January 2024 Instagram Q&A | ETP#142

What is up, guys? Happy Monday or Tuesday, depending on if you are listening to this on YouTube or the podcast platforms. What we have is our first Instagram Q&A episode of the year. If you've been around for a while, you know that these are definitely popular episodes and favorites for Brian and I, as we can just give back to our Instagram followers and a lot of the people that support us in offering them some help. or what it often ends up being is just some general curiosities into the day to day of the lives of Brian and Aaron. Before we dive into today's episode, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates please? Yeah, of course, man. So day 22 of abstinence for those that have been following my journey. I stopped consuming marijuana January 1st this year. So 22 days in, I guess officially today is 23 day 23, but it's 5 a.m. So we're not going to count today as a day yet. Everything is good. I would say, you know, I had that really kind of negative morbid update. two weeks ago on the quads training episode where I discussed how challenging the first seven days were. And then I briefly discussed how it was improving, but still had some issues last week. So now we're a little over three weeks in and I would say that I feel pretty fantastic for the most part. I can't say that I feel significantly better. than when I was consuming. So maybe that's something that is still coming up, but I definitely don't feel worse anymore. So that's certainly positive. There were a few things that kind of been hanging around that took longer than other things to dissipate. And so appetite was one that I brought up again last week as something that was beginning to come back but hadn't fully come back yet. I can... confidently say now at day 22 that my appetite is definitely back. I'm eating three solid meals and sometimes a snack in there as well. My body weight, which was for two straight weeks, down about six to seven pounds. So I was, I started this journey at a mid one nineties and it was one 87 at one point as I couldn't really consume much food. And as of the last few days, it's been consistently back to 191. So it is moving its way back to where it was. On the positive, I have had an extremely low level of sugar in the last 22 days. And I had zero sugar for the first 13 days, maybe, as my appetite wasn't there. I just didn't crave any food, much less sugar. In the last few days, I've been having a little bit here and there, but it's crazy because my desire to eat anything unhealthy really has kind of completely dissipated. It's a bit of a revelation because the last couple years, I would say my diet has been the thing holding me back the most in the sense that I smoked weed and I got the munchies and I like to eat food. And now I... It's it's really surprising to me that I just want to eat like chicken rice and veggies and fruit and like healthy grains and stuff and that's like kind of what I crave. So if for no other reason than that, I would say that this has been a super positive experience so far. Yeah, I have a couple other updates, but let's make this interesting and pass it over to Aaron for an update. So really quick before I dive in, how are we classifying sugar per se? I would classify sugar not as like fruit, like not eating fruit, like fruit would be, fruit is sugar, I don't consider fruit to be sugar. I would say sugar is things like chocolate covered nuts and raisins, which I would consume. Things like, you know, I go to Whole Foods and grab like a cookie out of the cookie bar, something like that. I am having sugar that is inherent in products like, I have Dave's killer bread. Dave's killer bread is like a healthy bread with five grams of fiber per slice. It's, you know, great ingredients, but there's maybe three grams of sugar in there or something like that. So, I don't count that as sugar. Yeah, I mean Gatorade is effectively like 94% dextrose. Okay, yes, I'm having Gatorade, but that's part of my pre-peri workout thing. And so because it's going to the pursuit of the workout or the recovery of the workout or whatever to fuel the workout, I don't consider that sugar. So yeah, I guess I do need to kind of qualify that. I haven't had any post-meal dessert would be like the way of saying that. Like candy, sweets, candy, sweets, those sorts of things. Like yeah, yeah. I thought it was just, it was an interesting little wrinkle because I know you had the Gatorade daily that I think just could have been informative for some listeners, right? Yep, cool. So I guess I really only have two. I need to really start writing these down throughout the week, because I'm always like, man, this thing happened, great update for Eat, Trade, and Prosper, right? And then like, four days go by, I'm like, I have no idea what that was, but I remember, I had this really cool update like four days ago, and I have no idea what it is now. But the Undefeated Nutrition launch, which I hinted at last week's episode, was a massive success, which is a big relief for me. For those of you that maybe didn't catch last week's episode, With the Undefeated Gym, it is under construction right now. We're launching Undefeated Nutrition as part of a circular economy sort of thing of people are coming in, having what people generally want and need when traveling to a gym available and offer for that. Jackson had his essentially beta launch of another large idea of his, which is Pro Camp that was this past weekend. or weak and the undefeated cream of rice flavor, first flavor launch was for Pro Camp. So we got very, very good feedback on it. People loved it, the flavor, everything like that. So it was a big relief and we are officially underway with our next batch of production and then getting that out. So it will be by the time this episode launches for anyone who's in Bali, it will be available at Pump Kitchen in Bali. And first we will launch in Bali, second likely Jakarta, but it will remain in Indonesia for now. Nice dude, that's very cool. Sweet, so on my second update, should we just go back and forth like this? Make it easy. All right, cool, my second update is also kind of related to the weed thing, but one of the other things other than appetite that has been really slow to correct itself, it's surprisingly, I didn't expect this, has been resting heart rate and HRV. And so my resting heart rate and HRV have always been super low. Um, always, like the past couple of years, people have been surprised at how low my resting heart rate is or how high my HRV is. Since I stopped consuming, both have been the wrong direction. Resting heart rate has been artificially elevated. It was initially 15 beats a minute for the first week when I was going through the big withdrawals. And then even once I started feeling better in the last couple of weeks, it was still five to 10 beats elevated. pretty much all the time, mornings, nights, whatever it was, it would be five to 10 beats ahead of where I would expect it to be. And then HRV has been really low. So people have always exclaimed how wild it is that my Apple Watch shows my HRV in the mornings at like 220 to 250 as a norm. And... during this recovery process, it's been in the mid 150s. So like 135 to 160 has kind of been the range, which is a really big drop. It's like 30 or 40% below where it was. And so just in the last like two or three days, it's finally corrected itself. And I can't believe how long it took. There was actually a part of me wondering if it was ever gonna correct itself because I was feeling fine and yet these metrics were still so far off. And so... Just in the last couple of days, resting heart rate has dropped back down to like 41, 42 in the mornings, which is where I expect it to be, and like 47, 48 at night, which is pretty standard for the past few years. And then HRV has been steadily in the like 220, 230 range. So getting close to kind of where it was before. And so I just found that really, really interesting that despite the fact that I was feeling better, those were still really the last things to correct along the way. And then the last update here real quick is just also related to this is as I've been paying this kind of neurotic attention to heart rate over the last few weeks I've been checking it constantly and really paying attention to my metrics probably more than anyone should I've been surprised at how much eating food Increases heart rate and I mean this makes sense from like a perspective of hey digestion takes systemic resources. And so you eat food, you have to digest, your heart rate goes up to digest the food, and there's this change, right? I don't know why I never thought of it or never paid attention to it before, but it really, it's like I eat a big meal and suddenly my heart rate's up like 10 to 12 beats. And so I just thought that was interesting and maybe somebody out there will also find that interesting as well. Yeah, it is always wild these little things that seemingly don't have a direct impact, but have obviously have some sort of mechanism, indirect impacts and how kind of sensitive things can be. Yep, for sure. Um, the only kind of other update I have in this isn't, this isn't too much of an update I had last Monday, like my first off day in months, right? Like no, no training. There was no cardio, like just straight up did not go to the gym, like no sauna. And I was very excited for it because it was kind of like, first was like, I just have to get through the lowest part of the lowest number of the lowest calorie target of the deficit, right? And like, that's how I had my site fixed, you know, when I had this grand goal you know, best physique ever. That was like, that was the first massive domino that had to go down. And then it was like, okay, I survived that. Now, you know, food's coming up, things are getting better. And then with the start of Pro Camp, like I finally had a day off and I was like looking forward to it to just like fucking chill. And then it got here. And I, if I'm being honest, I hated the lack of structure in my day. And I was like, I mean, I still had my Monday, you know, check-ins and all of those things. But when I know that like, hey, we're training and we're training legs and then we have like recovery. And I know I'm at the gym for like four hours, four and a half hours from start to finish. I need to have everything done by 11 a.m., you know, because I'm not coming back home to like five. Without that pressure, I just like. it was, I know instead of doing like six check-ins in a row, I would do like two and then maybe like play on my phone for a little bit or something like that. And I hated who I like became without that pressure. And I really learned things about myself on that day. Like I had, you know, this idea of like, I just gotta get to this day and then I'm gonna have this like relaxing day and it's gonna be beautiful and like my stress is gonna be down and then it got here and I hated it. And I really realized like there's that. The first person that I remember connecting with this on who posted about it was Steve Hall, Revive Stronger, and it's like, as the entrepreneur, like the goal of getting into entrepreneurship is like that time freedom, right? And then you're always like wired to just go, go. When you get that like time freedom, you feel like guilty, like you're wasting the day, or like it's getting away from you, or you should be doing more. And I'm feeling that now. And I... I can't say I hate it, but I'm at least content with the realization of it. But it was quite just kind of interesting to be like, I'm waiting for this day to get here and then it got here and you're like, how was your day? And I was like, I kind of fucking hated it. So it was just interesting. Yeah, I actually resonate with that completely too. And it doesn't have to be like work per se that I have to do like the fact that you're, you talked about working out as well. And it's having the structure, but it's also having movement. And so I think part of my problem with this day off thing is that yes, there's no structure. There's nothing to take up like a period of time that gives you urgency, but there's also. the fact that movement is medicine in a sense. And when you move, it helps everything in your mind make sense. It gives you the purpose to do things, but it also just makes you feel good. And so I really struggle with that too. And I'll often end up taking these days where I have so much freedom and I don't have a planned workout and I'll just end up doing like three walks. because I just need to like fill the time and I want to move, but I know I'm not supposed to actually work out. And that helps me fill the time. And so I'll do some work for an hour and then I'll go for a 20 minute walk and then I'll work for an hour and a half and I'll go for another 20 minute walk. And for whatever reason that seems to help me, but it's not quite the same as having that dedicated period of like, hey, this day requires me to go do this thing. Yeah, it was it was definitely eye opening and I at least I know now and hopefully I can remember for the next time I'm like I need something in there to go break that up And even if it's just like hey I went to the beach for like 30 minutes and went on a walk Like that would have been a good use of that day for sure exactly. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's it for me. Yeah. Um, the last thing I was going to say is I went biking yesterday. I did some zone two and the pedal fell off my bike in the middle of my ride. So I had to walk home and that was really frustrating because it was the first bike ride I've been on since the cessation 22 days ago, where I actually felt like my heart rate was stable and I was feeling good and energized and really excited about the fact that I was actually biking and not feeling obligated to do it. And then like 43 minutes in my pedal falls off. I'm two miles from home and now I need to walk my bike home with a pedal that doesn't exist. So that was frustrating, but you know, life goes on, you roll with the punches and now we're here. So let's jump into questions. Cool, so this first one I will kick over to you. It is a programming question. So upper push slash pull day, does the order matter? For example, chest, and then back, or is it better to do chest, back, chest, back, chest, back? Yeah, I love this question and I love the guy that always asks these two. He always has these really insightful questions that I know other people think about, but no one really asks them. They just kind of exist in people's mind. So I appreciate all these questions that he asks each week. I personally prefer the alternating approach. And the reason that I do... is because I feel like it allows me to give more to each individual section of the workout. So when you go chest, there's a decreasing performance aspect to it where I almost feel like sometimes there's a point reached where you get to the third exercise and it feels like the muscle is so taxed that it's almost hard to connect with it fully. Whereas when the alternating approach takes place, you can get to the third exercise and you had that mini period of recovery while you're working the opposing muscle group. So that would be reason number one. Reason number two is that I think it's a time saving mechanism to alternate as well. And so if you did chest, and, well man, okay, I actually should backtrack because when I say a time saving mechanism, The way I usually approach these is I'll alternate one set of each. So I'll do like one set of chest and then I'll walk over and do one set of back and then one set of chest and one set of back. So in that way, it's a time-saving mechanism. I don't know that it would be a time-saving mechanism if you just did all three sets of chest and then you went and did all three sets of back per se. So in that case, I don't think it matters so much, but I really love the aspect of choosing movements that are near each other in the gym if you're in a commercial gym or... you know, maybe it's a dumbbell row mixed with a chest press machine. So you can kind of occupy two things at once without having to occupy two machines, which I know can be frowned upon in the commercial gym setting. So if you can organize your training in a manner where you can alternate one set of each, then you get the time saving mechanism piece and you get the kind of mini break between sets of each. So that's. Yeah, the only thing I have to add there is with the order, I would say matters if you are not going to be consistent in your ordering from a performance standpoint. So if it's like, you know, weeks one and two, you do chest, back, back. And then like week. week three you go like chest back chest back for holy shit. I got this like big progression this week Is it did you really get that progression or did you just restructure the order and that was more advantageous by with the with the updated ordering? So that's where I say it does matter if you are flip-flopping back and forth in your ordering of the exercises Yeah, that's such a really good point. Yeah. You just want to have that consistency week to week, for sure. Cool. Next question, Aaron, what kind of ring are you going to buy Jenny? the ring she wants because I've always found it like wild when I had a couple of friends who were like, I'm just, I'm gonna go buy the ring and hope she likes it. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? That's your plan? I'm just not gonna do that because I just couldn't imagine. some big purchase like that. And then if they're big, Oh, yeah, it's great. And it's like not what they want. So I don't feel like playing that game. I'm just going to be like, Hey, you know, you tell me what you want, and then I will go buy it. So that is my approach. Kim and I had kind of a middle ground of that. She said she had wanted a champagne diamond and so I knew I was getting a champagne diamond and then the band was more or less left up to me. So I think luckily I did okay. Yeah, yeah, I said write down the prerequisites sort of things and then I will operate within that rigid structure. So that's what it's going to be. have you had that discussion yet or is that still pending? Cool, very cool. All right, next question. Y'all talked about resolutions at the beginning of 2023. Do you have a recap on those? Aaron, do you even remember what your resolution was? I remember I wrote down all of my goals for 2023. And I put them, I remember sitting at this coffee shop on January 1st, it's like out, well, it was like out in the middle of nowhere, just in rice fields. And I remember like sitting there and writing down all the goals. I, there was two that I did not accomplish. I wanted to release three public training programs in 2023. I only released one. And the other one was I wanted to start therapy. Um, and then I spent my therapy budget on investing into a gym. So that didn't happen. Well, it seems like you still had a very productive year. You know, you started the process of releasing public programs and you did something that, uh, man, it's going to push your business forward and allow you to do therapy in the future. Yeah, yeah, I think I had six goals, or I didn't know there were seven, and I got five of them accomplished, and there was the two that I didn't. Do you remember the ones that you did accomplish? Yes, one was a financial goal, chop that one off. Another one was to refine my client onboarding experience and I was very successful at that. That's one of the things I'd say I'm most proud about is when I onboard a new client, they're like, wow. I had, they'll say like, I had pretty decent expectations but this has already exceeded my expectations and I love that, right? Because I always want to wow people with the service. That was the second one. One was best physique ever, right? I accomplished that one, that was really cool. We, another one was I wanted to launch four successful upgrade classes, we did that. And then the final one is I wanted to do one continuing education course for myself and I actually did two last year. Nice, very cool. That's great that you remembered all those two because I'm pretty sure the only resolution I made, and I could be wrong and maybe I stated another one, but the only one I really remember is that I was gonna try to just eat weed and not smoke it. So now we're at two years in a row where my resolution is somehow involved weed. So I guess you can kind of look back on that and be like, man, Brian's been struggling with this weed thing now for like two years. And so I successfully only ate weed for four months. and then I went back to smoking it. So I think I did okay on that resolution. This one I'll actually get to because there's three questions coming up that all ask me about weed. So before we get to those three questions, there's one more that I'll kick over to you here. How much life stress can someone get away with and still make gains and can we adapt to mental stress? So I will answer the second part of that first because I feel much more confident in that. Can you adapt to mental stress 100%? Stress is, there are physiological impacts of stress but we know in the research that different people will respond to the same stress stimulus vastly different. You can adapt to mental stress 100%. Think about like, there's like the ice bath is a really, really good example. Like you put that person in the ice bath for the first time in their mind, just like screaming, like get out, get out, get out, you know, and many people, including myself, those first couple of times, like immediately, you know, in 12 seconds or 15 seconds, whatever got out, like you can adapt to the mental stress. Like there is perceivable. like strategies, let's call it that, you can use for that. I feel very, very confident in that statement. Now, the second part, how much life stress can someone get away with and still make gains? If the life stress is, so stress is one of those things, yes, with stress and the physiological representation in the body, which is primarily cortisol, which is the primary glucocorticoid hormone, that is catabolic in nature. So with the goal of trying to make gains, if cortisol is really, really high, that's not optimal, but you can kind of shunt that through things like carbohydrate feeding, right? Sleep, these sorts of things. Where stress starts to really break down most people is not directly, it is indirectly. When you are stressed the fuck out, your desire or willingness to adhere diminishes your commitment to the gym or to making that progress gets clouded because of the indirect impacts and therefore your willingness and desire for those things. So I believe you can get away with a lot, much more than people make it out to be. I just have a direct personal experience with the last six, seven months. I was under a lot of stress with... gym stuff, you know, client load, making these big decisions around when I'm going to start when we are going to start a family and am I being selfish with keeping us here in Bali to chase a dream of having a gym and like these sorts of things all while getting like really, really fucking lean. That was fine. I was still making gains, you know, not the best gains of my life. Of course not. But you know, I have training logs of the exact same program for seven months and at week 24 of the diet, you know, I'm doing a pulldown with more weight and more reps than I was doing at week 24 of my gain, of my bulk or my build. So it's doable, but it requires a much more resilient mind, I would say. Yeah, no, that's a really good answer. The only thing I'll really add onto it is that your perception of stress defines how stressful it is. And so what I mean by that is you can have the same experience, call it an ice bath. And if you frame that as this is something positive for me that I look forward to doing, then the impact on you is net positive. If you go into it and you're freaking out and you're shivering and you're like, this is awful. I don't want to do it. Then the net result is negative. And the same thing I've actually, I feel like I either heard this on a podcast or it was a study that I glanced at some point. Um, but they were talking about cardio. And even something as ubiquitously positive as going out and doing zone to work, uh, had either a positive or negative impact on your cortisol release based on how you perceive that experience. So if you were looking forward to that and if you're looking at it as a positive for your life, then it was a positive. And if you didn't wanna do it and you felt like you had to drag yourself off the couch and force yourself to go do this cardio session, then it actually was a negative for your life. And so I think working on the way that you frame things in your mind can really change the way that stress impacts you. So just on a global scale, that might be something to consider. That's such a good point to bring up, B. There's one last little part that I'll add. And this is something that really, really helps me. So I believe we've touched on this on the podcast before. I'm a bit of a control freak. I like... I like things done by my own. I wanna be in control of things, right? Especially in pertaining to my life. So something when I'm pretty maxed out on stress or everything's kind of hitting it once, something that's very, very helpful for me, and not so much a mantra, but I do repeat it, is like, I chose this. No one said, Aaron, you need to start these businesses or do these things, I chose this. And that really helps me when I'm feeling like... I'm fucking trapped sort of thing. It's like, this is no one's fault, but your own. Like you chose to take these things on, like you can handle it. And that really, really does help me. Yep, taking ownership of your decisions for sure. Cool. Well, the next three questions are all about weed. So I'll just kind of address these one by one as quickly as I can get through them. Main drawbacks of THC on both body composition and performance. As far as I know, there are no real drawbacks on body composition or performance. Anecdotally. There are a ton of high level athletes in both strength sport and cardiovascular pursuits, even things like marathons, half marathons, triathlons. And these people rely on THC and use it religiously before going out for these workouts. That's anecdotal. But I've seen enough of this and I know enough people and I've talked to enough people that know other people that all say the same thing. And these are high level performers that I would really struggle to believe that there's any negative impact at all. As far as body comp, I also don't think there's any issue there. I know enough high level bodybuilders that also smoke a significant amount of weed. And I would say in some ways, which we addressed very briefly on the last episode, is that it's kind of an appetite stimulant. And so if you're somebody that struggles to get enough food in, it could be actually a bodybuilding supplement in a sense to help you eat sufficiently. So any thoughts to add there, Aaron? Um, the, the only thing I would say is, uh, again, directly, it can help stimulate appetite. I would say it from a body composition standpoint, if you're someone who can't control their munchies like indirectly, it could be a hindrance to your body composition, but I don't feel like that's it's correlative potentially in some populations of people, but it's not, it won't cause your body fat or your body composition to be, uh, more. unfavorable, but it may lower your inhibitions around the munchies or something like that. Yeah. I'll also add that, I mean, it would make sense that if you smoke something, that it's bad for your lungs and therefore should over the long term have negative impact on your cardiovascular performance. I haven't seen any studies that actually confirm that and I've gone looking for them. So I just don't know if maybe they haven't studied populations that have been doing it long enough. Like have they studied 70 year olds and compared them to a control group that didn't smoke? I couldn't find that study, so I don't know, but it does make sense rationally that you would think that smoking something would be bad for your lungs. So, you know, take that for what it is. Next question is, what's the long-term plan with the THC? Glad you're feeling better. Thank you. The long-term plan is that I'm still gonna wait until the 30-day mark to make a long-term plan. But I know very confidently now at day 22 that if and when, and I still say when because at the moment I still think I probably will go back to using, that could change. I'm open to that changing in the next eight days. If and when I go back to using, I'm going to use it differently. And so I was pretty much a daily user, afternoons, evenings type thing. And I very much want to... contain it to two to three days a week. From my understanding of addiction through research and also through reading the book, Dopamine Nation, which was my inspiration for doing this in the first place, Anna Lemke defines something that's addictive in nature to be something that you do more than two to three days a week. And so given the impact of the withdrawal symptoms that I experienced, I don't want to have to go through that again. I am very steadfast in that opinion. I don't want to get back to a point where I'm doing it daily, where I have to then, you know, worry that I'm going on a trip internationally and I better figure out a way to bring it or else, what if I can't sleep? What if I can't eat? What if I'm craving it the whole time? I don't want to reach that point again. And so at this moment and day 22, my thought is to keep it to two to three days a week with one to two weekend days and then potentially one day midweek. Um, and that's my plan right now, but I'm open to changing, um, as things develop. Um, okay. Last weed question here, how has the weed hiatus affected your training? And so I can honestly say that it has affected my training. Not at all when it comes to lifting. I've. And actually, let me backtrack that the first seven days when I was really experiencing the withdrawal symptoms, I took a D load week, I basically I trained but I did everything three to five, six RIR depending on the movement. So you know, short overload, easy movements I take to three RIR, harder stuff. Yeah, maybe like six, basically going through the motions of training, but still training. After that first week, nothing changed. I kind of just ramped up and kept going from there. Lifting has always been easy for me. I mean, easy, not to say easy. It's, it's, it's been easy for me to get myself to go lift without it feeling like a burden. Cardio, not so much. So the way it's impacted me is I, you know, I have a coach, Mike T. Nelson, who's been programming me all my rowing workouts, and I peaked my 2k row with my all time PR time of 703 in December. And then a week later, basically, I decided to stop consuming weed and I lost all desire to do any kind of intense cardio. It was even honestly kind of hard to get me to wanna go do zone two. So for the first two weeks, I think I did one or two zone two sessions and a bunch of walking. And this third week, I finally felt better. And so I've done three zone two sessions. And I did one intense session where at the end of my zone two, I did 15 minutes of intervals. And the 15 minutes of intervals, this was a few days prior, they really screwed me up. Like my heart rate, which was starting to correct itself, just shot right back up and it was off for another like three days after that. So I kind of made the decision that I just wasn't ready for intensity yet. So it's literally been like three weeks now where I haven't done a single like high intensity interval style cardio workout. and I'm just now getting back into the desire to do zone two, which relates back to the mental stress piece. Like instead of forcing myself to go do something that might end up being a net negative on me overall, I just kind of leaned into the fact that I didn't really want to do it. And I just kind of let myself go for walks and enjoy nature more. And now that I wanna do it again, I'm excited to get back into zone two. I'm still not super excited to do high intensity interval work, but that might just be because I've now taken three weeks off of it. And anytime you get back into high intensity work after taking time off, it's just, it's just awful. I mean, it's awful anyways, but it's even worse after you've taken time off. So at some point I'm going to have to just kind of bite the bullet and do that. But that yeah, that's really been the main ways it's affected me as far as training goes. All right. Aaron, this one's for you. And it's from our dude, Joseph Earhart, I think his name is, the guy that always comments about equipment on our YouTube videos, which I love. He goes, how is Aaron, I know his garage, it was so sick. He knows equipment that I've never even heard of. He's like tried everything, it's wild. How is Aaron picking equipment for the new gym? Criteria. And then he goes, I love equipment, LOL. So there you go. Yeah, so it's actually been a very interesting process and it has been, as an American, right, who's now spent the better part of the last five years outside of the United States, it has been kind of eye-opening. For those of you who have not spent a considerable time outside the United States, or maybe I can even rope Canada into that, although my time in Canada is limited, many parts of the world simply do not have the same amount of fucking space that the US does. So like for example, the Atlantis hack squat that the CAS helped design, the hack squat pro or whatever, it's like four. sizes of other hack squats. Like American made equipment is so big. And when you don't have a gym that's like, I mean, Brian, you would know this better than I, how big was like the second PB location on CAS, like 10,000 square foot or something? Yeah. was 6,000 square feet, but that included the upstairs, so we only had 4,800 feet downstairs. Okay, so like, I mean, it's pretty common to have like these bigger gyms in the states where it's you have 5000 square foot, maybe 8000 square foot or something like that. In a lot of other parts of the world, you just don't. And when if, for example, like one of the gyms here. Body Factory, it's fully kitted, mostly fully kitted by Watts and stuff made in the UK. They've recently got a couple Atlantis pieces. The Atlantis pieces literally look like SUVs parked in the middle of this gym. They're so fucking big. And it would be a trade-off of the amount of equipment I could put into this gym. if I'm going with like the Arsenal pieces, the Atlantis pieces, those sorts of things. So it's been interesting looking outside of manufacturing in the United States to see what other parts of the world are doing. And lo and behold, it's a problem they have already solved. So a large chunk of our equipment order will come from Jim Leco, which is out of Sweden. And part of their design is being economically It's like designed for space saving sort of things. We have another batch of equipment coming from a company called Granite that's out of the Dubai, the UAE. And I am still in contact with a few other manufacturers so I can't really talk about which one we will go with yet for filling our third larger order. And then I will. I am in the process of looking for specific pieces, trying to locate used or secondhand as it's called here already in Indonesia. Those are some Cybex pieces, especially because Cybex is now officially out of business. So things like the Cybex squat press, that kind of pendulum swinging ask a leg press of sort, or not necessarily pendulum like pivoting. That's one. OG, Hack Squad, things like that I'm trying to locate. So really just talking to a lot of, making connections and contacts, speaking with people and then looking at pricing too. That was another thing that was pretty eye-opening. Like some companies are literally half the price of like an Atlantis, like literally half. You know, and when you're spending shipping across the world, like being on an island isn't great for like shipping costs and those sorts of things and being a resource, um, efficient, right? I want to get as many pieces of equipment as I can in there, not as strictly as many as I can, but the right pieces. And then is it worth spending $9,000 on, on the, on the Atlantis hack squat, you know, when I can get another one for 30, 3300 sort of thing. So it's been a very big eye opening process and I'll wrap it up there, but it's been evaluating a lot of things and then considering space, considering costs, what shipping and lead times are like. Like another, this is a really good one. We talk about Prime all the time on the podcast. They make great equipment. Their lead times are over a fucking year right now and they want a 50% deposit. So it's like, I want five machines. Each machine is, let's say $3,000 to make it simple. Five times three, sorry, $15,000. I need to pay them like 8,000 today, and it won't even ship for over a year, which is just ludicrous. So from my standpoint, it's ludicrous. Some other people might be like, yeah, that makes sense, but to me, I'm like, no. So. That's another one that's been an interesting wrinkle is like different companies have different massively varying lead times as well. Yeah, that's really interesting. I have two follow up questions just out of curiosity. How big is your space that you're building? So here's the thing, and this is where it's like really funny being the American. So here things are done in Indonesia. Sizes are done in, at least in Bali, it might be a little bit different. It's called Aura, A-R-E. And I believe it's, I don't remember specifically, but it's some conversion from meters, right? So. Then like when we're speaking with like the other, the other guys that are in the gym project, like they're Australian. So then we're speaking in like meters squared. And then my stupid fucking other outside brain is trying to like convert to what I understand. I can't really tell you, you know, it's big. That's all I can say is it's quite big, but trying to convert the numbers twice in my head, I just don't, I can't give you a good answer there, unfortunately. yeah, that's hilarious. I've never heard of Aura, but like, I can do meters squared in my head, but yeah, adding a third element complicates it for sure. And then as far as these kind of brands of equipment that I really haven't heard of, like Granite, and then you mentioned another one as well, how are you determining that the machines have like good range of motion, that they're, like, are there reviews? Have you talked to other people that have used them? How are you assessing that? Yeah, so one of them is, they're big biomechanics, one of the guys is a big biomechanics guy and a lot of the pieces are updated versions of older pieces that are years and years out of production. So they've been... members of the of the undefeated team have already tested them in other gyms during traveling and those sorts of things. So that's how we actually found out about them. Jim Leko is they have, I mean, they're starting to make it over to the States and stuff more and more, but we have, I haven't tested any of them, but one of the other partners in the project tested a bunch. He was at Binus Gym, which is that massive, massive gym in Dubai that you've probably seen videos and stuff of, and they have just so much kit in there that we sent him in there with a list of things to test and then got a lot of direct feedback and went back and forth and those sorts of things. Yep, yep. Yeah. Aaron, I guess I'll kick this one over to you to start and then I'll add some input here, but how does a peri-workout nutrition differ between lifting and cardio pre-post-intra? And then we actually got this question twice from two different people and it was phrased almost identically. So I just like that floored me, I couldn't believe that. So people are very interested in this apparently. Yeah, so I mean, the first thing I would say is we have to consider the context of the goal, right? Because if your goal is fat loss, right, and we are doing, let's call it morning cardio, I might send you in fasted, you know, if it's just like zone two or something like that. And that way we get to eat more food later in the day where you might have higher hunger signals and doing, you know, an activity is typically suppressive of immediate hunger response. So that's like one context. With training, I'm never going to have, I'm never going to allow people to train fasted really. So pre-intra post pretty much fats, very reasonably lower carbohydrate, the highest in protein equally distributed more or less. If the training sessions are longer, right? If someone's training maybe two and a half hours per day or something like that, I'm going to give more. intra and I might say, Hey, I want you to split this intra dose into like two doses and don't have the second one until you're already one hour plus in. If the latter parts of your training session, you're starting to notice performance, degradations or energy levels dropping for cardio. If someone's like, it depends on the word like cardio. If we're doing like a endurance type sport, like how Brian was doing that, that bike race in the fall, I would feel that, you know, probably even more aggressively than in the intro workout training because your consistent elevated heart rate is honestly higher. And your demand for fuel is higher, consistently higher for longer. So I would say contextually, it does depend on what the definition of cardio is. If it's 30 minutes on the stair master, like you don't really need to fuel that much for that. But if you're doing some endurance based sport or modality for sport, we would fuel that just like we would fuel a very, very hard training session. Yeah, I love the way you started that with it being context-dependent, because that's exactly my thought as well. I agree 100% that lifting is always gonna have, it's always gonna make sure that you are properly fueled for it. And that usually means having some food in you before you start, having some sort of intro, depending on how long and intense the workout is, and then obviously having a post. But I think that, based on current research, I think the post is less vital if you have a pre and intra. You don't need to like rush home and make sure you get your protein shake or your like chicken and rice in. I think you just really need to make sure that you're having some calories that are kind of disseminated throughout the pre and the intra. And then you can kind of eat the post as your appetite allows or whatever. I don't think you need to rush home and do that. Um, as far as cardio, it very much is context dependent. And like a long endurance session, are you doing a zone two? Are you doing an interval workout? These things all matter. And so yeah, if you're doing a three hour endurance ride where it's above zone two and it's, you know, in that zone, say you're at 85% of max heart rate or 80% for multiple hours, you need to fuel that with a ton of intra. The common sentiment around this, is that you fuel with about 90 grams of carbs per hour, which I always thought was so absurdly high. Like maybe if you're a high level athlete and you're literally burning through all that stuff at a rapid rate, but when I did my bike race, I did not wanna consume 300 grams of carbs. And that just seemed very excessive to me. And so what I did, and I think this worked out quite well, is I had a pretty large pre-workout meal with a bunch of like chicken and a shit ton of rice. And then that was a few hours prior. And then during the ride, I fueled with between 30 and 50 grams of carbs per hour with like a small dose of protein. And most endurance athletes won't use protein when they're fueling their endurance rides because it slows the absorption of the carbohydrate. I did a little bit of protein. It wasn't an excessive amount, but I did want to make sure that I was having just a little bit in there to kind of keep me going more long-term instead of just relying on straight sugar that I was gonna burn through really fast. That also seemed to work pretty well for me. I felt great during the race and didn't crash afterwards, which is pretty typical. I have done longer rides where I haven't fueled as heavily during, and I crashed really hard after. And so I do think you need to kind of play with that and find for yourself what the right dose of carbohydrate is for you during those rides to make sure that you don't crash, because that was a really awful experience for me to crash after almost three hour ride during that training ride. If you're doing like high intensity interval work, generally the time domain on that isn't gonna be super high. Like you're not going to be doing high intensity intervals for more than 30 to 40 minutes. And a lot of that's going to be rest recovery time. So I think if you have a great pre-workout and then you have a little bit of carbs to fuel you during your rest periods, that's probably fine. And then if you're doing a zone two ride, yeah, I really, the research is mixed on whether you do that fasted or you don't. It does seem that if you don't do it fasted that lactate production is a little bit higher. which I don't know how much that really matters in the grand scheme of things. If you did wanna try to keep lactate lower or keep your heart rate lower, per my update earlier about food and how it kind of increases heart rate, I have definitely found that doing in zone two rides fasted, I can keep my heart rate lower than when I have food prior or during. So just another kind of piece to keep in mind if you're trying to control that heart rate variable. Very nice. How about this one? How would you structure a back day? Two exercises for lats and two exercises for upper back? Question mark. Yeah, the first thing I would do is refer you to our episode that we did like three or four episodes ago, which was called Back and Lats Training. There you go. He's got it. So we literally spent the entire episode talking about back and lats training and how we would structure a day. And so the general sentiment I think that we shared was having two upper back and one lats movement, or two lats movement and one upper back, and that would assume a two times a week frequency for that muscle group. Now, if you're going to be doing a one times a week frequency for the muscle group, then I do think maybe going two and two is fine as well. Maybe you could even add in an additional isolation movement for like rear delts or like a straight arm pulldown type thing, which I wouldn't count as like a compound fatiguing movement. So I do think if it's a one times a week frequency, you could potentially have five exercises in there. But I do think if you're using a standard kind of evidence based in quotes, two times a week frequency, then having one day with two upper back and one lat, and then one day with two lat and one upper back, I think works out pretty well. What do you think, Aaron? Yeah, I agree. And I highly recommend episode 137 on that. Um, I can take this next one, Brian, or do you want me to kick it over to you first? Yeah. Why don't you start with it? I actually did read a Stacy Sims blog after hearing this. So I'm curious on your thoughts if you have not, but heard a podcast with Dr. Stacy Sims about zone five being better for women in menopause than zone two. Curious on your thoughts. So I have not read or listened to any of Dr. Stacey Sims, but here is my take on it. And I'm potentially, I hit the nail on the head or maybe I miss wildly. So one of the primary concerns for women in menopause and after is sarcopenia, which is loss of muscle mass and in kind of strength bone density as we age. or as those women in menopause age. I don't think I will, and I don't think Brian will be experiencing menopause either. Now, I have also seen research on zone five and in untrained populations, or let's call it not greatly trained populations, zone five can actually induce hypertrophy and strength, whereas something like a zone two will not. So that would be my, I guess, interpretation of the two things that I understand about menopause and in a potential benefit of zone five is we are risk, the risk is loss of muscle mass, strength, bone density, and zone five can induce these in those individuals. Brian. Yeah, so I wasn't quite like I'd heard this before kind of just in space that and I didn't really give it much credence because I I've been conditioned to the benefits of zone two. And so I thought it would be interesting to go kind of read what Stacey Sims was saying what her rationale was. And so it makes sense. Which is that women in general tend to be more slow twitch and more oxidative and thus potentially would receive less benefit from zone two endurance work because they're naturally inclined to have those kind of muscle fiber makeup anyway. So that kind of plays into some of what you were saying. There is also a discussion around zone five being just as good or potentially better for mitochondrial function than zone two. And I don't think that that's wrong. From the research that I understand, whether you're male or female, it does seem that you can get the same mitochondrial benefit from zone five as you can from zone two. So, in my mind, it still comes down to a determination of time allocation. And so, like it would for anybody, whether you're post-menopause, pre-menopause, whatever, there's only so much zone five work that you can do before it becomes so fatiguing that it ends up being a net negative on your body and on your recovery. And so, you know, Dr. Rhonda Patrick has, has talked about this a lot. She's a decent resource for this too, because she has been extremely bullish on high intensity interval training and Tabata work and stuff like that. And I'm not sure if she's post-menopausal yet. I believe she's in her forties, so probably not. But, um, she had a podcast with Peter Atiyah and he was trying to convince her to add in more zone two work in. And I think a lot of that really comes down to what I was just saying about the recovery curve. And if every day, like if you're, if you're trying to do 150 minutes a week, say, of high intensity interval training, that's probably going to crush any human. And so it depends how you're balancing your cardiovascular training. I think high intensity interval work is probably better, but if you're going to be doing, you know, 10 minute sessions four times a week, that's great. But then do you need more cardiovascular work or do you want to do more cardiovascular work? And there comes a point where you just can't do more high intensity interval work. And so you can fill in those gaps with more low intensity kind of zone two type work. So from my understanding of reading Stacy and then kind of understanding some of the stuff through Peter Attia and other research I've read, I would say that high intensity interval work is likely better to be the base focus for the menopausal woman. post-menopausal, but there is just a limit to how much of that you can do and recover from and there probably is some additional benefit that you can get by adding in some low intensity work as well. I think we covered that pretty well from our abilities there. Yep. Yeah, I honestly will just say that that's really not my area of expertise. And so you guys could probably tell by the way I was talking that I didn't seem extremely confident in what I was saying. That's just my kind of general understanding and thoughts on the matter. And I would obviously refer to, I don't know Stacey Sims and her credibility, but to her and maybe other resources in the industry is, you know, a bit. What exercises would you do to target the lats given the recent body of research? So again, I would refer back to the episode we did on back in lats, episode 137. The phrasing of given the recent body of research, I don't know what that is exactly trying to insinuate because to my knowledge, there has been zero research on studying the back or the lats because they are legitimately an impossible muscle group to discover. Like how do you measure muscle hypertrophy? in the back and the lats. You just can't do it like you can in the quads or the biceps or whatever, these muscle groups that are more commonly researched. And so the only thing I can assume is that by recent body of research, he's referring to the long muscle length research, maybe? What do you think, Aaron? Do you have any thoughts on what recent body of research means? though I was honestly gonna say, please, just episode 137, you're gonna get the most up-to-date answer from Brian and Aaron on training the back in the lats. Yeah, yeah. And so given the recent body of research and assuming he's talking about the lengthened muscle research, we do have a bit of a contradiction where we have research showing that long muscle length training is better pretty much ubiquitously across the body. And then you have Chris Beardsley and Paul Carter, mostly Paul Carter, who just legitimately keeps posting that the back and that the lats do not respond to long muscle length training. And so I can only assume that this question is coming from that because I get so many people sending me Paul Carter's posts every time he posts about the lats don't respond to stretch mediated hypertrophy and like five people will DM me this post and I'm like, I fucking know, like I follow Paul, like I got it, you know? I don't believe him, but I got it. And so in my mind, I think the lats do respond. to stretch, mediate, hypertrophy. I haven't seen any legitimate research that would make me believe otherwise. And so I still think that things like training the lats through long muscle lengths, using things like lengthened partials and doing movements that bring your arm A-D ducted across the body are probably good things for the lats. And I will stand by that until there's actual research that shows otherwise. Wonderful answer. Okay, this I'll kick over to you. When does Seabums Reign end? I think this year, if I'm being honest, he's having a child and that fundamentally changes people, I would imagine, right? I don't have any children yet. I think this is the, 2023 was the fifth year he won, if I'm not mistaken, five years in a row. I watched some of his vlogs leading into the Olympia and it, it- The things that I saw, and I mean, who the fuck am I just to say, right? But there was, I was watching like a six weeks out leg video and he was like, I think I'm gonna do this today and I'm gonna do this. Like there was no structured plan. And then like when he was in the thing, he was like, okay, we're six weeks from the Olympia. Like I gotta start taking it seriously now. I was like, fucking what? Like. Hehehe six weeks, you have to start taking it seriously now. Like I couldn't wrap my head around it. And then I was watching another one and he was like filming his training and he's like, oh, I gotta wrap this. I gotta wrap today's training up quickly because we have this podcast to go record. And he was like five weeks out from the Olympia. And I'm like, at five weeks out from the Olympia, what fucking podcast could be more important than your training sessions? You know? And I was like, I thought he would lose this year. to be completely honest because of what I saw. And then with the child coming, I just feel like at some point, there's going to be the proverbial wolves climbing the hill that are much hungrier than you. And I just like, what more does he have? Like five versus six, it's not really any different. From my mind, again, who the fuck am I? But I do think it's over. That's so interesting, dude. I love that. I love that you went that direction. I don't have nearly as much knowledge as you, so I did not watch any of his pre-Olympia training videos. But I would just say that from what I know, it didn't seem like there was anyone close enough. Like there wasn't a wolf that was approaching his food at the moment. And so there would have to be, to me, it seems like there would have to be a pretty significant slip. for him not to be the top of the wolf pack at the moment. And I do think he's just such a freak that I don't even know if he needs to get better. He might just need to maintain, and that might be enough for him to continue his reign. So I will say that I'm unsure, but if I had to put my money on it, I would say he gets another year in there. Yep, I love this. And then whoever asked this question, when you know, November rolls around, you come back here and maybe Aaron's eating his words. And I'm okay with that. Yeah. All right. I don't have a lot of thought on this next question and I don't know if you do either, but I'll give you first shot at it. What are your thoughts on David Goggins, Jaco, et cetera, and their fitness influence? I mean, their fitness influence, I think, is... They don't give contextually great information, right? I wouldn't say fitness is their forte. Their forte is insane mental fortitude and resilience. Like, those are the things that you pick up from Jaco and David Goggins, not workout advice, I would say. I don't think anything can be said negatively about the amount of mental resilience and fortitude that those two have. This one's interesting because it's something that I've always really resonated towards. That mastery of self and the mind, like the mind can be the greatest tool or the most or the thing that fucking holds you back for the entirety of your life. You know what I mean? And we've all had those experiences where we have like our triumphs of victory and then those defeats, you know, that were in the mind. And those, you know, those people who have mastery of that greatest tool that we have as humans is for me just it's such a big like accolade of what they can accomplish because of that mastery of their mind. Yeah, dude, that's a great answer. And I was actually gonna take it in kind of similarly, but say that I think because their influence is so much about mental strength that I actually think it creates a negative impact on health. And that's crazy to think because like David Goggins literally is like an insane human that's in like one of the best. he's in shape, you know, so to speak, more than almost anyone, like he does 200. I just heard a podcast where he was talking about doing a 240 mile run through Moab, and he got sick and put in the hospital at like mile 200. And then he returned from the hospital and finished the race or something crazy like that. So the mental resilience, like you said, is insane. But the impact overall on health and longevity, it can't be good. Like what he's doing isn't gonna help him live to 100. And so I think you kind of have to take it for what it is. Like you said, it's an incredible feat of mental strength and resilience, but it wouldn't be something that I would try to pursue as advice to improve my fitness or anything like that. So yeah, I think you've said that. This one, I'll kick over to you. I feel like we feel pretty similarly here. What mobility should we be doing that's not getting hit in your normal lifting routine? Yeah, if you're doing full range of motion training where you're pausing at the length and position and you're getting, you know, astagrass squats and all that good stuff, I don't see a whole ton of things that you'd be missing. I do still stand by the belief that you should probably mobilize things that are limitations for you. And so a good example of that is that I have a torn labrum in my shoulder, which is asymptomatic now, but it happened in 2012. And so I struggle to get range of motion in internal rotation on that shoulder. I can't reach nearly as far up or over my back on that side. And so there are probably things that I should be doing to work on that range of motion. which I'm not like honest to be completely frank, I'm not, but I probably should be. And I would say that in the pursuit of long-term health and longevity, if you have limitations in range of motion, those are probably things that you should or could work on outside of the gym. Beyond that, it's not exactly mobility, but I do think that things like stability, kind of fall into that same framework. And so, you know, if you just lift and you primarily lift in a sagittal plane, forward and backward, and you do sports like cardiovascular sports that primarily exist in a sagittal plane, like running or biking, where everything is forward and backward, there is likely some benefit to you in including things like some lateral movement and some agility drills and stuff like that, which aren't exactly mobility, but kind of fall into the same category. So, yeah, to wrap it up, I think full range of motion lifting gets you 90% of the way there, and then you can kind of fill in the gaps with whatever things you personally feel like you might be missing, but I don't think globally there's a prescription that I would provide. I don't like the global prescription sort of thing. One thing I think I feel confident that it would help a lot of people hanging from a pull-up bar, just dead hangs, like on your upper body and lower body days, it stretches out shoulders, I get a nice kind of release of my lower back, you know, on my hips, that one, it's a very, very low hanging fruit that's highly accessible. So that's one, I guess that I would say for, if I had to pick, I would say that. Yeah, I actually, I'll add one as well because I've talked a lot on my stories in the past about how I sit in a squat sit, just, you know, like someone in Asia would eat food. I just kind of sit in a squat sit for multiple minutes every day. Like every single day I do this and I don't even have to think about it. If I'm just not sure what to do with myself, I just drop down into a squat and I just sit there for a few minutes. So I probably accumulate. between six and 10 minutes of squat sit every day. And so that's really good for your hips, for your knees and for your low back. And I honestly encourage anyone that will talk to me about it to do the same. And I have this saying that if you do it every day, you'll never not be able to do it. How many people do you see that are getting older and they're like, oh no, I can't do that. I'm too old now. And it's like, well, if you did it at 60 and you did it at 50 and you did it at 40, and you did it every year leading up to that, every single day, like you'd still be able to do it, barring an injury or something like that. So I do think, whatever you want to, like look 30 years in the future, and whatever you want to be able to do in 30 years, you should probably be doing currently. One that I really love as well is getting up off the floor without using your hands. So stand up, sit down on the floor without your hands. lay down on your back and then get back up from that position again without using your hands. That is something that I would love to be able to do for as long as freaking possible in my life. And so that's something that I do tend to do relatively often as well. I just took a huge L in this podcast episode. I can not, not get up and down off the ground without my hands. No fucking way in hell. Okay, this next one I'll kick over to you, it's for you. So after the one arm training, then the weed hiatus, what is the next experiment? Hmm. You know, I've mentioned a couple times on here that I love the idea of pursuing things that I suck at or just new skills that I haven't mastered yet. And so the one that I keep coming back to in my mind that I really wanna do is archery and I almost even wanna do it. And this is so ridiculous. The biathlon is an event in the Olympics where you have to cross country ski and then you have a gun. And while you're super out of breath, you have to center yourself and breathe and focus on a target and hit a bullseye or whatever it is. And then you have to ski to the next spot and do the same thing. And so I just am so infatuated with this idea of combining cardiovascular exercise with accuracy. And so something like archery has been on my mind. There isn't exactly a cardiovascular element to that. So that would just be more of an accuracy piece. The problem with archery is that I'm not gonna buy a target to put in my backyard because every time I miss that arrow is just gonna fucking fly into other people's yards. And so I don't think it's extremely accessible, which is a bit of a limitation. And so honestly, I don't know at the moment. I do have like a few things ruminating around in my brain. but there hasn't been anything that's really stuck in this specific moment. So I will just table this one and update you guys as I kind of continue to figure it out. Alright. Uh, Aaron best way to incorporate refeed days. How many more macros, timing, et cetera. So again, this is massively contextual. And if I am being honest, in my professional opinion, I think refeed days are bastardized horribly across the space in terms of when their utility is warranted. Now I'll answer the timing. First, because I think it's easiest to answer globally, from a timing standpoint, I'm assuming you mean the distribution of the refeed throughout the day, evenly is what makes the most sense. Even if you are incorporating a refeed, I don't really see a benefit to having, let's say you're doing a 500 gram carb refeed. I don't really see benefit to doing like 200 grams of carbs first thing in the morning and then like, you know, 103 more times and like none in the evening because you're not going to partition that 200 gram of carb bolus. Well, it's just too large unless you're like a very, very large individual with an absolute metric fuck ton of muscle mass. Now How many more macros? Typically, how I will use it is I will estimate, okay, what do I think our maintenance calories are? Where is our current level of calories? I am then going to increase carbohydrate, which will put us up to that maintenance calorie approximation and then also likely reduce fats if fats are, let's say, more than 18% of total calories. If I'm giving you 500 grams of carbs in a day or 400 grams of carbs in a day having fats at like a Hundred or more just doesn't make any sense because we're not going to partition both of those very well in that day So fats will come down to pretty much as low as I can bring them and we will focus exclusively on carbohydrate for the refeed Yeah, I have nothing to add. I'm just going to acquiesce to you on that one and let us move on to the next question here. Yep, so do you see value in setting concrete goals for the year? For example, bench press X amount of weight or just do the best that you can every single day. Yeah, I'm torn on this answer, to be honest. I feel like in your early years, when you're just starting out, if you can assess what is realistic, which is obviously a challenge unto itself when you're starting out, I think that could be helpful. Like I remember when I first started, I just really, really wanted to be able to do a pull up with 45 pounds around my waist and bench press 135. And I know those are like super small goals, but I was like, you know, 15 years old and weighed 130 pounds. So those to me were goals that I thought were achievable and just seemed cool. And so yeah, I set those goals for myself. I struggle with setting those types of goals as an advanced athlete, unless you're a powerlifter where your pursuit is strictly about increasing strength. I think for a hypertrophy athlete, assuming that building your physique is the goal, then it really is just a matter of putting in the work day after day. And oftentimes if you're focusing on achieving a certain weight, it can actually detract from you achieving optimal stimulus to the target muscle, so to speak. And so I would probably encourage people not to set those types of weight goals. I agree that I do not think setting weight goals is probably best. I do however find without objective quantification in pursuit of goals, many people struggle. It's the same reason why so many people struggle when the goal is maintenance calories, right? With adherence and stuff, because it's like nothing's gonna, nothing's really gonna change much. Like how do I quantify if I'm being, you know, great at it? Like so many people struggle with a goal of maintenance because the goal is kind of auto regulation and to stay the fucking same. And there's just so much interpretation of that. I love concrete goals. Without concrete goals, I struggle as a human being so much. We talked about this earlier in the episode. I just I do very well on them I don't do well without them and for example like the concrete goals can't it does not have to be X number of weight like through my calorie deficit my diet, right? My concrete goal was no compromises, right? There was no this is good enough for today. It's this is the plan and the goal is day after day zero compromises, right? And I did really, really well with that. So I would say, you know, I think there is value in it. I think how you find which side of the fence is more, what's the word I'm looking for, lucrative potentially for you comes down to personality traits and how you respond. Cool. Dig that. How did you get into the position you are today as an online coach? Do you have advice for someone? So I will answer the second part first. Jackson and I have a course called Upgrade, which is literally everything we know about running an online coaching business packaged up. It is all of the systems that we use to run our business. It is very, very well worth the money. If you are interested, I would have a look at that. How did I get into the position I am today as an online coach? Taking it very, very seriously. I think that I was fortunate that I had a previous career that I realized that I was like, this isn't it. This is not what I wanna do for the rest of my life and that helped narrow things. I, very similarly to like I've said a few times else in the podcast, I do really good with pressure and rigidity. I do not operate really well with like, I'll work when I feel like it or those sorts of things. I cut the cord. All the Netflix got canceled. We moved away from friends and family. I sold my truck. I, we moved to the other side of the world so that there was no one around and I could build and get focused because there was no other option. That worked really, really well for me. If I removed all other options for the most part. That's what I needed to kind of get off the ground. And then to get into the position where I am today, I focused on delivering really, really good results. I think it's harder in this day and age because there's so many things that are like, like gurus messaging you and DMing you like, hey, I can get you 40 leads and you know, seven days and all these things. It's all bullshit. Don't get sucked into a lot of that stuff. It's gonna be years of hard work. and just focusing on delivering really, really good results and spending a lot of time on your own and saying no to a lot of things as a trade-off until you kind of get there. Brian, I feel like you have a lot of advice and input you can add onto this one as well. Yeah, you have a lot of good things to say there too. We are a bit on the pushing the time limit here, but the first thing I would say is you got to have a passion for what you're doing. Like nobody should be an online coach because you got into training a year or two ago and then you're like, yeah, this training thing's cool. Maybe I'll make it a career. You should be so passionate about training and nutrition and achieving your best physique or your strongest output or whatever it is that you want to pursue within the... the training game, you should be so passionate about it that it consumes you, that you're thinking about it constantly and that your thoughts about how you can improve yourself eventually are going to transition into how you think you can improve other people. And through that extreme passion that you have, it then becomes almost an inevitable consequence of that, where you're just so invested in training and in progression that you... so badly want to be able to disseminate your knowledge down to other people. And if that passion doesn't drive you in that manner, then you probably should choose a different career. All of this also starts with education. You can't be an online coach because you like training. Even if you have an intense passion for it, you have to have some education behind that as well. So like if you look at any of the top people in the industry, they've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on education for themselves. They've traveled to go to courses. Networking is also something that comes with traveling to do these courses and continuing education. No one in the industry or very few people in the industry are going to be successful without having a solid network of people that believe in them and will refer people to them. So make yourself so passionate, make yourself irreplaceable, make yourself so connected, that just is the world that you live in. And if that isn't your world and you're not willing to spend most of your time in that world, it's probably not for you. Such good insights that I just completely glossed over. But yeah, like very, very good. Okay, do we have time for the final two, Brian? Yep. the final question, we're gonna save it for like a full episode at some point. Agreed, I love that. Tips on getting back into cardio and lifting after COVID. I stopped all exercise for two weeks. Yeah, it's just gotta be slow. It's just like returning from injury or returning from any sort of sickness. The way that I would start it would be extreme deload. Go into the gym and just move. Don't have any expectations of reps or weights or anything like that. Don't worry if you have to rest five minutes between sets. Just get in there and move. Go for a walk, start there. And then from there, you just progress very, very minimally week to week or session to session rather. until you feel like you're feeling good again. And at some point, you're gonna go into the gym and you're gonna say, wow, I feel amazing. I feel strong, I feel motivated, I feel excited to train. And then you can kind of start working on getting back into the routine of progression and stuff like that. But initially, it should really just be a process of starting super, super easy, and then gradually, gradually adding as you feel able and motivated to do so. Really good answer, I don't have anything on the back end of that one, it's exactly what I would do. Or that's exactly what I did do, actually. Cool. Next one, I can't answer this one because if I'm honest, my HRV's dog shit, it's always been dog shit. So Brian is the HRV master between the two of us. How do you increase HRV? Well, the first thing to understand is that for many people, it's genetically predetermined. Not that you can't improve it, but that there is just a limit to how much you can improve it. So some people aren't going to be able to improve it to the point where other people are able to get to, regardless of how much internal work they do. And so then internal work becomes the key. And that means if HRV is a measure of stress, it's a measure of the autonomic stress inside your body. So How do you manage stress? It's usually through some sort of breathing practice, some sort of stillness meditative type thing, some sort of way in which you're controlling your breathing. Because HRV is a measure of the distance between your heartbeats, like the discrepancy between each heartbeat. If your heart is going faster, there inevitably is going to be less distance between each heartbeat. which means there's going to be less variability. If you're beating at a hundred beats a minute, it's da-d And so the distance between each of those is very small. If you can find a way to institute a breathing practice where you can slow your heart rate down to boom, then now you've created much more disparity and variability between each heartbeat. And that- will increase your HRV. And so decreasing stress and decreasing stress through some sort of meditative practice is the best way that I have been able to do it myself and that I've found other people to do the same. There we have it. I think that is a wonderful response there. And then the last question, which we, I don't wanna make this person think that we forgot about them, but it's a really good question and I think we should do a full episode on it. The question was, if you could only do 10 exercises for the rest of your life, what would you choose? So we'll table that one and we'll come back to it in a few weeks. Yeah, I think that'll be really, really fun. I actually had that as a Instagram post I wanted to do like months ago, and it's just gotten so far buried that it will never get done, especially now we're gonna have a podcast episode for it. But I think that will be a lot of fun. Cool, so as always guys, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week. Sweet, that was literally.