Episode 159 - Q&A: Olympic Lifts For SFAS Prep, Vo2 Max Vs. Lactate Threshold, Will I Run the 50K?, Rucking Vs. Running Crossover, My Top Book Rec, RPE Vs. HR (Zone 2), OSUT Fitness, Nicotine; Yay or Nay? & More!

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What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today's going to be a q and a edition episode from Instagram. If you want your question potentially answered, go ahead and give me a follow on IG at Terminator training. Check out my q and as. I usually do them every other week where I put a q and a story on and I try to answer some on Instagram as well as here on the show. I will say that I did not get to as many on Instagram as usual, mainly because I was trying to, [00:00:30] I promise, but for whatever reason on the page that had the questions from people, I was unable to click on more than half of them and actually go in and answer them so I can see them, but I couldn't actually go in and answer them.

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I promise I absolutely couldn't. So I wasn't blowing you off, but I am going to try and on this episode, prioritize the ones that I did not get to on Instagram. So there will be some overlap, but [00:01:00] if you follow me on Instagram and listen to the show, then you'll probably hear some new questions that you haven't seen yet. So let's hop into the show without wasting any more time. First question I think is a joke, thoughts on protein. So in the question story I put some criteria on things not to ask that I'll either give a facetious answer to or not answer at all, and I figured I'd get this one just because it was the most recent question, but one of the things was thoughts on one subject. So that's this one. The other one was [00:01:30] opinions on National Guard versus active duty, and the other one was to review other people's work or programs or creations or whatever that are usually people in this fitness space.

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So I think this is a troll because it literally just says thoughts on protein. Definitely eat protein would be a really good idea. But yeah, very smart of you and let's hop into a question that I can actually answer with some context. Transferring from a 50 to 60 mile per week program to strength work. How much running for maintenance? [00:02:00] It depends if you're trying to maintain your overall fitness and health, you could cut that in half easily, maybe even more, or you could just do a little bit of running and do some other non-impact stuff if you so choose. Honestly, running, if your goal is to try and gain as much muscle and strength as you can, running would be the least favorable type of cardio to do. That doesn't mean you can't do it, but it's just more stressful than other forms of cardio because of the impact, because of the eccentric stress, it's going to interfere, especially with [00:02:30] lower body gains a little bit more than say biking or swimming or something non impact.

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But if you want to maintain most of your running, I would say maybe cut down to 30 to 40 miles per week, are you going to maintain a hundred percent of what you've gained? No, but you are going to at least maintain the vast majority of it. If you're cutting down to 40 and you still notice that you're kind of struggling to make gains or you're struggling with recovery, then maybe you can drop it down to 35 or 30 or five. [00:03:00] I have found that unless I am going for very extreme high performance in running that I can usually maintain pretty well on 18 to 25 miles a week and your running volume is usually going to fluctuate, especially just maintaining. You don't have to have everything perfect. You don't have to make the perfect progressions every single week. You can be a little bit more lax with maintenance, but running is not quite lifting where you can really, really crank the volume super far back [00:03:30] and maintain it.

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But at the same time, as long as you're not trying to maintain extreme performance, you're just trying to maintain general running fitness and your ability to handle and be exposed to that impact of running without getting hurt. When you increase your mileage presumably in the future, then you should be totally fine on about half that, maybe a little under little over, but I wouldn't get too wrapped around exact mileages. Next question, do you utilize nicotine at all? Yes, I utilize [00:04:00] it probably wouldn't be the best word, although I do use nicotine for cognitive tasks. I guess that would be utilizing it, but also I have been using nicotine for a really long time, so to say that I am not a nicotine addict would be a boldface lie, so I guess I do utilize it for some things. For those not aware, actually a lot of people don't know the difference between utilize and use.

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Utilize means to use something for a specific reason. Utilize or use is just you use something. So if you [00:04:30] utilize fasting, you are using fasting for a specific reason and that is to either improve your health or make it easier for you to stick to a calorie deficit or whatever. Whereas if you're just using something like I'm using my phone, I'm not really, if I'm on my phone scrolling through Instagram, I'm not utilizing it, I'm just using it. So that's the main difference. That's probably not the best explanation, but those two examples should drive it home. So that's why I'm saying I don't necessarily utilize it because I have nicotine in yes for when I'm doing cognitive [00:05:00] stuff, but I also have nicotine in other times of the day.

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The only two times that I'm very conscious of using not using nicotine is before a conditioning session especially, but honestly before a workout and also in the evening, anytime after dinnertime close to bedtime, the half-life of nicotine, it is a stimulant, but it's not as powerful as caffeine and it doesn't have the exact same side effects as caffeine or these same effects, but it also has a faster half-life, so it's out of your system faster. [00:05:30] So you could use it in the afternoon and be totally fine, but if you have it right before bed or after dinner or whatever, it may interfere with your sleep. Everyone's a little different, but I find it does. I also find it interferes with my heart rate when I start out with a conditioning session, my heart rate will be higher and it'll go higher faster. So again, everyone's a little different, but that is what I have found.

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Nicotine also is interesting because it has partially stimulant effects and it has partially effects. Stimulant effects are more like [00:06:00] cognitive stimulation, relaxation effects are more like physical, so you may notice if you're a smoker or a dipper or whatever and you throw nicotine in or you throw or you light up a cigarette or something like that, which I don't recommend by the way, I use ZI pouches. I've got my handies in right here. Usually I have three milligram, but I for whatever reason had a six milligram lying around. I used to use six, I'm cutting back. But anyway, you might notice that you feel a little bit more relaxed, but also what's going on inside your body is your heart rate's increasing [00:06:30] slightly, your blood pressure's increasing slightly. So although you might feel kind of chill and relaxed and have a little more calm, what's going on inside your body is a little bit different.

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Also, it is a vasoconstrictor, a peripheral vasoconstrictor, so it reduces blood flow to the peripheries, which is why I always scratch my head when I see people throwing xin for their workout, for their lifts because it can be a stimulant, it can have stimulant like effects, but it also reduces blood flow. I would much, [00:07:00] much rather take a stimulant that does not reduce blood flow such as caffeine or something like that or even take nothing and have enhanced blood flow for a workout than reduce my blood flow by using nicotine. So I would not use it around training. You can do it afterwards if you want. You can do it other times of the day, but I would also be a little bit mindful of how it affects your sleep. And also if you don't use nicotine, I wouldn't recommend starting to use nicotine, especially if you know that you have an addictive personality.

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It can absolutely [00:07:30] be in small doses and in strategic doses when you utilize it, not just use it, it can help with cognitive performance and focus, but when you're addicted to it and you just use it all the time, then it performance effects are decreased and that's just like you need it to feel normal because you're addicted to it. So there's a big difference there. And if you are going to use nicotine, I would highly suggest using either a gum or a lozenge or a toothpick. They make toothpick nicotine or usin [00:08:00] pouch or some other brand like that and I would not go with the 15 plus milligram ones that they sell. Those are insane. If I put more than a spicin, I personally feel really nauseous. So honestly, the data on nicotine's performance benefits is usually like one to three, maybe even one to two milligrams.

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I haven't seen it in a while, but it's very small so it's like not even a x three milligrams in, they make ons in two milligrams, which sometimes I'll get if I'm really trying to cut back. But anyway, [00:08:30] yes, I do use nicotine. Do I utilize it? One could argue probably not because I have nicotine in way more often than I would consider it to be like a utilization method. So whatever you do probably don't smoke, probably don't dip if you possibly can. I used to dip a can plus per day and I am glad I don't do that now, but nicotine itself can be potentially problematic. Also, if you have a history or if you have blood pressure issues, then nicotine would not be a good idea to use on a regular basis because it's [00:09:00] going to increase your blood pressure if you have normal blood pressure, I wouldn't worry too much about it, but just something to consider.

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Next question, when if ever would you recommend training with a kit or a weighted vest for conditioning? Most of the time not at all. You can do things like hill sprints with kit on if you want. You can do really short sprints, you can do maybe some agility drills if you're training to be better on the battlefield in kit or in CQB or whatever, but I would not do runs definitely no point in running. In [00:09:30] kit. You're making your run harder, but you're also doing that by making the impact higher. If you want to make your run higher, you can do one of many things. One, you can run uphill, two, you can run harder. Three, you can tie something to you, so it's giving you resistance but it is not adding impact to it. So you can tie a light sled to yourself or a light tire or something like that making running harder by a increasing the impact so you're increasing the weight that you're carrying as well as [00:10:00] restricting your breathing is not really all that beneficial and honestly, doing a lot of kit runs and this is coming from someone who used to run a kit all the time, it's just not worth it.

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If you're going to ruck run with a ruck on, that's one thing. If you're training for a selection that requires ruck running or if you want to get faster at ruck running for some sort of time trial, then wearing your ruck would be a good idea and eventually working your way towards trotting and shuffling and running with that on would make you a faster rucker. So that sometimes [00:10:30] is just a necessary evil, but it's also not something I would do all the time. And there's a big difference in the weight distribution and the feel of a ruck versus a kit or a weighted vest, even if the weight is the same. So if you do all of your selection prep in a 50 pound weighted vest, even if that's about the same weight as you would wear in a ruck, it's still not going to result in the same specific adaptations.

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It's just going to have a very different feel. You're going to feel less comfortable with your ruck on when you actually have to wear it at selection. So for [00:11:00] the most part, unless you're doing some very specific speed agility or something along those lines, I usually wouldn't recommend wearing kit. It's just not really worth the squeeze going for long walks, if you don't have a ruck and you're not training for something that involves wearing a ruck, throwing a weighted vest on and going for a walk is totally fine. Yes, it's more impact than walking without the weighted vest, but it's nowhere near as much impact as just running without weight, let alone running with added weight. So that would be totally fine as well. [00:11:30] If you prefer that over wearing a heavy backpack and you want to make your walks a little bit more challenging and your heart rate get a little higher without running, that can be a good option too.

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Just make sure you start reasonable with it and don't throw a 50 pound weighted vest on the first time you ever go for a walk and then go 10 miles and then just smash yourself. Incremental increases, start light. My mom actually walks with weight on and she loves it and it doesn't beat her up, but she also is I think using 10 or 12 pounds, so it's really not anything that [00:12:00] crazy. So that would be my recommendation for wearing kit or weighted exercise. Usually not worth it for most things, but there are some applications for it. Next question, is there any acclimation benefit to doing the sauna one time per week? Yes, but very, very minor heat acclimation. I'm assuming that he's talking about heat acclimation. It requires very consistent and very frequent exposures to heat. So if you're just doing it once a week, I guess it's better than nothing, but also it's really not doing [00:12:30] all that much going into the sauna once a week has benefits, don't get me wrong, but for heat acclimation purposes, it's not frequent enough.

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Also, even though heat acclimation takes a lot of frequency and a lot of consistency to build, it goes away very quickly, very, very, very quickly. It starts going away within two days and then your heat acclimation is basically gone after seven to 10 days. So you also have that. So basically even if you are improving your heat tolerance that one day four days later, it's pretty much back [00:13:00] to nothing, which is why when you do a preparation for something that's going to take place in the heat, if you stop that protocol like five days early, it's pretty much almost useless. That's why you want to stop it like two days early, usually not the day before just because it's the stressor and you want to be as low stress as you can the day prior, but maybe two days before three days at the very worst would be a good idea to end your heat acclimation protocol, but you got to do it more consistently than that for it to really do [00:13:30] much and that is, unless of course you are also training in the heat multiple days a week and you're just going in the sauna to kind of top it off, then it's a totally different story.

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If you're doing three or four training sessions per week in the heat and then you go in the sauna once, totally different, that can benefit you, but just sauna and then training in normal temperature is really not going to do all that much, but that doesn't mean you should stop doing it, it's just a consideration. Next question. In your 50 k, if your calf flares up, will you grid it out and recover later or pull the pin? Alright, so right now as I sit [00:14:00] here in the comfort of my own home eight days prior to the actual race, I 100% will say that if I even race, which that's going to be a decision that I'm going to have to make next week after I run on it a couple times and see how it feels. If I race right now, I'm saying no way I'm going to stop if it starts hurting because I don't feel like being injured all summer.

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That's honestly just not what I really signed up for and I have other things to do and at this stage of my life it's just a 50 k, there [00:14:30] will be more and there's no point in me just continuing to make myself worse and increasing how long it takes to recover afterwards and just potentially messing with my summer of training. That being said, on race day, if it happens, all bets are off. So if I do step off, although I would love to say going to tell my wife this, my dad's coming to town as well, not just for that, but he's going to be in town, I'm going to tell them if I messed up and I vocalize that [00:15:00] or if I'm clearly showing it, make sure that I stop. But you never know, I might continue to gr it out and tough it out and just ibuprofen myself out, which is purely ego-based.

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It has nothing to do with what I would recommend to other people, like a hundred percent. If a client were in this situation and they had trained up for a race and I had helped them and for whatever reason they were hurt, I would one a hundred percent recommend that they either didn't start it [00:15:30] or just stopped as soon as they started feeling terrible, it's just not worth it. If I was a professional athlete or something like that or if I was at selection and I had a week left and I already started feeling pretty shitty but I really wanted to get selected, then it would probably be a worthwhile trade off. But for a 50 k, even though I hate to not do things that I say I'm going to do, there's definitely some context with that. If you show up to something and you're just going to mess yourself up for however long after by doing it just because you're too prideful [00:16:00] to not do it, that's really dumb and that would be setting a worse example for everyone who listens, everyone who tunes in all my clients than just not doing it or throwing the towel early because I'm messed up.

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So again, I would love to say that I'm going to be smart and make the right decision no matter what, but honestly I get very competitive and I really, really hate quitting things and stopping things even if it's the right call. So time [00:16:30] will tell, we will see next week. Next question for NRPs, how do you recommend training athleticism and coordination? Good question. NRPs by the way are non athletic regular people and you can be a NARP and still be successful in special operations. I'm assuming you've probably heard me talk about NARP S before in other episodes or in other content where if you are a little bit less athletic, you don't have an athletic background or you're just very clumsy and uncoordinated, you're going to have to do some extra [00:17:00] work on some things before you go to selection, not just your fitness but also your overall athleticism and I'll get into some of those things here.

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So you want to think of doing things that challenge you in space, so like proprioception. So honestly one of the best things to do would be to find an athletic friend and play tag because you're actually practicing very fast decision making as well as ability to see what's going on around you, change direction accordingly and go in the different [00:17:30] direction or go forward or go backward or maybe you start going right real quick and that person cuts back and you stop and you have to go follow them. That would be a great option. You can also do tennis ball drills either by yourself or you can have an actual coach like toss you tennis balls in different areas and you try and catch them. I would recommend doing is either starting an activity or hobby or sport recreationally that involves coordination. So this could be something as simple as pickleball.

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Honestly, [00:18:00] you don't have to be super athletic to be good at pickleball, but you actually have to do a little bit of athletic stuff. You have to have hand-eye coordination, you have to have the ability to move back and forth, cut and make the right quick decisions while you're out there on the court. It's definitely not as hard as tennis, but it is an option you could pick up even golf, believe it or not, everyone thinks golf is not an athletic sport. Golfers are some of the best athletes in the entire world. They're just athletic in different ways. They [00:18:30] don't jump super high, they don't run super fast or super far. They're not big and jacked and strong, at least most of them, but to hit a ball of that size with a club and get it in the hole in sometimes two shots, sometimes three, sometimes four, maybe five, occasionally, occasionally a little higher than that.

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Either way you're shooting under par is insane, absolutely insane. And to get it to draw the way you want it to or fade the way you want it to put spin on it, all that [00:19:00] kind of stuff, that's definitely more advanced golf stuff, but that would be another option. You could join some sort of parkour league or parkour club. Honestly, that would be a great thing for the obstacle course. Usually the most athletic traits are required on the obstacle course than anything else in selection at least. But you want to be more athletic after selection too because you're going to have to do things that involve coordination and proprioception and not being clumsy later in your career. On that note, you could also start going [00:19:30] to the range or join some sort of gun club where you practice not only shooting so like hand-eye coordination and find motor movements but also gun handling and you don't even actually have to go to the range to practice gun handling.

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You can do that dry fire, just be safe with it, make sure your gun's clear, all that stuff. Other things you can do in the gym, you can do like multi-plan movements. Things like Turkish getups are pretty decent. You could maybe learn some Olympic lifts, definitely tread carefully. Learning Olympic lifts, they're definitely highly technical lifts and high skill lifts and you want to have some good [00:20:00] mentorship and good coaching on learning them if you want to go that route. You can also do things like agility drills, but the thing that almost everyone messes up about agility drills is they have an agility course usually with cones laid out in front of them and then they decide what they're going to do with that course before they do it. So it should be more reactive. You shouldn't have some memorized pattern like I'm going to go to that cone and then I'm going to cut back to this cone and then I'm going to cut back.

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That gets you better at changing direction [00:20:30] definitely, but it is not agility because agility is seeing what's going on around you and then making a very quick decision and then changing your body position or changing the direction you're going in. Like NFL running backs are probably the most agile human beings in the world because they to make these split decisions, if you ever want to see agility in motion, like absolute beauty agility, watch a Barry Sanders highlight film or a Walter Peyton highlight film, those guys are [00:21:00] absolute agility savants. So it's not just memorizing a route in doing whatever the route you've memorized, it's actually reacting. That's why playing tag would be so awesome because if you have an athletic friend, you're probably not going to catch him. So you're going to get all this agility training in and you're also going to be doing it in a reactive way, which is huge for coordination.

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Proprioception, honestly, injury prevention. If you're really good at moving quickly in different directions, you're less likely to pull something [00:21:30] or get injured if you have to do that in real life. So all those are pretty solid options. Join some sort of club or join some sort of sport or activity and then do a few things in the gym that involve skill and fine motor movements and body control and you're going to be good to go. Next question, do you think VO two max or lactate threshold is more important for cardiovascular fitness? How about rucking? Cool question and it is 100% lactate threshold. That is more important. [00:22:00] However, they're both relevant, but also keep in mind that these things are just mechanistic. They're mechanisms that occur inside your body that will relate to your potential performance ability, but you shouldn't be too wrapped around the axle with either of these things as far as measuring it and changing yours and upping yours, getting it better, it's going to get better as you continue to improve your performance.

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So you want to focus mostly on, am I getting better? Am I getting faster? Can I run [00:22:30] faster for longer? Can I run the same pace for longer basic run progression stuff or exercise progression stuff, rocking progression stuff. But your lactate threshold is going to be a more relevant metric for performance mainly because your VO two max is what you're capable of, how good your body is at processing and utilizing oxygen. It's basically your ceiling. So if you have a really high VO two max, you have a really high ceiling, your [00:23:00] lactate threshold will determine how close to that ceiling you can perform and for how long you can perform there. So if you have a high VO two max, which by the way, VO two max is a lot more genetically influenced than lactate threshold, it's like 50 to 60% give or take genetics.

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So everyone's got a VO two max limit. You can get your lactate threshold way higher by training it properly, by running just under at just harder than your lactate threshold frequently. That's basically what speed [00:23:30] work is, and tempo work is in a nutshell, and you can affect it quite significantly. So because lactate threshold is very movable and very adjustable through training, it will allow you to perform higher at a higher percentage of your VO two max a longer period of time. And so even if there's a runner next to you who has a 90 VO two max, which is insanely high, almost no one has 90 VO two max, but just an example, and you only have an 80 VO two max, [00:24:00] but your lactate threshold is much higher, you probably can outperform that person if they have a lower lactate threshold. And so that should give you a little bit of an idea on what is more important.

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But again, these are mechanisms, they are relevant, but they're not everything. I would just focus on getting better and improving your performance and as a byproduct, your VO two max will go up not quite as much as your lactate threshold will, and there's a limit to your VO two max, but they'll both improve with good solid hard [00:24:30] training and making progress. Next question. When do you cut off your coffee intake for the day? Most days when I'm a good boy, I cut off around 10:00 AM is my last. I don't have anything after 10:00 AM Sometimes I will mess up and have coffee later in the day if I happen to be at the grocery store or something and it's like noon. There's a Starbucks right at the entrance of my grocery store and I love their Nitro cold brew Starbucks black or hot coffee, not a big fan, but their nitro cold brew, definitely a fan.

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So [00:25:00] I'll sometimes break it and oftentimes I pay for it by not having as good a night of sleep as I otherwise could. By the way, I cut it off around then I go to bed very early, I go to bed at like 8:00 PM so that's 10 hours give or take before I go to bed. So that time might be a little later for most people who go to bed later because I'm an old man and I go to bed super early, but also it is person dependent. So the half-life and caffeine is different for everyone. I think the average person, the caffeine half-life [00:25:30] is about five hours, but some people it's longer than that. Some people it's less than that. Some people can't have any caffeine or else it's going to affect their sleep and some people don't even know that and they still have caffeine and wonder why they can't sleep.

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Probably a multitude of different things affecting your sleep if you don't sleep well, but caffeine could be one of 'em and you could potentially try cutting it out or just having a really early cutoff. Maybe you have one cup or one and a half cups of coffee no later than eight is when you stop drinking caffeine and that could potentially help. But if [00:26:00] you are having caffeine in the afternoon, it's kind of this vicious cycle. So if you have caffeine, say at three or four o'clock and you go to bed at nine or 10, a lot of that caffeine is still in your system when you go to bed, and so therefore you're not going to get a very good night's sleep, a very high quality night of sleep, and so therefore the next day you're probably going to want that coffee in the afternoon because you were not well rested from the night before.

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So breaking that cycle can be pretty tough, but also highly worth it, especially if you struggle with sleep and you are an afternoon caffeine drinker, [00:26:30] but some people metabolize caffeine super quickly, others don't. I'm a little bit on the slower side, it's still in my system in the evening if I have it in the afternoon, so I have to be pretty careful with it. But I usually have one cup of coffee, six, like two hours after I wake up, and then another one around eight or nine once in a while. Again, I'll have usually the days that I have coffee in the afternoon. I haven't had much caffeine earlier. I definitely, if I have more than 400 milligrams of caffeine [00:27:00] in a day, give or take, I don't feel great. I feel jittery, I feel like it's too much, and then I kind of crash too.

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So once in a while maybe I'll have one cup of coffee and then another nitro cold brew in the afternoon and I'll enjoy it, but then I'll pay for it by not sleeping as well. Next question. On average, can you expect to make progress, maintain or lose progress during a IT? It depends on your fitness levels, but what I always, my general way to explain this is if you're very fit, if [00:27:30] you're much fitter than the average person in your a IT class going in, you're going to lose fitness. If you're middle of the road, you're about the same as most guys in your A IT class, you're going to stay about the same. If you are below average and not very fit when you show up, you're going to get fitter because you're just going to get exposed to more training stimulus than you clearly have been doing.

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So that's the way I would look at it, but either way, it's all transient. So a lot of people will hear that and be like, oh, okay, so I'll just show up average and then make all my fitness progress later. If you're not [00:28:00] going in as an x-ray or option 40, whatever, fine, whatever, you can just mediocre your way through life. But if you are an 18 x-ray or if you are an option 40 like a ranger contract and you want to go to selection after, you still want to show up very fit even though you're going to lose some fitness at a IT, because when you have a very high fitness ceiling and you fall a little bit and regress a little, you are much more primed to put that fitness back on once you [00:28:30] can get back into a good solid training regimen.

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So even though you are going to lose fitness and it's going to be like, shit, why did I work so hard? A, you're not going to lose all of your fitness. You're not even going to lose close to all of your fitness, but B, it's going to be transient and it's going to come back quickly once you get back into training. Whereas if you go in and you're on the low end and you get a little fitter at a IT, there's a massive gap between AIT slash OSI fitness requirements and [00:29:00] selection preparedness requirements. So you're going to have a big mountain to climb at a IT, you're going to get a little fitter, but then you better light a fire under your ass after AIT and turnover some new training habits that have been lying dormant for most of your life or at least before you went to OS I.

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So that's my suggestion and that's usually what happens, but like your question said, that's on average, experiences vary a little bit. Next question, is there a correlation with being a good runner and being good [00:29:30] at rucking? Yes, there is, but it's not always one and the same. Sometimes you'll see guys that are not great at rucking, but they're absolute stud runners and some guys will really damn good at rucking but not as good at running usually with exceptions. These avatars are as follows, really good runners, not a very good Rucker is usually a very skinny person with a big time running background but not a big time strength background and maybe didn't do enough specific training [00:30:00] for actual rucking in preparation so they can burn it down on the runs and they really struggle once you add another 60 pounds of weight to their back.

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That's usually that avatar. And then on the other hand, the guys who are really good at rucking and not so good at running are usually pretty much the opposite. They're usually tall, big, usually a former football player or something like that, very, very strong. They can move really well with added weight to them just because they have so much brute strength, but they may struggle a little bit [00:30:30] with running or at least they're not burning runs down. These guys can finish in the top 10 in a gated ruck and may not even finish in the top 50% in a run. That's just sometimes the nature of it. Oftentimes they are one and the same, not necessarily one and the same, but oftentimes guys who are really good runners are also really good ruckers, especially if they've done some strength training and especially if they've taken their rucking training seriously.

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Oftentimes, if you're just a naturally good runner but you're not highly competitive [00:31:00] elite level runner where you want to do everything you can not to get any bigger or stronger in the gym like gain muscle, then rucking is going to come super easily to you once you kind of transition over, not transition, but also incorporate rucking into your training, it's usually going to be a walk in the park. The other guys who are really good at rucking, they're just good at rucking because they're big and beefy. Honestly, if you are someone either of these avatars, if you're a really good rucker and not a good runner, you can trade some ruck progress for improving your run. [00:31:30] If you have to take three minutes off your five mile for example, and that comes at a cost of taking three minutes off your 12 mile ruck, highly worth it.

(31:40):

However, I will say in most cases the guys who are already really good at rucking when they become better runners, since they already have kind of the raw materials to be really good ruckers, they also get better at rucking even though they're already pretty damn good at it. The other way around, however is usually not like that. If you're just an absolute speed demon running [00:32:00] wise, gaining the strength in muscle required and the actual rucking specificity required to be a better rucker may indeed most likely will come at a trade-off of your runtime. However, usually these guys have such fast runtimes that they could take a minute off their two mile and three to five minutes even more potentially off their five mile and still be fine. And even if you are trading some of your runtimes for improved rucking ability, especially if you're going to selection, that is highly worth [00:32:30] it.

(32:30):

So yeah, usually guys who are good runners are also good ruckers, but not always. Sometimes we have some outliers that need to work a little bit more on or the other next question, can you put on weight and get faster at the same time? Yes, absolutely you can. I actually just did this as part of my unintentional ultra prep. I was fully expecting to lose a little bit of weight throughout the last four months or so, prepping for this ultra, and I ended up gaining about a pound and a half. I'm back down to about my starting weight [00:33:00] now, a little bit under my starting weight. I started at 1 97 and when I first got hurt, I was 1 98 0.8 or one, something like that, almost 1 99. So I gained a decent amount of weight and now I'm back down to 1 96 in the morning waking up, but I got much better at running over that time, so I gained weight and I also gained quite significant amounts of running ability because really all it came down to was the fact that I ate in a calorie surplus, so I ate more [00:33:30] calories than I burned on average.

(33:32):

I lifted weights, not a ton, but I lifted enough to at least maintain most of my muscle mass, and I did a lot of really high quality run training, so I got better at running from the run training. I gained weight from the calorie surplus and maintenance of muscle give or take, and that's really what it came down to. So is gaining weight ideal for getting faster at running? Not necessarily, but if you know need to gain [00:34:00] a bunch of muscle, a bunch of strength in order for you to reach your goals, whatever they may be, and you also need to get good at running or continue to be good at running, make small improvements, then that's kind of just what you're going to have to do. And it's not that hard. You just got to be meticulous with it. For some people, it's the opposite.

(34:17):

Some people would benefit greatly from losing weight if they have excess weight. You're just going to be a less efficient runner, you're going to burn more calories, it's going to be more of a demand for you to run. And in that case, losing a little bit of weight over this time [00:34:30] in a reasonable manner would be a decent idea. And all along with run training, that's also going to make you better. The fact that you're going to be lighter over time will increase the delta, how much you are improving over time. So yeah, usually people are not trying to gain and run at the same time, but it absolutely can be done. Next question. Can perceived effort level take precedence over heart rate during a zone two run? Yes, absolutely. In fact, for most people, I'd probably recommend going RPE [00:35:00] over heart rate at least most of the time because especially with novice runners who are just getting into it, it's very, very, very hard for a novice runner to stay in zone two without going over, without just having to walk every minute or even more frequently.

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And so a lot of people kind of have the belief that no matter what, you should just stay in zone two no matter what. And I've even said this in the past, and I don't think it anymore just because I've coached way more people and I've seen this play out so many times, [00:35:30] it's okay to go off RPE even if your heart rate is a little bit higher. However, it's also really to be honest with yourself about your RPE and not lie to yourself and fudge the numbers and be like, yeah, that was an RPE five, but you were just absolutely destroyed and your heart rate was in zone four, zone five. That's not what I'm talking about. The only person that does a disservice to is you or the person training. You're not going to impress anyone by being like, oh yeah, that was a RPE five, RPE [00:36:00] six, but in reality it was like a nine or a 10 that's just hurting your training progress.

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But if a newer runner goes out and just runs a true five six RPE, every time they go on a base building run, they're going to be totally fine, especially if you're actually monitoring your progress and your recovery and checking in with yourself. If you think you've been running at a six RPE and your recovery's taking a hit or you're just feeling banged up or overtrained, it could be something else, but it also could be like, I need to dial that back down to a [00:36:30] five or a four and a half, whatever. It's maybe you're going a little bit too hot now. You can definitely use heart rate if you want, but I almost never would use that as your very first way to gauge it, nor would I use it as the only way to gauge it. Your heart rate is going to fluctuate day to day, week to week, run to run based on many, many different factors that can affect heart rate.

(36:52):

So if you're only going by your heart rate, chances are sometimes you're running a little bit easier than you should be or you're running a little bit harder than [00:37:00] you should be. Heart rate is just one of many proxies, and I personally think for most people, RPE is a better one. If you get to higher levels and you're tracking your heart rate on everything, that's one thing, but for most people, as long as you're going RPE and you're being honest with yourself, you're going to be totally fine. And then you can always dial things back. If you find out that you're not recovering well or something like that, you can dial things back in the future, be like, okay, I need to drop one RPE from all my runs because I'm going a little bit too hard. Or you can kind of use a mix of [00:37:30] both.

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You can be conscious of your RPE as well as maybe double check it on your heart rate monitor, and that's probably a pretty reasonable way for most people to do it. I will say though, in today's day and age, everyone's very, very obsessed with technology and their watch and listening to what the numbers tell them. I don't decide whether I speed up or slow down. My watch tells me whether I should speed up or slow down. That can be a little bit problematic. I call it watch obsession, and you're just majoring in the miners by [00:38:00] only listening to your watch. Additionally, if you're eventually going to go somewhere like selection where you're not going to be able to wear a watch at all, let alone a smart watch, you're going to want to be more in tune with how your body feels at certain intensities, at certain paces, at certain efforts.

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And if you're only ever just looking at your watch and letting the watch make all your decisions for you, then you're going to really struggle when that watch is taken away from you and it's just you nothing on your wrist and you are alone and afraid at selection. [00:38:30] So knowing yourself is super important in this case and knowing what your tendencies and also just realizing that the only person that is being negatively affected by you fudging your numbers, whether it's RPE or heart rate is you. So just keep that in mind. Next question. In your current shape, could you pass election? No, because I am injured. I've got a calf issue going on right now, and it would definitely get worse in the very first week of selection. And [00:39:00] although I could probably gut it out, I definitely wouldn't want to. If I was healthy and not injured, I would probably need about four to six weeks to prep just for the rucking alone.

(39:10):

I could probably get through it with how much running I've been doing, but I wouldn't be able to get through it without just destroying myself because the ruck is a totally different stimulus. So if I did two rucks a week, give or take between now and about six weeks from now, I absolutely could pass. I would not do as well during gate [00:39:30] week as I did the first time I went through, I was an absolute savage. I was super skinny, just an endurance freak, but I was also good at rucking, but I would be all right. And then nav would be kind of a walk in the park only because I've done lots of land nav in way more difficult areas than Hoffman. And then I think team week I would probably do really well on just because I'm way, way, way more mature than I was last time, and I have a lot more experience.

(39:55):

I have a lot more ability to talk to people, ability to interact with people. I am [00:40:00] a better leader than I was, so I think team week would be a breeze. But yeah, I would need a little bit of time. I would also have to work on some hand release pushups and some of the PT stuff. I could pass pullups in the plank, but I would definitely have to do some hand release pushups just to get the movement down, but I could get there in a couple weeks. It would be mainly the rucking that I'd have to work on before I went and again, if I was healthy. Next question, if you could recommend a single book to yourself at 21, what would it be? Good question. For me and honestly for [00:40:30] probably 75 to 85% of other people at 21, I would recommend how to Win Friends and Influence People.

(40:38):

That book will teach you all about the most important thing in life to be successful really in any area, and that is communication and developing and building and nurturing relationships and getting what you want and getting people to like you and buy into whatever your message is. That book is pretty much the Bible for it. It is written by Dale Carnegie and it's [00:41:00] a must have if you're already like Mr. Charismatic and you just are amazing with people. Some people are just kind of born and raised that way. Most people aren't, but some are then maybe a different book for you. But for most people, that is the one. And if you're past 21, you haven't read it, don't feel like you missed out, just go and read it. If you're younger than 21, it's never too early to start improving your ability to communicate and be a charismatic individual.

(41:28):

So definitely that. One [00:41:30] next question, will you offer a set template that correlates to T eight 50 program IE not a monthly subscription, so like a PDF program? Honestly, most of my training blocks in T eight 50 resemble pretty closely Jack Iselle version two, especially a little bit less so Jack Iselle version one. So I pretty much already have these things because T eight 50 is ever progressing and ever going. I change the block every six weeks, so I don't make every single training block look just like Jack is L version two that only has three five week [00:42:00] phases, or Jack is L version one that has four week phases because I would just have to do this same thing every time, and that would not be very good for business, nor would it be fun to follow if you're following it. But yeah, I mean overall already have it.

(42:13):

If you want to check out Jack Elle version two, that's probably the most like T eight 50. Occasionally you'll see a phase similar to Jack Elle version one, but just less power lifting focused. Next question, I worked zero 200 to noon. Should I flip the sleep schedule back two normal hours or keep it [00:42:30] on my three to four days off? Okay, so I'm going to answer this as if you are just a machine and you're only going for optimality and you don't really care about practicality, and then afterwards I'll kind of answer it with what I think you should do. So in a perfect world for the most optimal health performance, longevity outcomes, although this is not a great schedule to be on for longevity, health or performance, it's even [00:43:00] worse if you go back to the normal day night shift on your days off because it's just you're never going to be able to set your circadian rhythm and get into this really nice rhythm of sleep.

(43:12):

It's already not ideal to sleep from, I would guess you probably sleep from like three or 4:00 PM to maybe 1:00 AM or something like that. That's already not ideal for your overall health or wellbeing or performance or recovery. But doing that sometimes and then going [00:43:30] back, say on your non-work days, you go and sleep 10 to six or something like that. What would be a somewhat normal sleep schedule? It's going to throw you for an absolute loop and it's going to be very, very difficult for you to make the progress you want recover. You're probably going to have some mood issues, mental health issues, and you're probably going to see some actual objective physical signs and symptoms, whether you do blood work or you actually just see maybe you gain weight or whatever. However, [00:44:00] I understand that for social reasons usually or running errands even, it can be very difficult to be awake at nighttime and sleep during the day every single day.

(44:13):

So I would say as best you possibly can stick to that schedule, but also if once in a while you have dinner with a friend at six or 7:00 PM and it's a non-work day, I wouldn't worry about it too much. What I would do in that situation is try to wake up even if you go to bed much [00:44:30] later than you, usually I would try and wake up somewhat close to what your normal wake up time is. That way the very next day you can get right back on track. If, for example, you usually go to bed at say 4:00 PM and you wake up at 1:00 AM and one night you stay up until 10:00 PM and you sleep the next day until 7:00 AM because you stayed out and you wanted to get enough sleep. When you try to go to bed back at 4:00 PM that day and you've been up since seven, [00:45:00] there's almost no chance that you're going to be able to sleep.

(45:02):

You're just not going to get a good night's sleep and it's probably going to affect you. You're probably going to end up sleeping in again and then going to bed early again, but not being able to sleep very well and so on and so forth, it's just going to mess you up. And then you're back on your work schedule and you have to get up at 1:00 AM It's just going to throw your body for a loop, your circadian rhythm especially. So my suggestion is to try and be as consistent as possible. If you don't have social obligations on certain weeks, just stick [00:45:30] to that schedule if you do or if you have to run errands or something. If you get off work at noon, you should be able to run errands in the afternoon, which is the evening for you. But those are kind of the exceptions where you don't have to be quite perfect every single time, but you will be way, way better off if you stick to it as close as you can.

(45:48):

I would also say the shorter you do a job like this, the better for your own wellbeing. If you can find a different job or a different shift in your same job, you're just going to be a whole lot better off health wise and [00:46:00] longevity wise because it's just not great for the human body to be nocturnal. Next question, is there a place for Olympic lifts for the tactical athlete selection prep or otherwise? Yes, there is a place for them, however, it is not make or break, and they are not for more people than they are for so Olympic lifts, by the way, for those not aware Olympic lifts are the snatch and the clean and jerk. And we'll also tie in all the variations of that power cleans, hang cleans [00:46:30] and the like. They are very technical lifts, they're very high skill lifts, and they take a lot of really good programming.

(46:37):

They take a lot of great mobility. They really require lots of focus. They require lots of skill. You have to be very good at these lifts to continue doing them without messing yourself up. And in reality, most people don't have that skill. Yes, you can develop it, but is it worthwhile to focus on because you're going to have to really put most [00:47:00] of your eggs in your Olympic lifting basket in order to get really good at them and be able to do them without messing yourself up. In fact, honestly, a lot of high level Olympic lifters also mess themselves up. Yes, they're kind of pushing the limits and going really hard. They're trying to compete on a very high stage, but still they're inherently not the most longevity friendly lifts. If you don't have the required skill for them and you don't have the required mobility, or if you program them poorly, like if doing them as part of a CrossFit [00:47:30] wad under fatigue for super high reps when they're a power lift, which should be done as non fatigued as possible and for very low reps and for very long rest periods, then you're going to probably run into some issues.

(47:43):

And I've just seen it happen way too many times with lots and lots of guys in the tactical space, in the soft space where they just feel like for whatever reason, they have to continue doing their Olympic lifts and it just keeps running them into the ground and beating them up. And it's ugly to watch too. [00:48:00] So if you are very proficient at Olympic lifts, you have a history of it, someone has taught you how to do them, or you have learned and developed the ability to do them safely and you program them well, then I would say absolutely, totally fine. However, if you don't have all those things and you don't want to put the extreme time and effort into learning how to be a proficient Olympic lifter, good news, there are plenty of other ways that you can build power. And by the way, that's the main purpose of Olympic lifts, is to build power.

(48:28):

So you can do jumps, you [00:48:30] can do throws, you can run fast, like do sprints, hill sprints, air bike sprints, rower sprints, skier sprints. You can do really anything. You're moving really quickly and you could have some weight added to it, that's fine. Or you could just do things with body weight. You can do jumps, you can do explosive pushups, any number of different things to kind of get that fast Twitch, A-T-P-P-C energy system involved, and you're going to be totally fine. And most of these things, by the way, are way lower skill and [00:49:00] weight, lower risk. You can absolutely hurt yourself doing other power exercises, especially if they're poorly programmed and you're doing them for really high reps, or if you're doing box jumps and then jumping back down off the box when the whole point of the box is to reduce the impact of landing from a high jump, and then you jump back down and it's even more impactful backwards.

(49:22):

Never ever got that one, but so many people continue to do that. But anyway, I digress. Many different ways to build power, [00:49:30] and there is absolutely no requirement to do Olympic lifts, but that's not saying that they're off the table for everyone. If you enjoy them, if you do them well, then you can absolutely do them. But lastly, they're also not going to be the thing that decides whether you get selected or not. Power is not useless for selection, but it's one of the less important physical traits to develop as you go in. So just consider all those things next question, genuinely curious, why did you program tempo runs on leg days and Jack [00:50:00] L 2.0? I don't believe I have tempo runs on leg day and Jack L 2.0. I have repeat work on leg days on some of the phases. But either way, the main reason to put high intensity lifting as well as high intensity running on the same day is so you can consolidate that stressor all in one and then you can start recovering from while you train other things.

(50:22):

So instead of looking at it as like, I'm going to train my quads, hamstrings, glutes, and then I'm going to train running, the way I look at it is today [00:50:30] should be a big lower body high intensity A, a high stressor day. And so I like to group the same things or very similar things together. So you'll see low volume, high intensity lifts, plus low volume running, relatively speaking. It's a lot lower volume than a longer run or something like that. High intensity running on the same day. That way you are just given your lower body and your nervous system, just a big shot of stress at one time, and then you are moving on to upper body or you're moving on [00:51:00] to lower intensity stuff a little bit later in the week. Higher volume, a little lower intensity. While you recover from that, you can recover certain energy systems while training other energy systems.

(51:11):

So for example, Monday, if you're doing lower body high intensity, low volume lift plus 400 meter repeats, for example, you are working mostly your A-T-P-P-C energy system, short, low endurance, high power energy system, and your glycolytic energy system. That's [00:51:30] like the moderate one 30 seconds to two minutes, give or take, where you're doing like 400 meter repeats. Of course, there's definitely some aerobic involvement, recovery between reps and stuff like that. But when I think aerobic, I think like long slow duration, long slow distance runs later in the week. So it's mainly those two energy systems and it's also mainly the lower body. The next day you can train those energy systems again, but usually you're going to see an upper body, lower volume, higher intensity lift in most of my programs because we're recovering that lower [00:52:00] body, but we're still eking out the last bit of that A TP PC energy system for the week before we get into more glycolytic and aerobic stuff later in the week.

(52:09):

So of course you can spread these stressors out, but because it's a hybrid program, you have to double up stressors on certain days. You won't see this in a lot of hybrid programs. That's why a lot of hybrid programs kind of stuck. You'll see things spread out a little bit more, but I always like to have at least one day where you're kind of doubling up on [00:52:30] stressors. And then usually the other day, although in Jack is L version one, both of the leg days also have run days, and that's kind of intentional to get you used to running on tired legs. But in version two, you'll notice that the second day where you run fast, whether it's tempo, fart flick, or a speed session of some kind is on its own day. It's away from leg training because I like to do it fresh as well.

(52:52):

There's pros and cons to both, but that is the main reason when you're doing a hybrid program that's worth a shit, you [00:53:00] have to double up on some stressors, you have to consolidate some stressors. That's just the nature of it. Otherwise, you're just going to get all these different stressors throughout the week and you never really recover from any single one of them. Next question, how to deal with fear of being judged for joining later in life? I usually say, and I highly recommend you take this advice too, don't take advice from people who have not done or tried to do what are about to do. So if you join and someone's judging you for joining [00:53:30] and they didn't join, why even bother worrying about what they think? Now, if you are getting judged by someone who has been there, done that did exactly what you want to do, then I would probably think a little bit more on that and maybe ask them, why do you think this is a bad idea?

(53:46):

Or what do you think about this? Other than that, other people's opinions don't matter. If you go through life just caring about what other people think and how other people are going to perceive you, especially people who aren't in the same boat as you or don't have the same mindset [00:54:00] as you, you're just usually going to become a person like that. And honestly, most people are like that. They just care about what other people think, so much so that they hold themselves back from doing something that they're called to do. And I think that's a terrible mistake. It's easier said than done. Of course, I was very, very apprehensive to even start talking in public when I got out of the military. Eventually over time, you start getting used to just not caring what other people think. So the people who are going to support you [00:54:30] are the people that you actually want to be around and continue being friends with and continue being close with.

(54:35):

The people who judge you negatively or try to undermine your goals or try to talk you out of it, are the people that you don't want to be around anyway. So it's a great, great litmus test for determining who you're going to spend time with and who you're going to listen to and who you're going to take the advice from. So that is what I recommend, and that goes for really anything, not just this particular thing, joining later in life. Whatever you're trying to do, if people [00:55:00] above you judge you or critique you, that's one thing. People who are above you and have done exactly what you are wanting to do, that's when you actually take some time to consider what they're saying for everyone else. Don't even listen to it. They may be thinking that they know what's best for you, but they're not you. So that is my advice, and I strongly, strongly believe it, and I would highly suggest doing what you want to do regardless of what other people think. [00:55:30] So I think that's a good one to end it on, guys. Thank you guys for tuning in. I'll be back soon with another episode. Till then, Terminator route.