah, I lost my friends because they didn't start cross fitting or whatever. It's ridiculous. I mean, it's absurd. But like at some level, you know, when you have kids, yeah, the conversation is, are we doing enough to be good role models? Are we demonstrating that we're living a life conducive to longevity? and checking the boxes for the different aspects of that, from the different modalities of exercise to nutrition and stuff like that. And so fast forwarding to the current time and the way that Kim and I approach our fitness, like you guys obviously know how I approach it. I do resistance training and a lot of cardio, and I don't always eat perfectly, but I think that I get a little bit of that get out of jail free card because of all the exercise that I do. Kim tends to eat. probably a bit leaner and cleaner than I do. And I think much of that is because she doesn't have the time to exercise in the capacity that I do. And so she's doing probably four Peloton sessions a week or some sort of, you know, higher intensity cardio. She's hitting two full body weight training sessions a week and going for walks. And then maybe, you know, one yoga or kind of class type thing with some friends or something along those lines. So over the course of a week, that's like six or seven sessions. They're just looking a bit different than the six or seven sessions I do. And that's totally fine. Like I'm just really glad that, you know, we found common ground and, you know, longevity is the objective and we're checking those boxes and doing the things that we need to do to be around for as long as we can.

[Aaron Straker]: 52:47

Yeah, I think you wrapped that one up wonderfully. I kind of say for me to wrap it up here, as long as the high level objective with you and your partner is at a similar wavelength, especially as that will oscillate and change. You know, like when, I would imagine, when kids are really young and they require so much more time, things are probably gonna get put on the back burner than maybe once all of your kids are in elementary school, middle school, you have a little bit more time, things might get more intense, or maybe you get into different sports, or things change entirely, but as long as, like I said, that same kind of big picture goal, in terms of the outlook and the priority for the family, is you guys are both in the same wavelength with, I think the individual goals can be very individual, and I do not think there needs to be much suggesting or kind of prodding. for the other to have the same goals that you do.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:48

Yeah, I think you just, if you're in a long-term relationship, you just don't want the precise form in which you exercise to be a point of contention consistently. Because over the course of time, that's just going to continue to exacerbate. And I just can't imagine that ending positively. So I think, you know, reframing what you look at as like the bare bones necessity for, for you to feel like you guys are kind of on the same wavelength. Like I think that's important to address. But I don't think that it's one of those things that needs to come up constantly and be like a battleground, you know?

[Aaron Straker]: 54:26

Yeah, agreed, wholeheartedly agreed there. Anything else you wanna add onto the back end of this one, Brian?

[Bryan Boorstein]: 54:33

No, that's all I got.

[Aaron Straker]: 54:34

Cool, I really liked this episode. I think it was a very, very cool question. Very different outside of what the normal X's and O's we speak of, but I think this is one that will probably have people thinking a little bit, especially longer term planning. Like I know I've thought a lot about this with family sort of thing and in the future for myself personally. So I was happy to share my thoughts about it with all of you. Listening, as always guys, thank you for continued interest in listening to Brian and I. We will talk to you next week.