Episode 189 - SFAS Run Pacing, Land Nav Myths, Ranger School Prep, T-Boosters, Meal Prep, New Hybrid Program, Peptides and 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 terminator training.com. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the show. What's going on guys? Welcome to another episode. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is going to be a q and a and I haven't really decided whether I'm going to get really in depth with a few questions or go through a bunch of questions and [00:00:30] give a little shorter answers. Still provide necessary context, but more of a rapid fire approach. Usually on average, I haven't actually done this out or done the math, but usually I probably get to 18 to 22 questions or so, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. Kind of depends on what kind of mood I'm in, whether I want to answer a bunch of different ones or just kind of keep it to a little bit more in depth on some of the more complex questions.

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So kind of undecided, we'll see what happens. We'll [00:01:00] see where it takes us. And just looking at the top few questions by the way, I'm going to answer mostly questions that I didn't get to on Instagram and looking at the top ones that are in my question feed, they look like not bad questions at all, but they just look relatively short quick answers. So we'll see what the ones below that I haven't even looked. We'll see what the ones below that look like. There might be some longer ones, but either way, looking forward to a little bit of a q and a and also looking forward to the fact that [00:01:30] it's Black Friday and if you are listening to this before the 29th, Saturday the 29th of November, the TTM Black Friday sale is live and it's a big one. Everything on the website is 50% off.

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We have eight programs and a recovery guide, PDF, and that discount is automatic. You don't have to type anything in. You just no matter what, if you go buy something off the website, you're going to get 50% off whether you want it or not. So whether you want 50%, of course you want the thing, but whether you want 50% off or [00:02:00] not, so you're stuck with that. And yeah, this is the cheapest. The programs are going to be probably till next year at this same time. Honestly, they probably won't be cheaper because we raise prices every quarter. So your last chance to get the programs at the cheapest they'll ever be is right now. So if you're interested, there are links in the description, whether you're watching or listening, you can find the links to terminator training.com and check out the products and take your pick and you won't be disappointed.

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These programs [00:02:30] are working really well for a lot of people and they could work really well for you as well. So now's the time and with that out of the way, don't really have any life updates. So let's hop into some questions. First question, thoughts on nasal breath cadence two, manage low zone two IE five steps per breath in and out. I think this is way overthinking it. I think that a lot of people are really interested in how to breathe when they run. Generally speaking, unless you just [00:03:00] have no athleticism whatsoever or if you're just really into overthinking a lot of things. I'm not saying this is you, the question asker by the way, but just in general, just breathe the way that your body kind of tells you to breathe. Breathe naturally. Yeah, you can definitely time things if you want, but to be honest with you, I would much rather just use RPE and or heart rate or maybe periodically.

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If you're kind of newer to it, you can say a 12 to 15 word sentence and if you can say that without stopping for a breath or without having a [00:03:30] really hard recovery breath after you say it, then you're probably in zone two. So if you want to kind of come up with a system like this to track your zone two, you can, but I just think it's getting a little bit more into the weeds than necessary and it's probably just going to make you think about some things that you really just don't really have to think about when you're training. So up to you, but I would probably stick to a more simple and less complex way to track it, but that's just me. Next question. Weighted pull-ups [00:04:00] as a core upper lift. I think that could be a very solid idea for a lot of people, especially if you want to get good at pull-ups, pull-ups, chin up, neutral grip, whatever you want to call 'em, rack chin, chin-ups are all great vertical pulling exercises.

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And the one thing I will say about weighted pull-ups, if you're not really, really, really good at body weight, and I don't mean you can do a lot of them, I mean your form, your technique, your mechanics not locked in, then adding weight to that is, [00:04:30] or I should say, or if you have a tendency to train past failure with pull-ups, which basically you might be wondering what are you talking about? How can you do a pull-up after you hit failure? You can hit failure with good locked in sound mechanics, good form, and then still do several more after with a little bit of momentum or a little bit of shoulders rounding forward or a little bit of maybe moving the legs a little bit or recruiting [00:05:00] muscles that aren't supposed to be recruited much for pull-ups, so on and so forth. And that can be really rough long-term, maybe not today, maybe not next week, but if you do that on a regular basis, really rough on the joints, especially the shoulders, but also sometimes it can bleed down into the elbows, so assuming you don't do that, which a lot of people do, but assuming you are disciplined enough to keep your form locked in and stop when you hit failure, of course, if you're getting tested on pull-ups and they allow a rep, even if it's not perfect, that's [00:05:30] one thing, but for training really not worth the squeeze.

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But if that's you, then weighted pull-ups are phenomenal. If you have shoulder issues or elbow issues, a history of them or if they just kind of come on and off, which is also super duper common to include myself, I have a right shoulder issue that's been on and off for 10 years. I used to do a ton of overhead stuff even though I didn't have great overhead mobility, overhead presses, you name it, and that kind [00:06:00] of took a toll over time. Also just using the barbell way too much, I was just very dogmatic about the barbell and didn't realize that if you use dumbbells or if you use machines or if you use something that allows your grip to kind of rotate your joints are probably going to feel better, just a more natural way to hold things and move things as a human. But anyway, if you are disciplined enough to keep your form locked in and you're really good at pull-ups, adding weight to 'em is a really good idea.

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It's a great way to improve the stimulus. It's a great way to get to where you can train in the lower rip ranges. [00:06:30] If you can do 25, 30 pull-ups without any load, yeah, there's nothing wrong with doing high rep sets and you can also adjust the tempo to make it so that you hit failure way sooner than that to kind of keep in a lower rep range, a little bit less fatiguing, but also you could add load and that works really well too. What I will say is I would absolutely consider not just doing overhand pull-ups, just the standard prone grip pull-ups, I would consider rotating in some neutral grip stuff even better. I would consider getting some ankles nineties, the [00:07:00] little orange things that you put on a bar. And like I said, that twisting through the range of motion or rotating, not necessarily twisting but rotating through the range of motion, whether you're doing pushing exercises, but especially for certain pull exercises, especially for overhead pulling exercises is a really good thing that, or you can do it on rings, that works too.

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But either way, I would definitely be sure to rotate in different grips and I would be sure to not always do weighted pull-ups every single week on end without any sort of break, without [00:07:30] any body weight pullups worked in. Or honestly, for most people I would recommend rotating pullups completely out like pro and grit, pullups completely out of your program periodically, even if it's just for a week at a time every eight weeks or something like that. Or maybe it's every quarter you rotate 'em out for three weeks or four weeks or something like that and do a pull up variation, whether it's a rack chin up, which I would definitely recommend to most people. Rack chin up, I've talked about it a lot, but you are essentially hanging on a [00:08:00] barbell. Ideally you have some angles, nineties or some rings that you can hang onto or maybe you have a neutral grip bar like a Swiss bar a little bit better than an overhand grip and you put your feet up on a box or a bench, so your body's in this jackknife position, basically an EL position, and you're just at a different angle.

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You're at a slightly more advantageous angle to a hit the lats and B, make it more shoulder friendly. So rotating those in would be a really good idea periodically and if nothing else, at least rotating neutral grip or rotating grip pullups [00:08:30] in periodically or pull downs or whatever you want to assist or substitute pull-ups with would be a really good idea for long-term. And by the way, when you do these non pull up lifts that are really a lot pull-ups, you're still going to be really good at pull-ups when you go back to 'em, if not better at them and if not in the long-term, down the road, much better at them because you'll be more available to do pull-ups more often because your shoulders aren't going to be always nagging you [00:09:00] or your elbows or even your neck. Some guys mess their necks up doing pull-ups or overhead stuff in general, so can be an absolutely great core lift, but it's not make or break if you like them, absolutely, if you're good at them, absolutely.

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But there are other great pull down exercises, pull up exercises that work really well as core upper body lifts. Next question, what is your unhealthy food? Guilty pleasure? Good question. This is hard for me to think about right now because I have been working with a coach for seven weeks and I have not had [00:09:30] anything off plan. I do hike days every weekend, really high carb days, but it's all clean food. I think the most off-plan thing I've had is a little bit of sushi, but it was like the boring sushi with just fish and rice and seaweed. It wasn't like the fun stuff with a bunch of other ingredients. In fact, my wife and I are going to get sushi later tonight. But anyway, favorite guilty pleasure food. If I could eat anything I wanted right now, I would probably, I've got down the street from my house, maybe not down the street like seven minutes away.

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I've got [00:10:00] a Jersey Mike's and a Marco's Pizza and a, I think Jersey Mike's for chain sandwiches is by far the best. So I would consider getting one of those and right next door is Marco's. And for chain pizzas, I think Marco's is a chain just in certain areas. I don't think it's a nationwide chain, but it is way better than we have local mom and pop shops kind of close to us too. And I think Marco's is way better personally, so I would probably get a pizza [00:10:30] from them, pizza sandwich, and then for dessert there's a grocery store. It's a little further from where I live now, but it used to be when I first moved to the Southern Pines area, North Carolina, it was right across the street and it was kind of dangerous because they have these cookies that I've never seen anywhere else.

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I'm not exactly sure if they're definitely not the grocery store company cookies, but I think they have a relationship with a more underground cookie making company and [00:11:00] they make incredible cookies. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. So I would have, and they come in these boxes of eight and they're pretty thick, good size. They're the chewy type of cookies too. I'm not a big fan of really crunchy cookies. I like Chewy and they have a bunch of different options too. They've got one like caramel sea salt cookie, they've got chocolate peanut butter, they've got chocolate chip, they have oatmeal raisin, they have oatmeal chocolate chip, they have this white chocolate chip macadamia [00:11:30] flavor. Basically all their cookies are delicious. They got chocolate on chocolate. So what I would probably do, and I might do this sometime soon because I feel like seven weeks I haven't gone off plan, so maybe I do deserve a little bit of a cheat day.

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I probably feel absolutely terrible afterwards. But hey, it might be enjoyable, but I would get a giant jersey Mikes, I think it's number eight or number nine. It pretty much has roast beef, Turkey, [00:12:00] ham, maybe bacon and a bunch of veggies and Mike's way and all that stuff. You guys are probably familiar with it. If you like Jersey Mikes, I would get probably a medium pizza, just all for myself with extra sauce. I always go with extra sauce at this place because the only downside if you get regular pizza at Marco's is they don't put quite enough sauce on it. So I'd have extra sauce, probably some pepperoni sausage, maybe some veggies, and I would have probably at least half a [00:12:30] box of those cookies if not the entire thing. So that's probably what I would go with. Other foods that I really like that are a little bit guilty pleasure ish.

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Honestly, I'm a big fan of crackers and chips, so Cheez-Its, believe it or not, I love Ritz crackers with peanut butter on them. I like a lot of different types of chips. I could sit down easily and eat a whole bag of chips if I didn't have a conscience. So I do sweets as well. But [00:13:00] I would say if I had to choose, I would go mostly savory, a little bit of sweet, kind of what I just went over with a pizza and the sandwich and the cookies. So that's what I'd go with. And yeah, thanks for planting the seed. I might go with that soon because I feel like it is almost time for a little bit of a cheat meal. Next question, favorite ab exercises? So my top, I would say three favorite ab exercises. One, we'll go with the oles first you go in [00:13:30] a 45 degree back raise machine and you have a staggered stance, so you're facing sideways, almost like a side plank position and you do side raises.

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So you pretty much bend down until you feel a big stretch and your side, your oles, you have your hand reached over your head to enhance that stretch. Then you come back up using your obliques up to where your body's in a straight line. You may have seen people doing plank holds on those, which are totally fine, but to actually grow and develop the [00:14:00] abs, you have to put 'em through a range of motion holding static positions like planks are not bad, but they're not going to grow your abs at all because it's isometric. You'll get stronger, but you're not going to get more muscular ab muscles that are going to be more visible even if you're a little bit less lean. I think a lot of people think that you just have to be lean to see your abs, which yeah, absolutely if you get lean, even if you don't do ab work, you're going to see your abs, but you could be a little less lean if you have very well developed abs, which [00:14:30] there's a genetic component for sure, but also you can build them just like any other muscle if you train them just like any other muscle.

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I'll kind of get into that in a second, but where was I? Oh, the isometric movements aren't really, you're not lengthening or shortening the muscle, so you're not really going to get much out of plank side planks and things like that. For the actual abdominals, I like to do one where I bring my ribcage to my pelvis, so a crunch or a sit up style motion. And I like to do one where I do the opposite. I bring my [00:15:00] pelvis to my ribcage. Did I say that the first time? Basically pelvis to ribcage or ribcage to pelvis. That is the range of motion, that is the best cues that you can possibly use for abdominal work. A lot of people just turn it into kind of hip flexor training. So my pelvis to ribcage exercise of choice would be either a Roman chair leg raise where your elbows are kind of on these little pads.

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You got these little handles, it's like a hanging leg raise except you have back support. And at my gym I [00:15:30] have a half bosu ball Roman chair, so you get to actually use the curvature of that ball to get more extension at the bottom. Of course, if you care and you're doing it right, which is a whole different story, but I like those and I really like a newer exercise that my coach has me doing right now. They are, I don't remember even the name of them, but if you are on T eight 50, you're going to see them in the next block. They are essentially like a bench reverse crunch. The bench is on an incline, you reach up over your head and grab the top [00:16:00] of the bench to kind of support yourself and stabilize, and then you put a foam roller underneath your knees and you're pretty much putting a foam roller between your calves and your hamstrings just to kind of keep your feet or your legs locked into the same position and you bring your knees up using your thinking about bringing your pelvis to your ribcage, you're bringing your knees up to your elbows and that one's absolutely killer.

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The first time I did it, I could do four reps with just a foam roller I guess basically [00:16:30] body weight. Now I'm up to being able to do like 15 because I'm doing them on a regular basis, but that one's great. And then as far as the opposite, bringing rib cage to pelvis, like a crunch motion. I like a GHD crunch where you use the actual place where you would put your quads doing a glute ham raise. You put the small of your back there, so it's like this nice little curvature and then you put your feet into the actual foot pads, but you're facing up of course facing the ceiling and you're just doing crunches there. It just is like a perfect [00:17:00] little curvature for that area and it allows you to really get into a nice fully stretched lengthened position and you just crunch up.

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And the range of motion for abs is tiny. It's not very big. Most people when they train abs, like I said, are doing hip flexor training because they don't have the right cues. You could do pretty much every AB exercise and not really use your abs that much. Yeah, you're going to use 'em a little, but you can make them mostly hip flexor and that's usually the natural tendency unless you have really good [00:17:30] cues or exactly how to engage your abs and all about the small range of motion and things like that. So literally all you're doing, regardless of what AB exercise you're doing, if you're doing some sort of leg raise, like bottom half up to top half, all you're thinking is pelvis to rib. Trying to make the front of your pelvis as close to your ribcage, the bottom of your ribcage as possible.

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And obviously if you think about that, that's going to be recruiting your abdominal muscles going to be flexing your abdominal muscles. [00:18:00] Then also you want to make sure that you're fully stretching them, lengthening them at the bottom, so going all the way down. Ideally, like I was talking about, you have some sort of curved object or something like that that you can actually use to enhance your ability to get in that position. And then the other way, if you're doing some sort of crunch motion, it's the opposite ribcage to pelvis. That's it. And then if you're doing something for obliques like that 45 degree back raise it's side of your rib cage to your hip bone pretty much and [00:18:30] the same on the other side. So those are my go-tos. You don't really need to train abs a ton and honestly you don't have to do, which a lot of people do this too, they do hundreds and hundreds of reps.

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They do these AB circuits with no rest. Your abs will grow if you train them just like any other muscle group. So most people aren't going to do 300 squats to get jacked legs just like most people aren't going to do 300 rows to get a jacked up or back. You do [00:19:00] three sets of eight to 10 or three sets of six to eight or three sets of 10 to 12 and you add load. If these ab exercises get easy, then you can add load to them or you can just slow down the tempo. You can flex for a longer time. You can really increase the range of motion as much as possible. There's multiple different ways that you can make body weight AB exercises much harder and make you hit failure in a good solid hypertrophy rep range five to 20, but that's what I go with. I usually train abs once or twice a week [00:19:30] and I do two or three sets of eight to 15 reps and I'm lean, so you can see my abs because they're lean, because I'm lean, but also they are decently well developed. I don't have the best epigenetics of all time, but they're well developed enough. You can tell I train them. Yeah, give 'em a whirl. Next question, what's a good program choice for ranger school ruck run lift or two and five or both?

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For those who have been listening for a while, you probably know my stance on going through a full [00:20:00] training program for ranger school. Generally, if you're a well-rounded tactical athlete, you should be able to go to ranger school at the drop of a dime and go crush. I got I think a four, three or four day notice that I was going to ranger school and my team leader or team sergeant had me do a PT test just to make sure two days before I went and yet obviously if you are an SF guy that respects himself and takes his job seriously, you should be able to pass [00:20:30] a PT test at the drop of a dime or max, I should say max, a PT test, but also SF or not. If you are a tactical athlete that takes his job seriously and therefore takes his fitness seriously, you should be able to go ranger school and do pretty well without training for it.

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Of course, you probably want to get some rux in, you want to get some time on your feet before you go, but a full on program in an ideal world wouldn't be necessary. That being said, that is not the case for a lot of people. A lot of people do have to train and prep for [00:21:00] ranger school, therefore I may in the future because the demand is high, make one even though it's kind of against what I believe in. As for your question, I'm assuming by both you don't mean doing both at the same time. You mean doing one or the other and that could be okay, ruck run lift is overkill for ranger school. You absolutely could follow it and it would prepare you, but it's a little bit more or it's quite a bit more than what you need. So maybe [00:21:30] following the first half of ruck run lift or something like that.

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The downside with two and five mile, yes, it'll definitely get your runs where they need to be, but there's not a lot of rucking in it. So if you have five months, six months or something like that, you said both in your question, fall two and five followed by ruck run lift or part of ruck run lift would be a solid option, but honestly, multiple of my programs would work for Ranger School. SFAS would work. Is it overkill? Yes, but it would work. [00:22:00] T eight 50 absolutely would prep you for ranger school, the training team and probably both of the Jack Elles. So all those are options. Kind of depends on what your strengths and weaknesses are. Like if you're worried about your runs more so than anything else, I would say two and five than ruck run lift. If you're pretty well balanced, you can kind of choose your own adventure with any of the programs I just went over.

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So best of luck. Next question, why don't SFAS programs focus on one hour efforts versus five mile time trials? You may not even run a five mile. [00:22:30] Yeah, so I think what he's referring to is the unknown distance runs at SAS and honestly the longest run is not that much more than five miles. I don't know the exact distance, but it's definitely not going to take you an hour. If it takes you an hour, you're probably not going to make it. Generally speaking though, because it's unknown, finding your one hour pace would be a good idea. Basically that's rudimentarily, that's going to be your threshold pace. Give [00:23:00] or take a pace that you can sustain for an hour. So running at that pace because you don't know exactly when it's going to end and it's a good solid pace to get a feel for would be a good idea, but five miles, two miles, et cetera are more standardized.

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They're more like, okay, five mile, if I can run a five mile in 33 minutes, you can rest assured that I'm going to do well on the longer of the two runs. That's a little bit more than five miles. Whereas if you're just doing these one hour threshold sessions, that's [00:23:30] not very good training idea because it's absolutely brutal and it's super fatiguing and it's overkill. You don't necessarily have to run at threshold pace for an hour to know what your threshold pace feels like or to calculate your threshold pace. So I would say that the question, I'm not a hundred percent sure if I understand the question fully, but I would say the main reason that people have these distance, these kind of distance standards and distances in their minds is because they're [00:24:00] more standardized and also after SFAS, if you make it through during the Q course, you're going to get tested on two miles and five miles and that's pretty much it.

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There's no more unknown stuff, so I would say that's probably why it would be kind of more complex to go about programming your one hour time pace and it would just be a little bit overkill. Next question, any land F courses you would recommend before going into the military? Yeah, so big one I would recommend is going to David Walton's Land App Muster. [00:24:30] He does one every month out at Hoffman, the Land F area where they do it at SAS and he's a very good instructor and you get some good hands-on practical exercises and that's the huge thing is actually doing it, reading about it, learning about it, talking about it, knowing about it, very important. Of course, that's like step one. You're not going to be able to do very well if you don't know the basics, but step two and also a required step to get good at it is to get out there and actually practice it.

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[00:25:00] Now some people are really good at just picking things up or they have a background of just being out in the woods or maybe they've used a compass they've navigated before. For people like that, I wouldn't really stress it all that much. You don't have to get out and practice it. Honestly, these things weren't available to anyone in my generation necessarily or people before that and guys were still doing fine. Honestly guys were probably doing better at Land Nav back then than they are now probably because most people just live in their phones and they just rely on their phones for everything, [00:25:30] including how to get from A to B, which I get if you've never been somewhere and you're driving somewhere, yes, absolutely, but if you go to the same place 10 times in a row and every single time you use maps, then that's just a clear indication that you're just kind of too reliant on your phone.

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You're not situationally aware enough. But going off on a tangent a little bit there, but I would go to Wally's Muster if you can't do that for whatever reason, or if you want more practice, maybe you go to Wally's thing, you get that nice baseline [00:26:00] training and you get those nice reps, you could consider joining an orienteering club. Believe it or not, there are civilians who do this stuff for free or for fun. They go out and they do land nav. The terminology that they use and maybe some of the strategies are probably a little different, but it's still reps and you're still getting out there and actually doing it. And the more you do it, the more confident you're going to get, the more competent you're going to get. But also competence is required to be very confident and going into land [00:26:30] nav, confident, not overconfident, like having a healthy respect for the course, but also confident in your ability to get from A to B is huge.

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A lot of guys are perfectly capable of passing Lev, finding the points they need to find, but either they just lack confidence and they don't think they can do it mostly because they haven't put enough reps in or and enough reps by the way is going to be different for everyone. Some people need maybe five reps in order to go pass [00:27:00] the star course. Some people need 55 reps. So it really just depends on a lot of different factors. Mostly your propensity to learn things and pick things up and apply things, but getting that practice in, getting those reps in, it's never a bad thing and a lot of guys are just not confident enough because they haven't done enough reps for them to be competent enough and therefore confident enough or guys will just overthink everything. There's just too much going on between [00:27:30] the ears.

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Really the only thing you need to be thinking about when you stand up after stopping at any point, make sure you have all your stuff, your gun, your ruck, your scorecard, your map, your compass, all your sensitive items they give you and your next thought should be, I need to get to my next checkpoint, which if you plan your routes properly, your next checkpoint's probably 500 meters away, maybe 700, maybe a thousand at the very most. Instead of thinking, oh, this is first point on the [00:28:00] first night and I have to walk 17 K in order to get there, how am I ever going to find eight points? You're not going to find eight points when you're thinking like that. All you got to find is your next checkpoint, not even your next point, your next checkpoint. And then from there you find your next checkpoint and then your next checkpoint.

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You break things down into chunks, which works well for a lot of different things, but really well for land A, it's basically non-negotiable, but when you have 10 other things going on in your head and that's probably generous, I'm [00:28:30] tired, I'm hungry, I don't want to be here, it's cold, it's wet. How am I going to find this point later today? How am I going to get through this draw? Should I go through this draw or should I skirt it? How close to the road am I, how far away? All these different thoughts that just cloud your judgment and make it so that you can't focus on the exact task at hand, which is getting to your next checkpoint. So those are the two main reasons that guys fail. Honestly, the land nav failure rate [00:29:00] is not an indicator of the candidate's ability to do land nav.

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Oftentimes the water's muddied by extra, extra stress, extra extra thinking about things. Dave Walton calls it cognitive load, your just cognitive load is way too high, and unless you offload some of that by narrowing your focus to what the next task is, then it's just going to overwhelm the hill out of you and you're going to overthink it. You're going to second guess yourself. You're going to third guess yourself. You're going to get turned around, [00:29:30] you're going to start going rogue and throw out the fundamentals and hope that when you're a little lost, you're just going to become unlost magically and unfortunately it usually doesn't work out that way. And the other reason is just lack of confidence from lack of reps. So good on you for looking to get reps in and those are where I would kind of look to get reps. Next question, should Jack Zel 2.0 get you a good Army PT score?

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By itself, I mean as a byproduct of following [00:30:00] the program, you would be more capable of getting a really good PT score. Does it have specific PT events like a FT events on it or specific practice for it? No. If you have weaker events for the A FT, you'd probably have to specifically throw those in as you get a little closer, but just like ranger school, I also think that, like I was saying earlier, you shouldn't have to prep for a PT test. You should just be fit enough and you pass a PT test, even if it's [00:30:30] at the drop of a dime, you don't get any warning. You should be able to crush max that test if you take yourself seriously as a soldier. I know that sounds a little bit harsh, but it really isn't like the A FT A CFT, whatever it's going to be when this episode comes out is not that challenging at all.

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If you're generally fit, you're going to be totally fine. Yeah, there are certain events where you might want to practice the hand release pushup. I get it. Not a lot of people do hand release pushups on a regular basis and I don't think you should either [00:31:00] and just your general chest training is probably not going to make it so you can get 60 plus, but things like the plank, anyone should be able to pass a plank at the drop of a dime with no training. I was talking about this a few episodes ago. It was probably several episodes ago now, but I said that I could pass a plank with zero training. I haven't done a plank other than when I did this to prove it. I hadn't done a plank since my last A CFT, which is in 2023, maybe 2022, and I said I could probably hold a four minute plank and [00:31:30] someone in the comment section called me out and said, there's no way.

(00:31:33):

And so I did it and I filmed it and I got four minutes. I probably could have got 4 35, probably a little longer. Plank is mostly mental, the ball throw, everyone's arch nemesis is now out of course because it's too hard. So you don't have to worry about that. The deadlift, I mean generally speaking, if you train on a regular basis and you do deadlifts, it's not that much to ask to hex bar deadlift three 50 or three 40 I [00:32:00] think it is. What else? The two mile, that should be a no-brainer. Sprint drag carry, also not very difficult. You're just running back and forth a few times. Really, really light sled, really, really like kettlebells and yeah, if you're generally fit, you have decent anaerobic capacity. Should be totally fine on that. I think that's every event. I might've missed one, but either way, if you have a good solid year round training habit, like if you have really good training habits year round and you don't neglect anything majorly and you don't [00:32:30] try and reinvent the wheel or just way overdo everything or what a lot of people do is they don't really train all that much, but then they hear they have a PT test in a month or six weeks or whatever, so they start training just for the PT test, which is a terrible idea essentially you want to be as capable as possible as a soldier, not necessarily as good at taking PT tests as possible.

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The thing is though, if you train to be a really good tactical athlete fitness wise, that is [00:33:00] as a byproduct, you're going to be able to crush PT assessments. That's just kind of how it works. Whereas if you just train for PT assessments, you're going to have some serious gaps in your ability to do what you need to do as a soldier, as a tactical athlete physically. So Jack is L two, absolutely. It'll get you to where you can pass crush a PT test as a byproduct, but you might also have to practice a couple of things like the hand release pushups or something like that as you get a little closer just to get the movement down, the timing down, [00:33:30] the technique down, the scale down. But yeah, I would say it's, it's nowhere even close and you'll never see this from Terminator training, a PT test program, not a chance, but can it get you there?

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Absolutely, but it does also depend on where you're starting. If you're starting from basically scratch, Jack is L two is probably not the best program for you, but if you are very unfit and very far away from crushing PT tests, following Jack L 2.0 may not get you there, but [00:34:00] it'll get you closer. But if you're pretty much on the cusp and you do a little practice, then you should be totally fine. Next question, just finish JG two. Is there a full body three to four day a week workout program coming soon? Yes. My third hybrid program is very close to being done. Expect to see that the first or second week of December. Is it full body? Not every phase. Some of the phases are full body. Some of the phases are, there's a push pull legs phase, there's an upper lower phase [00:34:30] and I believe there's two full body phases.

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So it's a good mix of a bunch of things in general. I'll make a full episode when it comes out going over it, but in general, think Jack is L one and jack is L two meshed into one. The first couple phases are going to be more hypertrophy focused and a little bit of ramp up for run volume and conditioning volume. It's like the first six weeks and then the last two phases, which is going to be like 10 weeks, [00:35:00] are going to be a lot more like Jack L one with the power lifts percentages. I know everyone loves percentages and more run volume, more conditioning volume. It's going to be a really sick program. Looking forward to it. Like I said, it's almost done, so if you can wait a week or two and pay attention to my stories, my podcasts, all my content, even better.

(00:35:21):

If you want all the lowdown on all these things, sign up for my newsletter. There should be a link in the description and I update people on the newsletter [00:35:30] a little bit sooner than the other platforms. But yeah, coming out looking forward to it and it will be on sale when it comes out too, so thanks for asking. Next question if I can repeat the pace, but the RPE feels like nine to 10, is my pace too fast for interval work? Good question. Highly nuanced because a lot of people will say, if I can repeat this, even though it's way, way, way faster than a realistic goal time, I should be able to do it and it should be more beneficial, right? [00:36:00] Usually not unless of course you are doing intentional, hardest, repeatable pacing. There are certain scenarios where I will program for my clients.

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I also have some of this in T eight 50. I also do some of this in my other programs where we'll finish off with like four, two hundreds or five, two hundreds at your fastest repeatable 200 pace with long rest periods. That's the thing when you're going really hard, your fastest repeatable pace, which takes a little while to kind of figure out. It's not like you're going to nail this your first time. [00:36:30] A lot of people go out too hot in the first couple ones and they can't repeat it. But when you're going at your fastest repeatable pace, you're not really going for your goal pace adaptations. You're going for more like aerobic power adaptations. So therefore in order to repeat it and also to make it less fatiguing longer rest periods are necessary. So for example, sometimes in my programs, 200 meter repeats have longer rest periods than 400 meter repeats because the four hundreds are relatively [00:37:00] slower.

(00:37:01):

The two hundreds are relatively harder and we're going more so for pace adaptations on the four hundreds and aerobic power adaptations on the two hundreds. So that's one of many, many nuances. But along those same lines, it depends on what your intent is with those repeats. So if it's that absolutely, totally fine should be like an hour nine to 10, but again, long rest and you shouldn't be doing a lot of them. If you are going and doing [00:37:30] a bunch of four hundreds with a one-to-one work to rest ratio or even less than a one-to-one or if you have a jogging rest or something like that or eight hundreds or miles, whatever it is, even if you can repeat them all, if that pace is way, way faster than what would be a realistic goal pace for you to hit. So say for example, your current two mile is 13 minutes, six 30 miles and you want to get to where you can do a 12 minute two mile, so your goal pace is [00:38:00] six minute miles, which is 30 seconds per mile faster than you currently can run that two minutes.

(00:38:05):

But you can do repeats at like 5 15, 5 20 per mile and you can also repeat them even with the rest periods and so on and so forth. It's still better, much better to do it closer to your goal pace than it is to do the super hard ones, even though you can repeat it A, it's actually allowing you to adapt. The main reason for repeats is so you can get used to running at [00:38:30] a pace that you're looking to run for longer than those repeats. So if you want to run those six minute miles for the two mile running your four hundreds, six hundreds, there are different ways to pace different distances, but running them closer to your goal pace A allows you to get used to that pace and the more you run that pace, the longer you're going to be able to hold that pace, especially if you do a continuous repeat session and continuous repeats week after [00:39:00] week after week, enough volume, the proper progression, et cetera.

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But also it's going to be less fatiguing than going 5 20, 5 30, whatever your hardest repeatable ones are way less fatiguing and therefore it's going to be more specific and less fatiguing. If you're exchanging specificity for more fatigue, it's never a good idea. This is, by the way, a very, very common thing. Weirdly enough, oftentimes guys will be super duper fast and studs at repeats like four hundreds, eight hundreds [00:39:30] burning it down, and then they'll get to the two mile or the five mile or both and they'll be significantly slower usually assuming they're training and actually prepping for it. It's because they're doing their repeats way too hard and therefore it's more fatiguing and it's less specific. So they're getting used to running at that super hard 400 pace or 800 pace, which is great if you're just trying to get that 400 or 800 as fast as you can.

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But if you're trying to do it for a longer run, a two mile, a five mile, a 5K, [00:40:00] it's less specific and more fatiguing and in therefore it's not a very good idea. So you can absolutely do this, but only if that is the main intent of those repeats. Generally repeats are going to be closer to a goal pace and even if the RPE is a little lower, even if the session doesn't smoke, you honestly repeats should be challenging, but you should not be crawling away from repeats. They shouldn't be at nine to 10 RPE, maybe nine towards the end, but definitely not 10. That's like [00:40:30] time trial. You save time trials for like 10 RPE, not like your six 400. So that's what I recommend doing. Tons and tons of different things go into repeats. It's not as simple as a lot of people think for general run goals though it can be pretty damn simple.

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If you follow my SAS program, the repeats in there are super duper simple. When I get into the two and five mile, a little bit more advanced, a little more complicated in my upcoming program, I've got even more high speed programming. [00:41:00] But still, is that all that necessary? Not necessarily. It just kind of makes it a little bit more engaging, gives people a little bit more things to try and things to experiment with, and it also is still effective because it's programmed intentionally and soundly. So that is how I would go about thinking about repeats. Next question. Any plans in the works for a marathon slash ultra marathon training plan? Not really only because even though I do program running, [00:41:30] running is one of many things that I program. I specialize in soft prep, hybrid programming. Running is one of the goals, but it's not just the only one.

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If I wanted the best possible marathon or ultra program, I would outsource that to someone who is a specialist in programming for running more specifically ultra endurance or marathon, not necessarily someone who just programs running as a portion of the overall [00:42:00] picture. So I could absolutely put a program together that would help you train and prep for either of these distances, but it would be delusional for me to think that I am the go-to subject matter expert in run specific programming. So basically what I'm trying to say is a little bit outside my wheelhouse and I would probably, if someone wanted to train for just a marathon or an ultra marathon and they didn't care about hybrid [00:42:30] athleticism getting strong and being jacked at the same time, I would probably tell them, Hey, you should go hire an actual running coach because yeah, I could do it for you, but this is not my specialty.

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It's not my bread and butter. I could make you strong jacked and good at running, but if you're really looking to burn down a really solid marathon, you don't really care about the other things. I would hire a actual running coach or follow a program created by a running coach, ideally a running coach who also runs too, which most of them do, [00:43:00] but that's the way I would go about it. Next question, what modifications if any two and five mile program for a 30 5-year-old or just auto-regulate? I mean, you should always auto-regulate. Auto ululating for those who don't know, is kind of judging the intensity, the volume, how hard you go each day based on subjective feedback. So how do you feel? How do your warmups go? Are you motivated? Are you focused? Are you not? Did you sleep well last night? Did you not sleep well?

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[00:43:30] Did you drink yesterday? Things like that. Or objective things like your recovery score, your HRV, maybe your grip strength, maybe your vertical jump if you do pre-workout tests like that to see where you're at physically for the most part. I would say for most people, subjective is a little bit better to use as your gold standard, although there's a little bit of gray area there because some guys, no matter what are going to say, they feel really good regardless of whether they feel good or not. So it does kind of depend, but autoregulation [00:44:00] is something that you should do all the time. If you don't ever autoregulate, if you only just look at a program, I don't care how old you are, I don't care what program you're on, I don't care what your goal is. If you just look at the program and follow it blindly and never, ever potentially make small adjustments like, Hey, I feel terrible today, I'm going to go a little bit easier.

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Or, Hey, I feel terrible today. Instead of doing 12 four hundreds, I'm going to do six or eight. Then you're at very best. You're going to overshoot, you're going to overdo it in general. [00:44:30] At worst, you're probably going to hurt yourself. You're going to get to a point where you have to potentially take a bunch of time off or really, really dial it back and it's not a great idea. So autoregulation, no matter what, no matter what program you're on, 35, 45, 22 19, definitely auto-regulate. As for your question, I would not worry about it. 35 honestly is like your prime for endurance performance. Most of the best endurance runners on earth [00:45:00] are in their late thirties, some even in their forties, I believe Kipchoge, who's the goat marathon runner of all time, and he's still crushing, I think he's like 42 or 43. So you're pretty much in your prime for endurance, and the volume in that program is nothing crazy.

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It's intense, especially phase two. The intensity is pretty high, but the volume's not crazy high, so you should be totally fine, and there's lifting in it as well that's going to kind of keep you durable and also the lifting volume's. Nothing crazy, it's just kind of enough to support your running, [00:45:30] but guys still gain strength on it, so I wouldn't worry too much about this unless of course you have some sort of special situation that requires it, but always autoregulate, no matter what, you're going to be golden. Next question, what are your thoughts on testosterone boosters? So you can try them, like things like tongue Ali Boron can be a good one. Boron is a super cheap supplement that can lower your SHBG, which is sex hormone binding globulin, which testosterone can attach to. If you have high [00:46:00] SHBG, you're usually, not always, but usually you're going to have low free testosterone.

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Your free testosterone is where the magic happens. That's like the testosterone that you can actually use for your benefit, for a lack of a better way to put it. So boron can lower SHPG and therefore it can increase your free testosterone tongue. Cat Ali can also be a testosterone, and I think Fido Agresta is another one. If you listen to huberman, you [00:46:30] probably hear him talk about this stuff all the time, but yes, they can raise your testosterone on paper, but higher testosterone on paper isn't always all that beneficial because you may not feel anything. For example, if you are at 400 and you take tongue Ali for three months, say just an example, and it gets up to four 80, yes, your testosterone's higher, but there's a decent chance you're not going to feel all that different or you're [00:47:00] not going to benefit all that much because your testosterone would up.

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If it doubled it, which none of these things double your testosterone, then yeah, you would probably feel it. You'd probably benefit from it. But usually these things are just very subtle and they're going to bring it up maybe a little bit so it's more mechanistic than it actually is. Yes, my testosterone on a lab might be higher, but do I actually feel like it's higher or am I actually seeing signs or feeling symptoms that it's higher and improved? Some people, in some cases [00:47:30] they might, but for the most part, it's usually more mechanistic. That being said, a lot of people will go to these things before they do anything for their lifestyle, and your lifestyle is significantly more important as far as bringing your testosterone up than taking a testosterone booster. So if you're not super dialed in on sleep, if you are not eating really well, if you're not lean, not too lean, but pretty lean, 10 to 12% body fat, give or take.

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If you are super stressed out all the time, if you have all these bad habits, if you [00:48:00] don't train, you don't lift weights, you do way too much cardio or you do no cardio, you drink a lot, use THC, use nicotine, live off caffeine, don't hydrate well, so on and so forth. You have bad relationships, you're always playing a victim. Whatever your average American does these days, and you're probably not going to have the best testosterone numbers, but if you take it upon yourself to improve your lifestyle significantly, and not just for a little while, but seriously long-term consistently, which yes takes effort [00:48:30] and sacrifice, and you might feel FOMO sometimes. You might not get to have all your pleasures that you want. Your immediate pleasures might have to be more accepting of delayed gratification. Then your potential to bring your testosterone up in a meaningful way that you're going to really feel and benefit from is so much higher doing that than it is taking boron or taking Ton Ali or retis.

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Of course, it won't always work. There are certain people that are really [00:49:00] locked in, dialed in, and their testosterone kind of stays low. If you're like that, I wouldn't even mess with testosterone boosters, honestly. I would go talk to a professional, a doctor and see what they recommend, but sometimes the best option for them is to go on TRT or maybe something like Clomid, which also the thing about Clomid, which is another, it's basically a serum selective estrogen receptor modulator. What that can do is somewhat naturally [00:49:30] increase your testosterone, but not in a way that shuts you down like taking testosterone. If you take testosterone, it's going to shut your body's natural production down. CH Clomid can naturally bring it up, but oftentimes guys will have higher testosterone on their labs from taking ch Clomid, but they won't really feel any better. So if you try everything and your doc recommends it, I'm not recommending this, but if your doc does, going on TRT could be a great option.

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Not super practical for everyone. Probably a lot of people listening to [00:50:00] this that aren't in SF yet or are looking to go to sf, but they're candidates still probably a good idea to hold off. Definitely a good idea to hold off, but if you are not and you're looking to optimize and you do all these things for your lifestyle and it doesn't really help, you are way, way better off having higher normal testosterone from testosterone replacement therapy than living your life with low T. It's not even close. The comparison's not even close. Of course, [00:50:30] crazy high like bodybuilder doses, that's not healthy, but having a thousand nanograms per deciliter testosterone, even if it's because you're on TRT, you're injecting, it is way, way, way better off than being natural, but being at 300 or two 50 and just feeling terrible. Lastly, another nuance. Your testosterone, the number on your labs is just one data point.

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A lot of docs, especially gps, military docs will just look at that. They don't care about your symptoms. [00:51:00] They only look at that, which is, I'm not even going to get into why that's a bad thing, but it is just a number. So if you feel really, really good and you have no issues, like no potential signs and symptoms of having low T, but your T may happen to be low, say it's at three 50 or 400, you don't really have to worry about it. I would just ride it out. But if you have symptoms of low T, some people have symptoms at 500, 600, 700 [00:51:30] and like I said, a GP is not going to take that into account, but a really good men's health clinic will take that into account your symptoms and also your numbers and then give you a plan from there. So just because you have low T or high T or middle T does not always mean that something needs to be done, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

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So if you have symptoms or you're struggling to gain muscle or you just have no motivation and you're not doing all these [00:52:00] dumb things like scrolling all day, of course you're not going to have motivation if you're just on your phone all day or if you're not sleeping well or if you're drinking every night. But if you're dialed in and it's still not working, it could be a really good idea to go talk to a doctor about potentially intervening with it. So wouldn't really worry too much about these things. You can try them if you want, but is it going to do a whole lot? Probably not. It might bring your numbers up on paper, but are you going to feel different? Who knows? But if you got money to [00:52:30] spend on them, it's not going to hurt you. So give more oil. Next question.

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What should the RPE be for ruck run lift ruck run slash trots in phase three? Great question and I'm going to go in and edit this because I usually try to think of all the variables to include and I guess I missed this one. It might say it somewhere in there, but either way I would go at about your goal pace. So if you're training for the long walk and you're going to have to go 18 miles, those trots should be about what you think you can do an 18 mile [00:53:00] or at. If you're going to go to SVS, you're probably going to, it's an unknown distance, unknown time, but it's probably going to be in the 12 to 14 mile range, so your trot should be around that pace. They can be a little faster. That's totally fine too. You can go a little harder, you can go a little easier.

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I wouldn't worry too much about the exact pace, but it should be a good solid, almost like you're doing a time trial, you're getting timed on it, but obviously a longer time trial, so you can't just take off and sprint RPE wise if [00:53:30] sprinting as hard as you possibly can with a R on is RPE 10 and standing still is an RPE one. I would say a seven to eight, seven and a half would be a pretty solid place to shoot for, but again, it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to overthink it. Just getting those periodic run trots in run bouts in is a really good idea when you're training for selection. By the way, the reason this is in ruck run lift is because it's a selection prep program. You guys have probably heard me talk about in [00:54:00] the past why it's not a really good idea to do a lot of ruck running when you're not close to selection.

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But yeah, I would stick to around that pace or that effort and you're going to be good to go. Next question, what impact does occasional lack of sleep and proper nutrition have on hard training session recovery? Really good question and if it's actually occasional, I wouldn't really even consider it. You can, going back to before I was talking about audio regulation, you definitely should auto-regulate. So if you have [00:54:30] a really bad night of sleep and the next day you got a big workout, maybe you're doing, especially things that are very mentally demanding, take a lot of focus or usually these things coincide but and or high CNS recruitment. So things like if you're doing triples on back squats or if you're pulling really heavy deadlifts or if you're doing repeats or if you're doing all those things in one day, usually not all those things, but say you have a lower body squat session [00:55:00] and you are also doing repeats and you got a terrible night of sleep the night before, I would probably either drop a set from the squats or maybe drop the RPE instead of going really hard close to failure, maybe dial it back to a seven RPE and I would probably drop some volume on the repeats or in some cases maybe just push that session to the next day and do something light on the day you got bad sleep.

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If it's afterwards still, is your recovery [00:55:30] going to be perfect that day acutely? No, but it really is not that huge of a deal. Consistency. What you do on a regular basis consistently is way, way more impactful on your overall grand scheme of things fitness than a periodic slipup, periodic bad night of sleep, periodic bad day of eating or both at the same time. It's really not going to harm you all that much unless of course you don't listen to what I just said and you just go, no matter what, I'm going to follow my program exactly to a T today I'm going to max out on squats [00:56:00] even though I got two hours of sleep last night. That's not smart. But if you use a little bit of critical thinking, little bit of common sense, little bit of autoregulation should be totally fine, really wouldn't worry about it.

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Next question is 20 quality miles a week better than 50 zone two miles? I think I talked about this recently, but if I didn't, no, it's not. So 20 quality miles for those not aware quality is pretty much like tempo speed, race pace work, like higher [00:56:30] intensity running that is intended to be a higher intensity session as opposed to easy runs, long runs, zone two runs, so 20 of those miles per week, that's like high level marathon runner, pretty close to peak in his marathon prep and those 20 miles are maybe a fifth of his weekly volume. So he's doing another 80, 90, a hundred plus miles of foundational work because in order to run [00:57:00] 20 hard miles per week, 20 quality miles per week, you need a massive foundation. And I'm not just talking about while you're doing those weeks, I'm talking about years and years and years before that, building your foundation, building your aerobic capacity, building your running tolerance, your tolerance to impact your running skill, your overall aerobic fitness and capacity in order to handle one 20 mile a week that's high quality, let alone every single week you need [00:57:30] a really good foundation.

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And if you're just doing those 20 miles as hard as you can or not, maybe not as hard as you can, but 20 quality miles with nothing else, it's totally impractical. It's not going to go well for you at very, very best. You're going to make no progress, you're probably going to go backwards, but most likely you're going to hurt yourself. So that's not a good idea. 50 zone two miles per week is totally fine, but if you want to get fast at a race that's not in zone two, which I'm pretty sure all races are not in zone [00:58:00] two, unless there's a zone two race that I don't know about, then you can't just run zone two, you actually have to run some quality miles. So the answer is you should be doing some of both, probably a little bit more easy stuff, a little bit less hard stuff, but it doesn't need to be 80 20.

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I think I've talked about this recently too, but it should not be just pure. I want to go minimalist, so I'm just going to go super hard for these 20 miles and I'm not going to do anything else. It won't go well. So [00:58:30] it order to the more quality miles generally speaking that you do per week, the either longer, you had to build a base and do mostly easy stuff and really build that foundation and you probably should still do at least one foundational run per week too while you're doing these higher quality miles, not 20 but higher or like I was referring to earlier about the elite marathon runner, you also need to be doing a bunch of foundational work at the same time during that time, ideally both. But [00:59:00] I understand not everyone can go run 70 miles a week and honestly most people shouldn't, especially if you're also lifting and training for other things, but that's just kind of the example.

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So would not do either of these. You're better off for sure long-term doing 50 easy miles per week, but also if you want to be fast, you have to do some fast stuff. You can't just do easy stuff. So both but not quite this much. Next question, what are some meal prep services you recommend? I recommend [00:59:30] one that is by far the best in its mega FITT meals. I unfortunately don't have a discount code. I think I might have a discount code soon that I can share with you guys, but right now I don't. They are one of the few that I know about at least that allows you to do your own. You basically can customize your meals, customize your exact macros, the exact foods you want, veggies, carbs, meat. So usually what I do, I get 12 every two weeks. It's on auto delivery [01:00:00] and they're all custom to my macros and the foods I prefer, I'll get mostly Angus beef.

(01:00:05):

I didn't do this the first time, I didn't know I was basically trying everything out. Their Angus steak, black Angus steak is insane and the carb options are white rice, sweet potatoes and regular potatoes. They might have brown rice too, which I don't mess with, but I'll do the steak with either rice or potatoes or sweet potatoes. And I'll also do, sometimes I do ground bison, [01:00:30] sometimes I do ground beef. It's a little bit higher in fat. It's like 93 7, which is not high fat, but for me, I'm eating a pretty low fat diet right now, so that kind of adds up. But I will do that periodically. I'll sprinkle some bison in and sprinkle some ground beef in and they also have ground chicken, spicy ground chicken. That's really good too. If you go this route, what I would strongly recommend, there are two cooking options.

(01:00:51):

One, put it in the microwave for a minute and a half comes out pretty damn good. It's not bad. The first several that I ate were that, and I still thought these guys were [01:01:00] awesome. But if you have time and you have the resources for it, like if you're eating it at home or whatever, throwing it in a pan with some bone broth and just letting it simmer for a while on low, stirring it every so often, putting a bunch of salt in there, pepper if you want, is honestly amazing. The steak, it tastes like you're eating a steak and rice bowl from a real restaurant, not quite as good as a high level steakhouse. Got it. It's meal prep, but it is delicious. I look forward [01:01:30] to them every single day. I eat them almost every day now. I get nine steaks, two spicy chicken and one bison is my current order.

(01:01:41):

I like it that much. So that is definitely what I recommend and honestly could be a great option for a lot of people. A lot of people think that in order to stick to their diet and eat the way they want to, they have to prep their own stuff. And there's nothing wrong with prepping your own stuff. You can [01:02:00] absolutely prep your own stuff and I would by the way, recommend if you want to be able to maintain something consistently, do some sort of prep, whether it's prepping your own stuff or outsourcing it to a meal prep company like this one, I personally would much rather spend a little bit extra because it's a little premium. It's not the cheapest meal prep, but the fact that it's customizable and so delicious is I would pay probably double what I pay for it right now and I would still absolutely do it, but [01:02:30] you get time back, you get energy back.

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The food that this company makes is way better than what I could prep myself. I would just probably throw a bunch of meat and throw a bunch of carbs and I used to do this and it was fine, but it's just so much more delicious and I personally think it's worth the extra cost. Not everyone does and that's totally fine, but either prepping your own stuff or outsourcing meal prep is probably those principles. Just having some sort of food ready to [01:03:00] eat when it's mealtime and not having to decide then or weigh your options or skip it or just eat crap food is a massive, massive factor when it comes to being able to sustain your nutrition plan. Whether your goals are to lose weight, whether it's performance, whether it's gaining weight, whether it's just health, some sort of planning and preparation pretty much is a commonality between every successful diet or nutrition plan.

(01:03:30):

[01:03:30] So I would strongly recommend either making your own if you don't already meal prep on your own or if you want to save some time energy and probably make it better than what you would prep yourself, definitely consider mega fit and again, stay tuned. Hopefully soon I'll have a discount code for them, but it's kind of still at the beginning of being in the works. So glad you asked. Next question, peptides for endurance, specifically Mott Sea and SS 31, yay or nay. [01:04:00] So the only one I can speak on personally is Mott Sea. I actually am currently taking it and I really, really like it. Essentially what Mott Sea does is it improves the health and function of your mitochondria, which are, most of you guys probably know that the mitochondria is the energy powerhouse of the cell, which you probably learned back in middle school.

(01:04:19):

But having healthy and high functioning mitochondria is very much, it's almost like your basis for vitality, feeling well, performing [01:04:30] well, being generally healthy, being generally active and high functioning. If you have really healthy mitochondria, you're going to be better at all those things and motzi can absolutely help. Of course it's a peptide, so it's all like no human trials and not for human use, whatever, whatever. So I'm not recommending you go take this, but that's my experience with it. I just feel really good. I'm not doing any endurance work right now. I do cardio four days a week, three to [01:05:00] four days a week depending on the week for 40 minutes and it's just an incline walk. Sometimes I'll use my air bike or a rower, but I'm not doing any running, so I'm not doing any long stuff. I don't have a personal case study to say, yeah, it works great for endurance, but I can absolutely see it working really well for endurance.

(01:05:17):

Is it going to be some crazy game changer, like massive PED, like EPO or anything like that? No, but it can maybe give you a little bit of a boost. Just all the mechanistic things that go on behind the scenes when you [01:05:30] take it. It just makes sense that it would help with endurance to a small degree, maybe a little bit more than trivial. SS 31 I really don't know much about, so I couldn't really tell you on that one. I'm definitely not a peptide expert. I have been learning a lot more about peptides and I think they're amazing depending on what your use case is. But I'm honestly not savvy enough to really give you a full rundown of either of these arms other than the fact that I really like motzi. So if you have the desire and the means, make sure when [01:06:00] you're getting these things, these peptides, make sure you're getting them from a reputable dealer.

(01:06:04):

There are some great ones online. There are also some completely shady ones. You're going to get a, who knows a mystery substance that's not really going to do anything and they're going to charge you for it. Usually if you find something and it's really cheap compared to the other peptides that you see online, not always, but usually it's probably not going to be from the best dealer. It may be a completely different thing. Their customer service might be terrible. Lots [01:06:30] of different things go on in the gray market like that. So make sure it's from a vetted source and unfortunately I can't really share on a public podcast any vetted sources, but you can do your own research, ask around and should be able to find some solid ones. So yeah, if you try it, if you like it, let me know. I would love to hear back on whether it worked well or didn't work well.

(01:06:53):

And yeah, I always like learning new things and case studies never hurt, so best of luck. [01:07:00] Next question. Thoughts on Jeff CSCS workouts specific to the tactical population? So this is Jeff Nichols. Jeff Nichols has been doing this for quite a while. He's a former dev grew guy and he's a very, very intelligent guy. He's got some great content on Instagram if you have an attention span longer than like 15 seconds. His videos are long, but they're very, very in depth and I love them. I watch them all the time. His programming, though I'm not a huge fan of his programming, he has recommended [01:07:30] in the past that you only need five miles per week. I think it was five to eight miles per week to prep for SAS, which is absolutely insane to me. And I have bought some of his programs. He uses percentage for every lift, so he'll use percentages for skull crushers and curls and lifts like that.

(01:07:48):

And I think anyone who knows their one rep max of a skull crusher or a curl is totally missing the forest for the trees. There are absolutely certain scenarios where percentage [01:08:00] based training works, but it's for lifts that are actually worth knowing. Your one rep max on squats or bench press, maybe a one rep max weighted pull up or something like that. Big motor movements going and testing your one rep max dumbbell bicep curl. Not very smart. And that's just one thing. Honestly, no disrespect at all to him. He's a very capable individual and very, very smart, probably smarter than I am when it comes to the fine details of fitness. However, his [01:08:30] programs are just like a Word document with some exercises, with some percentages. They don't really flow very well and there's no explanations on anything. And if you followed any of my programs, you probably know that my programs are not even close to being that they're extremely, extremely in depth and I get very, very, very specific and every single thing I program has a reason and I'm not just going to throw in an 80% next to a tricep [01:09:00] push down or a curl, 80% of your one rep max for eight sets or three sets of 10.

(01:09:05):

It just doesn't make any sense to me. And also I've had some clients that used to follow his programs that have come and worked with me and they get significantly better results and they're way less beat up and banged up all the time. Here's the thing, Jeff Nichols is a freak. He's an absolute beast. He's a genetic specimen almost no matter what he does for training, he's going to respond to it really well. And [01:09:30] even if he doesn't do a ton of running, for example, before Buds, I'm sure he probably didn't do a ton of running compared to other people when he went to Buds. So therefore he kind of recommends that to other people. But he was fine because he's an absolute freak for the non mutants like him that are among us, which is most people just by default. You can't have elite genetics.

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Not everyone can have elite genetics, otherwise it wouldn't be elite, it would be average programs like that. And advice like that just isn't quite as practical [01:10:00] or applicable. So I won't speak too much more just because it's been a while since I've looked at his programming and I also don't want to talk down on him. I'm sure that he is gotten great results from people, he's helped and people have gotten great results from his programs. So I'm not saying they're bad or anything, him and I just have a very, very different viewpoint on how to program and principles, mainly principles on how to prepare for various selections. So [01:10:30] that's my five minute lowdown on my opinions of his programming. But great dude, very, very intelligent. I would definitely follow him on Instagram. You're going to learn a lot of stuff and maybe just be a little bit cautious when you go and follow his programs.

(01:10:46):

Alright, let's do a couple of quick ones. How far do you carry your driver on a good day? When I'm hitting my driver? Well recently I have not been, although I played a couple of days ago and hit it pretty well, but [01:11:00] the few rounds before that have been kind of struggling with the driver, so much so that I've hit three wood off a lot of tees that I would usually hit driver on. But when I'm hitting it, well 2 75, 2 80 is usually my carry. So not super long. I guess for an amateur golfer that's pretty long, but it's not absolutely speaking all that long. But the reason I play well is not distance necessarily. I've got solid distance, but I am a lot better with my irons than my driver. I'm a lot better around the greens now, which is [01:11:30] a new thing. I used to suck around the greens, but turns out when you practice around the greens, chipping and putting you get better at it.

(01:11:37):

Crazy concept. And I've been doing a ton of that. Probably my practice has been like 90 10 around the greens versus going to the range and hitting balls. But I've always been a solid ball striker with irons. Drivers just hit or miss. It's kind of streaky. And if I can figure that out, which I hope I can, I might need to get some lessons just to kind of make some small adjustments and small tweaks very close. Some days [01:12:00] I hit it really, really well and far and straight, but other days I don't. And it's frustrating for sure when you don't hit it and play well. Usually my bad drives today are not as bad as they used to be. My bad drives basically before this year were almost always out of play, either in a hazard or in the woods I had to chip out or even worse going out of bounds, having to ret.

(01:12:23):

Now my bad drives don't usually don't go out of play. I can still play them, they're just not where I want 'em to be. Not in the fairway [01:12:30] or maybe in a bunker or maybe with some tree trouble or something like that. So if I can straighten that out, I am very, very confident in my ability to get to scratch within the next couple of years, scratch handicap. But for now it's a little bit of a work in progress. But hey, that's why we keep coming back and playing golf. It's fricking always going to be a work in progress. No one will ever master it and that's the beauty of the game. Next question, which program would be the best to utilize before utilizing your SFAS prep? [01:13:00] I only chose this because it says it utilized twice in three words. So what should you utilize before utilizing SFAS prep?

(01:13:08):

It could be really a bunch of different programs. It could be a two and five mile if you want to get better at running more so than other programs. It could be Jack Zel if you want to get strong in the power lifts and also improve your conditioning. It could be Jack Zel 2.0 if you want to get more jacked and do some jumping, do some strongman work, do some power and also improve your endurance. It could be you [01:13:30] could hop on T eight 50 and just follow that until whenever SVS prep comes up for you. Any of those are great options. I would say those are probably the best viable options for now at least. And then when my new program comes out, that'll also be an option too. So ruck run lift could be done if you follow the runner version, I would not follow the selection prep version of Run Ruck Lift for those not aware, there's a bunch of different ways to modify the program based on what you're training for.

(01:13:58):

So you could follow the runner version, [01:14:00] but honestly I would probably follow one of those few programs in either SAS going into SFAS or utilize rock run Lift going into SFAS and you're going to be golden. Alright, so this is going to be the last question. Is grass fed organic over standard meat really a needle mover? Yes it is. If you eat meat on a regular basis, if you're eating this, whatever meat you're talking about, usually this is going to be a bigger factor in red meat beef than it [01:14:30] is for other types of meat. So if you eat red meat on a regular basis, which I think you should, and you are deciding whether you should have grass-fed or conventional, it is going to make a difference. Pretty significant difference as far as mainly the fatty acid profile, the fatty acid profile in grass-fed meat is way better and healthier than it is in conventional meat.

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Additionally, pound for pound, you're going to get more protein, less fat in grass fed meat than conventional meat. So [01:15:00] if you eat it once in a while, really not a big deal. If you want to go to a steakhouse and they don't have grass fed meat there and you want to enjoy a non grass fed meat, grass fed steak, absolutely by all means. But if you eat like half a pound to a pound of red meat every day like I do, it makes a massive difference to eat most of that, at least grass fed organic. I don't eat all of my meat grass fed organic. We don't have any lean enough ground beef specifically at our grocery store to make it worth getting [01:15:30] the grass fed stuff. So basically the leanest grass fed ground beef that we have at my grocery store is 90 10 and there's conventional meat that's 96.4.

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I would eat the 96.4 conventional over the 90 10 any day mainly because I have a lower fat intake requirement. But also just in general, you're going to get more protein, less fat from that. And generally speaking, for most people, especially if you're a performance athlete and you want to keep your carbohydrates [01:16:00] high, that 6% difference is a lot more on the actual macros. 96 4 versus 90 10. So I'll go with that. But all else considered all else equal, you're going to get a much better fatty acid profile from a grass fed form of meat than you will from normal meat. If you eat meat once in a while or if you just don't care for it or whatever, you're kind of missing out on a lot of benefits. But then it doesn't matter if you are someone who [01:16:30] does like eating meat and you hear this and you're like, shit, I've been eating normal meat.

(01:16:35):

I need to get grass fed organic, but I don't know if I can afford it. Still get your normal meat, your conventional meat, you're still way better off eating that than just quitting meat altogether because you can't get organic meat. But if you have the means and you eat it on a regular basis, definitely worthwhile. Definitely a needle mover, yes to go grass fed organic. Most things that are organic or most things that are grass fed are also organic, [01:17:00] but not always, but grass fed, grass finished because you can make something grass fed. These farmers and these vendors of meat dance around these rules all the time. They'll do grass fed throughout most of their lives and you can still call it grass fed and then they'll finish it off with grain fed or corn fed or whatever it is, like non grass fed. So the cow is still basically going to have all the stuff in it that all the conventional meat has, but you can still put [01:17:30] grass fed on it because it lived some of its life eating grass.

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I don't know the exact rules on it, but it is something like that. You want to make sure it's grass finished as well. So basically they just are grass fed their entire lives and that's how you get the best fatty acid profiles and the most healthy meat. So that is what I would recommend. Great question. Glad you asked and awesome questions overall today. Thank you guys so much for participating. Hope you got something valuable out of that episode. And once again, the Black Friday sale [01:18:00] is currently going, so check those programs out in the description and get 'em for 50% off. And hope everyone has an awesome Thanksgiving and great holiday season. I'll be back of course with many episodes before the real holidays. But yeah, enjoy it. And thanks for tuning in. Chat soon, 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 [01:18:30] training or check out my website, terminator training.com. Alright guys, Terminator out.