What's going on guys? Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today's episode 213. Brian and myself are talking training and nutrition while traveling. We both just wrapped up some respective travel. Brian to San Diego, myself to China and Bangkok. And we thought it would be a great idea to talk about our strategies and approaches as traveling is a very, very large. Not deterrent, but it's a recurring issue for many clients that I speak with and I know a lot of people in general. So as people who have done it for quite some time and seem to be relatively successful, I will share that I had some, I took some L's on this trip, which we'll get into. I think it's very, very helpful to talk about. But before, as always, Brian, what's going on? Yeah, a few quick updates. um I had an awful night of sleep last night and for like no reason really. It was probably like my first night. In a really long time where I actually kind of felt like I didn't sleep at all, like I felt like I was like tossing and turning and hot and then cold and then up and then peeing and then couldn't sleep and hot and cold and it was just this full cycle. And there's like no reason for it either. um I woke up and I always assess like how my sleep was before I look at my app and I was like, I'm sure it's like three to four hours. Like that's all I felt like I got. The app said I got six and a half. So clearly there's some discrepancies between what the app is thinking is happening and what's actually happening. uh So whatever I'm operating on really shitty sleep. But I think the point of this all, the reason I bring it up is because I've also been someone who's talked a lot about HRV and how my HRV like tends to be quite high sometimes. And over the last, call it three months, I've essentially been submitting my screenshot of my HRV score. And this isn't just like a simple HRV. It's a, you know, a heart strap one. So it gives you like 16 different metrics when you're done with all of these weird acronyms that I had to go research. But I've basically been submitting a screenshot of this to chat GPT every morning and then having a back and forth with chat GPT to discuss it. And one of the things we realized that's crazy is that when I have really terrible nights of sleep and I wake up feeling awful is oftentimes when my HRV is the highest. And this is because my body sort of over rotates. And when I'm in these like terrible deprived sleep states, my body goes like extra parasympathetic, which is then going to correlate to a higher HRV score. So HRV is going to give you a higher score when you're parasympathetic, a lower score when you're sympathetic. My body seems to be like overcompensating. when I have terrible sleep and giving me these like really high HRV scores. this morning, my normal average like say on a normal day is like my heart rate's in the mid 40s and my HRV is 120 or 130 on RMSSD, which is like 200 on a SDNN if you use an Apple watch. So this morning it was like 150 RMSSD and like 230 SDNN. and partially because my heart rate was so low. So instead of my heart rate being like mid 40s, like it usually is, it was like 39 this morning, which again is like, dude, I didn't sleep last night. Like, why is my heart rate so low? So anyway, it's just been really interesting figuring out that my body does this weird like parasympathetic compensation thing, but it also kind of deters from my ability to use HRV as a readiness metric. I almost need to look at it like. I almost need to base it like more on how I feel and less on what the app is telling me, but I'm starting to learn how to distinguish these signals a little bit better as I've been like submitting these things every day and having this back and forth. So anyway, I just thought that was like kind of interesting on how like HRV we know as an individual metric. I'm like, some people have low HRV, some people have high HRV, like it is what it is, but just the fact that like I can have terrible sleep, feel awful, but have higher than normal HRV is another like just wrinkle in the fabric, which I found. frustrating. Definitely. Yeah, and then I guess my other two small updates. I'm going to go skiing on Saturday. I haven't been skiing yet this whole winter, mostly because Colorado has been screwed and we've gotten five inches of snow the entire winter, but I'm going to take a solo trip up to a basin, which is like an hour and 10 minutes from Boulder and go skiing. I think by myself this weekend for a day. So pretty excited about that. It's going to be 55 degrees. I don't know how the snow is going to be when it's 55, but at least I'll be skiing with no shirt on. And then the only other update really is just TRT stuff. I know everyone's constantly interested in this. I'm now close to 12 weeks into this thing. And I think overall it's been like super positive. feel I described it to someone the other day as like my days that were like neutral days. I have this framework that I talked about on Life Reflected where There's seven days in a week and usually five of those days are neutral. They're just kind of like, eh, par for the course. This is how life is. One day is like kind of a good day and one day is kind of a bad day. And when I created that framework, it was in the very, very early stages of TRT before I had felt any of the effects. And I would simply say that now it feels like my neutral days are mostly like neutral to positive. So maybe like a 10 to 20 % bump in general sense of wellbeing. and my good day is like better and my bad day is not quite as bad. So it just kind of seems like it's given me like a 10 to 20 % bump on my like floor of life, which is like overwhelmingly positive. Like I can't really think of anything negative on that front. The only thing I keep complaining about is just my body weight and it seems to have settled now, like it's not going up anymore, but I also like can't get it. even I'll go like three or four days in a row where I'm just like, I'm gonna go hungry for three or four days and just kind of see what my body does. And I still don't lose weight. It's like, I just I'm stuck between 206 and 210 every single day. No matter what I do, I can go like pig out and have like Dave McHoney just wrote us some like 400 gram fat cheat meals and stuff. I can go do some shitty crazy stuff like that or I can be hungry and my body weight still like 206 to 210. And uh I've lamented for a year on this show about how I wanna be smaller. This is just going in the wrong direction. uh But at least on the positive side, I don't feel bigger. Even though I'm bigger, I don't have a lot of the negative characteristics of being bigger. Like my cardiovascular performance is basically the same. I'm not more winded going upstairs. My body fat percentage is not higher, which by the way, just on its own is fucking nuts. that like I went from 195 at whatever my body fat percentages to like 207. And I'm essentially the same body fat percentage just fucking blows my mind. But whatever. So yeah, I think overwhelmingly positive weight gain has been weird. Very small, like I'll get like a zit or two on my back that I never used to get. So that's been interesting. But yeah, I would say overall like super good. And I'm just kind of excited to keep the train rolling and uh see where it takes me. Yeah that's a that's a really good update that 10 to 20 percent just elevated baseline kind of contentness with day to day is a very very good way to put it. Overall I would say I'm just uh about 10 to 20 percent more positive outlook in and much more. much more confident in my ability to figure the challenges out. Whereas before I might like spiral a little bit of like, this is bad, this wasn't what we planned for, what am I gonna do? And now I'm just like, I'll figure it out. It'll be okay, I'll figure it out. It's just like a little bit more of like a confidence thing. Yeah, general sense of wellbeing is just like a little bit higher across the board and so it extrapolates out to like a number of different aspects of Yeah, yeah, very, very well put. Anything else from you? Nah man, what's up with you? So 29 days until the great repatriation which I am very very excited for so still no address or anything we've actually put in an application to a place today we were kind of on the fence of. Do we want to get a place that we haven't seen? we do an Airbnb? But I'm just so sick of going in and out of places. I'm just ready to show up and have somewhere to live. So hopefully that works out. But that I'm very, excited for. I am putting information out to my closer network. And I would obviously consider everyone in Eat, Train, Prosper that listens to that first. I will be doing a three day in-person training seminar with a friend who is also an IFS. FBB Pro in September in Salt Lake City Utah. So it is going to be three day hands on training seminar with education and practical. on gym floor stuff in one of the most incredibly outfitted gyms in the United States. So if you are interested in that, just DM me or email me Aaron at Straker Nutrition Co. Dot com and I will send you over the brochure flyer for that before we post everything. So I'm sending things out to clients and in sort of my insider first because we are going to cap it. So it's very, very small group setting. But I'm very, very excited to be able to do some in-person things upon my return. the United States. And then the final one was I just come off a 10 day trip to China and Bangkok, which we're going to talk on more in here. But in the Bangkok trip, I decided to have this idea of a work trip, which sounds kind of corny because normal people on work trips all the time. But what I effectively did was I'm going to train every day at four. And all I'm going to do outside of that is just work. from you know 5 30 when I got get up until 10 pm. And obviously I have my normal weekly check-ins, client work, but other than that, I did a bunch of projects, content related things, and I just conceptualize it as I'm going to just do the things that I really like to do and eat the same foods. There's this really cool Japanese supermarket that was right at the bottom of the hotel I stayed in, the hotel room I stayed in had uh a stove top, burner, microwave, washer in it. It was fully set up and had a co-working space on the ninth floor too with free coffee. So I just had way too much coffee, worked all day long and then trained and it was so, so incredibly productive and I really enjoyed it too. So that was a little bit of a, an experience for me that I realized like, I can just do this periodically. I can go take a three day trip somewhere that has a sweet gym. And then if I have any of these big hyper sprint type projects that I want to do, I can just work sun up to 10 PM train in the middle of the day and just work on these things. And it would be like very, very exciting. And, and, and I realized the change of environment can be really powerful. So it's somewhere that I already have a little bit of like a love for Bangkok. All of my trips there have been very, very great. And this one was by far my favorite and it just kind of opened a new avenue of things that I can do in the future of this concept of like a work sprint trip. And aside from seeing, you know, my friends and training at four, I didn't really talk to anybody. I literally just was in the, was in my hotel room. If I was doing check-ins or like speaking or recording like videos or in the co-working space just with like headphones on and I literally didn't talk to a soul and just for Monday through Friday and it was great. So that was a very very exciting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this idea of the three-day sprint work trip, uh I love it because A, it's impossible for me, given that I was traveling with kids. But what it also does is it gives you kind of like an outlet of when you do have kids to be like, hey, Jenny, I need this like three-day trip to just go sprint and like accomplish this thing. And then I'll be back and I'll be like a better version of myself because I got this thing done. So the concept still holds even when you have kids, you just need to not travel with them like I did because then the whole thing falls apart. Yeah, I could only imagine. Cool. So that's the only update or those are the updates for me. So let's dive in and talk about our training in nutrition over the past two weeks. Yeah, I guess the transition there would be like, yay, I went to San Diego, but as I said, I brought the kids. So uh my trip was a bit different than yours. um A few things, I guess. I've been on this bro split since December. uh so 12 weeks or so straight of the bro split was awesome. I think my reflections on it now, a week and a half or so. since it ended is just how much I enjoyed it. I really thought by the end of it that I was gonna start, you know, feeling this kind of monotonous sense of, God, I need to go to the gym again and train because I'm on this like six day a week program or whatever. And I just, didn't really feel much of that. Like sure, there was the occasional here and there. uh Leg days are obviously like monumentally more challenging than. a single body part upper body day. I separated out quads and hams, but still like doing a quad day or a ham day is still like really hard compared to doing a shoulder day or like an arm day or something like that, even like a chest or a back day. uh But I really enjoyed it. And in the last week and a half since switching back to this full body structure, I actually am having some nostalgia for the bro split. think mostly because of how little fatigue I felt like I felt both in session and post session. Like it just, it almost felt like training was so stimulative and so directed to the area that I wanted it to be that the systemic fatigue was almost non-existent. um part of me even feels like now when I'm in this like cardio season, which is the whole reason I switched to full body training. that there's a piece of me that's like, man, I wish I could just keep doing the bro split forever, because training for 35 minutes a day is like a breeze. And then if I want to go do some cardio, I can do some cardio. If I don't, I don't. But it has me kind of like just maybe I'll adapt and get comfortable with the full body training as I go. But suddenly going from 35 minute sessions to our 10 minute sessions, like literally doubling the amount of time I'm in the gym and then also having the fatigue of, you know, legs then back. and chest and shoulders, then arms, like all this stuff. just, uh it's hard. Like it's made training hard again, which like training is supposed to be hard. I get that, but there's something really beautiful about training and feeling like it was productive without feeling like it was so hard. Like the psychological toll of training is just way less with the bro split than it is on these full body sessions. So anyway, kind of still working through that, but I didn't really have a choice in San Diego. had to, that was the point where I had to switch to the full body because I was there for six days and there was no way I was going to get my ass to the gym all six of those days or five out of six of those days. So I really just did two full body sessions across the six days. um And then I did, uh I think two cardio sessions and a bunch of walking and playing with the kids outside and stuff like that. So as far as training, ah The only interesting part really is just that that was the commencement of the transition from bro split to full body. And then I've been continuing that for a couple sessions since I got home. So in that was kind of was that kind of the plan once you got home with you know, we're at the end of March now and being in Colorado It's generally starts getting decent because of the altitude and how sunny Colorado is and stuff. Was it the plan? Hey Cardio season's coming. So I'm just gonna Transition this to full body back back in Colorado as well Yeah, yeah. So the plan was March 14th or something was supposed to be the last 13th was supposed to be the last bro split workout. And then starting March 16th or 17th, whenever I got to San Diego and got a workout in was going to be the first full body session. And that was just going to be like the start of switching to the, to the full body program. So since I've been home from San Diego, I've gotten two of these full body workouts in and my, my structure now going forward essentially is that I'm operating on a, uh nine day micro cycle. ah So I have a lift day every third day. So call it like Monday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, Tuesday type thing. every third day I do a full body workout. And then the other two days in between become either like cardio or uh auto regulated like rest recovery days. Usually the way that this plays out for me is that across a 30 or 31 day month, I'll usually have one or two days where I opt to do like rest recovery. And then pretty much every other one of those days is either a lift or a cardio. So in that nine day micro cycle, I'll likely do at least eight workouts, sometimes nine. But the way that I kind of auto-regulate the cardio is that I default to zone two. So I wake up in the morning and my first thought when it's a cardio day is, okay, today is a zone two day. Like I'm gonna keep, you know, stress a bit low, let my body recover, et cetera, et cetera. And then as I get out there and I'm in the midst of, you know, doing my zone two, I'll always, always start with, you know, 15 or 20 minutes of zone two, even on a hit day. Then I kind of assess how am I feeling in the midst of this workout? And if it's feeling good, then maybe this becomes like a higher intensity. cardio day, or maybe I just stick to zone two. And I just kind of auto regulate that so that I make sure that a I'm getting my cardio in without feeling the pressure and the psychological toll of, you know, the anxiety of, man, I have this like four by four hit workout today, and it's going to be really painful. I don't even really let myself go there. I'm just like, hey, in the moment, if I feel good, and I'm warmed up, then I'm going to do that. And that's actually been really effective. And it's kind of helped me manage fatigue in prior years, too. But I'm this year. The main change is as far as managing fatigue is that I'm actually not going to go beyond two RIR for any lower body compounds. And uh I think that just that one shift where I was pretty much taking everything to failure in prior years, I think sticking to two RIR on lower body compounds is gonna make a huge difference in just my general ability to show up and train and not feel intimidated by my training sessions, but also then the down the road impact. recovery, you know, with all the cardio that's being done and stuff like that too. So ah yeah, that's the plan. have a couple questions about that. This one is more for the listeners. What are some, so you said nothing beyond a 2RIR for your lower body compounds. So what are some examples of lower body isolation exercises that you will take closer to failure than a 2RIR? It would just be like a leg curl or a leg extension, but even those, I'm not gonna go into partials past failure or anything like that. Like I'll probably do the last concentric that I know I can do. And maybe that even means that there's another rep in the tank. Maybe there's not, like, I don't know. I'm not really like too stressed about it. Cause I think when you're dealing with those margins, like, first of all, we've had so many studies that show that two RIR compared to zero RIR are pretty similar. Like, yeah, there is a bit of a more benefit when you're getting to failure, but you're also obviously incurring these recovery and fatigue costs, etc. And so as far as the hypertrophic or strength based response, like two RIR seems to be fine. So even if on these isolations, I end up at one RIR, I'm not really too concerned. Cool. Thank you for that. And then with your So basically what it effectively looks like, if I'm understanding you correctly, is we have, you know, day one, let's call it Monday is a lift day in day two and three. So Tuesday, Wednesday are cardio days with the potential of one of those being auto regulatory. And then Thursday is a lift again on the Tuesday, Wednesday and in your two cardio days, what sort of modalities are and options for modalities are you kind of cycling through? Yeah, so for the most part, I'm sticking with biking. ah But if I have a day where I know that it's going into it, I'm like, this is going to be more of like an interval, like above zone two type day. I might be more likely to run simply because I can get my heart rate up above zone two in a matter of like a minute running. ah And for biking, I have to actually exert like significantly more effort to get my heart rate up. So like yesterday, for example, uh well, two, okay, two days ago, I did zone two on the bike, I did like a 90 minute zone two was great, I kept my heart rate pretty low, felt felt awesome. And then yesterday, it was a cardio day. And uh I decided to run and I didn't know if it was gonna end up being an interval workout or not I do I always do my first mile of running in zone two, which feels like laboriously slow it in my zone two pace is like 10 minutes and 45 seconds a mile or something like that. It's just like chugging along. And I think that's even gotten like a little bit worse being 207 pounds instead of 195 is just like even more of a toll from running. But either way, I always do my first mile in zone two. And then I make a decision at that point, is this gonna be like a harder push or am I gonna just kind of stick in zone two and keep it easy or whatever? And yesterday I felt good after the zone two mile. So then I did a mile at zone three, um which actually pushed my pace to like nine minute miles. I was surprised I was able to hit a nine minute mile in zone three. I know like for runners, that sounds really pathetic. So I take it with a grain of salt. um and then after that, I was like, okay, well, I've done two miles. I did one hard mile and then I did a five intervals of 40 second sprint with a minute 20 walk. And then I was done. So I did like three miles total, got five intervals in there, uh did what I needed to do. In some cases I might've done another mile, but in this case I was like, know, I have full full body lift the next day. I wanna monitor my fatigue here. I've done two cardio days in a row. So I kind of auto-regulated that to just doing those five intervals after the steady state stuff. And now I'm ready to do another full body session today. that structure seems to work pretty well. I wouldn't feel ready to do full body again with only one full rest day in between. And I know that used to be like a really popular approach in the pre-steroid era was these three full body sessions a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday type thing. uh But that never has worked for me. Every time I've tried to do alternating days of full body, I just, lose motivation and I don't enjoy it. But every third day seems to Yeah, I would definitely would agree with that. And then one thing I don't know if you talked about when you were in San Diego, did you what what did your cardio look like there? Were you running or did you do any bike modalities in the gym or anything like that? I wish I had a bike, but no, really hate indoor uh cardio. I just can't stand it. I know you do. You're as almost entirely indoors. uh Sun hurts too much here. The sun hurts. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have really hot sun here as well, but, but yeah, I, uh, I can't stand indoor cardio. So I will almost never do that, which is also why I switched to the bro split in the winter. Cause I was like, I'm either going to have to be on an indoor bike or an indoor treadmill, or I'm going to have to be really cold outside. Um, so yeah, being outside is, is key for me with the cardio. Just being able to kill those two birds with one stone and get sunlight and fresh air. And also. train the cardiovascular system at the same time. uh Incredible for me. So I ran twice while I was in San Diego, I lifted twice, and then I did two days of just kind of walking around and being generally active. I think I averaged like 20,000 steps a day while I was there. And obviously that was aided by the days that I ran, but um yeah, a lot of steps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, dude, you know what's crazy is so Kim actually left for a work trip on Monday, and I was there with the kids until Thursday. So I had three days there with no no Kim. And luckily, one of the days her mom was still in town and watch the kids that I could go lift. But the other days, I was like, I can't leave the kids alone. Like, what am I going to do for my exercise? And I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to take the kids out. We're going to walk everywhere. I'm going to show them like, you know, law street beach. Do you remember? Do you remember the pipe? at Law Street Beach that we used to try to walk across as like uh a psychological challenge of sorts. Is that where the hill was that we would run up as well? Yeah, sort of, but the pipe was like just maybe a hundred yards south of that. But there was this long green pipe that was maybe like 20 feet above the ground and there were like some jagged rocks below and it was, it was like a water pipe. So it was relatively wide, but still, I mean, when you're 20 feet above jagged rocks and you're walking across something like start to feel that a little bit. uh So I took the kids there. uh Bryson shimmied his way across it. He was a little too scared to like walk across it, but shimmied his way across. And so anyway, point being, I had no coverage for the kids. I couldn't go work out. couldn't get away from them. And I simply just made them walk around. And we went to you know, steak and fries and got food. And we walked here and we walked there. And like, we just walked everywhere. And that day I got 21,000 steps. And I was thinking about like the fact that my kids are half my size. And so they must've gotten like 35,000 steps. Like I don't even know how many steps they got, but if I'm doing 20,000, like those kids were booking it. So anyway, that was kind of neat to just realize how capable they are of moving their little bodies through space. And I'm sure they just had literally limitless amounts of energy and could have just done it all day long for like for all meant. even times where I was sitting still. Like we went to the beach during that day and I just sat on a towel and just kicked it and watched them and they were running in the water, out of the water, burying themselves in the sand, doing sprints, playing football, like all of these things. And I'm just like, dude, what is wrong with you people? That's awesome. Okay. ahead. What you got? I was going to say, you want me, do you want to talk about nutrition or do want me to talk about training over my trip? And then. don't we do your training and then we can both talk about nutrition a little bit. Perfect. Yeah. So a little bit different as the entire point of my trip was kind of training. So the trip to China was to IWF Shanghai, which is the single largest equipment, gym equipment manufacturing conference in China. So there were literally dozens and dozens and dozens. of equipment manufacturers, brands, companies, those sorts of things there. And then there are four kind of premier, four? Or is it three? Three kind of premier gym branches in Shanghai. Each one has multiple locations. So there's Up Gym. which I found out, Up stands for Ultra Power Hell that they had gigantic on the wall. Cause I was like, Up Jim, that's a strange name, like, but whatever. And then you walk in and there's this huge sign that says Ultra Power Hell. And I was like, all right, sweet. That I'm a big fan of. So there's that one. There is Mars Pro Gym, which had two locations, which were both very, very cool. And then there was a newer player that has emerged that is called Iron Jungle. with multiple locations and each location has its own kind of mascot. So the one is all like a rhinoceros, which is like one of the animals in the iron jungle. And then the other locations have like a different, you know, badass animal. So they were really cool. The gyms were great. They were, were really, really cool. And they were just had so much equipment. And it was... I was going to say it's overwhelming, but it wasn't overwhelming. my friend Ben, who I was with, we just, how we trained is we're to do one hard set on everything and then move on instead of doing two sets so that we can do like 10 exercises. Yeah. And play on more machines. And we structured it as as a push pull legs. And then we lined up so that we could train as frequently as possible. um And then Ben is actually lives in. Bangkok. So then I went from Shanghai to Bangkok and he recently opened a old school hardcore bodybuilding, you know, warehouse style gym in Bangkok called Forge warehouse BKK. And then we train there. So I trained nine out of 10 days in a row. The only day that I took off was Monday because we were both super beat up. I had a red eye from Shanghai into Bangkok and rolled right, you know through immigration's 40 minute Cab ride to my hotel checked into my hotel I bought Sunday night at the hotel so that I could check in right away and go right into check-ins so it was a Monday was definitely a rest day because I was not doing so hot on sleep and stuff and we just trained for like two to three hours every single session and had so much fun and evaluated different pieces of equipment and different things. And I said our approach was one hard set to failure and move on to the next piece. And I there was some days where we kind of had to leave early because the girls were hungry or the girls were done just like waiting for us. But I probably could have trained for three, three and a half hours every single day. I was having so much fun. I felt just that that that youthful joy in it again. And that was really, really cool. So I was very I really enjoyed having that feeling again, because it's been quite some time since I've had that. Yeah, I think you are so lucky in that you have such good training partners every time that you train. Like, you're not very often, I'm sure at some times you are training by yourself at your gym, but, are you, really? Okay. I don't know why I thought you always had like a group of guys kind of passing through training with. Oh, there's cons. The thing that's really cool about undefeated, which I have to admit, people are showing up like brand. Brandon Hendrickson was just here. He just won the mister. He just won men's physique at Arnold Classic. Like there's top Olympians coming through almost kind of regularly at this point, which is really, really cool. But I there's certain people I enjoy training with. but oftentimes it kind of turns into a little bit too much socializing for me. then I've also discussed, genetics is a very, very real thing, a very, very real thing. And some people come and train like at a 70 % and they're like, all right, sick back day. And I'm like, fucking what? Are you kidding me? We barely trained at all. And they're like, they're numb. good. That's what I do. And I was like, okay, you know, sick. I think I'm going to keep training because that's not what I need. So uh yeah, I honestly, I would say I do prefer to train by myself most of the time. So do you, when you break down why you felt like this kid in a candy store on this trip, how would you break down the percentages of how much of it was being in a new location with new equipment and how much of it was getting to train with Ben and like row out during that session? I would say probably 70, 70 % maybe training with Ben. is my, besides probably like you, right? Ben is one of the few people that I can talk about the absolute minutia with of if we change the exercise, if we set the pad like this, the peak resistance will be here and that's different than the other things that we are gonna do. we can, we do all these little like micro adjustments that May add up over time to ever so slightly, you know additional hypertrophy or whatever, but it it's cool being able to go in the into the weeds of training of how if you when we're rowing if you put external rotation pressure on like the thumb side of your grip You can feel more rear delt in it with this one So like these little things like that that I don't get to really talk about anyone with ever. And so that I would say it's probably 70 % Ben and then 30 % like, let's go to this gym because they have that piece of equipment sort of thing. So yeah. I totally agree. think the intellectual curiosity side of training, even if it's not going to move the needle so much on your gains acutely, I think that's why I got so obsessed with the lengthened bias training for a couple years, you know, in the early 2020s, because it was just something new and novel and it allowed me to explore the intellectual curiosity of manipulating. various movements to make them more lengthened. And so whether that was effective or not was almost secondary to the fact that I was just excited about trying this new thing and seeing how it feels on my body as I train. And so I totally relate to that as well. Yeah, one of the things that was really cool and in full transparency, the best piece of equipment in my opinion from the the the event is there is a very, very famous Chinese bodybuilder. I always fuck up his name, so I'm not even going to try and say it. He was open class bodybuilder, very popular in like 2021, 2022, 2023. I think 2023 was his final year, but he is. has recently released a new brand out of China that is remaking some American classics. And the first release is the Magnum Biangular Row, which is really cool. It's plate loaded machine. What's really cool is it has thigh pads so that you can like squeeze your legs in also to brace. But what's best about it is the resistance profile. It is heaviest in the lengthened. and there is a pretty strong drop off in the short so that you can actually fatigue each of the positions. in the lengthened range, in that full stretch, it feels like your lats are tearing off the insertions, because it's insanely heavy. And then you make it just past that length into where the drop off starts to happen, and then you can actually get full scapular retraction and fail there too. So the drop off I found is actually literally perfect, because you can... produce probably five or six sets of stimulus like with that one set on that piece of equipment. And there's multiple hand grips you can do. Yeah. now and it looks simple. Like it almost kind of looks like a hammer strength row minus the little thigh squeeze things that you're talking about. The resistance arc is worlds different than hammer strength. Yeah, yeah. so interesting. Yeah, so that was probably one of the favorites. um And yeah, definitely implemented an intro because training sessions were easily two hours long with everything to failure, assisted reps and stuff, but just had uh a great, great, time. And it sparked this concept that I had kind of been... Swirling around on social media of boys training trip uh and it's the same thing a long weekend Maybe a Thursday Friday Saturday fly home Sunday sort of thing pick an area Somewhere that has an incredible gym, which by this point There's absolutely incredible gyms like all you know, literally all throughout the United States fly in small group Maybe five six guys run an Airbnb cook all the food no outings or anything just train get some you know, maybe small amounts of work done just have big training and and life discussion sort of thing. So I've had plenty of interest in that. So once I get moved, settled and set up, I'll try and make that happen sometime in summer or early fall. Do think that's gonna be in Asia or in the US? I think it will be in the US and in the honestly, I just I don't want to fly all the way back that soon yet. And it's it's probable I have at least one potentially to Asia trips in the fall already. So I mean the trips are far if you haven't done it. It's depending on where it's anywhere from like 20 to 27 hours of flying. So be miserable for me. I can barely even handle a four hour flight when I'm just like sedentary for four hours. I get up like so antsy. Yeah. first time we flew to Vietnam, was probably... near like panic attack the first time. I was like, my knees were just throbbing and my back was so stiff and I couldn't sleep. I'm through every movie that is reasonable of an interest to watch. And you're confined in this space and you're just like, what the fuck am I gonna do? And the stupid little screens is like six hours left. You're defeated. You're so defeated. But now I just, it's like, of those things you just learn how to deal with it sort of as much as I hate to say it. Well, keep me updated on that, because if there's any way that I can get out for a day or two, and it's within an hour of me, ah I could consider joining you guys. I think that'd be sweet. All right, cool. What uh are you doing with your training in general? Are you back to doing kind of a push pull legs thing overall? Yes, push pull legs. will in the week prior, I also did a shoulder day. I've come to realize that my ability to really contract and connect with my lateral delts is not great. So that I want to give a lot more just sets to so that I can practice that at creating the stimulus. uh Because I do think that's one of the places where I can really because I haven't really tapped into a good connection there, I think I can improve my delt development by fostering that connection. So I'm dedicating a day to just give additional time to that. So I was training six days per week. Bri would do a push-pull, delts, legs, push-pull, but I think I will swap the secondary day or I might only do one push per week. but it's been so variable with the travel and then I have two weeks here and then pro camp starts and then that's what's going to be pretty much a free for all and then I have one more week and then we move. the training has been productive but wildly inconsistent in terms of repeating movements and structure week to week. Yeah. Well, like we've discussed in the last few episodes on here, you know, maybe that sort of like rigid dedicated structure every session is not necessarily necessary. Yeah, and I will say training has been really productive. I have noticed changes in my physique, which has been really cool, specifically through the mid and upper back, which is the primary focus. Now I just have to learn how to pose it correctly, which is a new task of its own. On the topic of the lateral delt connection, just real quick, since I thought of it, you obviously know, and we've talked about it on the show, that you want to initiate that lateral raise by pushing out, not by lifting up. I think most of our listeners are probably aware of that at this point. uh But one thing that I've actually started doing literally just in the last couple of weeks that I think has been really effective at amplifying the mind muscle connection is a, like just a half second or a one second pause in the short position. And I had been uh avoidant of that across all short overload movements for years because of the length and bias. I was like, why do I want to waste energy by holding the short position when I can get more out of the length and position? But just in the last couple of weeks by holding the short position, which I'm doing on like lateral raises and like pull downs and rows, leg curls, leg extensions, whatever, anything short overloaded. uh I've actually found that that increases the mind muscle connection. dramatically. And so especially on lateral delts, that might be something to consider if you're not doing it. That's something I've recently implemented, uh just a one second pause at the top. something that, what initially kicked us off for me when I was training with Ben, did, I don't remember what we did, but it was a little sequence, nothing crazy, like a pretty moderate, normal shoulder thing. and his lateral delts were so pumped. was like, I can't even hold my arms up because he's like, they were so, and they were, could see they were bursting. And I had maybe like a 2.75 out of 10 pump in my lateral delts. And I was, it made me go, hmm, there's something in my execution that we are, cause we were using the same weight and stuff. And I realized something is, is off here with mine. Uh, and then him and I had some conversations around it and I realized, okay, there's, there's There's things I'm leaving on the table that I can improve and get more stimulus out of, which should only in theory yield more productive lateral delt growth. So I'm glad that you've implemented that and found that productive. That's cool. ah Okay. Anything else on training? I guess the one thing I'll mention is I, so the gym I went to in San Diego was a fitness West, which we used to always make fun of when we would be out there as you know, it's the average Joe's gym from dodge ball or whatever. uh And it is like, in a way, like the people that train there are kind of like, I don't know, usually old and just kind of, you know, just trying to be healthy, going through the motions. ah But anyway, they have like some really epic machines. And one of them is the, the nitro chest press. And I've never experienced the Nitro Chest Press except at this gym. So I went there last year when we were in San Diego and I went again this year. And using that Nitro Chest Press is so good. And then they also have, I think, the best T-bar row that I've ever used. It's different because instead of your legs being straight and your feet being on the foot plates, they actually have you in this like frog position where your knees are almost up in your chest and your feet are pushed back against foot plates, but you're in this much more like kind of hunched over position. And then you can adjust the the height of like various things to create the perfect setup where your chest is in like the exact right position. And uh it's old school, like it's super old school T bar row, but uh literally so so good, so effective. And so anyway, just really enjoyed kind of screwing around with some of that uh archaic but super effective machinery that they have. Yeah, what's really interesting as I guess a new hobby of mine has been gym equipment since the selecting pieces and stuff around defeating getting into that world. There's a renaissance in sought after equipment from that era and the prices are getting absurd. So that Nautilus Nitro pin loaded uh chest press is selling for five and six thousand dollars now. Yes. Yes, it is absurd. Yeah. know uh Eli Hargis who went through all the N1 stuff? He messaged me when he saw me using it and said that he got his Nitro Chest Press off Craigslist for $300. Like five years ago, was people were still selling these things dirt cheap. And now I think it's it's definitely in a bubble as because the thing that's happening now is a lot of the gyms that are being opened, they're not your 24 hour clubs anymore. It's people opening independently owned strength and conditioning facilities. I'm sure you've seen all those mega gyms in Texas and stuff. And that equipment is very, very sought after now. 20 years later when people realize how good it was and the prices that they're going for are just silly. All right, dude, well talk to me about your nutrition and what kind of you did and what you learned and all that stuff. Yeah, so I guess I'll start with with China. So I left China left for China at 227 pounds, which is the weight that I want to be at. I want to stay plus or minus 10 pounds over my uh stage weight cap. And for the, is one of the first trips where I said, I'm not going to take a food, a food scale. I'm not going to take a body weight scale. I'm just going to eat to my hunger. We're going to be active. We're going to train and I should be pretty much body weight stable. found myself very hungry as we only ate about three, 3.5 times per day. Sometimes I would have a banana and you know, weigh on me. So when we did eat, I was very, hungry and I would find myself having literally two bowls of rice and each bowl was probably 200 grams, but I was quite hungry. And because I was so hungry, I realized it was it was pretty good. And I only the first day that we were there, I had a couple pieces of bao, which is a Chinese like kind of street food esque. They're like, you know, pork filled dumplings or dumplings with with other fillings. But other than that, I was pretty good, right? I kept to my my meat, you know, veg and eggs sort of thing. And then we get to I fly to to Bangkok and my hotel has a scale in my room. So my great I can see how I auto regulated over my trip to 38.8 11.8 pounds. And I took the batteries out, I got off the scale and I was like, there's no fucking way. And normally, because I was traveling to China, I also didn't have any growth hormone in me and that you're gonna carry another like three, four pounds. So that was completely flushed out and I was like, there's no fucking way. This is bad. This is about as bad as it gets. This is by far the heaviest I've ever been. So that day I sat down, I drank a ton of water, I got through my check-ins and I went to the mall and bought a food scale because I realized that my appetite is unreliable for me to be at the body weight that I want to be at. And then over my consistent days in Bangkok and what I also did is I sat down in chronometer, I built myself a meal plan. So this is what I'm eating day in and day out. So I did breakfast. which was at the buffet at the hotel, a lunch slash pre-workout. had intra. I had a post on the way home and then I had a lunch and dinner which were identical meals, which were just chicken breast, kimchi and white rice from the Fuji Super in the front of the hotel. And then I settled into 232 to 233, which is still. five to six pounds up from where I left. Yeah, that's interesting, man. uh That's not so different than my story. I gained a little bit of weight too, but it fell off pretty quickly and I got right back to my kind homeostatic range. But I'm looking at your numbers here. And so you said you settled into 3.5K calories with 270 grams of protein, 485 carbs and 60 grams of fat. And so that's wild to me that A, you can eat that much food, including protein and keep your fat. that low. Like I feel like I would really struggle with that, or at least I would have to be so cognizant of the little bits of fat that appear in all of the various carbon protein dishes that I eat. I don't, I generally don't eat any fats. have two to three eggs. And aside from that, it's my ancillary fats off of my chicken, off of maybe my beef mince, but I don't do avocado. I mean, every once in a while I will order something that has avocado on it, but I'm never having any almonds, know, nut butters. I don't do because. I just I'm I'm hungry at 3.5 thousand calories. Like that's not really maintenance. But the problem is my body seems to want to be a little bit higher, but I don't want it to be that high. But I'm I'm hungrier than I really feel like I have reason to be at 3.5 3.6 thousand calories at 228 to 232. I guess my question because I'm experiencing something kind of similar where I almost feel like I almost feel like I have to eat less food or equal to less food now at 200 and call it 210 pounds or 208 or whatever I am then I did at 195 to maintain weight and so I don't like is that the same case for you like when you were not on TRT and you were natural and you were around 200 pounds body weight say like isn't 3.5 K kind of maintenance for you at that point as well. It was near ish. I think the difference is I think your body is more I don't want to say more efficient. To me what it truly feels like are the muscles get greedy with what is floating through the bloodstream in terms of nutrients and will uptake more. But yes it is. It is very easy to maintain my body weight here. And I would say it's almost kind of a challenge. Like I'm hungrier than I should be day to day at this level of food. But if I keep eating more, my body weight continues to climb and I'm pretty lean right now. Yeah, mean, isn't that just so weird though that like you could be 25 or 30 pounds less but have the same maintenance calories? I they weren't the same. could 3.5 would be a gain for me at 200 pounds as a natural and I would say right now the 3.5 is a slight deficit. Maybe call it 300 per day or something like that when I was truly through post travel. like March in January, or sorry, not March, end of December through the end of January, when I was still meticulously tracking everything and weighing myself, 3.6, 3.75 kept me in the 233, 234 range. Yeah. I feel like it's even more extreme for me. Like I actually think I have to eat less now to maintain body weight than I did at 195. And so that's interesting what you said about maybe like the muscles are greedy and they're just uptaking more, which would then make one think that when I wasn't on TRT that I was excreting a lot of the caloric load instead of absorbing it maybe. potentially Yeah, it's just wild. I actually, it's been like a little disconcerting to me because like I was saying in the beginning, I can fee hungry and literally eat significantly less food than I would have eaten at 195. And yet my body weight just stays the same or keeps going up. I haven't been able to actually like lose weight even on three or four days in a row of being hungry. And I still look at the scale and I'm like, oh, hasn't moved. And usually just simply on food volume, it would move but that isn't So yeah, I don't know. is the rules of the game. You're still playing the same game, but the rules definitely are not the same as when you were full natural. I felt that to just on the on the upper end as a natural, when you have let's call it, let's call it more more muscle than your body really wants to have. You kind of have to do these things to force your body to have that higher amount of muscle mass. And let's call that your, you know you're five foot ten five foot eleven sort of thing right like the 195 200 you're on and lean let's call it you know 12 % or whatever under you kind of have to strong arm your body to keep that higher amounts of muscle mass and feed it a lot and stuff the opposite is is kind of true it's it's that that bar really gets lower with the TRT plus for how simple it is to maintain what's another you know 10 pounds of muscle more or more and you can probably the listeners can probably tell I'm not speaking about this very objectively because I don't think it's truly understood at a like a research level and I don't know if we'll ever get that research. I hope we do because sometimes I feel like I'm kind of crazy even though I'm looking at my food logs I eat the same fucking day in and day out and I'm hungry and my... I I am... upwards of like 40, 45 pounds heavier now. It's a lot. Yeah. struggling to kind of comprehend it and also create like a new baseline or homeostasis or whatever of what normal is for me. Um, which I think actually transitions decently into my San Diego nutrition, which to be honest, like, isn't that interesting because I essentially just did mostly what I do at home, which is I ate from 12 to six and because I only eat for six hours, I just pretty much consume whatever I want. Um, I make sure that the first meal is extremely healthy, know, usually a lean protein, complex carbohydrate, some fruits and veggies, whatever. And then uh in the evening, I just kind of would go out to eat at restaurants and stuff with the kids. ah Do you remember the place Steak and Fries that moved in next to San Diego Athletics when we were at 12, when we were at the one on Cass? up the one that was in north pb no, no, no, no, casting garnet. So the big one the really big the big one that yeah So like three blue three stores up knows three streets three doors up from it on the same side of the street ah It was it was called steak and fries and it it opened up nine years ago So it would have been like while we still had the gym there and I built a relationship with the guy that owns it because I was always there eating cheese steaks And and he's from Philly. He moved out here specifically to start a like Philly cheesesteak style restaurant. And so he was telling me that he like buys like a ribeye, like a fresh ribeye roast like every day and he shaves it up himself. And then he ships in this like Amarosa super soft bread from Philly. And uh he has like this amazing like grilled onions. I mean, I don't know how you make grilled onions amazing, but his are fucking phenomenal. And then obviously, I prefer my cheesesteaks with Provolone, some people prefer them with cheese whiz or whatever. But he does them with Provolone as well. So I became obsessed with these cheesesteaks and I ate them all the time when we had the gym. Every time I come back to San Diego, I like legit crave these things because there is nothing on the same level in Boulder. Like the cheesesteak selection here sucks. ah So I come here and uh usually I'll have like two or three of them across a week, which is still like a decent amount of cheesesteaks. Well, it turned out that my kids loved my cheese steak the first day that I got it and I got it on day one. So we had six days to go and I had my first cheese steak. Kids were obsessed with them. We ended up eating them five days in a row. So every night for dinner, we just went back to Steak and Fries and ordered another foot long cheese steak with like double meat and like, you know, cheese, grilled onions, bread, the whole thing. So every night for dinner, basically except for one night was a foot long cheese steak with double meat. ah And the kids also every night split a foot long cheesesteak. And so that's what we did every night. That was my nutrition. It wasn't super interesting, but it tasted amazing. And I got my fix, because the last one I had, was like, that one wasn't as good as the first four. So I got my fix in, got tired of them, came back. But mostly that was my nutrition. One really healthy meal to start the day, maybe a small snack in between, and then a big cheesesteak at night. And then we would usually do some sort of like ice cream or small dessert to kind of wrap the night up and go to sleep and do it again. So I've just really found with this structure of eating between six or between noon and six, it just allows me a bunch of freedom with my nutrition to eat the things I want to eat. And I always prioritize protein first, like making sure that I'm getting at least 150 grams of protein a day, I think is my number 140, 150, something like that, which is about 70. 5 % of body weight. Actually, it's maybe a little less than that at this point, but whatever body weight times 0.7 is kind of the bottom range. And then I'll usually be a little more than that, but I always focus on protein. I focus on making sure I get enough fruit. I love fruit. So that's not usually a problem, but every day I have like three to five pieces of fruit and then uh veggies where and when I can. uh But aside from those basic rocks, I do allow myself like cheese steaks or other similar types of food at night. And uh seems to be working okay for me. So that's kind of how the trip went. One thing that has been a recent addition for me and I think I alluded to this as well on my work days, my big work day. So let's call that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I've started pushing back my breakfast to what ends up many days being close to about 10 a.m. which is pretty different for me especially considering I'm up at 5 15 or 5 30 and it's just really helped my work efficiency in the morning. So I'll work from Effectively, I start around six. Once I get my morning kind of errand tasks and journaling and stuff done. I work for three, three and a half hours and then I do a 20 to 30 minute walk and then I go into breakfast and that I find I'm quite hungry by the time that that starts, but I would rather be hungry in the morning as opposed to in the evening. That's just a personal preference and we can kind of blunt that with caffeine and such, but that's been a newer one. for me that was mostly work determined, but it has been working out really well. But then my second meal is usually only hour and a half later. And then I need to get that in because I can't really only train after one meal. It's just my body's moving through moving through them too quickly. And I don't want to put in 200 grams of carbs in a single meal because that all just feel heavy and sluggish and stuff. And I don't like that feeling. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. I've actually made one major change to when I train as well in the last, I guess I started it probably maybe six months ago. And so for many, many years, I always trained fasted because I would fast until noon and I liked training in the morning. I would always train and then my first meal would be post-workout. And that would apply to whether it was cardio or weights. But maybe like six months ago, I started training at noon or one. which would mean that I have my first meal at say like 1130 or something like that. I'd give it 15 or 20 minutes for the nutrients to kind of start flowing through the body and then I would go train. And this would apply to HIIT cardio or weights. I'm still kind of cool with doing zone two fasted as long as it's not like a really, really long zone two session. But what I've found is that oftentimes I'd be... I wouldn't say dreading my weight session at all, but it would kind of be like, my body doesn't feel like ready to lift weights. And then it's like clockwork. Every time I eat this meal, I wait 20 minutes. And then I'm like, all right, let's go. Like I feel ready to lift weights now. And so that's been kind of like a little bit of a revelation for me is just like the power of food. um And, yeah, I don't know. I guess like that's just kind of changed my, my general sense of interpretation of readiness. because I can feel very unready for a session and almost blame it on mental lethargy or a poor night of sleep or whatever reason. But as soon as I eat the food and give it like 15 minutes, I just feel ready to go. And then as soon as I start training, it's like within a set or two, I'm good to go. And so I think there's like a lot of power in that. And uh kind of feel silly that I went like 10 years of my life always training fasted when it's just way better with food in my body. Yeah, it's better late than never on that one. But that's really all I got, man. I don't have anything else on this topic here. How about you? That's it. That's all that I have. So as always, guys, any questions about anything or comments, you can drop them in the comments below. Brian and I will be back next week.