Episode 193 - 12 Dumb Training Mistakes I made as A Green Beret So You (Hopefully) Don't Have To

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What's going on guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is going to be a little bit of a different type of episode and I have made the determination that I'm going to continue making some periodic shorter top 10 lists or six things, this five mistakes, little shorter episodes that hopefully are packed full of wisdom and knowledge and things you can implement based on whatever's on my mind [00:00:30] at the time. So today what is on my mind is some of the mistakes that I made as a young and hungry, but very naive, dogmatic and not necessarily fitness savvy, but just kind of misinformed as far as fitness and adaptations and recovery and how to train for the job, but also do it in a way that actually supported the job, not necessarily train, just so I could be as fit as humanly possible.

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Of course, fitness is a priority and it should [00:01:00] be your priority if you're in any special forces special operations, but it is as I'll kind of get into, it's not the main thing. It is the thing that supports the main thing, which is your job. And I made several mistakes because I didn't know any better or maybe I did know better. I just was stubborn and type A, and that's kind of a commonality among a lot of people who make a lot of mistakes training wise, especially in this type of field or if you're pursuing just any big goal is that hard [00:01:30] work has always helped you in most areas of life. And of course it's important in fitness, but there's a limit to it because in training you develop fatigue when you train and that fatigue has to be managed and the byproduct of training hard is you got to recover from it.

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And not only that, but you also have to allow time for adaptation. So I'm going to get into today 12 mistakes that I made training wise, and some of 'em are like training decision wise. [00:02:00] Some of 'em are actually like xs and o stuff that I made as a green beret so that hopefully at least you don't make all of them. Maybe one of these will land with one person and that person won't go down the same path I went. Not to say that the path I went down led me astray or anything like that. I was highly physically capable throughout my entire career, but it came at a cost and I'm kind of paying for it now, not just from what I did in training throughout my career, but just wellbeing [00:02:30] wise and health wise. I'll share some anecdotes throughout this, just some things that happened to me throughout my career that had to do with my health and wellbeing and potential longevity that were at least partly influenced by bad training decisions and hopefully they will kind of help you point yourself in the right direction and so you can avoid some of those mistakes, at least maybe plant a seed.

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So if you start running into these down the road, whether you're going into soft, whether you're in soft already, whether [00:03:00] you're shooting for soft in the future or whether you just want to be really fit and capable, which I think is a good goal for any man who is self-respecting. So that's what we're going to get into today. Before I hop into the list, just a quick little thank you for your support on Jack Gelle 3.0. It came out Friday and it is going really well so far. It was a great launch and so hopefully anyone who has started it is enjoying it so far. And yeah, just want to extend a thank you to all you [00:03:30] guys and also it is going to be either the day prior or the day of the end of the sale when this episode comes out. So if you're listening to it on basically before Saturday, the end of the day, Saturday 20th of December, you are still in luck.

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You can grab that program at 25% off if you'd like with the code JG three fit no space. So the letter J, the letter G three FIT all no [00:04:00] space and that'll be linked also in the description as well. So you can check it out there, but you can hop on it for 25% off if you are interested. So I will say too, this is hopefully going to be a relatively short episode. I'm going to try and make these relatively short and concise and not just go down rabbit holes. It's going to be all off the cuff. I literally have notes of each one, but I don't have any notes as far as outlines are concerned. So it's going to be I read it off and then I just shoot the shit and go off [00:04:30] the cuff. But anyway, I will say my voice is a little bit on the edge of fading on me, so hopefully it hangs on for the rest of this.

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I'm not really sure why. I have been getting like 8,000 dms recently about the new program, which happens every time we launch a program, which is awesome and a lot of them I respond via voice, so that's kind of the only thing I can think of. I'm not sick, I feel great. So the voice is just a little raspy. You guys may or may not be able to hear it. Hopefully you can't tell too much towards the [00:05:00] end, so just apologizing in advance if that offends anyone. Honestly, I don't really care if it offends. You guys know me. I'm not a huge fan of holding back in hopes that something I say or do doesn't offend anyone. So anyway, let's hop into the first one, which is married to the barbell and very, very anti machine, very anti specialty bars, honestly anti anything other than straight bar training.

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So whether it's barbell squat, bench deadlift, overhead, press row [00:05:30] and straight bar as in doing a lot of pullups, doing a lot of dips, which nothing wrong with that and of course doing some calisthenics, maybe using some kettlebells, maybe using some dumbbells, but you would never see me on a machine, even a cable machine like once in a while maybe I do some tricep push downs and some curls when no one was looking, but I just was so bought into that late two thousands, early 2010 mantra of if you're not doing barbell squats and barbell deadlifts and barbell overhead press like the big [00:06:00] five lifts, you're a pussy. And that is so ridiculously not the case and it kind of has cost me a little bit. I have since absolutely gone away from the barbell, not for everything but for most lifts just because I'm older.

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I'm 36 years old and even towards the end of my career I was in my early thirties and I started going away from the barbell mostly still kind of had that free weight Kool-Aid drinking disposition, but I started to use some specialty bars. [00:06:30] So if you are blessed enough to go to any special operations unit, pretty much you're going to have access to every specialty bar you could ever imagine. So safety squat bars, transformer bars, which are a safety squat bar with multiple different settings. Cadillac bars, which is a bench press bar. It's a neutral grip Swiss bar that also has a cam to it, so it almost looks like a pitchers mound so you get more range of motion deadlifts. I've always been built really well for deadlifts and I've always done deadlifts at least on a semi-regular basis. [00:07:00] It took me a while to start rotating them out of my training once in a while, which I think is a good idea for anyone just because the deadlifts a high CNS fatigue lift, it's a high mental focus lift.

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It can be a bang your body up, especially if you're not built well for it. I am, I'm not that built that well for bench press or other lifts like that. So rotating those out finally was a good idea, but I still to this day deadlift just not year round usually probably six to eight months out of the year I will pull dead lifts The other parts of the year I'll do some variations and [00:07:30] the main reason I like to caution people about just being too married to the barbell is not because the barbell is an ineffective tool or because I don't think that people should start their lifting career learning the basic barbell lifts because if you can do barbell lifts well you can do any other lift. Well pretty much if you can do a beautiful barbell squat when you get on a belt squat or when you get on a leg press, which are way lower skill movements, you're going to be totally fine.

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Whereas the reverse is not true. You could [00:08:00] be a very good dead or you could be a very good leg presser, whatever that looks like to you. Honestly, there is definitely some skill involved in a good leg press, but we won't get into that. But even if you just are a regular leg presser or hack squatter for your main leg movements and you go to a barbell, it's going to be kind of foreign to you and you're not going to have those fundamentals down quite as well as you would if you started on the barbell and then worked your way into venturing out to some more [00:08:30] machines. But the main reason I do caution people against getting into barbell lifts or doing them for too long or doing them year round or doing them for every single main movement pattern no matter what is because it puts you in a fixed position.

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So no matter what, if you're holding the bar, your hands are going to be in a fixed position if the bar's on your back, you are going to have to put your body in a fixed position to support that bar. For example, a low bar squat. If you don't have a really good upper back thoracic mobility, you [00:09:00] don't have really good shoulder external rotation, you don't have a really solid ability to brace, you don't have a really strong core, you don't have a really robust lower back. Eventually you're probably going to run into some issues doing too many barbell squats and that's low bar. High bar squat can be kind of problematic too for some people depending on your build, depending on your mobility, but that's one example. Another one is bench press. If you think about a bench press versus a dumbbell press for example, the great thing about dumbbells is you can rotate your [00:09:30] joints through the range of motion, which is a more natural way for your joints to move when you're actually pushing load bench press, your shoulders are in that fixed position, your elbows are in that fixed position.

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If you bench press too much or for too much volume or you use too much load or if you use your sternum as a trampoline like a lot of people do and just try to get more reps or just do more weight, eventually it's going to catch up to you most likely. Some people are just built phenomenally well for benching. They've got really thick chest front to back, they're kind [00:10:00] of barrel chested, barrel chested. Freedom fighters is kind of a Green Beret nickname. Not everyone's a barrel chest freedom fighter by the way, but it's kind tongue in cheek thing, but thick front to back, so their chest to their back is thick and they've got shorter arms and therefore their range of motion on bench press is relatively short. And generally those people can bench a lot of weight. Usually those people are a little worse at deadlifting because they just have different proportions that most great benchers are not very good and vice versa, squats kind of a wild card, [00:10:30] but those are a couple examples.

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Overhead press too. In order to do overhead press with a barbell long-term without banging your shoulders up or your elbows up or your neck up or even your lower back, some guys bang their lower backs up, which doesn't really have to do with the barbell. It has to do with their overarching of the lower back and kind of pushing it up, but just being in that fixed position can be rough on the joints, especially when you just never rotate it out. So regardless of who you are, unless you're brand brand new to lifting and you're following a basic barbell program, awesome, [00:11:00] but if you have been lifting for a few years, experiment, my challenge to you is experiment with a period of time where you rotate the barbell out for certain lifts. I will say a hinge, especially whether you're built well for a deadlift off the floor or not, we're not really talking dead lifts off the floor for this example, but R dls stiff like a dead lifts and things like that.

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Nothing wrong really with the use of a barbell for most of that, if not even all of your main hinge [00:11:30] movements mainly because it doesn't really require any mobility in your upper body and it requires mobility in your lower body and stability and good movement mechanics, but you're holding the barbell with your upper body and you're just kind of holding it out in front of you so you're not twisting your arms through a range of motion. You're not putting 'em in any sort of somewhat stressful position like you would with a barbell squat up on your back. And so it can be a lot more favorable for people to use barbells year round for hinging. I personally do, I [00:12:00] don't do off the floor deadlifts year round, but I use a barbell generally year round for hinging and I'll do R dls and I'll do stiff like a deadlifts and they don't bang up my upper body and if they bang my lower body up, it's not because of the barbell, it's because I'm either mis loading it or I'm doing it with lack of focus or I'm too fatigued or I go too heavy or I just have a lapse in judgment.

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And these days I don't really push any lifts to that line, that fine line of maybe overdoing it or overstressing myself and potentially hurting [00:12:30] myself. I definitely have in the past, but I don't do that anymore. It's not part of my goals. So generally a hinge, you can use a barbell year round, but other lifts, the older you get, the more banged up you get, the more mileage you have on your body and also the more you neglect mobility, which most people do every single day they lift, they don't lift with a full range of motion, especially the lengthened portion and certain barbell lifts. You can't lift with a full range of motion, like for example, a barbell bench press. You can't get to your chest full active range of motion [00:13:00] because the barbell hits you in the chest, whereas I was talking about that Cadillac bar earlier.

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It allows for more range of motion and yeah, you're not going to be able to lift as much because it's like an extra couple inches, a range of motion, but you're also in that less externally rotated position with your shoulders. It allows you to usually better stack your joints, your wrist and your elbow underneath the load and it's a more powerful position and it's also usually a more healthy position in your shoulders. Those who struggle with bench press like shoulder health wise, typically [00:13:30] they feel a lot better when they use either a Swiss bar, which is the neutral grip or a Cadillac bar, which is the neutral grip plus that extra range of motion and even certain things like a Smith machine press that's often more, although it's totally blasphemy, it was blasphemy to use a Smith machine back in the early 2000 tens, mid 2000 tens when I was kind of going through this.

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It's still a more stable lift, and so it's be more, it's not quite as much of a strength stimulus. It's not quite as much of a pure CNS because you're not having to use a bunch of stabilizers, [00:14:00] but that's okay, especially if it feels better in your shoulders. And for me, I can do a straight bar Smith machine press, whether it's an overhead or a semi overhead. I don't go directly overhead anymore or a bench press and I feel pretty good. So my challenge to you is to consider rotating out the barbell at least periodically throughout your career or even right now if you're not even in yet. There's no barbell lift requirements in any special operations that I know of, and if you [00:14:30] can, by the way, you can absolutely do this. There's plenty of other ways to gain strength. Bus sides using a barbell for everything you can do for chest.

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You can do dips, you can do the machine dips, you can do dumbbell presses, you can do smith machine presses, you can do deficit pushups and any number of different things you can do flies for your back. You can do besides barbell rows like bent over barbell rows, which that should not be your only pulling movement because you're just going to fry your erectors, especially if you're doing squats and deadlifts, [00:15:00] but you can do dumbbell rows, you can do chest supported rows. I would recommend most people's rows for upper back work should be mostly chest supported. That doesn't mean you can't do any unsupported, but chest supported is going to allow your erectors to rest and it won't interfere with your squat and your deadlift training and your squat and your deadlift training. Like if you did a heavy deadlift day the day before, you could do chest supported rows the next day.

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Not necessarily. I usually wouldn't set up training like that, but that's just one example, especially overhead press too. That's [00:15:30] another huge one. Using dumbbells is usually for almost everyone going to be a lot more favorable on the shoulders, and that's not to say you can't use a barbell for anything, but it's just a word of caution to try and get the fact that you have to use a barbell for everything out of your head. You joints are going to feel better, you're probably going to recover better. You're going to build more mobility because most lifts that you can do on a machine that also have a barbell sister lift, so for example, like a belt squat versus a back squat. Usually [00:16:00] if you actually take it seriously, you can get deeper on a belt squat if you do it right, which is a whole different can of worms.

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You can get deeper on a pendulum squat. You're almost like a pendulum. Squats almost like forcing you to get deeper and a lot of people are like, oh, what if I don't have access to this equipment? Then get yourself access to this equipment. There's gyms across America that have amazing equipment. Of course, if you're deployed or if you're in some austere environment and you don't have access to it periodically, great. That's another important reason to be proficient at the barbell [00:16:30] lifts just because if you have minimal equipment, usually you're going to have a barbell and some plates, but a gym membership, I can assure you is probably the best investment you could ever make as a far as your overall health wellbeing, joint health longevity versus just using your barbell in your garage every time you train. A lot of people will ask me like, oh, what if I just have a barbell and some bands?

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Can I follow your whatever program that has a bunch of different machine lifts and a bunch of different [00:17:00] specialty bars? Yeah, you can. There's substitutions for every lift, but you're going to bang yourself up over time and spending 40, 50, 60 bucks a month on that gym membership is going to give you way more returns than you could ever imagine. Being all in on fitness or being very, very gung-ho and very driven to reach your fitness goals, guess what? That requires more equipment than just a barbell and rack and a bench. It just does. So that's number one. Before I beat that dead horse too much, let's get into number two. [00:17:30] Similar to number one, Olympic lifts barbell Olympic lifts. Without the skill, I would do way too many Olympic lifts than what I had the skill for. A lot of people will ask me, why don't you have Olympic lifts in your programs?

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And although this is not talked about very often, it's definitely well understood in the fitness community, especially higher level coaches, but it's not discussed very often why Olympic lifts are way less appropriate for more people than they are appropriate for, or I should say [00:18:00] they're less appropriate for way more people than they are appropriate for because they require a ton of skill to even get to a baseline proficiency at an Olympic lift, especially a snatch, but a clean two and all the variations of them. I will say, I'll get into this in a little bit, but you can do some variations that are way less skill driven and way less potentially risky on your joints, but in order to even get baseline proficiency, you need to spend probably about six months if you're super [00:18:30] athletic, maybe four months if you're a narp non-athletic regular person, maybe eight, 10 months working with someone who is very proficient at teaching it and really not loading it all that much and putting weight on the bar every single week, you got to get your skill down in order to do it in a way that's going to benefit you most as well as in a way that's going to cause the fewest potential hiatus in your lifting career because your joints are all fucked up, your shoulders talking to you, your elbows talking to you, your lower back, your [00:19:00] hips, your knees.

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I have seen some absolute dumpster fire, Olympic lift technique and guys will just do it every single week on end on end, and that includes me. That included me when I used to do Olympic lifts all the time. This was really early on in my career. I would do a bunch of hang cleans, I would do a bunch of power cleans, I would even get into some snatches sometimes. I took a very, very long hiatus probably from my two year into my career mark until two years before I got out. I was in Afghanistan. [00:19:30] One of my good buddies, rich is a very proficient Olympic lifter. He still is, although actually funny story, this is kind of tangential, but he doesn't Olympic lift anymore. It was banging him up too much and he was a very, very highly proficient Olympic lifter. He would do like three 15 full clean and jerks and it would look beautiful and he would snatch like 2 55, 2 70 and it would look really, really nice and he still switched it out.

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This just came to me. I wasn't really planning on talking [00:20:00] about that, but he helped me a bunch with Olympic lifts and he said, do not put more than 135 pounds on the bar for the first several weeks. I had done them before. I thought I was proficient enough to start adding load, so I eventually did add load. I have some videos myself doing some pretty ugly, not super ugly compared to what I sometimes see in regular gyms, Olympic lifts, but they're just basically a train wreck waiting to happen and just like the bench press and just like the squat and just like the deadlift, [00:20:30] the overhead press, these all take a lot of skill and they all require a lot of mobility and Olympic lifts are probably one of the highest. They are the highest skill lifts you could ever do, like a full on clean and jerk and even just a full on clean where you catch it in a squat position and a snatch.

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They require a ton of skill. They require a ton of athleticism and you build that skill. Oh, by the way, by not loading it every single time you go into the gym, the best Olympic lifters in the world, yes, they go heavy of course, but I would say [00:21:00] probably 20% of their lifting sessions are actually heavy Olympic lifts and the other 80 and these guys train often because it's such a high skill sport and every little tiny fractional millimeter counts because they're competing at such a high level with a bunch of other very, very highly skilled Olympic lifters that 80% of the time they're just doing skill work, which is probably heavy for the average person. If someone saw a professional Chinese Olympic weightlifter doing skill work, they'd probably be like, oh [00:21:30] my god, that's way more than I could ever even imagine doing for my one rep max.

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But it's relative, so for them it's not super heavy. Once in a while they go heavy. Most of the time they just do skill work, and the problem with a lot of tactical programs is they throw these barbell Olympic lifts in and most people, the vast, vast majority of people in general, but also in soft just don't have the skill for it and rightfully so. It takes a lot of dedication and a lot of putting other things to the side to build [00:22:00] skill in the Olympic lifts. You got to really focus on it for a really long period of time and ideally have expert instruction. And most people don't do that. They just get their program, they see cleans, they see snatches, and they just full send. I won't even get into the problems with doing these things under fatigue for really high reps like CrossFit.

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I never really thankfully got into that. I definitely have done some high rep cleans but lighter loads with metcons, which I'm about to get into some metcons, but you're just [00:22:30] not doing yourself any favors by completely butchering these lifts and continuing to add load because they're really good power exercises, which they absolutely are. They're really good power exercises, some of the best, but only if you do them properly and only if you can potentially do them on end and continuously without banging yourself up, hurting yourself, and also making sure you train all the other things that are necessary to be a well-rounded tactical athlete, soft guy, which oh by the way, power is just one little [00:23:00] thing. And oh, by the way, there's countless different things you can do for power. If you really love Olympic lifts and you know feel seen right now and you're like, maybe my form's not great, chances are it's probably not, but you can do partial Olympic lifts, you can do segments of them.

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You can do clean high poles, you can do clean poles, you can do even a hang clean with a barbell that's a little lighter, but you're just kind of going for that skill development, that power development, you don't need a ton of weight on there. Those are a lot less risky [00:23:30] and they require less skill, they require less dedication for you to continuously do them, but for the most part, I wouldn't even recommend that. I would recommend doing things like jumps, any number of different jumps, throws, throwing medicine balls, swinging kettlebells, and on that note of kettlebells, kettlebell Olympic lifts are a hell of a lot more joint friendly than barbell Olympic lifts and they also involve less skill. There's also more room for error because again, fixed position on a barbell, your hands are in [00:24:00] a fixed position, whereas in a kettlebell, if you mis groove something or you're slightly off on one of the reps, it's probably going to be okay because the kettlebell is moving around you in space.

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It's not just fixed to your arm, so you can twist your joint, you can kind of make small micro adjustments and you can compensate throughout the movements, and although I wouldn't recommend them to everyone, I don't put them in my programs to be honest with you, other than maybe I'll put once in a while I'll put some kettlebell cleans in part of [00:24:30] the training session in my T eight 50 program, but it's low load, so I'll have guys do whatever it is, like a Metcon with each segment that they do kettlebell Olympic lifts. It's like five reps and I'll tell them to use their 12 something that would feel hard for 12 reps, so it's way lighter than what you would be going for for max power development. You can do sprints, you can do hops, skips, jumps, any number of different things that are very, very good for power.

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[00:25:00] It's all about intent. If you try and move as hard as you can, as fast as you can, whether you have heavy load, light load, moderate load, it's all about intent. And if you do them intentionally with the goal of building power, all these other different lifts that are way safer and way lower skill, you're going to build great power, more power than you could ever need for your job, but you're also just going to stay healthier and it's going to overrun your life if you do it properly. It kind of has to just take over your training. That's the main thing you got to focus on. Unless you have an [00:25:30] extensive background of it and you're very, very high skilled already, then of course you can implement it into your regular training, but I strongly recommend most people, unless you want to take that time and really dedicate to it, which is okay, but also you're going to have to just be okay with the trade-offs of letting other things kind of fall to the side.

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I highly recommend steering clear of the barbell Olympic lifts and doing portions of them or better yet doing various different jumps, throws, skips, hops, swings, and you're going to be [00:26:00] feeling way, way better when you're my age than I do, and it's not just because the Olympic lifts of all these things and more, but that is a huge one. Alright, next one. Number three is insane met cons. I used to do absolutely ridiculous. There were times where I would train three times a day and usually it would be a lift in the morning or a run in the morning and then a lift midday or a run midday, just kind of whichever one I didn't do and then after work I would go do these insane that were like not well thought out. They [00:26:30] were high skill stuff, super high fatigue. The main goal of these metcons was just to see how tired I could get and how smoked I could get, not to really improve anything.

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Yes, you can implement metcons into your fitness routine in a way that improves your fitness, your general work capacity, but these were not that. It would just be endless amounts of row as hard as you can for 500 meters, do a bunch of burpees, do a bunch of which I'll get into burpees here actually really soon. Do a bunch of high rep box jumps, [00:27:00] do a bunch of muscle ups. These are high joint stress, high skill lifts that you shouldn't do for a high reps B under high fatigue and I would do all that. I would just break all those rules and my goal, like I said, it was just like if I was completely smoked after everyone, then that was my goal was accomplished and that is just, you guys have probably heard me say, if your goal going into a training session is just to get as tired as you want, it's not going to be all that [00:27:30] fruitful for you because you're not going to get rated or assessed on how tired you can get in a training session.

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Yes, you want to be able to push hard and there's absolutely a way to channel your intensity into the right areas with the right intent. For example, taking a set with really good form close to failure or you're getting tested on a two mile, yeah, you want to go hard during that two mile and get your best time and put as much effort as you can, but doing it all the time in training, especially when you're already smoked, especially [00:28:00] when you're already overreached and overdoing it, which I almost was the entirety of my career is not fruitful and my joints would feel a whole lot better and just my body in general would feel a lot better. There was one year where I went or it was over a year, I went like 524 days in a row without taking a rest day and I actually wore that as a badge of honor looking back kind of stupid.

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Definitely should have taken more rest days. Don't recommend this, but I would run usually most of these days were two sessions too. Once in a while my [00:28:30] arrest day, my easy day was like an easy 60 to 75 minute run. That was my off day and again, I'm not trying to say this to boast, this is not intelligent stuff and not something that you should do, but it was a streak that I tried to get on and towards the end of that streak I went and I was just feeling rundown all the time. I was feeling tired all day. I had brain fog. My appetite was all weird. Some days I'd be super hungry other days even though I should have been hungry, I wasn't hungry. My sleep was all over the map. Of course there [00:29:00] were other things I was doing outside the gym, which we'll talk about later that were contributing to that, but I went and got labs done and my testosterone was 2 63 total testosterone.

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That is probably the average testosterone level of an 85 90-year-old man, so obviously not good since then. It is not that low anymore. I have smartened up and got my shit together and even right after that, that was kind of a wake up call. I didn't really change a hell of a lot about [00:29:30] the mindset I had towards training, but I definitely was more graceful with myself as far as being okay with not training three times a day or sometimes not even two times a day, sometimes not walking out of the gym like I could barely even get to my car just completely destroyed and it helped bring my testosterone up, not by much, it was still probably six, seven months later I got labs done again and it was in the four hundreds, which is still not great. It's definitely suboptimal for a 27-year-old kid, [00:30:00] but just goes to show that stuff wreaks havoc on your hormones, not just your testosterone, your thyroid, your metabolic health, even your cardiovascular health when you just overdo things and of course that bleeds into your day-to-day life, your mental health, your ability to focus, your clarity, your motivation.

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There were times where I just had no motivation to train whatsoever and I would just still do it. I would still do it, and I'm not saying that you should not train when you're not motivated. Sometimes you absolutely should, but when [00:30:30] it's clearly caused by the fact that you're just overdoing everything, that's when you have to intervene, that's when you should intervene. That's when I recommend you intervene. Even though I didn't, I have since then. Of course, as I've gotten older and developed my fitness knowledge and my physiology knowledge, I know that I was just running myself into the ground and it wasn't smart, but metcons should be maybe once a week, maybe twice depending on what you're going for, if at all. There have been plenty of weeks where I do zero metcons. [00:31:00] Most of my clients, I don't have them do any metcons.

(00:31:02):

I put metcons in some of my programs. Usually it's as an option. You can either do strongman work or Metcon or I'll give people a few different Metcon options, but they're all low skill. They're all really short and the goal is to build capacity. It's not just to smash yourself into the ground. Yes, you're probably going to feel smoked after them, but that's not the goal. It's kind of the byproduct and that's kind of the byproduct of all training fatigue. You don't want to chase it. You want to accept it as a welcome byproduct, but also you got to manage it. You [00:31:30] can't just go as hard as you possibly can all the time and just chase that fatigue. It's not going to be fruitful for you. Which brings us into number four, which is running in kit and running with a ruck on year round all the time.

(00:31:43):

Every single Friday was ruck run or kit run Friday and I would usually go like six to eight miles and these were not zone two sessions. These were basically time trials, sometimes a little short of time trials. Other times I would go do ruck hill sprints or Kit Hill sprints [00:32:00] when you're adding load to your frame to make running harder, first off, there is a time and place for running with a ruck on. There's also a time and place for running with kid on if you're prepping for something where you're going to have to or if you're doing some agility stuff or some short sprints in the gym to get better or prepare yourself for how you're going to perform and move on the battlefield once in a while, that's okay, but just going out on a jog and adding 20, [00:32:30] 30 pounds to your back with kit or adding 40 to 50 pounds in your back with a ruck and you're not training for selection as far as ruck running is concerned, which is really the only time I recommend these days.

(00:32:42):

Ruck running. It's just not fruitful and it's going to bang your joints up and I had really, really, really high running mileage just my entire teens, twenties, even in my early thirties. I had very high running volume. I had a good baseline and I had really taken it [00:33:00] super seriously and developed a lot of skill as far as running mechanics are concerned and still adding that extra load to make it harder when there's so many other ways to make it harder. I'll get into here in a second. It's just going to add extra stress to your skeletal system and it's totally arbitrary. You're not going to have to use when you're going on the X, you're not going to be ruck running 10 miles, you're going to be walking slow with a ruck on, which by the way, you can do pretty much ad lido if you work up to it, but you're not going to be running, you're not going to be putting your kid on getting [00:33:30] dropped off several kilometers out from your target building and jogging to the X.

(00:33:36):

It's going to be a tactical methodical movement. There might be some short periods of time where you have to do a little bit of maneuvers or do some sort of battle drill or go from house to house or maybe quickly sprint from behind cover on one side of the X to the other side. Yeah, I get that, but you're not going to be going out and just continuously jogging with [00:34:00] Rucks and kit on and if you do, it's just going to bang you up. You might feel good about yourself and rucking is probably my strongest physical trait. It was. It's not anymore, but it was when I was in, I was a really fast Rucker. I would crush people in long rocks, but I didn't have to do that. If I just kept my running base solid and I continued to strength train and I ruck walked on a regular basis, I would've been totally fine, which is what I recommend doing.

(00:34:27):

The only time you should ruck run is if [00:34:30] you are closing in on selection. So if you're already in soft and you're trying to go to a tier one selection that's R dominant like you're in SF and you're trying to go to Delta, yes, absolutely r run in training and ruck run while you're there, otherwise you're not going to make it. But if you're eight months away from doing that or if you have no intention to do that or if you're a future soft hopeful and you are a year plus away from even joining the army or even signing your contract ruck, running right now is a terrible idea and I strongly [00:35:00] recommend against it. If you want to get a whole breakdown on how to achieve rucking dominance, I literally have an episode called How to Achieve rucking Dominance, and that will give you a good idea of what I'm talking about.

(00:35:11):

It'll break down what I just went over a lot more in depth and that brings us to our next one, which is doing burpees, just the act of doing burpees, and I kind of say this tongue in cheek burpees aren't always completely a waste of time, but I'll tell you when they are always of time when your shoulders are already jacked up and because of all the different things that I'm talking about [00:35:30] on this list and my lack of mobility work, which is a later one, and also you are doing them right next to this big beautiful stack of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cardio equipment, rowers bikes, skiergs treadmills, Jacob's ladder ellipticals, you name it, if you go to soft, you're going to have access to all these things. There's going to be tons of them in your gym and those are actually made for cardio.

(00:35:59):

Burpees [00:36:00] are kind of this filler exercise that a lot of people think because it's really hard of course, that it's a really good thing. It's doing you really well and if you watch the average person do a burpee, even the average soft guy, even me when I used to do them all the time, they were disgusting because I chase fatigue. I was doing them to make myself as tired as I could or I was already tired. I'd run a 400 meter repeat and then I'd go do a bunch of burpees for whatever reason or I would just do them as part of this insane Metcon like I was talking about earlier. And if you go down and you do a beautiful pushup [00:36:30] and you're nice in control, you're not flopping your chest on the ground, your back isn't super arched because you can barely keep your core engaged and you come up and you do this nice jump, you land athletically, come back down.

(00:36:45):

You can do burpees if you want. They're still way better exercises than burpees, but it's not the end of the world. But when you are doing them under fatigue or if you're doing them as part of a highly fatiguing metcon or if you are just doing them to make yourself tired [00:37:00] or give yourself a cardio stimulus right next to these beautiful cardio machines that are actually made for that and they're a lot more joint friendly and they actually transfer to real world fitness a lot more, then it's totally not fruitful. It's something that I recommend avoiding because it's just going to bang your shoulders up. And it's also when you do high rep jumps, especially if you're actually jumping high, which is the proper way to do burpees, doing a set of three to five burpees where you jump as high as you can, that can be a pretty [00:37:30] solid power development exercise or power development intent of your exercise.

(00:37:35):

But when you're doing 400 of them or if you're doing 20 box jumps and then you go straight over to do a bunch of burpees, yeah, you're not going to be jumping that high. But doing a bunch of jumps for cardio is usually not what I recommend. So if you love the burpee and you do it really well, or sometimes I'll program no jump burpees where you go down, you do a perfect pushup, you stand up and you go back down, you do a perfect pushup, you stand up, [00:38:00] that can be all right, but if you're just flopping around like a fish out of water doing burpees like most people do, eventually it's going to catch up to you. And even if it doesn't catch up to you joint wise, it's usually just so high fatigue or part of something that's so high fatigue that hormonally and just general health wise, like I was kind of talking about earlier, day-to-day vigor and wellbeing wise, it's probably not going to serve you all that well.

(00:38:22):

So use burpees with extreme moderation. I personally am never in my entire life going to do a full burpee anymore. [00:38:30] I think the inventor of burpees, his last name was burpee. I can't remember his first name, but he would just be appalled if he went into the average gym and saw people doing burpees. He'd be like, this is not the exercise that I invented, not even close. What are you guys doing? So just keep that in mind. That brings us to number six, and this is a huge one. It's not necessarily a specific training thing, but it is just a training approach, a mindset that I went about it with. I would oftentimes train so hard, worked so much that it would interfere [00:39:00] with my ability to do my job. What you have to remember when you're in soft, like I was saying earlier, fitness is very important, but it's not the main thing.

(00:39:08):

The main thing is your job, the main thing is to shoot, move, communicate, medicate, and that is what you're there for. So if you are training so hard or if you're training so much or if you're doing so much volume that it is interfering with your ability to shoot, move and communicate on a regular basis, then you have your priorities backwards. And I would do this quite often. I was very [00:39:30] attached to being a very, very fit individual. Everyone knew me as the PT stud and I was really proud of that and I kind of still am, but doing so in a way that is going to interfere with your day-to-day job, which sometimes it did. It didn't always, but it sometimes did. Sometimes I would just smoke myself in the morning before a 16 hour range day into the night and I would just be absolutely crushed.

(00:39:55):

And my decision making ability wasn't great. My communication skills weren't great. [00:40:00] My ability to do fine motor movements, gun handling and moving around tactically would be reduced because I was just destroying myself in training and that is not the goal. The goal is to train so that you can perform better at your job. And with my programming these days, you guys probably have seen some of my programs, they are not meant to just go destroy you so that if you do these training sessions, you're not going to perform well at your job. Ideally, you do enough of course [00:40:30] to make your adaptations and to achieve high levels of fitness, but it shouldn't be so ridiculous that you're super sore for like six days or you're nervous system's all suppressed or you're just constantly in this fight or flight state, you're kind of tired but wired, you can't make decisions well, you can't think clearly, you can't speak clearly.

(00:40:51):

That's completely missing the purpose and it definitely took me a longer time to kind of realize this than I'd like to admit, but I finally did and I started to kind of dial [00:41:00] things back and remember what I was training for. I'm training to do my job better, not to just be as fit as humanly possible, but also at the cost of my day-to-day wellbeing, my day-to-day capability. So this is actually important for pretty much anyone. If you are a knowledge worker and you spend a lot of time really doing a lot of deep thinking, deep work, maybe there's a creativity component of what you do throughout the day. If you're just going and training so hard, whether you're going in the morning before you start working or just in general you're training [00:41:30] on a macro scale is interfering with your ability to do these things, you probably want to think about it.

(00:41:35):

Even since I've been out, there have been times where I'll go hit a leg day and I just can't even focus for the rest of the day. I can't speak, I can't write, I can't do anything. I'm just completely destroyed. Doing that once in a while, probably totally fine, especially you got buddies in town or if you're doing a team workout and you guys are taking off for the day, sometimes we'd go in on Fridays and just do this hard team workout and we'd go get breakfast and [00:42:00] that was it. Or we would go do the incline twice in a row, which is brutal in Manitou Springs. It's a 0.88 mile straight uphill staircase and it's absolutely a crusher. And then you run down 5K down this switchback trail bar trail, super great workout, but I would just go ham. But oftentimes we would just have the rest of the day off.

(00:42:21):

We would go get breakfast in town and then we'd be done doing that once in a while. Not a huge deal. But if all your training on a macro scale is just interfering with your ability [00:42:30] to shoot, move and communicate, you're doing it wrong and something needs to change, which brings us perfectly into number seven, which is regularly sacrificing sleep. So I could get one of many training sessions in early in the morning before the day started. Now I'm all about getting up early and get your training session in. That's honestly the most consistent guys that I've ever been around as far as SF guys, operators, et cetera. Most of them train in the morning before work starts because you just never know what's going to happen that day. And [00:43:00] this was usually, like I said, one of multiple training sessions for me. I would break off at lunchtime, I would break off after the day was over and go train again, but on a regular basis, I would a not go to bed at the right time.

(00:43:13):

I'd go to bed way late and I'd wake up super early and I'd get to work. I usually had, when I was at Fort Carson, I had a 45 minute or so commute when I was at Bragg, it was like 35 to 40 just depending on traffic. Later in my career I stopped doing this. I started to go to bed super early, but earlier in my career I would [00:43:30] sleep usually like 10 30 or 11 to three 30 or four and go and get to the gym as soon as it opened up. And I would take pride in just being the first one there and so on and so forth. First off, there's nothing magic about training in the morning. You can train if you have time for it, you can train at a different time of day. And by the way, it's okay sometimes to train once, especially if you're going to be sacrificing sleep that day to sacrifice sleep so that you can get one of several training sessions in, you're just not going to recover from it anyway.

(00:43:59):

You're [00:44:00] not going to fully recover from it anyway because you're probably going to go and do the same thing. If you're like me the next day and the next day and the next day is like I say all the time, stepping over dollars to pick up pennies, it is not a good trade-off in order to make the progress you want to make the things you do outside the gym, and probably the most important of those things is sleep quantity and sleep quality are just as critical as the training you're going to be doing. So if you are detracting from your sleep, knowingly detracting from your sleep so you [00:44:30] can go get your training in and oh, by the way, make all these other mistakes too, you're just going to be in this constant state of stress and under recovery and it's not a good way to go about your job.

(00:44:40):

It's not a good way to go about your life in general. Once in a while, if you have a big day coming up or something like that and you want to go get some training in, you're not going to be able to get to it later in the day. Even if you're cutting an hour off your sleep, get it. Not the end of the world at all. But doing this on a regular basis is just a terrible decision. It's not good for your [00:45:00] health, your wellbeing. It's not good for your performance. I would've made better gains had I most of the time either gone to bed way earlier I did later in my career. I started to go to bed at 7 45 or maybe just slept another hour, hour and a half and still got to the gym in plenty of time. By the way, I would get to the gym at five and our work day didn't start till nine, so I'd work out for two and a half hours, then I would go and grab breakfast and I always liked to show up a little bit early to the team room and yada yada, but I could have not done that.

(00:45:29):

I [00:45:30] could have started my workout at six 30 or seven and slept till 5, 5 30, but I just had this, I don't know, it was looking back on it, super dumb. That's really all I can say about it. And if you're doing this on a regular basis, you're going to shortchange yourself and eventually it's going to catch up to you. Your hormone health's not going to be great. Your just general day-to-day performance and your ability to focus and do your job is also going to be detracted from especially when you're making all these other mistakes too. So get your sleep, really prioritize [00:46:00] it. You're never too young to start prioritizing sleep. You guys have probably heard me talk about sleep a million times and oftentimes I'm talking to my former self because I never prioritize sleep. I was all over the map with my bedtimes. I was all over the map with my wake up times I would go drink, which is going to be a later one, and it's just not a good way to go about it.

(00:46:18):

And the sooner you get that into your head and start prioritizing sleep and doing the right things throughout the day to actually sleep, you're going to make better fitness progress. By the way, even if you don't start training quite as early in the morning, there's nothing magic about training in [00:46:30] the morning. Honestly, training in the morning physiologically is the worst time of day you can train. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, especially if it keeps you consistent or it's the only time you can do it, but it's totally not a good trade off to sacrifice sleep for it. Which brings us into number eight, a couple more. We're going to breeze through these. I know I said this is going to be a short episode. Didn't quite happen. But anyway, I think this stuff's important. Number eight is continuing to work on my strengths and pushing my weaknesses [00:47:00] to the side.

(00:47:01):

Generally speaking, most people, whether it's training or not, like to do things they're good at, kind of makes sense. When you do things that you're good at a lot, you get better at them, it kind of gives you this false sense of success. You're like, oh, I'm already really good at this. Now I'm even better. And of course, if you're like a specialist in something, like if you're a runner and you get better at running because all you focus on is running, then that's a good thing. But when you're in SF or honestly any tactical profession, you're going to have to be good at multiple different things and [00:47:30] capable in multiple different domains of fitness. And I was always quite strong and I was always really good at endurance my training back then. I tell people this kind of like tongue in cheek, but it wasn't really that far off, was Jack Gelle on trend.

(00:47:45):

So if you follow Jack Gelle, it's a well thought out effective, not crazy excessive hybrid program. It's my original hybrid program and it's great, but it was that on Trend Malone and probably 500 milligrams of testosterone [00:48:00] and probably some D ball and so on and so forth. So Jack Gazelle just blown way out of proportion. And I would just train strength and endurance. And because I was just focusing on those things, my power was lacking. I didn't do any jumps, skips, hops. I didn't really do any short sprints. I had poor agility. I couldn't change directions. Well, I had poor mobility today. I don't do [00:48:30] anywhere near as much mobility as I used to do back then. And I'm way more mobile because I lift with a full range of motion and I don't just chase big time squat, bench, deadlift numbers, overhead, press numbers, and then just do these half fast mobility drills, which I would really not do consistently anyway.

(00:48:45):

Now I just lift the full range of motion. I'll do a little bit of mobility, not really all that much, and I'm way more mobile now and my joints feel better, my whole body feels better, and I'm 36 and back then I was in my mid twenties, so that should be saying quite a bit. So I would kind of neglect these things because [00:49:00] I didn't like them and I wasn't very good at them genetically, I'm just more prone to being an endurance athlete, but I worked really hard at strength because I wanted to prove people wrong that you couldn't be really strong and also a really good runner in Rucker, and this was kind of when hybrid training was first making its appearance. When Alex Vita originally wrote his hybrid athlete book, I just ate that shit up and yes, being strong and having great endurance, those are probably the two biggest things you can kind of focus on as far as being a highly [00:49:30] capable soft guy, but you should also be able to sprint really fast without hurting yourself or without looking like a narp.

(00:49:37):

You should be able to change direction, whether you're wearing kit or not. Changing direction is important. You should have some power, you should do some jumping, you should do some skipping, you should do some throwing. I didn't really do any of those things. It was just low rep lifting, maybe some accessories and lots of running and some rucking, and that was pretty much it, and my body was always kind of banged up. It's stiff. I didn't feel [00:50:00] great. Of course, all these things contributed to it. It wasn't just that, but ensure that when you go about your career, you identify what your weaknesses are and you don't have to necessarily try and make them strengths, but you should definitely make it so that they're not glaring weaknesses. And if you're already really good at something and you put it on the side burner to focus on some other things, you're still going to be really good at that thing, especially because putting it on the side burner, not the back burner.

(00:50:26):

So you're doing some maintenance work and you're probably still going to be better than [00:50:30] most people at that thing, especially if you're a super go-getter, super hard charging, but you're also just going to be more well-rounded and therefore more capable and oh by the way, you're probably going to feel better and you're just going to be less one or two dimensional. So something I strongly recommend. That's why in Jack L two and Jack L three in T eight 50, you'll see a bunch of hop skips jumps. You don't just see straight line movement. You'll see strongman work, you'll see hypertrophy work, which is coming up pretty soon, and it's because all those things [00:51:00] are really important, which brings us to our next one, which is insane amounts of pull-ups and weighted pull-ups with terrible form past failure. I've talked quite a bit about pull-ups recently about how once you hit your failure on pull-ups, you can do a lot more reps by incorporating some body English and it's just going to grind your shoulders up, especially when you lack overhead mobility, which I did, and I would always, always, always for some reason just do fixed bar pull-ups with the classic prone grip, which is a great exercise, but never rotating your grip [00:51:30] by using a neutral grip or an underhand grip or even better rotating grips like angles nineties or doing pull-ups on rings.

(00:51:37):

Occasionally I would do that stuff, but very uncommon and I would do a lot of weighted, I would do a lot of body weight and like I said, I would just go way, way, way too intense on them. Generally, unless you're getting tested on a set of pull-ups or if you're seeing where your one set max is at or your one rep weighted pull-ups at you shouldn't be going to failure. It's not a good lift to go to failure on. Even if you do have [00:52:00] really good form, and even if you do have really good overhead mobility, leaving a rep or two in the tank, A, you're going to be able to do more reps if you're getting tested on them. There's a difference between hypertrophy pull-ups and testing pull-ups real quick, hypertrophy pull-ups. You're actually controlling the eccentric testing, letting gravity take care of the eccentric.

(00:52:19):

You're not just completely letting go, but you want to let gravity take care of it because you're just going to be able to do more reps. It's less fatiguing that way, but even if you are going for hypertrophy, generally speaking, you probably want to leave a rep [00:52:30] in the tank, especially when you have an extra 45 pound plate, 2 45 pound plates, 3 45 pound plates and you're doing lower reps. It's just not worth doing all the time. If I could go back, I would've done a lot fewer, a lot lower frequency, and I would've done a lot more rack chins, especially with angles, nineties or rings, I would've done a lot more pull downs. I would've rotated my grip significantly more often. I would've done way less testing reps where I just let gravity trying to go for [00:53:00] as many reps as I could, just allowing gravity to bring me back down and my shoulders would feel better, they would've felt better.

(00:53:05):

Back then, my shoulders were always banged up, especially my right shoulder, which still sometimes bothers me today, even though I take lifting a lot more seriously as far as technique and exercise selection is concerned. Back then I just didn't know any better. I used to think that the only way you could bang your shoulders up, and this is so ridiculous, but a lot of people still think this way is doing too much overhead pressing or doing too much bench pressing. It never really registered to me that [00:53:30] you can bang your shoulders up from doing too much overhead pulling work, which you absolutely can. And I would say it's almost as common. It's usually a combination of poor overhead mobility, poor overhead press execution, poor bench press execution like I was saying earlier, using a barbell for everything and doing a bunch of overhead pulling, but oftentimes pulling can, especially the way most people do pull-ups, especially weighted pull-ups, that could probably be number one as far as what is exacerbating your shoulder [00:54:00] issues more so than pressing.

(00:54:02):

So just keep that in mind. Don't be so dogmatic with always doing pull-ups. Just use some critical thinking skills, which brings us to number 10, which is thinking hypertrophy. AKA training for muscle gain was a waste of time. I literally used to think that as long as I was strong and as long as I could run and hold my own in the gym, I didn't really have to care about gaining muscle, although you don't necessarily have to [00:54:30] be super jacked to be a good soft guy. Training for hypertrophy like with that intent, not necessarily like you're trying to step on a bodybuilding stage, but just doing some higher rep stuff, using some machines, using some cables and not being so one to five rep range dominant is a very good thing for your longevity especially. But muscle development, guess what? A good solid byproduct of making your muscles bigger is potential strength in the future.

(00:54:58):

If I had done more accessories [00:55:00] for my big lifts, if I had done more push downs, if I had done more curls, if I had done more lateral raises, I would've been a lot more balanced, way less imbalanced, and also my joints would've felt better and I would've given myself a higher strength potential to where I could use that extra muscle mass to develop even more skill in the squat, in the bench press, in the overhead press. And because I had just bigger muscles, that increases your strength potential. It doesn't always increase your strength if you're not doing any lower rep [00:55:30] like strength style training. There are some big jacked, super huge bodybuilders that have massive muscles that are way less strong than someone who's half their size because there's such a neural component to strength and it doesn't require huge muscles. But today, honestly, I program way more hypertrophy stuff than strength stuff for every single client.

(00:55:51):

And in all my programs, I do have some strength bias programs, Jack L one and the last couple phases of Jack L three are definitely strength biased, [00:56:00] but they also have plenty of accessories and most of my other programs are more hypertrophy centric. There's definitely a solid crossover between strength and hypertrophy when you're doing most of your stuff in the five to eight rep range, and by the way, you can do any lift in that rep range, even isolation movements. Some people think that you have to do isolation lifts for 12 to 15 plus reps, which is not the case as long as you're doing it with good form and you're controlling the eccentric and you are choosing the right exercises. You can do lower rep stuff of isolation movements and [00:56:30] just general other hypertrophy movements on machines, but you also want to consider sometimes going a little bit higher reps chasing the pump, although chasing the pumps not going to put a bunch of muscle on you immediately.

(00:56:42):

It'll make you look jack for a little while. It's still really good for your health and your joints and having muscle mass on your body unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that people with more muscle mass tend to live longer to an extent. Of course, there's extremes in every scenario, but there's being more muscular is almost never [00:57:00] a bad thing unless of course you're trying to go win the Boston Marathon. Yeah, you don't want a bunch of muscle mass on you, but being okay with, even if it's not functional, even if it's not a super heavy barbell lift, even if you have to use, God forbid, a machine or a cable stack, it's a really good idea to do that on a regular basis in your training. And in fact, I would probably emphasize it even a little bit more than your pure strength work.

(00:57:25):

You're going to feel better, you're going to have better longevity, and not just in your career, but better [00:57:30] longevity overall. You're going to feel better later in life if you're not always just pushing that one to five rep range and you're trying to put some muscle on you in a more reasonable manner. Which brings us to number 11, second to last one, and that is following 200% programs. I was talking about it a little earlier with Jack Zel on trend, so I won't beat this up too much. You guys have probably heard me talk about 200% programs before, but when I first started getting into hybrid training, and this lasted quite a while until I found Alex Vita and his stuff, and even then I [00:58:00] still wasn't a true believer in the fact that you can do minimal effective doses of each and still make great progress and actually recover, but I would do a running program and then I would take a lifting program.

(00:58:12):

Oh, by the way, each of these programs are meant to be followed on their own, not combined together, a hundred percent lifting program, a hundred percent running program. What happens when you add a hundred percent to a hundred percent? You get a 200% program, and oh, by the way, you can't recover from [00:58:30] a 200% program. You can't do as much running as a runner and as much lifting as a lifter at the exact same time and expect to go anywhere other than hurt yourself or overreach like crazy. Or if you're too stubborn for too long and you continue doing it overtrain and you're going to have to intervene in a big way and take a lot more time off than maybe a couple days. I see a lot of this still today. Even there's high level, not high level, but there's very popular [00:59:00] fitness influencers.

(00:59:01):

I would not call them coaches, I would call them fitness influencers, and I'm thinking of one right now, and I'm not going to name names that make 200% programs and they're super popular and almost everyone I've ever talked to that has followed one of those programs, they're like, yeah, you feel great for a couple weeks and then you just run yourself into the ground. I got shin splints, I jacked my shoulder up, I had runner's knee, I just couldn't recover. I started getting messed up sleep. I started, my appetite was all over the place. I was basically, [00:59:30] the person is describing being on the verge of over-training syndrome. Of course, you're not going to quite get there usually unless you're super stubborn, but just because you can do that much training does not mean you should, does not mean it's beneficial. You want to do as much running as is required to continue making running progress.

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You want to do as much lifting as is required to continue making lifting progress. You want to do as much jumping, skipping, hopping, sprinting as required to maintain your power [01:00:00] or make smaller improvements in your power. By the way, when you're trying to improve all these things at once, by default, you're going to have to accept that you're going to make smaller improvements in each category. Your deltas are going to be smaller. If you're specializing in one thing, you're going to make a lot more progress than if you are training. Even if you're doing everything perfectly correct, you're doing the perfect dose of everything, you're still going to make smaller progress in each one. Your body only has so much recovery reserves to dedicate to each area in your [01:00:30] overall training load, even if you're super dialed in outside the gym. So if you're on a 200% program, it's going to be short-lived, and I strongly, strongly recommend not piecing together a bunch of different programs because some people will take, and I've talked about this a long time ago in an episode, but some people will take, they know the 200% program, not a good idea.

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So they'll take a lifting program and a running program and just cut them down to half the volume or half whatever it is, half the intensity and call it good. There's also an art form [01:01:00] to plugging in certain workouts on certain days. For example, running workouts matched up with certain lifting workouts at a certain time of the week or on a certain day if you're just cutting them in half and you're just still following the program as it's laid out and you're doing say, a super hard squat session on Monday, and then you're doing repeats on Tuesday and then you're doing deadlifts on Wednesday, and then you do a tempo run on Thursday, and then maybe you do front squats on Friday. [01:01:30] Here's the deal. That might be all right if you were just doing the lifting portion or if you were just doing the running portion, but that's like five consecutive days.

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Your entire work week of extreme high CNS fatigue, extreme lower body bias, and it's just going to be very short lived for you and you're not going to very well at all. And hopefully if you are on something like this right now, you quit. But just something to look out for in the future. You don't get rewarded for spending more time training. You get rewarded for [01:02:00] getting more results, and there's a big difference. Yes, it takes hard work. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it takes intensity. Yes, it takes a certain amount of volume, but it doesn't take 200% of the volume. It doesn't take all the volume in existence. So just remember that.

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And lastly, but not leastly, going hard on weekends, a k, a partying hard on weekends, and then coming in Monday and having my hardest workout every single week on Monday. You guys who have [01:02:30] seen my hybrid programs, you've probably noticed my voice is kind of fading on me here, but this is the last one. You've probably noticed that my hybrid programs, the beginning of the week is always the most intensity, mainly because I like to go higher intensity, lower volume early in the week and then kind of fade that intensity while the volume ramps up towards the end of the week, long runs, higher volume lifting, things like that. That's how I trained back then. But of course I would do high volume and high intensity on Mondays and Tuesdays, [01:03:00] and it was after a weekend of just going out on Friday night, going out Saturday night, eating like shit, getting bad sleep by default.

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If you're going out and partying on weekends, you're not getting restorative sleep, you're not recovering at all. And usually, of course, I would train well hungover on those days, not quite as hard, but I would just go in and crush myself on Monday, just sweating everywhere. I thought it was a good thing. I was just sweating everything out and usually it would mess me up for the rest of the week. Of [01:03:30] course, I would still just grind through it, just being stubborn and being what I thought was like a go-getter in a good way and just like, oh yeah, I'm super tired. I'm super fatigued. I went out and got hammered last week. This is stuff that I'm so not proud of. It's not even funny, but it's something that I did, and it's something that I know for a fact other people do, and other people will continue doing it unless of course this kind of plants a seed in you and you're like, oh, maybe that's not that good of an idea because it's really not.

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It is in no way, shape or form fruitful. So [01:04:00] if you're going to go really hard on Monday, great, but also do the right things over the weekend if you're going to go really hard. Not training hard, but nightlife hard, drinking hard, not sleeping hard over the weekend. Your hardest training sessions of the week should not be Monday, and I would not recommend doing that either. I would recommend learning to respect yourself and not going and just destroying your health and your wellbeing just because you think you need to go and party with your buddies, your drinking buddies. Really not all that fruitful. And I know it's [01:04:30] kind of hypocritical because I did it all the time, but I don't do it anymore. And although there's a little bit of a break in period going from going out all the time to not going out all the time, you definitely learn who your real friends are because the people I used to go out and drink with, probably one 10th of them I still communicate with and still hang out with because they were just my drinking buddies.

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We would basically just go and almost use each other to validate the fact that we were going out and doing dumb shit, and it's no way to live. So the sooner [01:05:00] you can get out of your mind that going and working off your stupid decisions all weekend or just not doing that at all and taking yourself seriously, respecting yourself, being interested in health and longevity and treating your body like the vehicle, like the machine that it's going to have to be to do your job at a high level, the better you're going to be just in literally every aspect of your life. There is not a single thing about drinking that I miss the thought [01:05:30] of waking up on a Saturday morning with a hangover right now makes me a little bit nauseous, and I used to do it every single weekend. And then again, the thought of going and just crushing myself on Monday with a super hard squat workout and heavy singles, and then just going and running endless amounts of 400 meter repeats on the treadmill or a bunch of different hill sprints, and then probably later that day going and doing a bunch of the other stuff on this list, metcons and burpees and things like that.

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It's [01:06:00] just unfortunate that I didn't know any better, but now I do know a lot better. And because of that, I'm sharing this stuff in hopes that even if you don't know any better now, you might have to try it a few times. And most people listening have probably made some really dumb training decisions before and are maybe continuing to and maybe will continue to until you finally learn that it's just not working for you anymore. It wasn't working for you back then, but maybe you're just not aware [01:06:30] of it yet. And that was the case for me. And again, I got away with all this stuff. I was a very, very high performer, but it was costly. It came at a major cost of my overall health, wellbeing, effectiveness as a human effectiveness as a green Beret. And it of course gave me the ability to make episodes like this and teach.

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And honestly, sometimes when you're type A, you're stubborn, the best way to learn is to just do it wrong for a long time [01:07:00] and you finally fucking get it and you change yourself or you slowly start to change yourself. That was the case for me. But hopefully one of the things I talked about throughout this entire episode, at least one can help at least one person potentially start to think a little bit differently about their approach, whether you are chasing a soft dream or you're already there. So that's all I got today for you guys. Thank you very much. If you're still around for tuning in, I know this was not a short episode as intended. The future ones hopefully will [01:07:30] be a little bit more brief, but I think honestly most of the context I included was necessary just to kind of drive the point home. So yeah, lemme know if you guys have anything you want me to talk about as far as top 10 lists or ranking things or mistakes that I've made or anything like that. And I am all ears. I will definitely take a look and potentially make an episode on it in the future so I can help as many people as I possibly can, not make the same mistakes that I did. So thanks guys. Have an awesome holiday. Till next time, Terminator route.