Pilot | Introductions and Background

00:00:01  Welcome to the Eat train Prosper podcast. We provide you sustainable training principles for strength and building muscle effective nutrition practices for improving and maintaining a lean physique and practical lifestyle habits for becoming a champion of your own health. Inside and Out hosted by Aaron Straker and Bryan Boorstein.

00:00:24  I write welcome to the pilot episode of the Eat train Prosper podcast. So I'm here with my good friend and podcast host Bryan Boorstein. My name is Aaron Straker. And with this first episode. We're just going to kind of talk about how we got into training how we got into nutrition our backgrounds what we're doing and then our plans with this podcast. So if you just give everyone a little introduction on yourself Prime,

00:00:49  Some guys are and I are super excited to be here and be able to talk about some kind of dorky things in the industry that that maybe we don't get the ability to focus on in everyday life for that people may not necessarily think is quite as interesting across our social media is so we can really dig deep into topics and the other nuanced of it and she's excited to get going with all this for you guys and a half ago. I was in Boulder me and Brian got together and just kind of having a conversation about podcast and stuff when we realize we kind of were both itching to do kind of the same thing. You know, I have a little bit more depth of the conversations with including the specific context something that you don't get to do really on Instagram because of that 2200 character limit. So that's where the idea for this E Train Prosper podcast was born and then kind of Dino given a little bit more of a

00:01:49  Brian is a little bit more, you know better to be completely honest and nuanced on the on the training side of things and then the kind of complete opposite is no true for me on the nutrition of a little bit more nuanced unless the training so it's a really really good. I'm combination here with the both of us to cover training to cover nutrition and you know how to implement it into your life in a way that's going to be healthy sustainable inside and out. So if you can just kind of give everyone a little bit more background on what you do for business Prime.

00:02:20  Yeah, I own a couple companies that do training and aluminum nutrition evolved Training Systems was my original baby. It started out of need to have a little bit of that kind of functional bodybuilding feel leaving CrossFit and try to find a path that allowed me to train a little bit more sustainably train my clients little bit more sustainably but also had a little bit of that fun that we kind of all felt that addiction to within the crosses space and I was you know back in 2015-16 17 kind of going through that that hybrid mentality with evolved and then in 2018. I linked up with Laurie Christine King and we started a similar company called Paragon training methods. So between those two we have a bunch of different programs that operate from like purely physique spectrum and then moving more into that kind of hybrid Focus where there's some Olympic lifting some metabolic conditioning work.

00:03:20  As well as that big focus on strengths and Susie as well. So that's kind of where I reside at. The moment background is Way Beyond that but I know that we'll get in touch to all of that here as we keep going through a little bit of background on myself. I'm a nutritionist. I own and operate egg nutrition coaching company called Striker nutrition company. I'm really just focusing on objective nutrition and helping people get into shape leveraging nutrition and lifestyle from really driving not having much deeper conversations around, you know, what works will not work what works you do an in sustainable method which are things that we really don't focus on but what is going to work from a sustainable method long-term things that you can repeat keep your hormones and tracking on really educating men on how to do things the right way and being a champion you all throughout house.

00:04:12  So I think what would be really cool with with this episode is too, just cover our backgrounds a little bit. And one thing that I think would be pretty interesting cuz it's a it's a very like vivid memory. I have been in my own mind and I don't think you and I've ever talked about it. So it would be cool to talk about it. Here is how I remember meeting you how I remember like learning about CrossFit PB which is which still stands for Pacific Beach, which is in San Diego where we both used to live. So it's a January 2012. It's like November or October of 2011 and I am used my Flex first year in the CrossFit and a couple friends up to the up to Orange County to one of the end LF LCI Invitational. Is that what it was? I was the one in Mission Gorge. Okay, the Left Coast Invitational the one up in Orange County was it was the

00:05:12  Ethan holiday one ends and I forgot but I remember it was you pits Anders and loaded and then someone was with her they were like, oh totally CrossFit PB guys and I had heard, you know, just do like a little kind of CrossFit rumors at CrossFit PB is like where you go if you want to lift heavy and actually get Jack to know that's what they like actually lift weights. You're not just doing with running workouts and stuff and after doing like a year of running workouts and I was like super lean, you know, but I was 179 pounds actually Jack, you know compared to everyone else in it. I remember seeing like I was like, okay like that and my lease is coming up and I was going to be moving to the beach and that's like solidified it for me. I'm going to go to CrossFit pee because I like seeing you from a distance and then you know, basically two months later. My lease was up I moved in. Do you know walked into CrossFit?

00:06:12  Remember that is super long hair and he was like jerking 350 2012 for CrossFit and just being a whole new world and it was very very different and it was like a whole new thing for me and I suck because I was like so weak compared to everyone but I was excited. It was like I'd I felt like really at home. That's kind of like when I remember Reno meeting you and then obviously you was a member at the gym for

00:06:44  For 4-years four and a half years until like really that the sale and stuff and then basically wheat, you know when Andrews come it took office when I was like I just a little boy doing CrossFit at that time and we'll come and get into more or less. But yeah for sure one of my one of my memories of of you coming into the gym for the for the first week, maybe not the first time but was was kind of a long line. So you're saying and you know, we were preparing for what we knew was going to have some sort of either heavy snatches are heavy cleans in the open that year and I think it workout ended up being that that's not flattered that went like 75 135 165. But but I remember you just struggling so hard with 135 matches. Yeah, and and you could do the many how it looks like a squat snatch cars. That's whatever just get the thing over head. And then it's wild to think like I think if I can remember correctly. I feel like you got like nine reps at 1:35, but it wasn't a lie.

00:07:44  Okay, there's like 30 to Jenny. So anyway, so that I remember, you know, I'll be getting up to a 235 snatch 245 whatever it was you ended up hitting 5253. But yeah, like you got to appoint even within a year where that 135 snatch was like butter. It was like no big deal. So it was just a matter of putting together our have with the strength that you did have a little bit of technical proficiency. Oh, wow, I suck a cool. So if you can just kind of take me back a little bit more than a lot of the more like like how you got into training right like would introduce you to lifting weights and let's talk about.

00:08:34  Yeah, for sure. These are going to be good story too excited for everyone to hear everything. So I was 15 years old. I was super late in the puberty train and basketball is my favorite sport short white kid late puberty, like basketball. I needed something and weightlifting was kind of that thing. So I was trying to make Varsity has a 9th grader. I failed and then I'm mediately started lifting weights over the course of the next year work super hard primarily on compound movements. I felt so blessed that I fell in with a group of guys in the fledgling internet that really just promoted big compound movements stay away from the floss. They told me not to do the Bro split, you know chest Monday back Tuesday type thing. It was you know deadlift bench, press squat overhead, press pull-ups Rose basically dips seven movements for Peter them twice, maybe 3 times a week and got really strong.

00:09:34  And I think that was the best thing that could have happened me because it didn't require a ton of time. It taught me how to work hard and I got big and strong in a short amount of time and made Varsity the next year. So that was the very beginning and

00:09:50  like I said just forever grateful that that's the way it happened because today, you know flashing forward to 2015-2020 and even prior to that the Bro split was the thing like you would open a muscle magazine in the nineties are the early 2004 today and that's what the guys that that are big in her on the Olympia stage or doing. I mean, there's number different reasons why they're doing it and we'll get into this and future episodes, you know regarding things they might be taking how much damage they can do to a muscle in a given session and things like that, but someone new starting out that's deadlifting and squatting, you know, who these meager numbers. They don't need to be just doing it once a week. They need the time to practice the movement and do it multiple times a week and so it so again, you know, so lucky to have fallen into that camp.

00:10:43  Throughout the throughout high school, that's more or less how I trained back in the day. They called it hit I guess that that that acronym still exists a chai tea instead of HIIT. So it's high intensity training and it basically just means working hard on a select few movements. So that was the start as I got into college is really kind of when I fell into the bracelet thing and there's a program out in the early 2000s late 90s called Max OT, you know this program and no I don't think I actually do eyes from a company called AST Sports Science and it is essentially the idea is that you do one maybe two muscle groups a day. If it's too then it's one big one one small one and you do only 629 sets per body-part per week. So you hit them all in that same session to my chest day was like two sets of bench two sets of dumbbell bench in two sets of dips in one set of flies or something like that seven total sets.

00:11:43  Every rep was 4 to 6 Reps for compounds or 6 to 8 reps race relations. So everything was super low wrap and every set was to complete and utter failure not like assisted reps failure, but like until you literally cannot move the weight no matter what and there was even kind of some some it's okay to use a little bit of body English. It's okay to kind of like twist a little as you're pressing likes to get the weight up and get the overload no matter what and I continue to gain a bunch with that program and you know, it was hard work. It taught me how to work hard to tell me how to work to failure and in the new age of training there's a lot of discussion about how you don't need to train to failure how the majority of studies show that two or three rupture of failure is going to get you the majority of the benefits that train to failure was significantly less fatigued, you know, all the topics that we can continue to go in over the over the years but are over the episodes rather, but the one thing that you can't get away from is that if you haven't trained to failure you do

00:12:43  Know what you're up Shy failure is there was a study that Eric Helms did I think it's part of his Ph.D. And they took trained men who bench press and told them to put their 10rm on the bar. Whatever. They think they would fail at for 10 reps and the average difference with something like six reps. The average person is getting like 16 raps with their 10 rep max. Some people are getting 22. So if the average is 6 people don't know their proximity to failure and I think that what that was that Max OT experience taught me was that you will get benefit if you just train to failure and work harder than you did the prior session's up. These are kind of all these little lessons that are integrating into

00:13:30  Who I am and what my belief system is now how I train people currently and all of these things that help me be a better at what I do now and help relay this information to people more effectively the max OT took me through college. It was perfect and hers is the guy I started CrossFit PB with Aaron was the member there for a number of years as we discussed and he was also my college roommate so we would go into the gym and I remember us just getting so drunk on Thursday nights and then going in Friday was always arm day cuz we could do it in flip-flops. So he stood there and do like preacher curls and you know tricep pushdowns or whatever in are flip flops the day after being drunk and this is just the things in college that you do, but we always got our sessions in one of the things that I really want to touch on his you later on in this episode over in future episodes is my my lack of focus on nutrition for years and years and years. I didn't really pay much attention nutrition at all even

00:14:30  Through the max 30 days to college through CrossFit. I didn't really pay much attention nutrition. It was more the mindset of you can eat whatever you want because you're feeling feeling performance and it wasn't even until I came out of CrossFit on the other side and like 2015-16 17 the nutrition really started to kind of be a thing that that I put my focus in so it's wild to think that I trained for like 20 years before I was even like maybe this nutrition that you kind of important as well. So kind of pushed through that Max OT stuff finished College continue training with a bro split and remove the San Diego. We started CrossFit and I can just continue talking about the the cross of days and stuff. But I'd love to hear a little bit more of your story before we get into the the CrossFit thing. Yeah, that's perfect. Kind of tell my story up until basically, you know, the one CrossFit it too so I got into training through playing football in high school. I

00:15:27  Was fortunate to go to like a big enough for a school in Pennsylvania and football was very very just important. Right and it was basically in the seems. Okay, if you want the football game to lift weights and they basically encouraged us to quit playing other sports too so we can spend that time lifting my girl playing basketball of super super lanky like very skinny. I wanted to high school at five foot nine hundred 35 lb, which is like insane and then I played football freshman year and you know start lifting after a freshman basketball season and then put on like a bunch of way, you know, I went into my sophomore season like 165 supremely 30lb that year which is of course great and then through some bad things with basketball. I just didn't really agree with the coach. He lost a lot of respect for most football 9 months out of the year to train and

00:16:27  You know during the antenna in middle of football season and I was very fortunate that we had like one of our coaches played college football understood the weight room. Like we have extra the training like he had it posted up on the specific days are give us a new thing. Everyone have the tractor stuff. We have these logbooks and then sauce one of the guys moms worked for like a big

00:16:52  I don't look like a corporate like bakery or something like that. We're like food that was like just expired like she could like take in like give us so and then they would pull money together for Mike the parents and stop and buy like protein powder and then we'd have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to like every day after training. They were like get your protein shake get your peanut butter and jelly and you know, get two of them like we would eat, you know, when we would like train and eat and I mean very Fortune I've accepted that code for you are training was really structured. So on Tuesdays, I remember we have a heavy double back squats, right? We do appear 10864 to increase weight on Mondays were similar with bench and then on Fridays we would have wide squats on Wednesdays. We would do front squats like it was like, I remember then they would make us do dips every single day. Also some of that pie wasn't like the smartest but like it was structured and really really good. I didn't, you know soon football became just a means for me to

00:17:52  If weights I was much better at piano lifting weights and I wasn't football and then after my sophomore year and they started putting us in powerlifting competitions in the offseason like a little that. I know we were doing powerlifting causes lifting competitions. I get all the other football schools in the in the division are the majority of them and you don't want to do it and it was single ply powerlifting. So we have like to endure suit we didn't deadlift and told my like my last meet but it was really really good and well then that was really cool. Like I didn't know how strong we were back then because everyone was that strong. So like one of the stories that I tell is I have been asked my parents to get a tattoo from when I was like 12 years old and then eventually they're like, okay you of this Lifting me coming up if you place you can get a tattoo. So that was like my goal, right? It was like 2 weeks or 3 weeks after my sixteenth birthday, but I squatted 405 in their competition.

00:18:48  I like you knowing like now what I could squat like it's kind of impressive, you know that I was so young and was able to do that. But like you just when you're that age and your hormones are hitting it it's pretty much a natural steroid cycle really because your hormones are pumping out of control when your hitting puberty and if you're actually training the progress you can make it so that really take me to high school and then and I had a big eye injury my senior year required surgery. So I wasn't lifting off the shoulder SLAP tear slap took me out for like eight months from from training and then got the college decided not to play football, which was a blessing in disguise and really kind of just found myself now like on my own I tried to go back to that program. We hadn't in football, but it was just like so demanding and without the pressure of a football and in the liberty of knowledge and without having that environment that it was just so much that would like

00:19:48  I did what a week and I can't do this anymore. I don't know how I did actually looks like all the drinking and stuff obviously with college. So I found myself in the muscle magazines and is picking random stuff up in that like carried me through college. Like I wouldn't say I made a ton of progress and the best thing I progressing, always sucked in high school. I did my Max at my last competition going to 55, but then I ran like a mean one of my roommates Wendler 531 my junior year of college and I got my bench sounds like the last thing I could do then and then towards like my senior year. I was becoming very like disengaged of training. I was just sick of seeing like the same same people doing the same things and seeing the stupid music videos on it like that the corporate school gym. I was sick really really burnt out on it and

00:20:48  Like right at the end of Machinery. I remember seeing like a kid. I went to high school with posting videos on Facebook and little me little that. I know it's time is CrossFit but I was yo, what is the stair climbing ropes? They were flipping tires Mystic 2009 2010 and I was like, what are you doing? Like you do schools get out in a couple months. I graduate. You know, what are you? What are you doing everything and he's a cat when you get home, you know, hit me up. I'll bring you to the gym type of thing. And that was like kind of rash on my cell phone into CrossFit immediately after graduating college and that was a big cuz I was excited train again after the last a year. I've been pretty much going through the motions. So that's kind of where it where I found that and then literally a month later ended up moving to San Diego and then, you know, I needed this be a friend group and everything. So be joining a CrossFit gym was a great method for that was so new to me. I was super excited. So I did that for a year downtown and then, you know kind of going back to

00:21:48  Start the following year move to Pacific Beach, you know met you join CrossFit PB and that's kind of what kind of stuff to wear at your now. Yeah, that's that's awesome. I love that story out of the fact that you were basically doing powerlifting in in high school is rad. You weren't doing any Olympic lifting though. They be my junior year. I want to say they brought in some guy that teaches how to clean and it was very very strange. And I remember that he was like an old 60s and we had like to have not even hexagon octagon plates. Right and he was like cleaning and like dropping the weights in the bar and ever and let everyone take a look around like loses his crazy old buddy. Do you do a drop in the weights like that? But it but I mean cleaning I think like I worked up like a 150 155 maybe 175. I power clean but it's like it was just a deadlift.

00:22:48  Jump jump, right exactly. So that's how I Rippetoe teaches it. Well, it's so I think the transitions really well into kind of the next thing which is are involved in CrossFit and kind of some of the things we've learned from it, but also maybe some of the things that that we needed to change when we left it or maybe they were even the Catalyst for why we had to leave it in and I think they're kind of to two thoughts on this to two things that come to mind for me.

00:23:17  What is it? We both are athletes and Crossfit I think was a way in which we could go back to feeling like athletes again and allowed you to compete with your Bros. But with this competition that's inherent in CrossFit.

00:23:36  It also kind of created this.

00:23:39  process of training in which we were so motivated by performance increases that the quality of the movement that we were performing kind of decreased or at least

00:23:51  was degraded under the mat be fatigued. So you do any thoughts on that. I mean 100% what would you what you first spoke about like really hit the nail on the head? Like I I feeling like an athlete again was I didn't know how good that would make me feel, you know at 22 when I just want Michael Caine college is over. I'm working, you know, and it wasn't lackluster in terms of fulfillment in my life. But like that's what it's like feeling like an athlete and competing again was incredible feeling.

00:24:28  And that's a good initially would really drove me and then when he find another, you know a group of guys that were basically, you know, we were doing the ten of us that we're all within, you know, two or three years of each other roughly the same size, you know, 592 like 6 185 to like 225 lb like it was incredible what that did for me cuz they having something to care about again.

00:24:51  Yeah for sure is amazing having Kendall and who's your interest alone? All those guys there too. It was just a constant like bro out everyday and I think this also brings up in my mind kind of the notion of CrossFit being a unique sport in that when you practice other sports and in you know, their every type of a little differently if you practice Jiu-Jitsu you're working your ass off and it's it's a workout much like it is in CrossFit, but that's kind of the point is that in CrossFit. You cannot practice CrossFit in the sense of getting technically better more proficient at the movement without also simultaneously working out.

00:25:31  And so this is this I think it's like kind of the root of the problem for like someone like us that comes from an athletic background and we understand the importance of technical Proficiency in the fact of being able to be more efficient with your movement and what that brings in the more that you do these movements and continue to to harness your energy to improve your Technique. You're you're really just going into recovery debt and I think that that's what got me in the end. You know, it's like you go to practice basketball and you're shooting a hundred free throws, but you finish your hunger free throws in you you walk out of gym in like you you didn't expend any energy but you got better at shooting free throws you a 10-minute email to attend Foster's on the minute and that's not easy you end up being very fatigued from so you know that being one major point.

00:26:24  And then in the pursuit of a beating of rose of the leaderboard that we had on the wall with the top five matches in the top five cleans the top side back squats and all these different things man. I remember when I first learned to snatch I was so obsessed with that. I did every day for 6 months and like those are just the type of things that for whatever reason at that time in my life.

00:26:50  I just felt like I needed to do to get better at what I was trying to get better at and in the end. I ended up with a torn labrum and some I've had to keep can't call adrenal CHP when taxes and tag. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I just I just said was I was motivated to train that process and coming out of it. I just knew that I needed to put so much more focus into the quality of the movement in the quality of the Reps that I was performing and it every rap mattered and that doing things like 30 cleans for time was not what I had in my future like if I was going to continue what ended up going to be going into this hybrid program that Iran, you know, we stopped doing cleans for time is 4 time things like that. We would do things like clean and snatch technique work with lighter loads. So these kind of lessons of

00:27:49  Of quality over quantity being the thing in coming out of it and realizing that the more you can recover the better you can perform and and it kind of felt like in CrossFit that that was a little bit backwards. I think one thing that I think is is the now maybe this could be now because I'm you know, simply older, you know, 32 years old in your years older than me five years. 5:30 A M. I mean, we're just a lil bit older. Now I think is is one part. Maybe we're a little bit more introspective. Another thing is it was also knew, you know, we rode that first wave across the lot of the data wasn't out there like remember back when you were you were cooking games athletes and stuff like that to have like a remote coach was like fairy new when there weren't many people doing a type of thing and I think it was like when you're part of that kind of first wave at you don't have a lot of the lessons before of the kind of field on cuz now it's like a really don't think people are crushing there.

00:28:49  Adrenals and their recovery capacity and stuff like that from from this in Evil under eating under a covering but like back then no one was speaking about it. Or maybe I was just so young and didn't really know her and I agree. It was like one of those things everything was so performance-driven and I remember, you know, my goals I don't care. I want to I want to go to Regionals right? I want to be better so that that year before my first injury, you know, we were training 7 days a week and remember you when you talk to me, what time are you guys coming into the gym is closed on Sunday, but I remember what was his name Dave Dave rice rice had a key cuz he worked like at the hospital night. So he would like we would go work out with him on Sundays. We were training 7 days a week for Life by two months on end and you were like a are you guys training 7 days a week and were like fuck. Yeah, dude, we are and you're like no you cannot do that and it was like fighting hit me like a

00:29:49  It looks so foreign to me that I needed to recover and all these little things we're literally just like stacking up against me. Like I had sucked it sleeping slick my entire adult life. I was drinking on the weekends and then training 7 days a week and then it wasn't until you know, I got that first injury when I ruptured my achilles doing box jumps, you know, I was one of those people that it hit me and I was 25 years old and I'm looking at like eight months to recover and get it like that was what made me like slow down and we'll have all this time on my hands and I was like really salty about getting hurt, you know, cuz I was like, why am I the one who's getting our wires everyone else? Okay, but little did I know everyone else you got to sleep at night. Everyone else didn't drink kills Thursday through Sunday as much potentially. They could probably get more cards. I was one of those people who like unscalable carbs are bad. So good morning, and I'll have as much as I want.

00:30:49  Oh, I can't have it like oh is that meal come with rice and I can of rice like I was one of those people that's what I really truly believed. It was very common back then, you know, right and it wasn't until like I've really everything was I wasn't able to do what I want to do anymore. So I that Achilles rupture that I finally, you know recovered from and I was actually able to Parlay, you know that right into going into regionals that next year which is like really really wild but it was actually at that, you know CrossFit regionals and in 2014 when I realized it like hey, I don't want to do this anymore. I've reached my goal and the the work required to kind of boot past that I'm not interested in and I just, you know, I don't have any more CrossFit related goals in a kind of like kind of what you were saying. I got to that point where

00:31:39  Doing as I'm done doing burpees, right because that how's that going to help me with my goals? I'm done doing 95 lb snatches for time. I just didn't have any more of those spirulina CrossFit Cycles. So it's time for my training to switch in the nuts know where I moved into Olympic weightlifting full full time in that was, you know, great for a while, but I still had all the recovery capacity issues to sleep and food issues and ultimately just getting hurt even more than he knows that very next year. I don't even think I was maybe a full year out of when I recovered from rupturing. My achilles that I tore my patella tendon and that's enough to surgeries in three years. You don't get much training done when you're covering from these big surgeries and it was at that point. I was like I got to do something else cuz I was just

00:32:34  Yeah, totally that's really really cool to hear all that and I think it just plays into the fact that while we were discussing about, you know, when the goal is to improve fizzy if you can recover better. Like I've heard people talk about this with the best bodybuilders in the world are just like the super laid-back chill guys that like they go in and they smash it for like an hour an hour and a half or whatever and then they go home and they just like sit on the couch and watch TV and like read books. Literally you just want to recover as hard as fucking possible and that's how you get to the top of the game. And as I transitioned out of this crazy CrossFit mindset of more more more

00:33:17  Antenna moved into the hybrid world and just started feeling better. It's funny how like just slowly and gradually over time. I maneuvered away from the things that didn't make me feel great and like, you know, you can even use the example of a back squat and as simple as a back squat or deadlift and like these are two movements it throughout the first years that I trained big compounds was the focus drop Max OT big compounds with a focus CrossFit big compounds focus rite. I come out of this and I'm like mad every time I deadlift and squat really heavy my body either feels like shit or I'm really tired for like 3 days. I wonder what's going on with that. Yeah, and that was that I used to be that person with a guy squatted. I love to squat squat in a four days a week, but my legs would never grow and I and I still watch need to do more I need to do heavier, you know, but I was sick. My recovery wasn't there I wasn't eating enough or I wasn't eating enough of the right things. I should say and I just like all those things like now I realize

00:34:17  Lab, great lovers for a traditional back squats grow my legs for this and I know like you're in the same same boat in that regard and it's it was one of the things I had some of those he go to a little bit tight until I cry need to be strong. I need to ask you no more than 350 for at least five reps. You know, I can't do that and when it came back to like really just kind of looking at myself and sitting down with okay. What do I want right across it's over. I'm not really looking to go make really into powerlifting even though I do like, you know the compounds I just want like to improve my physique. I want to feel great. I want to improve my speaking. I want to be healthy again. That was a big one. Like I really want to be healthy at my joints feel good and stuff like at this point, I'm 28 29, and you know, I'm finally over that patella tendon surgery and a Mike. I just know more surgeries, right? You know, I'd say I have three of them in my life at that point. I'd been through, you know, six rounds PRP in my shoulder for the second time at work, and I just can't do this anymore.

00:35:17  Fucking recovering from being dumb. Like I'm just I can't do it anymore. So I became my focus and that's kind of where I found myself in the last like 3 years. And I mean, of course we haven't talked about nutrition it on, massive massive part of this but it's kind of myself now just you know training to feel great and me and improve my physique and that's really really funny. You know what I really like to do now and it's been various is going to come full circle, which I know is I think is very simple for you.

00:35:49  Yeah, for sure. I mean just to put a ribbon on that whole thing, like being able to look objectively at your movement selection and be able to say okay. I had this love affair with squats, but maybe it's time we break up and I love to deadlift and pull heavy off the floor but maybe doing it in conventional or Sumo style is not the most effective way to train a specific body part and is causing too much residuals teacup. Maybe that's the case. Maybe it's not the case but being able to kind of look at things objectively.

00:36:21  Inflect movements that work for you write like even if something as simple as a lateral raise might not work for you or like an upright row. That's a common one right up. I Rose don't work for a lot of people you don't have to do the upright row. You can do the cable lateral raise or the cable face pull or something like that and find the movement that feels better for you and ensures that your body feels good throughout the day because if we're training for life, we don't want to be training in a manner that's going to inhibit the quality of our daily life and that's kind of the best thing that I got out of this switch to the South training is it not only is my physique improving and I have more mental Clarity and focus throughout the day more time to spend on projects and things like that in with my family, but I also just feel good and my body feels good and that's really kind of the big takeaway hundred percent one thing. I wanted to talk about really quickly before we talk about nutrition is take me back a little bit through of your background of like what took you from so like this weekend.

00:37:21  CrossFit to opening a gym in deciding. Hey, this is what I'm going to do. I'm becoming a coach or something. I want to do being a CrossFit coach went straight from I'm going to open my car a CrossFit gym.

00:37:38  Yeah, I mean I was so into fitness just from from such a young age. It consumed me and even throughout College where maybe my priorities shifted to two girls and drinking over over Fitness Fitness was like second and then it was like my education because I was in school for Fitness anyways, but it was like something out of super obsessed with and I always right about it. So even getting out of school. I had family members and friends that I was training, you know via email with spreadsheets and stuff like that and it was just something I was going to do. So the read the story of how it all happened was Anderson. I getting blacked out in Vegas in 2009 for a bachelor party and stumbling down the streets of a guess. He turns music to totally open jam and I don't like yeah totally in like we both forgot about it and then like two weeks later. He's more sober back in Pacific Beach. He's like, I remember when I said that thing about the gym,

00:38:38  It was just it was just my path man. I don't really know that there's even a moment where I was like this is this is something I want to do is just like always kind of meant to be as likely of course. I'm going to open the gym, you know, if if someone would have told me that I could make a living doing what I'm doing right now like 20 years ago. I would have done this like from the very beginning but I was always back then it was you know, you can't make much of a living in this you need to go into business. So you need to go into psychology or you need to take one of these other paths and man. I am just incredibly thankful and grateful to to be where I am doing what I am doing right now. And I know that that you feel the same way. Yeah, it's really interesting because it's like he mention like eventually football this weekend away for a means for me to lift weights. And then when it came time to go to college and stuff people with family members are asked me was I think I'm going to get like to know going to exercise face or something like that. And I remember I got specific family Roxbury exhibit of mist.

00:39:38  No, no, no. No, you need to go to school for something that you can make money in there are thinking about okay like yeah, I think I want to have money like that would be probably a good idea to go to school first check then and you know, that was always fine and I was like, hey, this is a job going to pay the bills type of thing. But immediately after school I get into it and I'm like this. This is what this is and it was always like that. It was just a means to pay my bills and stuff like that when it was 4:30 when it was time to go out of there to the gym because that's what my priority right my man. So for me, it is like my I worked as a software engineer for do you know almost eight years out of college, but it was always a means to an end of than once a little did. I know nutrition back should become the the primary pathway, but it was always for Always by route of the Fitness Woodstock is what got me there.

00:40:35  So I think it's have sound of human-caused talk about. Okay, so why don't you kind of tell me a little bit more about like once you start learning a little bit more about nutrition and paying more attention to it. Yeah. So like in the initial days in high school, I would say I actually did pay attention to it. I was big into the like six meals a day got to have protein every 3 hours type thing. So so I did that a little bit through high school. I wasn't super into drinking or anything like that. But then as soon as I got to college all that got thrown by the wayside one of the topics that I actually wanted to talk about in our future episodes is

00:41:11  They're the dreamer ball super, you know put on 30 lbs in x amount of time and then cut it all off and see what's underneath idea. And that's actually what I did in in college. So it was a combo is a combo of good and bad wait for sure, but I went from 170 to 200 in 4 months in my first semester of college and I got so strong. I mean it it was the biggest gaining. Of my life in strength was going that that first semester at College when I gained 30 lb, so I have an interesting perspective on that but I at while I don't think necessarily that everyone has to do that. I think that that was an important piece for me was realizing the power of food.

00:41:58  and then

00:42:00  kind of coming out of that and going into CrossFit. It was much like you wear carbs are seeing is is the bad thing and I distinctly remember Andrews night at the first gym. You probably remember to we would literally take a pound of red meat and throw it on the Foreman grill and Grill it until it was done. I throw some cheese and some guacamole on it. And that was our meal like for one of us and we did that like three times a day. So I was literally what we are eating if you are Crossfit workouts, I didn't know any better. I remember competing in the open in 2012 at 212 which is the happiest I've ever been in my life and for contacts to like the leanest I've been recently is like 185. So that's like a 230-pound Delta. And so even throughout cross it then even with I realize that carbs are important. It was a much much of like a just eat what you can see diet because I was working out so much.

00:43:00  Saturdays are hour-long imams in 3 workouts a day and like all these different things. So I was just shoveling food into my body. So then coming out of CrossFit into the physique space. I knew for sure. I had to change the way I was eating and I knew the principles of eating but much like I didn't understand.

00:43:19  Pacific details of of training for hypertrophy specifically as much as I do now. I also didn't understand nutrition for hypertrophy or nutrition for for proper dieting or things like that at that time either. So coming out of that was a bit of an experimentation phases, but I figured out you know, I knew protein had to be at a gram per pound, but what was my personal need as far as carbohydrate and fat ratios did it matter at all? And I know we can have an episode on that topic to cuz I feel like that's very interesting in nuanced and as it turns out I I lean more toward higher carb when I really thought the whole time that I've based on my cross experiences of I would have guessed that I was a little bit more lyrics for higher fat. So, you know, you kind of learn these things if you go and in the grand scheme of things like I learned enough that I got myself down from

00:44:11  About 205 lb to 185 lbs in 12 weeks and didn't lose any strength on the way. So, you know throughout those processes. I think it's been super cool to read the stuff that you put out there and a bunch of the other evidence based experts in the industry in kind of the things that people tend to agree on based on the way there that research currently exists. Yeah. I like what you said that last part about the things that people generally agree on that's a good journaling a good basis for the day if everyone is saying this, it's probably probably I guess I should say pretty good. Mine is a little bit different. So in terms of like eating for my goals, I should say bad started back in in high school with football. So I was fortunate at a stepdad who knew a decent amount about putting on weight and stuff like that because he played football and it's always that's really funny telling the stories. He would bring home with a local supplement.

00:45:11  Store you bring home if it was literally in a bucket in like a 10 lb bucket this stuff called Growtein XXL. And I I mean, I think I think too but how would you like to of those shakes a day and they were probably a thousand calories each and then I was eating breakfast lunch dinner and then we know the best protein shake in whatever they would give us after football but I put on 30 lb high school. So when I said I went in at 1:35, I went into my senior football season at 2:15. So like putting on weight with always anything in them eventually got moved to like tight end so I can hang out with all the wind like to 4250 plus eat all the time, but then, you know kind of

00:45:56  In Heights in college in and pay any mind to it, right? I'll end up losing a little bit of it just by not eating so so much and then threw that you know, it took me into you basically when I found CrossFit not okay. I don't need all of this, you know football wait anymore. So just by doing I start paying a little a lot more catch like paleo type stuff, right? So I'm like Insurance workouts at the long shippers a lot of running and that's what I believe. I lost a lot of weight. I got down the middle 17511 very likely how muscle to emerge didn't know any better and then, you know going through everything we talked about with once I got back into training and dinner Reno coming over to the TV Jim eating a lot of fat and just I really didn't know anything about me Tricia recovery the importance of carbohydrates all these things that we did so so much meat it was always double or triple triple burger patties, and then you would go to Aqua

00:46:56  Every Monday and I would eat is literally as many ways as I could until I would get sick. I just did the dumbest things in kind of like what you said when I went to Regionals I run to Regions at 2:17, which is massive for me in CrossFit. And then after that once I got into like I like my pseudo second powerlifting phases at a powerlifting gym and just like how do you make powerbuilding really meant to have this idea that I wanted to get like as big as I got up at 2:27, which for me is a Mastiff a reference right now. I was supposed to do one this morning and that's like right at that face is One Nutrition really kicked in right? It's like when I really started taking a big interest to and I was spending a lot of time with General Nutrition coaching business school rankings of things and that was when I realized after my new trip after my injury is when I started like a read that first Renaissance periodization

00:47:56  Book back of my 2014 when it came out since when I started learning about macros and different things I'd be like kind of briefly dabbling in track my feet or basically getting an understanding of these of these types of things and then after you notes spending a lot of time with her and then learning more from her and seeing a lot of licked the request and stuff that came in I got to understand like how little like your gen-pop CrossFit person. Patricia, and that's really why I was here three years prior. So became this big rabbit. I just love learning about it and at the time of my problems and injuries for like healing and that knee surgery. I'm feeling really good again, and I just started learning so much while so, you know what she was doing my Precision Nutrition level 1 cert which was very very cool. I went through in unofficially did the NCI level 1-1 when she did a remote. I just basically hung out with her for the weekend and read everything. That was really really cool. Just one.

00:48:56  something new from you than it was like I was

00:49:02  dissatisfied with my my role in work and it was a hobby. So I just like spend a lot of time learning and then my body composition was improving I was for me about all these ended out to the body which I thought was really really cool finish became sick encompassing thing and then I went got my license and then I started my side business, and then you know, if in like 7-8 months of that I realize this is what I want to do not like I don't want to do what I've been doing any more software and is she okay. This is a business in this is where I'm going to take full circle because of Hawaii thought I'd go into the exercise phys and have something to do in like the gyms in Stockton. There's a couple times where I kind of thought about potentially getting into like become a CrossFit, but I was always kind of hesitant worth it to apply like everything is coming full circle. I could finally like stop pretending I would say about who I was in my life and it's been phenomenally.

00:50:02  Give me the best decision I've ever made it was really cool to see just makes me how much nutrition has given me an obvious way to spend my days giving that back to people. Yeah, for sure. And I think that the key there is that we both found something. That was a hobby for us something that we were obsessed with and turned it into a profession and we're the luckiest people ever and it's really cool that

00:50:29  When we read stuff in our free time, it's usually things that both interest us and also enhance our profession so man. It's just so cool. So cool to be here and so cool to be able to help others with all the things that we've learned over the years hundred percent. So with that is there anything else you kind of like to talk about in this pilot episode?

00:50:53  Now, I think we're good man. We have for anyone that doesn't know we have a list of like twenty two different topics that you want to cover me to super super excited to get into the IT band sings. One thing. I think it's very and really I think why this podcast ends up happening to be completely honest as you and I are both pretty much the same in regards to like being just a little bit about these types of things were like someone's going to take it to work level 7, you and I are going to go to 11 and I know that okay for the mechanisms of action here, like if I do if I can get a half if I get an extra rep on this thing over like 4 months, what does that turn into type of Deal or other people are destroyed

00:51:39  Yeah, totally dude while I'm just saying. I'm really glad we decided to do this and hope everyone out there listening at least get something out of it. And so that is it for our first episode of the E train Prosper podcast, and we will be back next time. Let it go.

00:51:58  Thank you so much for listening to eat train Prosper. If you found this episode valuable, Please Subscribe or share this with your friends, you can find more from Aaron at StrakerNutritionCo.com and more from Brian at EvolvedTrainingSystems.com. Talk to you guys next time.