224-Overrated/Underrated: Pre-workout, Carb Cycling, Pro Masks & More

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Hello, I am Kevin Smith and you have found the Terminator Training Show, your one-stop shop for no BS training, nutrition, and health information. For more, please go to Terminatortraining.com. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the show. What's happening, people? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is going to be a little bit different. We're going to do an overrated underrated from this week's Instagram story prompt where normally I do ask me anything. This week I changed it up and did overrated underrated. I've done a probably a handful of these episodes in the past, and I have a good time doing them, and people seem to like them. So probably every 10 to 12 episodes or so we'll do an overrated underrated. And I have gone through and picked the topics beforehand, just not all the topics are great. And every time, without fail, some super smart person, actually several handfuls of super smart people, will say whether they think something is overrated or underrated. Like, hey, I'm going to say this topic and also that it's overrated or that it's underrated. Guys, just like questions, when you give me a topic, you're basically prompting me to say whether I think it's overrated or underrated and why. If you say whether it's overrated or underrated, great. I now I know whether you think something is overrated or underrated, but it doesn't really give me a topic to talk about talk about. So what is the point? Anyway, went through and picked out some good ones, and I am gonna discuss those, basically say whether I think it is overrated or underrated, or give some context. In some situations, some of these things can be overrated or underrated, just depending on the situation or the context, and a little bit as to why it's a good little challenge for me as far as teaching and simplifying things, as well as a good way to almost answer questions and give you guys some good solid information that you can apply to your lives, and equally importantly, give you some things to probably not think so much about or waste too much bandwidth focusing on, or if something's underrated and not a lot of people appreciate it, something to focus a little bit more on that matters a lot more. So that's what we're gonna do today, and really no updates. So I'm gonna hop right into today's topics. First one is cardio while wearing a pro mask. Let's go. Alright, so for those not aware, rule number one in special forces, at least, there may be other places that abide or follow this type of rule number one thing. It's kind of a facetious and tongue-in-cheek thing, but still applies. Rule number one is always look cool. And the most ironic thing about this, and for those not aware, a pro mask is a mask that you put on if you're getting a chemical weapon attack. It's a military, it's part of a military mop gear where you put your mask on. You've probably seen it in movies, or if you're in the military, you've probably done some pro mask training where you do a gas mask, like you get mustard gas, or what is it? It's uh tear gas, and you have to go into a chamber and you take your mask off, you have to breathe it in, it's a good time. Everyone pukes, everyone has like everything coming out of all their orifices, and then you put your mask back on and seal it. You gotta get a good seal, and then you get out, and it's a good time. But anyway, that's a pro mask, and you'll see people that think it's a good idea to go and train in them, like do runs and other ridiculous cardio. Usually it's cardio, but sometimes it's like I've seen people doing lifting in them, which is even more asinine. But anyway, the most ironic thing about it is typically you're gonna do this because you think it looks cool. You're gonna do this to draw attention. You're hopefully, I'm gonna explain why it's not a good idea, like to do it for effectiveness of your training, but most people are doing this for attention, let's be honest, and they think it looks cool. In reality, for those who are, I mean, I guess not super narcissistic and have a normal personality, we all think it does not look cool. It looks the opposite of cool. You are literally, you think you are following rule number one, but you're actually breaking rule number one blatantly. You look freaking ridiculous. It'd be one thing if it actually helped, but it actually makes your training less effective, and also you just look ridiculous. So, why does it make it less effective? A lot of people think that because it restricts your breathing and it's uncomfortable, it almost simulates altitude, and later we'll get into a little bit of altitude related, like actual altitude, not fake altitude, like a pro mask or an altitude mask, kind of same thing. All it's doing is restricting your breathing. The benefits of altitude, actual altitude, are not that it restricts your breathing. There are actual benefits at the cellular level and the blood level and the cardiovascular and capillary level of actual altitude training that are absent from just restricting your breathing and training. It's basically like you are plugging your nose or you're just putting like a cotton ball in your mouth to make it difficult to breathe. That's the equivalent of what you're doing by wearing a pro mask. And so essentially what you're doing is just limiting the potential output that you can actually put into your training. So you're getting less effectiveness from your training session just because you're making it harder on yourself by restricting your breathing. So not only that, but you're also, like I said, breaking rule number one really, really, really badly. So if you want to train with your pro mask, you can in the off chance that someday you may actually have to use it in real life. Guess what? If you do your pro mask training as far as not your workouts, but your actual pro mask training before you go to an environment, most likely, if if you're ever gonna go to an environment that has a potential threat of a CBRN or chemical weapon attack, you're gonna do plenty of pro mass training, actual on-the-job training before you go. So you're gonna be at least familiar with wearing it and operating in it. And you might do a little bit of movement and things like that. But in the off chance you ever have to have it, use it, and you train too much in it, you're technically in the margins not gonna be as fit as you would if you just trained without restricting your breathing and you're able to just breathe and put more into your training and therefore get more out of your training. So it's insanity, it's ridiculous, and I just find it ironic how badly people are blatantly breaking rule number one, even though they think they are following rule number one to a T. And I've always found it super, super funny. But if you are listening to this and you're thinking, or you're already doing, you're already doing your pro mass training, there you have it. It is not serving you whatsoever, and it's making you look absolutely asinine. And there's honestly, I I think that's pretty objective. I guess it's a subjective thing, but I mean, come on, man. You look fucking ridiculous. Anyway, let's hop to the next question. Not question, overrated, underrated. Next one, overrated, underrated, baby onboard bumper stickers. This is my buddy who knows that I have a pet peeve of people having a baby onboard bumper sticker on their car. So, yes, very overrated. Why? Well, when is the last time you were gonna rear end if you've ever rear-ended someone, did you look at the back of their car and make a conscious decision whether you're gonna rear-end them or not, or did you just accidentally rear-end them? Probably the latter. Having a baby onboard bumper sticker, it's not like someone's going to think about rear-ending you, but then they see your baby onboard bumper sticker, they're like, oh, never mind. I'm not gonna rear-end this person, or maybe it's on the side, I'm not gonna debone this person, they have a baby on board. No, car accidents are ideally accidental. So all it does is just like let people know you have a baby in the car. It's not actually you're basically like gaining trying to gain attention. You're trying to get attention. Like, oh, I'm so cool, pay attention to me. I have a baby in my car, I'm super special, and I have a baby now too, so like I can actually speak like from a parent. I'm never gonna put this type of shit on my car. But it's not like people are just gonna see this and decide, never mind, I'm not gonna re-rend you. So I just think honestly, I think 98% of bumper stickers are ridiculous, unless it's like a brand or something like that. But I think most people's bumper stickers are stupid, and I also think people's license plates, I don't even know that vanity plates where they get actual words written on their plates, are also super dumb. But I think that might be just my pet peeve. If you have the pet peeve that I have, like bumper stickers and baby on board stuff, let me know in the comments. But I just I don't know. I don't know why it pisses me off so much, but I just think it's asinine. Anyway, next one. Overrated, underrated, not snoozing when you feel like you need more sleep. Highly what? Not snoozing, you're deciding not to snooze even though you feel like you need more sleep. That is very underrated. Most people are gonna snooze in this situation, and I am not discounting the necess the necessity of sleep. Sleep is really important. However, by snoozing, you are starting your day with a why. I've talked about this a million times, but for anyone who's new, or just to rehash it, a lot of people need to hear these things over and over and over again for it to click. When you snooze in the morning, well, let's rewind a little bit. When you go to bed at night and you set your alarm for a certain time, you are committing to waking up at that time. You're telling yourself, I'm gonna wake up at that time. You're making a commitment, no one else knows about it, you're the only only one who knows. And here's the deal: when you break commitments to yourself, you chip away at your self-esteem. And a lot of people do it all day long. They have these little tiny commitments, they might not even be like big important things, like waking up on time, pretty menial, not super important. However, when you don't follow through with your commitments, aka you lie to yourself, aka you have no self-accountability, aka you can't even lead yourself following your own self-narratives and self-direction. How are you supposed to be confident and how are you supposed to have beaming levels of self-esteem? You're not. It's not possible. So when you start your day with snooze, even if you do need more sleep, you're still starting your day with a lie, aka a loss. And a lot of people do this multiple times per day, and a lot of people do this every day, at least every workday. So they're starting almost every day of their lives, five out of seven days per week, pretty much, with multiple lies. They flake on themselves multiple times and they wonder why their confidence levels are low. Well, that's a big, huge one because usually when you start your day with a lie like this, you can't hold yourself accountable to something really, really, really simple, like waking up when you told yourself you're gonna wake up. I can pretty much guarantee you're not holding yourself accountable elsewhere. And here's the deal: if you need more sleep, guess what? You can set your alarm for later and sleep till your alarm goes off. Not only is that not lying to yourself, but also it's gonna be much higher quality sleep than getting interrupted every, I don't even know how often snooze goes off, every seven minutes or every nine minutes. I think some phones are different. But imagine getting, let's say you sleep eight hours per night and you press snooze every, let's say you press snooze six, seven times, and it it equates to an hour. That is one eighth of your night that you're getting interrupted on your sleep every nine minutes. And also in the morning, right before you wake up, that's usually when a lot of your REM sleep occurs. So this is where your mental and cognitive recovery, a lot of that occurs. So you're interrupting that every nine minutes, you're not getting that quality sleep. So every night you're basically cutting an eighth of your night of sleep off by pressing snooze all the time. So that's the physiological effects. So what are the solutions? Either go to bed earlier and wake up when your initial alarm goes off, don't press snooze, or if you know you need more sleep, then set your alarm later. And that solves it. So again, this is highly underrated. Waking up anyway, if you feel like you need more sleep, you are doing something because it is the right thing to do, not because of feelings. You're basically taking your feelings and your emotions out. Oh, I'm comfy, I'm warm, I feel like I need more sleep. But guess what? You made a commitment to yourself to wake up and you're gonna go wake up. And guess what? If you don't feel like waking up in the morning, pretty much every single day, you're not like excited to go attack your day. That's a pretty clear indication that your life is lacking fulfillment. So that can be fixed. You can choose to chase more challenging things and more exciting things and more things that like actually give you the desire to wake up and get out of bed and go attack the day. So that is my thought on snooze. Obviously, I am very passionate about this subject. I used to be a snoozer and I never really pieced this together. I used to be someone that flaked on myself all the time. And then of course, I still once in a while, I'm not like perfect across the board. I don't definitely don't press snooze. I don't even use an alarm anymore because I go to bed and wake up at the same time and I just wake up naturally within a 15-minute window every day. And also I run my own business, so I don't really have a time that that I need to wake up. But that being said, once in a while I do flake up myself, but I do it way less often. And my wins, my actual follow-throughs way, way, way outweigh my flakes of myself. And so therefore I feel a lot more confident, my self-esteem is higher, and I feel like I am a better leader of my own self, and therefore I would be a better leader to others because if you can't leave yourself lead yourself, you can't start by leading yourself. How the hell are you supposed to not feel like a phony when you're trying to lead others? I just don't see how that is possible. I don't see how you could sleep at night, whether you press snooze or not, trying to lead others when you can't even hold yourself accountable, if that makes sense. So, anyway, let's go to the next one. Next overrated, underrated, dumbbell-weighted step ups. I'm gonna say this is overrated for the way most people do it. The thing about a step-up is it's really easy to cheat with your back leg. It's easy to push off and give yourself some extra momentum with your back leg. And also when you have a dumbbell in each hand, it's a lot less stable. So you're just gonna be limited by how much you can load the tissue, the actual glutes and the adductors and the quads. That's kind of like the main muscles that are working in this movement. But even still, even if you have one dumbbell in one hand and you're holding on to an upright, like on a squat bar with the other hand, you're making the lift more stable. Or even if you're like on a Smith machine, you'd probably top out on a Smith machine if you're doing a step up, like a high step up. But basically, if you're making the lift more stable somehow, which my favorite way to do it is just to hold on with another hand and use a dumbbell in that hand, still people have the tendency to push off with their back leg, the leg that's on the ground, and therefore it's really hard to standardize your progression. Like, are you actually stronger last week, or did you push off a little bit more with your back leg this week than you did last week? Type thing. So, as far as single leg movements, step-ups are not my favorite, and that is the main reason why. That doesn't mean they're useless, and it also doesn't mean you can't discipline yourself not to push off with your back leg. There are certain cues that you can use to not do it, and also you can just decide not to do it. But most people are really attached to the reps they're doing or the weight they're doing or progressing from last week, no matter what, even if they do push off a little bit more. That I would prefer someone do a split squat. A rear foot elbow Vedic split squat would be honestly my favorite single leg movement, mainly because you can't really cheat it. Uh, a lot of people don't really perform them the way I like to see them perform them, in that they do the first leg, they go straight into the second leg. If you can do that, I've talked about this a lot, but if you can do that, go straight into your second leg and get the same amount of reps as you could in your first set, you are absolutely not training that first leg hard enough. You should need rest in between the legs. Think of it as if you see, let's say, three sets of split squats, that's three sets each leg. I would think of that as six sets. That's why typically when I program stuff like this, I only do two sets because it just takes forever and it's very fatiguing to do lots of sets. I see some programs with five sets of multiple different single leg movements, which is ten sets of multiple different single leg movements, which is insane. But either way, doing something like a split squat, even a reverse lunge, especially a deficit reverse lunge, yes, you can definitely push off with that back leg, but it's a little bit less of it's a little easier to standardize with that back leg. And it's okay a little you could you could make an argument that it's okay to push off a little bit more with that back leg on a reverse lunge because it's more of a both legged exercise. You're actually getting a little bit of stimulus from that back leg. I also like for single-leg stuff, a kickstand goblet squat, fantastic exercise. If performed properly, a lot of people don't perform it properly. They kind of put the weight on, they they evenly distribute the weight on both feet, and they're like, this is way too easy. If you are doing that movement properly, it's a very uncommon movement. I have it in some of my programs, but if you're doing it properly, 98% of the weight, 99% of the weight is gonna be on your front leg. It's gonna be a very single-leg dominant exercise. And if you can do sets of eight to ten with more than 70 pounds, you're incredibly strong, or you're just really good at that exercise, or you're a little bit of both. For example, when I first started doing that lift, the week prior, I did a Rogers squat, Bulgarian split squat with I want to say 425 for seven reps. The first time I did that movement, and I'm experienced, so I like know exactly how to perform these movements, even if it's a more foreign movement for me. I'm not super skilled at the movement, but I know how to load it properly and execute it properly. I used a 40-pound kettlebell and I got eight reps per leg. And I was like, that was to failure. 40 pounds versus 425 on a split squat the prior week. So that's a great movement. And if you do it right, very hard to cheat. Not to say that step ups are a bad thing, they can be very beneficial, again, if you're disciplined with them, but I would say they're a little bit overrated as far as single leg movements are concerned. Next one, collagen supplements. Very overrated, mainly because A, collagen protein is very low quality, so it does not have enough of all nine essential amino acids, so you're not really gonna get a lot of benefits protein-wise from collagen supplements, but a lot of people will use them for like joint health, and a lot of people use them for skin and nails. I would say that's probably the best thing for them. It's a little bit iffy, like the data on it is a little bit iffy. Are you gonna get great results for like healthier skin and nails and hair, or is it really pretty menial? And also, does it really matter? Like, do you want your nails to grow faster? Do you want your hair to grow faster? That can be an indicator that you're generally healthy, but there's a lot of things that indicate your health besides that. So as far as joint pain, they're not really gonna do all that much, especially compared to fixing everything else in your life that is potentially causing joint pain, like your overall diet. Is it super high inflammatory? Collagen's not gonna do shit for you if you're just eating inflammatory foods that just jack you up anyway. Your training volume, your training load, managing that is gonna make a big difference. Your execution, your running form, so on and so forth, those are all gonna play a much bigger role than taking collagen to fix your joints. And I will say though, doing something like soaking your some of your food, like your rice or other things, or even just drinking bone broth, like really high quality bone broth, kettle and fire is what we use. It's absolutely delicious, and we put it on a lot of different things. I cook all my megafit meals, by the way. If you want to try MegaFit, best meal company, best meal prep company in the game, go to the link in the description and it should take you straight to a 10% discount. But if it doesn't, go to megafitmeals.com and use the code TTM for 10% off. Fantastic macros, absolutely delicious. And if you're at home and you're making them at home, I would strongly recommend instead of using the microwave, using the stovetop, soaking them in some bone broth. Bone broth's really, really good for your gut health, and it also has a little bit of protein in it. Again, not super high quality protein, just like collagen, but it is just a great way to add some salt to your food and also make it more easy digesting. And if you have gut health issues, it's fantastic. Now, usually when I make foods with bone broth, they're easy digesting anyway, but this can kind of give it a little bit of a boost as far as gut health and digestion. So I wouldn't waste your money on collagen. You can if you want, it's not gonna hurt you. If you like it in coffee or if you feel like it makes you feel good, that's fine, but it's definitely not something to go out of your way. I would say it's overall overrated, but not gonna harm you if you like to use it. Next, overrated, underrated, Planet Fitness Gyms, because of their nice machines. Highly overrated. Planet Fitness overall is overrated. The fact that Planet, I'll get into machines here in a bit, actually. So, why is Planet Fitness overrated? Mainly because of their double standard. So they claim to be a judgment-free zone, but typically, in my experience, I haven't been to a lot of Planet Fitnesses. I've only been, I think, to one, but just from what I've heard and what I've seen, like on social media, some videos and whatnot. If you are not really that into fitness, let's say you go to Planet Fitness for like their Tuesday pizza night or something, I don't know if they still do that. They used to have like, I don't know if it was Tuesday or Friday. Basically, if you went between certain hours, they'd give you a piece of pizza or two pieces, I don't know, something like that, which is ridiculous in its own right. But anyway, people like that that are not serious about fitness, that are like afraid to go to the gym, which by the way, if you're not serious about fitness and you are self conscious about Going to the gym, guess what? You gotta start somewhere. And it's not like people who are really, really into fitness at the gym are gonna see you come in and negatively judge you, be like, what the hell is this unfit person doing here? In fact, unless the person's a complete dickhead, it's the exact opposite. I absolutely love to see when people come into the gym, even if they're a little bit afraid and apprehensive to do it, to hopefully improve their health and do something good for themselves instead of just continuing to be fat and afraid of going to the gym. So most of the time, the super fit, really jacked, maybe more intimidating looking people are the least intimidating people. And if you A, they're not gonna judge you, and B, if you go and ask them something, if someone like that came and asked me, like, hey, you don't look like you're no, you look like you're no what you're doing, can you help me with something? I would be happy to point them in the right direction. But I do understand like the apprehension to go to the gym. Either way, a lot of people like that gravitate to Planet Fitness because they are a judgment-free zone. And yes, they are a judgment judgment-free zone for that type of person. However, if you're serious about fitness and you maybe want to go and use some chalk, or maybe you want to go and do some deadlifts, or maybe you want to go and show off the fact that you're jacked and you've worked really hard to build all this muscle, so you're wearing like a sleeveless shirt, you're like serious about fitness, or maybe you're training super hard and you're making noises, which is totally acceptable. It's not acceptable, in my opinion, to do like these ridiculous bicep curls and calfphrases and scream, but like last set of a hack squat when you're burying it and you're going to zero reps in the tank, letting some noise out is totally understandable. Honestly, I would say if you are doing that and you're not letting noise out, I don't really trust the fact that you're going to zero reps in the tank. Anyway, neither here nor there. But in my opinion, and in my experience, and from what I've heard, those type of people will get judged, people who are serious about fitness. And that's a double standard, and I don't like that at all. I also think their business model, although very brilliant, is a little bit scummy because they just know they charge so little. They charge it used to be 10 bucks a month, I don't know what it is now, but they're so cheap that so many people on a whim of motivation will go and sign up and maybe go for a little bit and then they just stop. But it's so cheap they just never get rid of their membership, so they make money off these people that just don't go to the gym, which is gotta say, very brilliant as a fellow business person, but also a little bit scummy, and I'm just not a huge fan of cheapies and freebies, just not my type of environment. As far as nice machines, unless you know something that I don't, and don't get me wrong, I am a big-time machine nerd. So a lot of machines that a lot of people think are nice are actually not nice. I can pick apart like 10 different things that make them shitty machines. But unless you know something I don't know about Planet Fitness with nice machines, they don't have very nice machines. Their machines are very vanilla and very, very basic. They get the job done for like an average person, but I would not consider them nice machines. Nice machines are things like Prime and Atlantis and certain Arsenal pieces and certain Jim Lecco pieces and certain, let's see, Panada pieces, and things like what else? Nautilus. Nautilus has some great, great pieces. Not planet fitness stuff. Oftentimes I would guess it's probably like maybe some life's life fitness stuff, which life fitness does have some decent machines. Their leg curl, weirdly enough, is super nice. Their seed leg curl, I should say. They probably have some, maybe some hammer strength. Hammer strength does have a decent couple of pieces, but 98% of hammer strength stuff is pretty awful. Even though people think hammer strength is nice, that's a perfect example. So I'm not sure what you're talking about about nice machines, but overall I'm gonna say Planet Fitness is highly overrated. I don't want any part of Planet Fitness whatsoever. And you can call me a dickhead for that, but I don't really care. Next one, fruit and grain bars for carbs. So I'm gonna say overrated mainly because grains are not the most ideal carb source for most people. Even though everyone says whole grains this, whole grains that, whole grains part of the food pyramid, whatever. Grains are just not easy digesting for most people. They're not great for most people's gut. And that's just what I've experienced over a long time working with a lot of people, as well as myself, as well as just a lot of people that struggle to digest grains. And if you don't now, eventually, if you continue eating a bunch of grains, you very well may, especially if you're eating grains plus all the other shit that people eat on a regular basis that just destroys their gut health, or they're just super high stress, they train way too much. There's a lot of different things that go into worsening your gut health. Some of it is a little bit, you can you can have like autoimmune issues, you can have food allergies, you continue eating a food that you're sensitive to and you just don't know it. Things like that. There's a it's very, very complex. Gut health experts still have like 1% of everything there is to know about the gut figured out. So it's a very complex system. However, grains generally are not very easy digesting, and they can lead to some inflammation, they can lead to some gas, bloat, they're slower digesting. So if you're eating these around training, not ideal. The fruit in them, I mean, fruit's pretty good for you, but usually it's like kind of processed fruit. They probably add a bunch of sugar and other additives to these bars. So, in general, I would probably for the most part steer clear of fruit and grain bars and opt for things like regular fruit, like whole food fruit, would be a great option. If you're doing this around training, something faster digesting, like a rice-based item, such as rice and grinds. Another thing we have a discount code for. Pridefoods.org, 10% off with the code TTM for rice and grinds, the best hot cereal, rice-based cereal, super easy digesting on the market. It's a great oatmeal alternative. Going back to the greens, oatmeal is another one that is iffy for a lot of people. Some people do handle it just fine, other people don't digest it well, if that is you. If you feel sluggish or if you just feel not great after you eat oatmeal, or you want something faster digesting around your training, oatmeal is higher in fiber, so it's slower digesting. It's got a little more fat in it too, then rice and grinds is a great option. You can find info for that in the description. Anyway, having something faster digesting, rice-based, around your training would be a better option. Rice cakes, rice crispies, even, rice and grinds, white rice itself. Or if you're really close to training, instead of having a green bar like this, you could do something like maybe a some something with almost pure carbs, probably like a gel or intra-workout carb supplement, or even a stinger waffle. I don't love stinger waffles right before training because they do have some fat in them, but they'd probably be a better option than a fruit and grain bar. And they can be fine like after training, or if you're doing something really, really long and you want a high carb like bump, just note that they have a little bit of fat in them so they're slower digesting. I don't really understand why people think they're such great periworkout foods. There's like seven or eight grams of fat in one stinger waffle, which is not a lot of fat overall speaking, but for your intra workout or just before your workout, that's too much fat. It's gonna slow digestion down. Anyway, those would be better options than fruit and grain bars. If you like fruit and grain bars and you handle them well, you're probably either a unicorn or you just don't realize what it feels like to eat foods that are more gut friendly and easy digesting. And if you did, you would feel the difference. But a lot of people just have no idea that their gut health is absolutely horrendous, or they just don't want to acknowledge it. Honestly, I always say this. If you want to know the general picture of gut health and how poor it is in the United States in general, like general population, go to an airport male bathroom. You will see, smell, and hear just how bad the gut health is of the male population as a whole. Furthermore, if you want to see how bad it is in fitness-minded people, even fitness-minded people that really take their fitness, ideally their health, or supposedly their health seriously, go to a bigger gym bathroom, and you will smell, see, and hear just how bad people's guts are. To be clear, you should not have diarrhea every single time you go to train. You should not have these massive, disgusting shits all day long, like randomly go to the airport bathroom and have these massive shits, or randomly go to your gym bathroom and take these disgusting shits. Like that is a clear sign that something is not right. Even though it's normal, or no, I should say, even though it's common, it is not normal. The male body, the human body, I should say, is not supposed to function that way, even though a lot of people do, that does not make it a normal human bodily function. So anyway, going on a tangent here, but gut health is something I'm really passionate about because I've had some issues with it myself, and I've been a little bit of in that same boat, like convincing myself my gut health's fine, even though I know it's definitely not, and I finally fixed it, at least improved it. It's not perfect. I still get messed up once in a while. Usually it's because I make bad choices, and I know going into it, it's a bad choice, it's gonna mess me up, and I still accept it, which is fine to do once in a while, but for the most part, you really want to keep your gut health in check, and because it's not just your gut, it's it there's an axis between the gut and basically every single organ in your body. So it is very, very important. It's underrated, like gut health in general is underrated, even though a lot of people like think it's overblown. It's in my experience, not. It's something that you should probably take seriously, especially if you know that your gut health is not great. Anyway, moving on to the next overrated, underrated. Carb cycling. Carb cycling, this is a great one for context. So in some contexts it's overrated, in others, it's underrated. Let's talk overrated. When is carb cycling overrated? Oftentimes, people online, coaches, trainers, Instagram influencers, etc., will do these like carb cycling challenges where they'll try and claim that carb cycling is this magic thing to lose extra fat or get extra shredded, or if you just join my six-week carb cycling challenge, you'll be ready to go to the beach with a six-pack in six weeks, as if everybody's six weeks away from having a six-pack. Most people are further than six months away from having a six-pack, let alone six weeks of carb cycling. Anyway, that's when it's overrated. It's usually just a marketing, scammy marketing technique, and it's a way to get people almost to think like, oh, I've been doing this all wrong. I need to just carb cycle, and that is going to be the solution to all my problems. That is where it's overrated. Where it's underrated is for someone with big performance goals, especially if your training throughout the week fluctuates significantly as far as volume, intensity, and things like that. So if you have really, really high output training days, let's say some days you're doing three-hour rucks, or some days maybe you're doing a lift plus a conditioning session. Maybe you're doing double sessions. And then other days you're doing maybe a 45 to 60 minute lift or a 30 to 45 minute easy run, or maybe it's a complete rest day, and you're just a generally active person with really good metabolic health, you're relatively lean, you're decently experienced with tracking macros. If you're just brand new to tracking macros, probably a little bit too advanced, but let's say you have some experience with that, then it makes a lot of sense to carb cycle because you're pretty much matching your daily calorie and carb intake up with your output. Usually, calorie cycling and carb cycling are pretty similar. Most people call it carb cycling, but usually you're also fluctuating your calories too. So, say you have a three-hour ruck one day and the next day is a rest day. It makes a lot of sense to eat more on that three-hour ruck day because you're gonna burn a lot more on that three-hour ruck day. So you would drive your carbs up and that would also drive your calories up. And then the next day you'd eat fewer carbs and that would also drive your calories down. You can carb cycle without changing your calories. It's a little bit more complex, not really applicable to most people listening to this. That's more of a lifestyle type thing, or maybe you're trying to manipulate the way your physique looks around a competition, like a physique show or something like that. But even like bodybuilders will do some carb cycling and they'll also calorie cycle. But I think for that type of person and that type of goal, it's really underrated. It's a great, great strategy. I use it with pretty much all of my clients. Yeah, all of my clients, whether they're in a cut or they're in a surplus or they're at maintenance. Honestly, it's great for cutting because it's a fantastic mental boost as well as performance boost. Let's say you are in a calorie deficit. Instead of eating in a deficit every single day, when you cycle calories and you cycle carbs, some days, especially your higher output training days, you're eating probably closer to maintenance, maybe even sometimes in a surplus. Yes, you can sometimes eat in a surplus, even though you're in overall a deficit and still be fine. You just compensate for it on another day. So let's say it's a really hard training day and you want to perform as best you can and recover from that training session as best you can. Maybe that day you eat a hundred calories or 200 calories mostly by carbs over maintenance. And the next day is a rest day. You compensate on the rest day by eating less that day, and it evens itself out. So as long as you're in a net deficit, typically I do this on a weekly basis. I kind of determine how many calories per day someone needs to eat to be in a certain amount of calorie deficit, 300, 400, 500 calorie deficit. But then I multiply that by seven and we get their weekly calories, and then I will assign different amounts of calories on different days based on output. Lots of things go on behind the scenes as far as tracking this stuff. I have some articles on my website that talk about carb cycling and how to implement it. And I also talk about it in my soft prep recovery guide. But I think it's a really good strategy for that. I also think it's a really good strategy for somebody who is more of a lifestyle person that has a little bit of tracking experience. So a lot of people generally like to eat a little bit more on certain days and a little bit less on other days. Usually for most people, it's the weekends. They like to go out, hang out with friends, have a good time, maybe eat a little bit more on weekends, and maybe on an average Tuesday, they're really busy, they're totally fine eating a little bit less. So let's say they're trying to be in a calorie deficit. Maybe on Friday and Saturday they eat at maintenance. On other days, they create their cer their deficit. And that is an example of calorie cycling. And usually the best way to do it, if you care about like performance or physique, is to mostly manipulate your carbs. You can manipulate your fat a little bit, you can manipulate protein too, but that is getting a little bit into the weeds, especially for the lay person. If you have a coach that's doing it for you, that's one thing. But for the most part, just using the carbs to drive them up or down based on your output or based on your lifestyle, your preferences is a solid idea. And again, you can also use it for physique goals. If you're trying to get really jacked on your big heavy training days, especially if you're in a surplus, have super duper high carb days on your surplus during your surplus on your higher training days, and then drive those cars back down a little bit lower, still making sure that you're in a surplus on your non-training days or on your easier days, and that can be a great strategy. So, overall, for some people, underrated, for other people, overrated. Next, overrated, underrated assault bike for conditioning. I would say very underrated. It's probably the best piece of equipment that there is for conditioning, just because A, it's low skill, you don't have to have a lot of technique, and you don't have to have all you don't have to do a lot of practice and worry too much about your skill when you're going about the assault bike compared to something like running. Running is what I call a double cost activity. So the cost of not having great running skill, and by the way, running is absolutely a skill. If you've been listening for a while, you know this, but it is a high skill activity. And the double cost of it, if it's low, if your skill is low, which for most people it is, because they don't treat it like a skill, one, you're just not going to be as good at it, which is acceptable, I guess, fine. That's kind of the cost for low skill at any conditioning modality. But the other cost of not being skilled at running is you're way more likely to get injured, some sort of overuse injury. Whereas if you have no air bike skill, which again, it just doesn't take all that much skill, yes, you can have there are certain things that represent a little bit more skill. Some people are more skilled on an air bike. There's certain things technique-wise that matter, but they don't matter as much in that you still can get a really solid training session in. And if you're really, really unathletic and you're really unskilled, let's say it's your first time ever on an air bike, your chances of hurting yourself are almost slim to none. Your chances of getting an overuse injury are slim to none. So it's a very, very accessible piece of equipment. And you can absolutely crush yourself, you can crush your soul on an air bike with more intense workouts. I would say for like zone two, longer stuff, it definitely can be used, but it's not ideal, especially an Echo bike where you actually really have to like work hard to keep an Echo bike going. An air bike or an assault bike kind of goes a little bit on its own, a little easier. You can kind of coast. So it depends on your fitness levels. Like for some people, just barely getting an Echo bike going might put them into zone two, zone three, or higher. So it might not be the best option for like low intensity stuff, but for generally fit people, it's probably totally fine. But overall, for higher intensity stuff, it's fantastic. It's a full body thing, you can absolutely burn it down. It's great for high-intensity interval training, it's great for a little bit longer intervals, it's great as part of a conditioning piece where you're using multiple different pieces of equipment, or maybe you're doing some strongman stuff along with some cardio stuff, and you're hopping on the assault bike. So I think this is a fantastic. If I was gonna have one piece of equipment, although I am partial to the rower just because I love the rower, and rowers are much higher skill than a lot of people think they are, and I like the skill aspect, I like doing things that I can get better at skill-wise. It just is like mentally stimulating and fulfilling to me. So I would choose the rower if I could have any piece of equipment, but my second choice would be the assault bike or probably the echo bike. Actually, funny thing is, I have the concept 2 rower as well as the assault bike or the echo bike, and I love both of them. I definitely use the rower more often, but the air bike in general is a highly, I would say under slightly underrated, not highly underrated, just because a lot of people share my same viewpoints on it, but I don't think it gets quite enough respect compared to what it should get. Next overrated, underrated, keto breads. Okay, so I think this is a facetious one, but anyway, I'm gonna say this is highly, highly overrated. Alright, so keto, honestly, people have bastardized keto so, so, so hard. And it just drives me nuts. Honestly, people like who are low carb, I made a post the other day and it's getting a lot of traction. A lot of people are seeing it about how stupid it is to basically cut out carbs or be afraid of carbs if you want to perform better. It's kind of a meme post, and for whatever reason, people who love to go low carb, like keto people, carnivore people, people who just are anti-carb, they think that life is better without carbs or that they can perform better without carbs or that they look better without carbs compared to if they were to. All asinine stuff that I won't get into, but for whatever reason, people are just attached to it. It's almost like their religion. And anytime you talk negatively about it, they just get super duper upset. And you can see the comments section on this post for a representation of that. Honestly, most comments are good, but some of them are just people who are feeling offended. Anyway, keto. The original use of keto, the reason it was actually invented, is to treat epilepsy. So people who have seizures on a regular basis, and it works really well for that. However, actual keto is very high fat, pretty damn low protein, like low to moderate protein, and really, really low carb to no carb. A lot of people these days eat keto, quote unquote keto, but they eat really high protein, decent amount of fat, and pretty low carbs. But they will take these things that are normally carbs and turn them into keto. So basically they add a bunch of fat and therefore calories to them. They add a bunch of fake shit to them to make them kind of maybe taste. I've never I would never try this stuff, and I I never have, but they try and add things to make it taste like normal bread, but they make it keto. It's got way more fat in it, way more calories in it than regular bread would. And they think because it's keto, it's somehow going to be more beneficial for them than just being okay with eating some actual like quality bread, like sourdough bread. God forbid you have sourdough bread, which has a lot of carbs in it. You're gonna feel way better, you're gonna perform way better, you're gonna look way better. But no, I'm just gonna have this keto bread, even though it's not actually keto. Keto in general is gonna be whole foods, whole keto foods. And it can be beneficial again for certain people, especially if you have epilepsy, very, very beneficial, probably the most beneficial way you can possibly eat. However, a lot of people just have adopted it and bastardized it and started making all these ridiculous keto things, keto ice cream, keto bread, keto muffins, keto cookies, whatever have you. And if you're gonna handicap yourself by not eating carbs, Deciding not to eat carbs because you think it's better. In fact, usually for most people it's worse. Then just stick to it and don't try and eat these fake things that are usually carbs and tr try and turn them into keto. It's just, I don't know why you wouldn't just eat actual bread and do yourself a favor. Anyway, I'm very passionate about this stuff, but I just think people are that they're they're just so misinformed. That is the main thing. People are just drunk on different people's Kool-Aids because there are a lot of creators out there that are very enticing and very, very articulate. They sound really smart, they sound really convincing, they usually believe their own bullshit. Some of them are disingenuous, they know better, but they're so sunken past, like they have the sunken cost fallacy. Like I've already, I've already put my name out there as this guy. Even though I know better, I'm gonna continue to promote this. Other people actually believe their own bullshit. Their own, like, you're way better off, everyone's way better off, everyone can perform better, everyone's gonna look better, everyone's gonna be more healthy if all they eat is meat, or if all they do is eat keto, carbs are toxic, carbs are for the devil, carbs cause diabetes, they cause bloat, they cause you to get fat, whatever. But it just annoys the hell out of me because it's all bullshit. And honestly, most people are gonna get the best results and also be able to sustain them and feel the least restricted and stay the healthiest if they just eat a relatively balanced diet that includes regular bread, not keto bread, regular bread. Generally, you want to choose something like sourdough bread because it's better digesting, it's healthier, but you'd just be better off doing that and also eating some fat and also eating some protein and also eating some other carbs. You're gonna look better, you're gonna feel better, you're gonna be more healthy. Again, most people, there are certain instances and certain outliers that this doesn't apply to, but for the most part, most people are gonna do better or would do better, hypothetically, if they decided to, they stopped drinking the Kool-Aid, if they just lived a balanced life as far as what they do for nutrition and stopped attaching their identity to the way they like to eat, putting it in their Instagram profile, thinking that every day starting the day with bacon and butter in their coffee, like pouring melted butter into their coffee and eating bacon is somehow a good way to start your day and more healthy than eating a balanced breakfast of what let's say a couple eggs, some egg whites, some sourdough bread, or maybe some rice and grads, or maybe some oatmeal. It's just all insane to me. So anyway, keto bread, way overrated. Thanks for getting me going. Next, overrated, underrated, intra workout carbs. Context again, for most people, overrated. For most people listening to this, probably underrated. So the average person does not need to worry about intra workout carbs. They don't train hard enough, they don't need extra carbs in their life as far as like drinking them during training. However, if you have big performance goals and or you need a lot of calories throughout the day, then intra workout carbs is a fantastic idea. If you want to make gains in the margins, if you want to really support your in-training performance as well as your recovery from that training, intra workout out carbs, even if you're eating enough carbs overall, still a really good idea. So generally these are gonna come in liquid form unless you are doing something like a run, you're doing some gels, maybe some gummies, some chews, whatever have you. These are fantastic ways to keep your energy levels up. They're gonna delay how long it takes you to tap into glycogen. They're kind of what's called glycogen sparing. Basically, you're giving yourself glucose in your bloodstream and your body's gonna kind of burn that off. You can't really have, you don't really have a lot of glucose in your bloodstream at one time. You have a lot more glycogen. But by taking in intra workout carbs, you're gonna preserve how long that glycogen, which is basically stored carbs from overall carb intake, you're gonna delay how long it takes you to start start burning through all of that. So that's one benefit, but other benefits are you're gonna start recovering from your training session faster because you want to replenish that glycogen as quickly as possible. And if you're taking in more carbohydrates during your training session, again, you're not gonna lose it as much. And so, therefore, you're gonna be able to train sooner for the next workout. But there are some indirect benefits as well, such as if you're someone who is lean and you train hard and you're just a generally go, go, go, higher stress person, doing a lot of hard training is going to be a pretty significant stressor. And later in training sessions, as you're training for a longer period of time, basically the stress effect of that training session can be a little bit modulated by taking in carbs. You're gonna release insulin, and insulin can have a little bit of a cortisol dimming effect. Very, very minor. It's kind of subtle and it's more nuanced, and it doesn't really, it's not super applicable or necessary for everybody to think about. My dog, it's thundering out. My dog is trying to get into my office. So let me go open the door. I will be back. We're talking about, let's see, the stress effect of intraworkout carbs. BRB. All right, my dog is now in my office. She's good to go. She's shaking and panting. She does not like thunderstorms. She's been through a thousand of them in her life. She's 10 years old, but still, she gets terrified every time. Anyway, intraworkout carbs can have a little bit of a dimming effect on the cortisol release from that training session. And therefore, in a round of almost a roundabout way, help with recovery. You're just a little bit more chill sooner after you finish training, as well as during that training session. Not chill in that, like it's gonna impede your performance or like calm you down or make it so that you can't go hard, but hormonally, it's gonna balance you out a little bit. There's a lot that I'm skimming over just to not get super duper into the weeds here. But that is another more nuanced, lesser discussed effect of interworkout carbs. And a super nuanced one that almost no one talks about is the fact that the brain in the nervous system prefer to run on glucose. So you have your glycogen, which I already discussed earlier, kind of stored in your musculature. You do store glycogen in the liver just in smaller amounts, but in the musculature, that is very, very important for high output training performance, especially if you're doing things like a tempo run or a time trial or higher rep bodybuilding style workout or repeats, whatever have you, that glycolytic energy system literally means you're burning sugar, you're burning carbohydrates, you're burning glycogen. That being said, if you have a little bit of glucose coming in, so you're taking intraworkout carbs, whether it's liquid or gels or whatever have you, that is going to support optimal nervous system and brain function. So your nervous system kind of communicates with your musculature to allow it to function at its best. So that is important as well. And for all those reasons, I would say for a lot of people listening to this that have big performance goals and big recovery goals, or significant body composition goals, and you really want to be jacked and lean and strong, interworkout carbs would be a really good idea. For the lay person, the general person who's just looking to get a little bit fitter and healthier, totally not something to focus on. Pre-workout. I'm gonna say pre-workout is overrated. Mainly because a lot of people either A, overuse it, they abuse it, and as such become reliant on it. And B, because the after-effects, especially if you're using pre-workouts that have these days, pre-workouts have insane amounts of stimulants in them, and mainly caffeine, but other stimulants do, you're kind of dampening your recovery a little bit because you're getting your nervous system all ramped up. And even if you're doing this during the day, if you're doing this in the evening pre-workout and then evening workout or afternoon workout, that is a terrible idea because it's going to eat into your sleep. Not a good idea. However, even throughout the day, if you're getting super ramped up on a ton of stimulants prior to training, yes, it can have an acute performance effect and caffeine used strategically, which I'll get into here in a second, can be great. But using pre-workout for all your training sessions to get super ramped up, you're not gonna be, you're still gonna be ramped up well after your training session. And after training, in order to recover fully and optimally and maximally and long term, make the gains that you want, not just get your workout in and have a good time doing that, but actually get the fruits of your labor long term, you wanna be able to switch or somewhat rapidly transition into a more rest and relax state, a parasympathetic state. When you're training, you're ramped up, you're sympathetic, you're fight or flight. That's a good thing. You want to be that way. And caffeine can make you that way or can enhance, basically accentuate how ramped up you are. That being said, after your training session, if you're still ramped up from your caffeine, it's gonna take you longer to start recovering and chilling out. And oftentimes you might crash later, you might feel terrible later. And again, if you're doing this in the evening or the afternoon, it's gonna interfere with your sleep. And if you don't feel like it is, it actually is. So that's not a great idea. But also, people get to where they can't go and train without pre-workout. If you are so reliant on a substance, like an outside substance, to go get your training sessions in, which you should be able to just do anyway, that's a problem too. It's almost like being fully reliant on when you go into a social situation in the evening, you need to have a couple drinks before, or else you're just way too anxious. You can't actually handle yourself socially without booze. That's a problem. That's probably a bigger problem than needing pre-workout to go train, but it's similar. You have to rely on a substance, which generally speaking, that's not a great place to be. So using caffeine strategically, usually not in the same doses that are in pre-workout, 400 milligrams, 350, 400, 500, whatever milligrams of caffeine can be great. However, it is usually more beneficial if you're not also using caffeine all the other times where you're not training. Let's say you're drinking four or five cups of coffee a day and you take pre-workout, but even on the days you don't take pre-workout, you're still drinking four or five cups of coffee a day, you're not really going to benefit quite as much from that pre-workout caffeine and you're taking in insane amounts of caffeine on those days. But if you are not using a bunch of caffeine on the days that you're not using pre-workout or using any caffeine, you don't have ideally, you don't use pre-workout, you use something like coffee or caffeine pill. But let's say you're using pre-workout, but you're only doing it once a week or twice a week, just for like one or two workouts, that can be a little bit better and you're doing it in the morning, so you're it's not interfering with your sleep. Yes, you're still gonna be ramped up after that training session for a while, but sometimes it may be worth it, especially if it's like a competition or if it's a max out day. You don't really care about the adaptations from that workout, you just care about the performance in it, or if it's not a workout, if it's a competition or a race or something like that, you want to perform. You don't care about like recovering perfectly and adapting perfectly. That can be a great use case for using stimulants. But just relying on pre-workout, which is honestly for most people, that's the way they use it, that makes it mostly overrated. If you can use it responsibly, then it can be, I would say, maybe properly rated, maybe a little bit underrated, but most people don't do it that way. So all right, let's do a couple more 6120s for developing speed. So the way that most people do these, overrated. The way that I like to do them, I do these with a lot of my clients, underrated. So, generally speaking, I think this is a military thing. The way the army, most people in the army do them, you run as fast as you can for 60 seconds and then you rest or you walk for 120 seconds. That is not very beneficial because you're just going as hard as you can. It's not actually repeatable because later in the session, let's say you're doing eight or ten of these things, by the time you've done several of them, you're as fast as you can is not gonna be anywhere near as fast as the beginning. And even if it were as fast as the beginning, it's still gonna be way, way, way faster than you're actually capable of running, let's say your two mile, which is probably what you're doing these for, two mile improvement or five mile improvement, or both. So it is gonna be way more fatiguing, way less specific, and therefore less stimulative. However, if you pace them in a way that is relative to your goal paces or what you should be running general repeats at. So maybe your goal two mile pace, or maybe let's say 15 seconds, 15 to 18 seconds faster than your current two-mile pace, something like that, that can be great. And also adjusting the rest periods over time. So let's say you start with eight 6120s, maybe you do 10 next week, then maybe you get to where you're doing 6090s, you're resting a little bit shorter. You're keeping that same pace, but you're shortening the rest periods. Then maybe you get to 6075s, then maybe you get to 6060s, and you're doing more over time as well, not indefinitely, but maybe you get up to 18, 20, 22, and again, you're pacing them well. When you manipulate a little bit of the variables, the speed, the rest periods, even what you do on the rest periods, sometimes maybe you add some jogging to the rest periods to make them less complete. They can be very, very beneficial. And like I said, I use them with all my clients. My newer clients, when I first start them with speed work, we always start with duration base. We don't start with distance base. And usually it's 60120s. Some guys who are fitter, it might be 6090s or 6075s. You can also fluctuate the first number too. You can adjust the first number. You can do 7590s, you can do 75 120s, you can do 90 120s, you can do 9090s, you can do 9060s. This all takes a lot of programming knowledge though to do properly. It's not something you just what pace should I do these at? It depends. It depends on lots of different variables, depends on how long you're resting, it depends on how fit you are, it depends on your current running goals, your mileage, it depends on how long you've been doing these things for. So there's a lot of little nuances that go into them. And like I said, the Army does not, or people who do them for Army PT, and usually people who do them on their own because they learn them from Army PT, don't think about any of these variables. And they do them and they wonder why they're not getting any faster, or they wonder why they're getting hurt. It's because they are trying to be head chefs at a Michelin star restaurant despite being a grill dad that is really good at making steaks on the grill. AKA, they are trying to be programming experts, but they don't have any credentials or programming expertise. They haven't put in the work, they don't know what they're doing, so they just run as hard as they can, and then they rest and they run as hard as they can, and they just wonder why they don't make any progress. That's why. So 6120s, when well programmed, underrated. 6120s the way most people run them, highly overrated. Alright, let's do gut check PT, 100 pull-ups, 300 push-ups, etc. etc. Highly overrated. Doing random gut check workouts on a very, very occasional basis. Ideally, it has some rhyme or reason to it, not just this random stuff. Like, what is it? 100 pull-ups, 300 push-ups. Just what are you gonna get out of that? Really, not all that much, other than really fatigued lats and really fatigued pecs. And because you're probably just doing these in a certain as fast as possible, or in random rep schemes, or you're just doing every single set to failure, then resting for a random amount of time. I mean, this session that he wrote in wouldn't be that bad, especially if you are someone who does push-ups and pull-ups on a regular basis. But general gut check workouts where you just do random amounts of random exercises, or you just run random distances for a random intensity, or you mix a bunch of random stuff in and the goal is to get tired and feel sore tomorrow and feel accomplished and feel like you did something, you're not really getting much out of that other than having a good time. And if your goal is to just have a good time and get tired and get sore and not make any fitness progress and potentially hurt yourself, and if you don't hurt yourself, just potentially overdo it and be really fatigued and not really see any results, great. But I don't know a lot of people with that goal. So, other than doing these things very, very occasionally, gut check workouts in general are highly overrated. Now, if you're like going to selection, the goal of a lot of selections, you won't see this at SFAS, but you'll see it at a lot of different soft selections. One of the goals is to like break you down and smoke you and see if you can mentally hang on. AKA put you through gut checks. A lot of people think in order to be able to withstand that, they have to practice it and do it all the time in training before they get there. That is not the case. You want to build yourself up before you go to these selections. That way you have a high ceiling from which to fall when they put you through the ringer. If you always put yourself through the ringer by doing a bunch of practice gut check workouts before you get to the actual selection, you're gonna show up already having broken yourself down. And then where do you go from there when they start breaking you down? Your mental fortitude, yes, that can take you a certain distance, but you're also at these selections, you're not just gonna be getting put through the ringer, you're also gonna need to perform. You're gonna need a certain ruck time, a certain runtime. So you're gonna have to display your fitness. And in order to display your fitness, you have to build your fitness up prior to, and that includes training, progressive training that you can recover from and that you can adapt to, and that you can sustain for a long period of time. It does not mean just destroying yourself all the time with gut check workouts. So, in general, people who do gut check workouts typically have nothing to show for it other than just saying they're a badass and being sore all the time and thinking that's a good thing, and always being banged up and doing all this mobility to try and solve it or other recovery bullshit that they think is actually helping. When it's really not, it's really their training that they need to fix. And it's just, I don't know, it annoys me, and it's actually pretty common because people just don't know any better, or maybe they do know better, they just don't believe when I tell them that it's stupid. So hopefully you guys are taking stuff that I say to heart. I know a lot of people are, and I hear back from you guys all the time, and I appreciate that stuff. But putting yourself through the ringer all the time, really, really stupid, once in a while, okay. But in general, random ass got check workouts, highly overrated, and something that I would strongly consider keeping to a very, very, very, very infrequent basis for best results. So I think that is a good one to end it on. I got very passionate about a few of these things in this episode, if you couldn't tell, but I get really passionate about this stuff anyway, just because there's a lot of people doing dumb stuff out there and saying dumb stuff and spreading misinformation, and not to say that I know everything and I am always gonna be the voice of reason. I do get opinionated on some things, for sure, but I always try and think using first principles and bring it all the way down to the facts, and I feel like I'm pretty good at that. And I like to think for myself. I don't like to regurgitate what other people say. That just is not my style, and I appreciate you guys for trusting my words. So, anyway, I'll be back soon with another episode. Hope everyone has an awesome week. Until then, Terminator Out. Thank you for listening. If you like this show and want to start crushing your goals, please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And for more fitness content, follow me on Instagram at Terminator underscore training, or check out my website, TerminatorTraining.com. All right, guys, Terminator Out.