199 - Q&A: Training to Failure, MARSOC Swim Prep, AIT/RASP/ SFRE Prep, Marriage Tips + More

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What is up guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is gonna be a q and a from this week's Instagram. Ask me anything where I go through as many questions as I can. I did a little bit more rapid fire in the last episode and I'm gonna do that again today. Some people gave me some feedback saying they liked it. I've gotten feedback both ways, more in depth, fewer questions as well as a higher volume of questions, a little bit less depth, but getting to more of them. So I'm gonna kind of rotate back and forth and go [00:00:30] from there. But got a bunch of good questions to get into today and I am just finishing up packing and getting everything ready for a trip down to Florida. My wife and I and the dogs are driving down to St.

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Augustine. It's about a six hour drive from where we live and we are gonna do a little mini vacation over the weekend and my dad is also flying down. My dad and stepmom are flying down tomorrow and they're gonna meet us down there and my dad and I are gonna play well. Actually all four of us are gonna play one of the courses [00:01:00] at TPC Sawgrass on Saturday. By the way, for those who don't know, TPC Sawgrass is like a world renowned course, one of the most sought after places to play golf in the world, to be honest with you. And so it's definitely a bucket list item to play there. But Saturday we're playing the other course that is not as well known, but it's still a beautiful place. It's called Dies Valley. That is one of their two courses. All four of us are gonna play.

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It's a little bit less of a prestigious course and a little bit more playable. It's the other [00:01:30] courses super hard, the stadium course, which by the way, we are playing, my dad and I are playing on Sunday, so that one is gonna be amazing. Super excited for it. It's gonna be cold blustery, but it originally was supposed to rain and be in like the mid fifties. Now it's gonna be in the high forties, which kinda sucks actually. Maybe even the mid forties by the time we start and windy, but at least it won't be raining. And I play golf once in a while in 40 degree weather. Honestly, I've played in sub four degree weather and it's not overly fun. You don't play [00:02:00] all that well compared to what you would play in nice warm weather. You have to hit extra club, maybe extra two clubs for the same yardages.

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The ball just doesn't go as far, you're all layered up so it kinda shortens your swing and it's a little tough to play, but either way it's gonna be freaking awesome. We're playing midday on Sunday and I'll definitely, if you guys follow along on Instagram, I'll definitely be taking some pictures and videos and documenting it because it's a honestly once or twice in a lifetime experience to go do something [00:02:30] like that. And um, super excited for it and it feels good to kind of treat my dad to it. My dad's treated me to a lot of really nice things in my life and he's treated me to a lot of nice golf courses and it feels good to just be like, Hey, it's on me, let's go play T c's gras and have a really good time. So really looking forward to that. It's gonna be like a five day trip.

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We're gonna play golf at least twice. We might play another round on Monday. Time will tell, but looking forward to it. I've been dealing with a little bit of an upper back [00:03:00] issue from a very multitude of different things. Mostly golf swing, although I haven't swung a club in like two weeks, which kind of is unfortunate because I'm gonna be a little rusty when I first start playing this weekend. But, oh well also lifting also probably the most, the thing that exacerbates it most is just sitting at the computer for very long periods of time. I've got a monitor up here, but sometimes I just find myself naturally crouching over and rounding my back up a little bit and it's a little [00:03:30] stressful on the upper back and the neck. I've had upper back issues kind of on and off for a lot of my life and although it's pretty well developed as part as far as parts of my body compared to other parts of my body, it's probably my best body part.

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It's my upper back. It still bothers me from time to time and probably mostly self-induced, just doing things a little bit too excessively, which is kind of the story of my life. But anyway, super pumped for that and super pumped to get into these questions. And without further ado, [00:04:00] let's get rolling. First question, how much carbs to eat if doing SFAS or Jack Gelle? Also getting about 18,000 steps a day. Thank you. You're welcome. Alright, so I've talked about carb intake quite a bit recently, but we'll quickly go through the way I would determine it. First you gotta start with calories, determine your calorie intake for you. Since you're getting 18,000 steps and you're doing these more higher volume programs, I would probably go something like body weight times 18 to find your maintenance. It depends if you want to lose weight or gain weight.

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[00:04:30] You can kind of add to that if it's, if you're trying to gain weight, maybe body weight times 20 maybe if you're trying to lose weight, body weight times 17, 16 to get your maintenance calories, your approximate maintenance calories. By the way, this is a rudimentary equation. So once you find this calorie number, you'll want to track for 10 days and you'll also want to track your body weight. If your body weight's trending up and you don't want it to be, then dial back the calories back after those 10 days. If it's trending down and you don't want it to be opposite, dial the calories back up. If it's saying about the same, then boom you found about your maintenance. [00:05:00] But from there you want to break those down into macros. So what I like to do is solve for carbs using the two, basically the the sum of the two essential macronutrients which are fat and protein.

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Sorry, I dropped my phone here. Fat and protein are two essential macronutrients. So no matter what, you have to eat those in order to thrive. Carbs, you don't need to eat, however, you definitely want to eat plenty of carbs in this situation. So figure out your essential macronutrient needs and then whatever's left [00:05:30] over, that's what you'll do for carbs. So very simple body weight times one protein grams really easy. It's a little more than you technically need, but it's still a totally fine amount to eat and it makes things super simple and it's great insurance on making sure that you're covering all your bases. Honestly, most people fall a little bit short, maybe not most people listening to this, but most people in general fall a little bit short on protein. So if you're going body weight times one, you get that buffer room and even if you fall short, you're still eating enough protein for fat, probably body weight times three [00:06:00] to, sorry, body weight times 0.3 to 0.35 would be a good place to start for fat.

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And then what you're gonna do is add those two calories together. So for every single gram of fat you eat, that's nine calories for every gram of protein you eat, that's four calories. Carbs are also four calories. So what you'll do is multiply your protein grams by four. That's how many calories of protein you're getting. You'll multiply your fat grams by nine, that's how many calories of fat you're getting. And then whatever's left leftover is the number of calories [00:06:30] worth of carbs that you're gonna be eating. So say you have like 2000 calories left over, divide that by four and you're gonna get 500, that's 500 grams of carbs. That's just a rudimentary guess shot in the dark. It's not like applicable to you necessarily, but that is how you'll feel in your carbs. And again, definitely do a little test period where you're on these macros and seeing how you feel, seeing how you perform, seeing what your body weight does, making sure it's doing what you want it to do and titrate up or down from there.

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Also, carb cycling. Some days [00:07:00] I would eat more calories and more carbs. Those are generally best for your higher output training days, like the days in jackel when you're doing really long runs or long rux or when you're doing two sessions you're doing a lift plus repeats or something like that. Those are generally gonna be your high days. And then a more moderate day would be a single session lift or maybe a shorter run or something like that where you'd eat around maintenance. And then on your low days you'd eat fewer calories. Basically you would take the sum of the calories that you ate in excess on your high days. So say you eat [00:07:30] 800 gram, 800 calories more than your maintenance on, for example, two high days per week. You would subtract that 800 from your maintenance and eat that in your low day.

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If you want a little bit more visual on that. I have a recent post on Instagram that I'll try and link in the description here. Also, I've got a couple recent articles that I will link in the description on this show so you can read more about it and kind of see that in person. It's kind of hard to follow when I just explain it honestly. It's kind of hard to explain, but I think that covers [00:08:00] most of the bases. So best of luck, enjoy the programs. Next question, is it more beneficial to take exercises to failure every time in parentheses zero RAR, or how should I set up my sets and reps? This is such a cool question. I love talking about this stuff and I will try and make it as streamlined as possible so I can get to more questions because I could talk about this for like an hour.

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It's a lot more nuanced than a lot of people think. You ask some coaches and they'll say, always train to failure. You'll ask other coaches and they'll say, never train a failure, always leave reps in the tank and [00:08:30] everything in between. And it does depend on a lot of different factors. One, it depends on your experience. If you are not great at keeping your form locked in as you approach failure, then leaving some reps in the tank is probably definitely a very good idea, at least for now until you get your form kind of locked in. Pushing the last couple reps when you're under fatigue, especially if your form breaks down, is just not great for your longevity. And also you can still get plenty of stimulus from training just shy of failure if you are [00:09:00] doing a high volume lifting plan. So if you're doing like 18 20, 22 sets a week per muscle group or something like that, then I would almost always leave one rep in the tank on most isolation lifts and two to three on most compound lifts.

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If you are doing something more reasonable, which is usually what I recommend, a little bit lower volume, something like eight to 12 sets a week per muscle group, maybe up to 15 on certain muscle groups, like a weaker muscle group that you kind of wanna bring [00:09:30] up or something like that. Then I would use the following heuristic. So if it is a squat or a press or an unsupported row, like a barbell bent over row where you don't have chest support and you're doing it with free weights, so a barbell squat, a barbell bench press, an overhead press, I'm like that. Generally two reps in the tank is a pretty good place to be. You could push a little harder, but for most people it's just totally not worth the squeeze. Even if you don't hurt yourself, it's still more fatiguing and because you have free weights, you're not really locked into a track like you would be on [00:10:00] a machine.

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So there's a lot more things that can go wrong. So generally two, maybe three reps in the tank is a good ballpark to be in four machine lifts on those same types of exercises. So if you're doing a machine squat, uh, hack squat, pendulum squat, leg press, something like that. Or if you're doing a machine press, you can usually take probably for presses one rep in the tank for squats, usually two, maybe sometimes one for a chest supported row because you're not using your lower back to kind [00:10:30] of brace, you have that chest support. And because the back muscles are a little bit different as far as their strength profile to push muscles and squat muscles, I won't get into all the details, it's kind of nuanced, it'd be going down a rabbit hole. But generally for a chest supported row you can take it to one rep in the tank, maybe failure, maybe for some people on occasion do some length and partials where you're just trying to do a full rep but you don't quite get it.

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I wouldn't do that all the time because it's just more fatiguing, but it can be beneficial to do sometimes. Usually for [00:11:00] me when I'm doing chest supported rows, the last set of whatever lift I'm doing, I will take two failure and then maybe do a partial rep, maybe two partial reps depending on the day, depending on the exercise. Again, this is assuming your form is locked in and by the way, before I get into the rest of them, failure, everyone's got different definitions of failure, but failure is when you can't do another rep with the same form that you do for all your reps. Pristine, locked in technique, it's not like inability to move. Like for a pullup for example, you [00:11:30] might notice that when you do pullups, once you hit failure on your last good rep, you can use some body English, maybe recruit some other muscles and get more reps.

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That's not generally a good idea unless of course you're getting tested on failure on pull-ups and you just wanna get as many reps as you can just do however many, many reps will count. But for the most part in training you don't wanna necessarily do that. Moving down to isolation movements, actually think we covered every compound compound machine lift, compound, oh hinges. Hinges is another one just in the same categories [00:12:00] as squat and uh, unsupported row, probably two reps in the tank, maybe one, sometimes three depending on what lift you're doing. Maybe a deadlift, you usually don't want to leave, you don't want go too close to failure with a barbell deadlift from the floor in most cases. There are periods of time and circumstances where there are exceptions to that, but we won't get into those details for isolation lifts, anything that is lengthened bias.

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So anything that really puts most tension on the stretch position. For example, [00:12:30] a chest fly or a facing away curl or a standing calf raise where your legs are straight. Generally you wanna leave one rep in the tank sometimes if you're more advanced, maybe zero. And also another nuance that I, I guess I should cover at least the way I program zero reps in reserve and failure are a little bit different. Failure means you actually fail on the rep, you're trying to do the rep, you can't lock it out. Zero reps in the tank means you pretty much can't are are pretty sure that you're not gonna be able to do another full rep. So that's a little nuance [00:13:00] that I program like not everyone programs the same way for a lot of people failure and zero are are are the same but just some I figured I'd cover.

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So anyway, for isolation movements length and position overload, that big stretch probably one rep in the tank, sometimes failure if you're more advanced for short overload lifts like a spider curl or a seated calf raise or a tricep push down, something like that where most of the tension is at lockout, like when you are fully contracted and not [00:13:30] necessarily in the stretch, you can take those lists of failure pretty much anyone with decent form can take those lists of failure again assuming you're not doing an insane amount of volume. So that's the general heuristic. I think I covered pretty much everything. I might've missed one little detail but no one's probably gonna notice because most people just don't think this deeply about this kind of stuff. But at more advanced levels in the margins it definitely does matter. Not only for gains but also for safety reasons, also for fatigue management and it's really important stuff and honestly I think [00:14:00] reps and reserve learning what one rep in the reserve feels like two reps in the reserve feel like learning what failure feels like on certain exercises is just a very valuable thing to do.

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And honestly, if you don't know what failure feels like, you're not gonna know what one rep in the tank feels like or two reps in the tank. You probably will think you might have one or two reps in the tank. But there have been studies on this and it's proven that most people are not very good at gauging their reps in reserve unless of course you're experienced and you do this all the time and you think about it and you're actually mindful and you occasionally flirt [00:14:30] with failure that way you know how, what it feels like when you're one rep shy of it and two reps shy of it and so on and so forth. So that is the way I would go about it. Next question, swim frequency for a NS training. Pool skills as well. So I'm assuming you're talking about marsoc and it'll depend on a few different things.

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It'll depend on how comfortable you are in the water. If you're already a pretty strong swimmer you probably do one or two swims a week and be good. I've had a few guys that I've trained for MARSOC selection and they've been pretty strong swimmers. [00:15:00] So usually we'll do two swims one week. One is a longer swim with some pool skills, one is more like intervals and then follow the following week we'll just do like a pool skill day and or a longer easy day. So it's like two swims, one week, one swim the next week and so on and so forth because you also have to train all of these different disciplines you're running, you're rucking, your strength work, your carries all that stuff. You gotta factor that into every time you train throughout the week, it's going to contribute to the [00:15:30] fatigue that you need to recover from.

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So you can't just swim ad lido, you can't just ruck at li ad lido, you can't just run as much as you want. It's gotta be in some sort of controlled manner so that you can actually recover and therefore benefit from it. If you're a weaker swimmer and especially if you're already pretty strong at running and rucking and just generally strong, then maybe three swims a week, maybe even four sometimes could be beneficial for you. It really depends on what you got going for yourself. If you're more balanced, I would say probably [00:16:00] two swims a week and then focus the rest of your attention or most of your cardio attention on rucks and runs. But lots of different variables go into it. And again, I'm not even sure what selection you're training for exactly. I know Air Force calls it A and SI know MARSOC calls it A and s.

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Even Delta force selection is a NS, which you don't have to swim at all for but that's kind of the way I look at it. Ruck run lift has plenty of swim sessions. If you're interested in a program, there are swim sessions programmed [00:16:30] in as far as which days of the week you should consider doing what types of swim, your higher intensity swims, your pool work your your skill work, your longer swims and things like that. So that can give you a good idea of how to go about it. But again, like if you're a super weak swimmer, the swimming in RU run lifts probably not gonna be quite as much but in that case you could just replace something you're already good at. Say you're already really good at rucking, you don't think you need two rucks every single week. Maybe every other week you replace that ruck with a swim or you replace a run with a swim if you're already [00:17:00] pretty solid at running, so on and so forth.

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So that's the way I would go about it. Next question, how do you come up with the durations of your tempo runs lots of running knowledge and conditioning knowledge and lots of times writing programs and lots of people I've programmed for and also just kind of determining what the goal of the program is. It's if it's like a two and five mile improvement program, then tempo runs can be a little bit shorter. If it's like a marathon prep, you can go a little longer on tempo runs not necessarily a lot longer. There's a limit to 'em. Like you don't wanna be doing like hour and a half [00:17:30] tempo runs or anything, but you know somewhere for most people, somewhere in the 20 to 40 minute range is a pretty solid tempo duration or what would that be like two and two and a half miles to five miles or so, maybe a little over five miles.

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And then you can also cut 'em into intervals. There's a ton that goes into it. It's not just like, hmm, I'm just gonna go with 25 minutes or eh, you know what I'm gonna do three eight minute rounds today. There's tons and tons of nuances. Just like anything you write in a program, in any program that you [00:18:00] set up from beginning to end, face to phase, whatever it is, the lifting, the conditioning, et cetera. It all comes from knowledge and experience and seeing programs and writing programs and iterating, self experimentation, decades of this kind of stuff. That's how I kind of come up with all these things. It's not just a random thing and honestly like if you're not savvy with general physiology, strength conditioning, especially aerobic work, then it's not like you're just gonna be able to pull some number out of your hat.

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[00:18:30] Like there actually has to be some thought process that goes on behind the scenes. So that's I guess the best way I could answer that question. Next question, I'm a bigger guy, 225 pounds at six one. Should I lift during the base phase of two and five mile? Yes, absolutely. Everyone should always lift. Now you don't have to lift to try and get more jacked or gain more size, but lifting will support your running. Every single high level runner, pretty much every single high level runner these days does some form of strength training because it is that important. As [00:19:00] long as you don't eat in a calorie surplus, if you are eating around maintenance or maybe you're eating in a little deficit, if you wanna get a little smaller, you're not gonna gain weight. It's just you don't gain weight unless you're eating more calories than you consume, then you burn.

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That's just a rule of physics. So if you're lifting two or three days a week, and by the way you could follow the list from phase one or the list from phase two or even the lists from another one of my programs that's no more than three days a week, you'd be fine doing any of those but just lift to give your body [00:19:30] a stimulus for muscle growth. And even if you're not eating enough to grow muscle, that's your best bet at preserving muscle and it's also your best bet at reducing injury risk and all the other benefits of kind of lifting at all times. So even I've had a client in the past that was a former 2000 pound total powerlifter and he wanted to go and pursue an 18 x con contract. So we had to turn him basically into an endurance guy even though he's a former strength guy and I still had him lifting two to three days a week.

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So [00:20:00] regardless of your goal, you should be lifting no matter what. There are lots of ways to lift that don't involve you getting super jacked and it mostly comes down to how many calories you're taking in. Next question, should I lose weight before I start SFAS prep If I'm severely overweight, yes that would be my best recommendation. The sooner you can start losing that weight, the better off you're gonna be because ideally you don't have to cut weight or improve your body fat percentages, which I would consider more of a a better goal than like getting to a certain [00:20:30] weight on the scale. 'cause you could lose weight in lots of different ways and most of the ways other than one losing mostly body fat are not great. So the sooner you start the less it's going to interfere with your really big push before you go to selection the last few months before.

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Ideally you want to eat for performance which requires maintenance calories at minimum. So if you're also eating at a calorie deficit and trying to perform the best you possibly can in those last few months, you are a not gonna perform quite as well, [00:21:00] you're not gonna make the same progress. But B, you're also putting yourself at higher injury risk. When you're eating a calorie deficit, you're also in a recovery deficit and it slightly increases the injury risk if you're in an insane deficit, which I wouldn't recommend for anyone. Even you, even though you have to lose weight, I would recommend a more reasonable one. But if you're in a really high deficit then your risk of injury is much higher than it would be if you're more moderate. But it's still, even if you're in a minor deficit, you are still at higher risk of injury than you would be at maintenance and that's where you [00:21:30] want to be by the time you start your selection prep.

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If you're not quite there by the time you're like three months out, four months out, whenever you start your pre-selection prep program, hopefully you follow program going in, not a big deal. You can continue your cut but ideally if you start now and you get to where you want to be body composition wise, then you can just kind of coast as far as calories are concerned, you can coast in and really make sure that you're covering all your bases nutritionally as you go into selection. Next question A IT is six months. Do I do a soft prep program before going to basic [00:22:00] for rasp or start at a ITI would not do a soft prep program this far out. I wouldn't generally do a pre-selection prep program before you're going to a IT, you're gonna lose most of those gains as far as the specific selection gains.

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If you have six months between when you finish that program and then you go to a IT and you're fitness is gonna kind of lose, you're gonna lose a little fitness anyway. So it's really not all that fruitful and it's not super longevity friendly to follow selection prep programs when you don't need to be following selection prep programs. AKA really the only [00:22:30] time you need to follow a selection prep program is going into selection. That being said, some guys will do it and they'll be fine. If you're gonna follow Ruck Run Lift, which is my main selection prep program that would work best for rasp, I would do more running in your first time through 'cause there's a bunch of different options like as far as running and rucking frequency per week, I would choose mostly runs. You definitely can ruck a little bit maybe once a week or every other week, but you don't need to be rucking two or three times a week like the program will have you do in the later stages of it.

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So in the meantime [00:23:00] something like Jack Iselle and or two and five Mile Jack Iselle, probably probably Jack Iselle three or Jack Iselle two and two and five Mile if you have time before you go would be solid or one of those if you don't have as much time. Jack Iselle three is like four months long and two and five miles, like two and a half months long I believe. So those would be better options just to get more general fitness and they would more than prepare you for a IT And then depending on your timeline, depending on your ability to kind of control your [00:23:30] own training at a IT and in whatever gap there may be post a IT and pre rasp, then that would be a better time to follow ruck run lift. So that is the way I would split it up.

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Next question, goal two and five mile time for officers going to SVS. There's really no difference as far as run times are concerned between officers and enlisted. I don't know the exact standards but generally if you want to be nice, warm and fuzzy and confident in your ability, if you can run around 35 minute five mile and a [00:24:00] 12 45, 13 minute two mile, you're gonna be, you're not gonna fail because of your runs. That's for sure. A lot of people do over index running though and they put way, way, way more stock in it than they need to and then they kind of forget about all the other aspects of selection. Like for you, you're an officer so the main differentiator is gonna be team week. If you perform really well at team week and you show that you can lead men and be a good dude and do things that officers do compared to what enlisted [00:24:30] do, you're gonna be held at a little bit higher of a standard during that team week than a brand new private 18 x-ray.

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So that's a main thing I would focus on as an officer. Other than that, the fitness standards are all equal for everyone as far as I know across the board. But still you wanna show up and be competitive and it feels good to finish in the top of the class and runs and rucks during gate week. Also you gotta do land nav, you gotta find your points and make it through the whole thing and so on and so forth. So running is important [00:25:00] but there's no real special like officer's gotta run this whereas everyone else has to run this Next question. I attended SFRE and got a no-go two mile run, 14 26, 5 mile 39, 25 ruck three hours, two and five mile program or SFAS prep, not two and five mile because there's no rucking and you need skill, you need to work on your rucking.

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I would say because your run times are a little bit, it depends on your, it does depend on your timeline. If you got a TI a bunch of time follow two and five mile like right now and then get into something like [00:25:30] ruck run lift or Jack is L three, those would probably be better options going into SFE Ruck run lift would be overkill for sure, but it could still work especially if you only follow some of it Jack is L three would probably be a better option going in there because it's a little bit more spread out, a little more reasonable. And s fres, yes you have to perform similarly to what you will have to do at selection but it's just a lot more condensed so you don't need that staying power like ability to repeat your efforts day after day after day like you do at selection.

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[00:26:00] So either of those programs work SFAS is great but also it's lower run volume. So what you could do, I guess another option would be to follow two and five mile and then follow SAS because you're gonna build most of your running skill prior to starting SAS and you kind of refine it throughout SAS but there's more rucking than running in SAS program. So any of those different options should help you and just show up prepared, go crush and move on to SFAS. Next question, how long should [00:26:30] an aerobic base build be, especially if doing eight hours of zone two weekly? Alright, so you are definitely well past long enough to have a pretty solid base if you're doing eight hours a week, honestly if you cut that down by a third you'd still be good to go start speed work. Everyone's a little different and you know if you're trying to be an elite runner, be a little different than if you're just trying to be a good military runner.

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But generally if you're doing 150 minutes of zone two running per week and feeling good and not banged up, I talked about this very [00:27:00] recently I think in the last episode, but if you're, if you've reached that point then you should be able to start going into easing into speed work, doing some strides, doing some pickups, doing some hill sprints and then getting into actual structured speed work. So you are more than sufficiently ready. Next question completed ruck run lift but selection date got pushed back. Should I just do redo ruck run lift? Yeah that's tough. I am guessing you're probably national guard because this happens all the time with my National Guard clients and it's super frustrating. I'll [00:27:30] prep them for selection, they'll be ready to go and a couple weeks out it's like nope, you're going to the next class and then oftentimes it happens again and again.

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I've had one dude where it happened like five times in a row, it was incredibly annoying and that included the break between the last class and the spring and the first class in the fall. I think he was supposed to go in April originally and he ended up going in January the following year. It was absolutely ridiculous. But anyway, hopefully that doesn't happen to you [00:28:00] and in your case I would, yeah probably follow ruck run lift again, I would take some time off in between if you haven't already take at least a week maybe, probably even better would be two before you get back into it. Not you don't have to take it completely off from training but definitely dial your training back. Don't do a lot of impact stuff. Mostly cross training. Do some lifting and you can definitely do some easy running and things like that but you don't have to like finish the program.

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Shit, my selection day got pushed back, I'm gonna restart it day one tomorrow. That wouldn't be super smart if you have like a weirder timeline and you're [00:28:30] not gonna be able to follow the entire thing. I would just kind of take that time off like I just went over and jump in probably in phase two and follow like three quarters of the program. That'd be a pretty solid way to split it up. Next question, do you do any shooting anymore? No, not really. I've shot one time since I've been out. I never really was super into it as far as going and doing it on my own when I was in with just wasn't really my thing. I usually played golf on the weekends or did long runs or long rucks or whatever it was. So as [00:29:00] such I'm still kind of into more golf stuff most of the time that I spend away from work and training and like hanging out with my wife, I'm either practicing golf or playing golf 'cause I have a goal in the next few years to become a scratch golfer.

(29:12):

So that takes a lot of time and energy. Not that I don't enjoy it. If someone invited me to go shoot, I would absolutely do it but it's just not something I've always been passionate about and therefore I don't do it very often. Next question. Top three tips for marriage life in the army, especially soft. Yeah, this is a tough one. [00:29:30] So I'm no marriage expert but I did, I was married for most of my career. I was with my wife for all but like two weeks I met, I met my wife two weeks after I got to uh, 10th group. So we were together for almost all of it and we were long distance for a good couple years before we actually moved in together where she moved to Colorado and we were actually engaged and then we got married and so on and so forth.

(29:51):

So although I'm not an expert, I've got experience with it. First off, you really gotta choose the right person. Honestly in my opinion, [00:30:00] marriages that don't work in soft also would not work if there was no soft involved. It would just take longer. Soft is kind of a good way to fast track a failed marriage if that makes sense. Just because if you don't have the right person no matter what, like you're not gonna be able to make it work eventually, but soft just makes it way harder because you're not together for a lot of that time and it just kind of is a fast track to failure. So obviously like if you've already chosen the person, well hopefully they are the right person, but [00:30:30] a super important factor of choosing the right person is them being independent and not relying on you every second of your life.

(30:37):

I guess this is number two. If they rely on you for pretty much everything and they can't handle life on their own, especially if you have kids, that's gonna be a massive problem. It's gonna be basically impossible to make that work because she's gonna be on her own for a lot of that time, half the year, more than half the year, some years and it's just not gonna work if she can't do her own thing and [00:31:00] handle herself and always relies on you to pick up the slack, do things for the kids, do things for the house, do things for your finances and so on and so forth. So that is a huge one as far as choosing your partner. Make sure they're not super dependent on you even though technically they will be your dependent. And I would say another huge one, I'll, I'll go two more.

(31:22):

One is when you're home actually be there all there like present, a lot of guys will go away four trips, [00:31:30] they'll go on deployments, they'll go on training trips, they'll be at work for long hours throughout the day and then they're home and they're either just in their phone just scrolling the whole time, trying to numb out whatever's going on, not really paying attention to their wife, their kids, their family, whatever it is. Or they just kind of always have one foot in the team room door. They're always thinking about work. It's hard not to think about work when you're at work it when you're not at work, that's just the way it is. But forcing yourself to be as present as possible around your family is a huge one. [00:32:00] And lastly sounds super trite, but communication, like actually telling your wife what your needs are, telling your wife what you're thinking, telling your wife what you're about to do.

(32:09):

You know, if you're about to go on a trip, like don't beat around the bush, just be like, Hey, I'm going on this trip, this is what needs to happen before then. This is what you can expect. So on and so forth. Instead of just like trying to, you know, dodge hard conversations and let it play out as it may, that's not a great way to go about it. So really communicating with her, [00:32:30] especially when you're gone, like making the effort to get on FaceTime if you possibly can at least get on calls, at least at the very least, if you don't have great connection you're you're still gonna have, most of the time you're gonna have some sort of internet connection, send her messages on signal, sending her messages on WhatsApp, whatever you use is gonna be huge. Just letting her know you're thinking about her and that you're not just like completely gone and not even thinking about life at home, not even thinking about your family.

(32:55):

That's a huge one. And just I, I guess I'll get into one last one. [00:33:00] This is what messes up most guys in most marriages is they act like children when they're on deployments, they go out and do dumb shit, they talk to other women, they get with other women, they just do a bunch of college boy frat boy type stuff. And if you're an actual committed husband then that's doesn't really have a place and you're gonna see people on your team doing that and it's kind of is what it is and it's unfortunate but that's the way it goes. But if you can pretend there's like a C [00:33:30] TV camera that is watching your every move when you go out and your wife is gonna have access to that C-C-T-C-C-T-V camera, that is probably a good way to kind of go about it just so you're doing the right things and you're not being a shitty husband while you're gone.

(33:43):

So that's more than three, but that should give you a good start. Next question. Is it possible to use JG three for NSW by mixing in swims, high volume calisthenics, et cetera? Yes, it is NSW Naval Special Warfare. I'm guessing you're training to go to buds, something like [00:34:00] that. Or maybe you're training to go screen for green team or something along those lines. But you could use JAX L three. You could also do the same thing for rock run lift. Generally Navy's rucking needs or rucking requirements are less intense, so there's gonna be way more rucking in ruck run lift than you're gonna need most likely. But also you can replace some of those rucks with more pool work or swim work and like you said, high cal, high volume calisthenics. There are definitely some calisthenics in those programs, but there's not a bunch of like flutter kicks, which [00:34:30] I know Navy Special Warfare definitely emphasizes flutter kicks.

(34:33):

So you'll definitely wanna do those on your own and you might have to change the pushups up. I think Navy pushups are just regular pushups, not the hand release pushups, but just some minor changes like that. But either of those should give you a pretty good solid blueprint. Next question, what mileage will your advanced running program start at? That's a good question. I'm not exactly sure. I haven't added up the mileages yet, but it is mileage based. Unlike SVS where most of the runs are, most of the runs besides [00:35:00] the speed work are duration based in this program. It's gonna be mileage based so it'll be easier to add them up. It'll probably start in the mid to high twenties and it'll work out. It won't be a continuous build in volume like a lot of running programs are. If you just add volume every single week and never give yourself a chance to kind of dial things back and let your body adjust to certain volumes, then you're not, it's not gonna go well for you.

(35:26):

Also intensity, intensity is gonna fluctuate as well, but it should get up to [00:35:30] in the mid forties, maybe high forties, maybe 50 miles per week towards the end of it. But again, I haven't added it up so don't hold me to that, but it'll definitely be considerably higher volume than 2.5 mile. Next question. I broke my ankle. Should I train the uninjured leg or avoid imbalances? Great question. You should absolutely train your uninjured leg. Yes, when you first get back to training your injured leg, you will have imbalances like that leg. ISS obviously gonna be weaker, but they're gonna be less. So if you train the other leg, there's a cross, [00:36:00] what is it called? Cross communication. Basically your nervous system will cross communicate with the other side, the injured side that you can't train and make it so that side atrophies a little bit less.

(36:13):

Even if you are getting stronger and getting more muscular on the good side, that bad side is gonna catch up a lot faster if you train the good side while you're injured. So you should train every other part of your body, your upper body, your other leg, and even if there's a big imbalance, there will be a big [00:36:30] imbalance by the time you're done, it's not gonna be as long of a comeback for that weaker side or that injured side to get to where it's kind of more even with your strong side. So definitely train it. Next question. Can you build resiliency to life in an airborne unit or does jumping inevitably take a toll on you? So it's gonna take a toll on everyone for sure, and not everyone's jumping experiences are the same. If you're a bigger dude, you come in like a sack of bricks.

(36:56):

That's just kind of how it is. And if you take really [00:37:00] good care of yourself as far as in the gym as well as outside the gym, you do the right things and you're just a generally fit, capable, healthy individual, it's not gonna take as much of a toll on you as it would if you didn't do those things. And honestly like it sounds like, duh, of course everyone in the military and airborne units takes good care of themselves, but it is nowhere close to being like that in practice. So as far as making yourself less susceptible to injury for jumping, not really much [00:37:30] you can do other than make sure you just PLF every single time and hope that some luck is on your side. There are some unlucky people that get thrown out by a jump master in the wrong place or they come in and land on a small part of the DZ that happens to have like a truck on it or something like that.

(37:47):

And that's unfortunate. You can't really train your way to avoid injury when things like that happen. But there are also people who go through all these PLF practice, train up PLF by the way, is a parachute landing fall. There's a proper [00:38:00] way to land with a parachute that makes it so you're way less susceptible to injury than if you land any other way. But there are people who will go through all this PLF training, you do a bunch of stuff on the ground, you do tower week airborne school, you have five jumps at airborne school and then before you jump every single time you'll do a bunch of PLFs. And there are people who just decide not to PLF or for whatever reason they like forget to PF or forget how to. So I don't really have much of sympathy [00:38:30] for for people like that.

(38:31):

But as long as you PLF, you keep yourself in good shape, you sleep well, you eat well, you recover well, and you don't overdo everything, then that's kind of your best shot at it. And like I said, some people will degrade a lot faster, not just from jumping but just from the stress of being in the military in general, which if you're in an airborne unit, jumping is involved. There are plenty of people who finish their career super destroyed and there are plenty who finish their career [00:39:00] feeling pretty good and a lot of that is on you, not all of it, some of it's outside of your control, but a lot of it is in your control. And oftentimes the people who finish their career completely destroyed. A lot of it was their fault, but they will blame anything but themselves for the fact that they finished their career destroyed and that I have no patience for that whatsoever.

(39:21):

But you'll see it all the time and I see it all the time. So that is my best advice for you. Best of luck. Keep your feet used together, [00:39:30] keep yourself in shape. Next question. Any short game tips? Yeah, so this year when I got back into golf, I took several years off basically off from golf, definitely off from practicing golf, that's for sure. I would play when my dad came down. That's about it. I probably averaged from 2022 to this summer I probably averaged three to four rounds of golf per summer, so not a lot in zero practice. But this summer I got back into it and I [00:40:00] have always had a weaker short game than my ball striking. I've always been a pretty solid ball striker. And so I decided to fix that and I started practicing my short game a hell of a lot more than going to the range and hitting balls.

(40:16):

And now my short game is actually stronger than my ball striking, which is great because you know you can get your ball striking up pretty quickly. Short game's a little boring to practice, which is why most people don't do it. Chipping, putting, hitting, pitch shots, things like [00:40:30] that. And turns out when you practice it a lot more, you get really, really good at it. So what I would do is go on YouTube. I would only find like one or two people you get instructions from because there's so many different ways to skin it. If you're watching 10 different short game pros, you're gonna hear 10 different short game things. It's very similar to fitness. You'll hear all this mixed information, lots of these pads lead to Rome, but when you're just trying a bunch of different techniques from different people and maybe experimenting with them for a short period of time, [00:41:00] then trying something different, you never really get good at the one.

(41:02):

You really don't need a bunch of different techniques. You just need to get really good at your preferred techniques. What I would recommend is the lads Jason Day, who is one of the better golfers in the last probably couple decades. He has a YouTube channel and he's got some buddies from his home town in Australia that are also part of the channel. And they're all really good at golf. They're not pros like he is, but they are all super solid and they do [00:41:30] more entertaining videos, but they also do instructional videos and he is one of the better, if not the best short game player in the last couple of decades chipping and putting. And he's very, very good at instruction as well. So that would be where I'd start. There are other options too, but if you can get a good warm and fuzzy from that and then honestly the rest is on you to go practice and practice and practice and practice.

(41:55):

It's kind of boring like I said, but it does pay off and you can get [00:42:00] way, way, way, way, way better in a short period of time if you practice on a regular basis. I brought my handicap down by what, from like 16 to 2.5 over the summer and almost I would say 80% of that improvement was short game and maybe 10% ball striking and maybe 10% decision making on the course. Just golf iq. So it can't be done, just takes some time and it takes learning [00:42:30] the fundamentals and then just going and practicing. Next question, knee pain is six and a half outta 10 40 days out from ic. My run times are maxed, should I stop running and sub? I'm guessing he's wants to sub like a cross training in and yes, at least for now, maybe not the entire time but you're already solid at running, so that's good.

(42:51):

You can maintain most of that if you do the right thing. And the right thing in this point would be to take time off from running and do some cross training, biking, elliptical, swimming, [00:43:00] maybe some stairs if you can handle that. If the stairs don't bother you, maybe some incline walking. If that doesn't bother it, it's most likely, I'm guessing it's more of an impact thing. So even though there's a little bit of impact with incline walking and stairs, it's much lower than actually going out for runs. But kind of keeping it day by day and reassessing. If you get that pain down to like a three or a two outta 10 and it kind of stays there, not like a two outta ten one day and then right back up after one run back to six. But like [00:43:30] a good solid, consistent two outta 10 or less.

(43:33):

Ideally you have no pain but you can run on a two outta 10 pain and be fine. That would be what I recommend for your goal. So even though it's a pain in the ass, when you have to stop doing what you know you need to be good at, you're already pretty solid at it, which is good. If you still had a bunch of runtimes runtime to cut off your runs, that would be a little bit of a different concern. But even if you did have that, I would still stop for anyone listening, say you have a similar thing going on [00:44:00] and your runtimes aren't where you want them to be continuing to run on it, that six and a half comes becomes a seven, becomes an eight, and so on and so forth. Even though you're running, you still think you need to make all this improvement.

(44:13):

It sounds obvious, but it's just not the best approach and people will stubbornly do this. I'm only saying it because like I've seen people just continue to grind it out. I've had clients in the past, not recently, but I've had clients in the past that start developing shin splints and then they don't tell me for like seven weeks after [00:44:30] they've been running on their shin splints for seven straight weeks. They're like, Hey coach, by the way, I've got shin splints. And I'm like, okay cool, let's, when did they start last run? Maybe expecting two runs ago, no, seven weeks ago. Well then it's gonna be a lot bigger of a problem. It's gonna take you a lot more time to dig yourself outta that hole. So nbb in the bud right now. Do cross training. You can definitely set up your training week the same way you would do your runs.

(44:53):

You can do some intense stuff on a rower or a bike or something like that. You can do some tempo or tempo intervals, you can do [00:45:00] long stuff and everything in between. But I would strongly recommend taking at least a week off, maybe it might be two weeks, maybe three. And then when you get back into running, another huge thing is not to just pick up where you left off, even though you're still gonna be very aerobically fit, your body's not gonna be used to running. And also because you're coming off an injury, you're still a little bit susceptible to re-injure it. So what I would do is start with like a 30 minute session where you run for three minutes, walk for two minutes every five minutes, run for three minutes, walk for two minutes, [00:45:30] then maybe the next time you do four in one, then maybe the next time you do eight and a half, one 30 every 10 minutes.

(45:36):

And then you can increase the duration of that over time as well. But I would get to where you can do those runs and feel good and not exacerbate it and then you can kind of get back into some easy running, maybe some strides and then hopefully by the time you're a few weeks out, hopefully you can get back into your normal running programming. But it would definitely be a great call to give it a break right now. Next [00:46:00] question, tips for it. Band pain after long rux and zone two runs. So there could be a number of different things that are at the root cause of it, but for most people in my experience, it's running mechanics and if you take a look at your cadence and you notice your cadence is really low, then that's a pretty good indication that your running mechanics are not great.

(46:18):

So bringing your cadence cadence up, which I talked about last episode. Basically it's shooting for one or two steps per minute, more per run, hanging out there for a week, then increasing by another one or two steps per minute and so on and [00:46:30] so forth until you're, up until one 70 to 180 5, 1 90 range would be a good idea. A little bit lower that than that on a zone two run, but not by a lot. This is kind of off topic, but it's actually kind of important. A lot of people's cadence are like 20 to 30 steps per minute, different on when they're running fast versus when they're running slow. And that is not great either. They shouldn't be the exact same. Like if you're doing a two mile time trial, your cadence should be higher than a zone two run, but it shouldn't be a massive gap.

(46:57):

Maybe 10 steps per minute at the most [00:47:00] would be a good thing to shoot for, maybe, maybe 12. So ensure that your cadence on zone two runs is also climbing. Even if it doesn't get all the way up to 180, if it gets up to the 1 65, 1 70 range, you're in a pretty good spot. That would be probably the, without knowing anything more about your running form or mechanics, that would probably be one good blanket piece of advice for most people who are dealing with something like this. Make sure you're lifting with full range of motion. Even if you have to drop some load in the gym. Full range of motion lifting is gonna basically make you a more [00:47:30] functional individual and it's also going to improve your mobility. And even if you have to drop load for a little while to get the form down and the technique down, eventually you're gonna get to where you can be stronger because you're gonna be stronger in entire range of motion, like the entire squat rather than the squat just above parallel or something like that.

(47:48):

As far as symptom management, a lot of people will think this is like root cause management, but it's not. Symptom management is making it so that your IT band doesn't hurt, but it's not necessarily addressing the root cause, like fixing your running mechanics [00:48:00] would and fixing your lifting technique would. But you can do some foam rolling. The problem is most people will foam roll the shit out of their IT band and the IT band is not a muscle. It's basically fascia and foam rolling. A non-muscle is just gonna irritate it more. So if you're doing these long runs and your IT band is all jacked up and you take a foam roller to it, it's just further exacerbating the problem. And most people do this by [00:48:30] the way. Most people will foam roll the hell outta their IT band and it's kind of a exercise in futility.

(48:36):

You want to foam roll the musculature around it, so your TFL, your outer quad, so like it's the vast laterals, the outer quad that's like right next to your IT band, your hamstrings a little bit, your glutes, especially the outer glute, the glute mead. I would probably take a little cross ball to that. Even your calves can be a a major factor. You can roll your calves out, but also another thing people do with foam rolling, I've talked about this in the past, [00:49:00] but it's been a while. They don't foam roll properly. There's this idea about foam rolling that you're going in and like breaking up fascia. That's not what's happening. That would take like a steam roller and obviously a steam roller would also crush your bones, and so that would be not a very good idea. Foam rolling is allowing the muscles that are irritated or the muscles surrounding what's irritated.

(49:22):

Oftentimes these are all interconnected, like your entire right side of your body say it's your right side, your whole lower body on your right is [00:49:30] dysfunctional in some way, and there are areas where your nervous system is kind of guarding them from further injury. So essentially what you want to do is find those areas and hang out on them and wait till your nervous system kind of relaxes and it's like, oh, okay, we can free up this range of motion. Now most people take it like they're rolling out a pizza dough. They'll just go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and that does absolutely nothing. You might feel temporarily better, but it's not doing anything what you wanna do. Here's an example of what I would do with this [00:50:00] issue right here. Take a foam roller start up towards your hip. You don't wanna roll over the actual joint, so you don't wanna roll over your knee joint or over your hip joint, but just below the hip joint and work your way very, very slowly down towards your knee with that foam roller.

(50:15):

You're literally not even rolling back and forth. You're just rolling really, really slow. It should take you like if you were to do it without stopping, I'll talk about stopping here in a second, but if you're to do it without stopping, it would take you at least 30 seconds to get from hip to knee. Probably even more than that. When you find [00:50:30] a spot that is tender, that's when you kind of stop on that spot and hang out. You can do really, really fine little micro move movements, but you wanna hang out there for 30 seconds, 40 sec five seconds, 60 seconds until you feel that kind of release. And it relaxes a little bit. It's gonna be less painful. Sometimes you can really feel it like release, other times you can't. But if you do it for 45 seconds, then you go down a little further and you go come back up to it, it'll be way less painful.

(50:56):

You might not even be able to feel that same spot, the tenderness in that same spot. [00:51:00] So you might find two or three spots throughout your outer quad, your VAs laterals on one roll, and you hang out at each of those spots for a short period of time. That kind of allows you to relax. It'll roll out. It allows for more range of motion and it'll make it so that part of your body is not irritated and stressed out and potentially affecting other parts of your leg throughout your runs. But again, that's not a really a root cause treatment. That is just symptom management. So don't try and solve all your issues by ignoring your run technique [00:51:30] and ignoring your lifting technique and just relying on foam rolling. But foam rolling can be something to add in from there. Honestly, it's just kind of giving it time and you might have to take some time off from running while you do this as well.

(51:43):

Just really depends on lots of different factors. And also lastly, make sure you're not doing ridiculous amounts of volume. If you're doing insane amounts of running, insane amounts of lifting and you're not recovering properly, or even if you are recovering properly, you're doing the right things out of inside the gym, but your workload is just way too high, it's unmanageable. [00:52:00] That's not gonna do you any favors either. And that's really, really, really, really common. That's why I mentioned it. Next question, how important is carb timing versus total carb consumption? So if you were to eat 300 grams of carbs less than what you need, but you time them perfectly, things wouldn't go that well for you at all. If your timing was all jacked up, you're eating the perfect amount of carbs, it wouldn't be optimal, but at least you're eating enough carbs and so you'd fare better [00:52:30] that way.

(52:30):

So total consumption is more important in the hierarchy of most to least important. I have an apple pie analogy I like to use as far as nutrition is concerned for performance. If you think of number one, the crust, the crust that goes over the top, the crust on the bottom, it kind of encloses all the ingredients. AKA, it's the most important part of the apple pie. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't be able to make an actual pie. It would just be a bunch of apple and syrup. So that is your most important thing, [00:53:00] which is total calories consumed. If you're eating perfect macros, if you're eating the exact right foods, if you're timing everything perfectly, but you're eating a thousand calories fewer than you burn, you're not gonna do that well. So that's number one. Number two is macro distribution on a pie.

(53:14):

This would be having the right ratios of apples to syrup to sugar. I know there's probably more things that go into an apple pie, but those are like the main ingredients that make up the actual filling. So this is the filling. That's number two, total macro dis distribution. [00:53:30] So for example, if you're eating the perfect amount of calories but you're eating way too much fat, nowhere near enough carbs and maybe the right amount of protein, you're not gonna get the same benefits as you would if you have those distributed perfectly, which you can go back to an earlier question where I talked about that. Number three is gonna be food quality. So think of buying all your ingredients for a pie at Piggly Wiggly versus going to a local farmer's market and getting really high quality ingredients. So this is like [00:54:00] choosing whether you eat whole foods versus processed foods.

(54:03):

Whole foods are gonna be generally more appropriate and more beneficial for you health-wise as well as performance wise as well as gut health wise. That's a big thing too than shitty low quality food. So that's number three. Number four is timing. Timing is like making sure that you are making the pie in the right sequence, you're adding the right things at the right times and you're cooking it for a proper period of time. So it comes out as a really good pie that is timing. So [00:54:30] how many meals a day you eat, how you eat in relation to your training, your peri workout, nutrition, so on and so forth. Then lastly is the ice cream that you put on the top of the apple pie to make it an amazing pie. You take a pie, which pies are pretty good on their own, but then you add some vanilla ice cream to it and it's even better.

(54:47):

And that is supplementation you can get by no problem without supplements. But supplements definitely help, especially when you have all those other four things taken care of. So that's the pie analogy, that's kinda the order, the hierarchy of [00:55:00] your performance nutrition. So in this case, going back to the beginning, I just figured I'd share that just because a lot of people get the sequence mixed up or they overindex certain things, they under index other things. It's all important, but there are certain levels to it. There's a hierarchy most to least important and that's the way I analogize it. Alright, because I have to go and pack the car here in a second. We'll do one more question. Favorite rice and grinds concoctions just picked up some maple cinnamon. It's elite. Yes, [00:55:30] let's go. So as far as individual, like if I'm just going to eat one flavor for one meal, I would go with cinnamon brown sugar, which is one flavor by the way.

(55:41):

Maple waffle is another flavor. They're pretty similar, but cinnamon brown sugar would be number one. Maple waffle would be number two. And coincidentally, those are amazing to mix as well. Almost every time I eat rice and grinds, there's a scoop of one and a scoop of other another. I don't usually eat one single one at the same time. So [00:56:00] my favorite concoction, maple waffle and brown sugar, cinnamon, it tastes like you're eating a big bowl of gooey waffles. It's absolutely delicious. Chocolate is another one that mixes really well with multiple different flavors. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate on its own, although it's decent, like absolutely would eat it if I didn't have anything else. But chocolate with maple. Waffle is delicious. Chocolate with coconut is actually really good. I don't like coconut on its own. It's way too coconuty for me. But if it's one scoop of chocolate, one scoop of [00:56:30] coconut, delicious chocolate peanut butter, I mean can't really beat chocolate peanut butter combo.

(56:36):

But weirdly enough, I don't love peanut butter on its own. I could eat it, but I would rather mix it with chocolate. And also if you're doing a big ass bowl, like say you need a bunch of carbs, I've tried this one time 'cause I needed three scoops. I was like way behind on my carbs. But I did one scoop of chocolate, one scoop of coconut, one scoop of peanut butter, and it was actually delicious. So those are all really good combos. Blueberry is hit or miss, like some people like blueberry. I don't mind [00:57:00] it. If I'm gonna do blueberry, I'm gonna mix it with cinnamon brown sugar and that's not a bad mix at all. I don't like blueberry on its own, it's just a little bit too sweet for me. But those are all great. And then to make it even better, what I do is add some frozen berries.

(57:12):

I put them in the bowl and then once the rice and grinds are done, by the way, I would recommend making rice and grinds if you can on the stove top. They just come out way better than the microwave. But if you're in a pinch microwave's, no big deal. But anyway, finish making the rice and grinds on the stove top. They're super duper hot. And so I pour them on top of the berries [00:57:30] and mix it in and basically it cools the rice and grinds off so you don't have to wait like 30 minutes to eat it 'cause it's so hot. The frozen berries cool it off. And also the rice and grinds haw the berries out so you're not chewing on frozen berries. So it's a win-win. And then if I need more carbs, I'll usually chop up a banana and add some maple syrup or some honey.

(57:51):

I like maple syrup a little bit better, especially on my go-to, which is maple waffle and brown sugar cinnamon. It tastes like a big bowl of waffles with [00:58:00] berries and some bananas. It's absolutely delicious. And if I don't eat more carbs, I'll just put some sugar free syrup on it and call it a day. So love it. Glad you guys are all getting into rice and grinds. I've gotten lots of questions about it lately. And yeah, highly recommend if you haven't tried it. Pride Foods is amazing. Hopefully at some point somewhat soon I'll have a discount code for you guys, but that is still in the early stages of being worked on. So that's it guys. Thank you very much for tuning in. Apologies for not getting to more questions, [00:58:30] but gotta go do my vacation, drive down to Florida and super pumped for it. But hope this helped and thanks for the awesome questions. Keep 'em coming. Till next time, Terminator out.