202 - Overrated or Underrated? BPC‑157, Carb-Cycling, Z2, BJJ, Pre‑Workout +More Hybrid Training Hot Takes

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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 overrated, underrated edition episode, so what I'm going to do is go through some of the overrated, underrated Instagram replies that I got from this week's. Usually I do store, or usually I do Q&As, but this week I did overrated, underrated, basically asked for a topic or a trend or a fitness fad or a supplement or a food, whatever it may be that [00:00:30] a lot of people talk about and I shared whether I thought it was overrated or underrated and why, and I'm going to do that a little bit more in depth here on the show. I'm going to go over some of the ones I went over on Instagram and I'm also going to get to some that I didn't get on Instagram so you guys can, it's kind of like just a good way to learn about certain topics and whether they're actually worth paying attention to or not.

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A little bit of a different thing from q and as. I've probably done four or five of these in all 200 and what 201 [00:01:00] TTM episodes, so I enjoy doing them and it's a little bit of a good changeup before we get into it. However, I am super pumped to announce that the new program Run Advanced is officially out and available for purchase and as usual, it's going to be on sale for 25% off for the first week. It's out with the code run 25. You can find links and all that jazz in the descriptions below, wherever you're watching or listening, and really, really [00:01:30] pumped for that. I'm going to make a full episode on it here soon, probably sometime mid-March, so I just kind of cover everything. But essentially the gist of it is it's a 15 week program and it's for more advanced runners.

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It's a great program to follow after two and five mile. It'd be a good program to follow after Jack is L three or Jack is L two. Or if you for whatever reason, follow ruck run lift and you're not going to selection, which I don't really recommend, I would follow that program pre-selection, but if not, and you want [00:02:00] to get continued run gains, you can go into that program essentially as long as you're running about 25 miles a week or so on average and you're feeling good, of course that would be a good program for you and it's definitely run by us. It's not a hybrid program. There is lifting in it, so you can expect if, unless you're like a brand new lifter that has little experience or maybe you're just brand new to good lifting program along with running, you might gain some strength, but for most people it's going to be more of a strength maintenance thing.

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It does have some army physical fitness test [00:02:30] maintenance stuff in there, so it's got some hex bar dead lifts, it's got some hand release pushups, or if you're not in the army and you have an equivalent PT assessment, you can kind of make adjustments to that and hit that. But yeah, it's going to be an awesome program and it was definitely really challenging to make. I made it for more advanced runners. You legit can change things up pretty much every week, not in a random, unstructured way, but you don't have to do the same general repeat structure every single week. So essentially [00:03:00] the way it works is week A is going to be two lifting days and more of a two mile bias, and then week B is going to be three lifting days and more of a five mile bias. There's going to be some long runs with quality portions in them.

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There's fart lake runs, there's tempo runs, there's a bunch of very unique repeat structures. There's some short hill sprints, there's some longer repeats and everything in between, so it should be a pretty sick program. I'm looking forward to hearing back from guys who follow it, and again, that's [00:03:30] on sale for the next, if you're listening to this, the day it comes out or several days after it comes out, it's basically on sale till Saturday. Let me look at my calendar real quick. The end of the day, Saturday, the, what is it? The 7th of March, that sale we'll go to. So you'll still have plenty of time after you're here in this episode to hop on it. And with that out of the way, let's hop into today's q and as. Starting with the first one, no, not q and as, overrated, underrated. [00:04:00] I'm probably going to say next question 10 times in this episode because I'm used to it.

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But anyway, overrated, underrated topic number one, California. So I know the guy who, one of my clients actually is the person who wrote this, and he's from California, so he's probably biased and I kind of am biased too because I have a lot of people I love in California. My wife's family's all out there, my dad's oldest brother and some of my cousins are out there in the LA area. To be fair, I have only spent [00:04:30] a decent amount of time in SoCal, mostly in the LA area, a little bit of time in San Diego. I went to San Francisco once a long, long time ago. So I guess I will kind of bias this to southern California. So is it overrated or underrated? It's hard for me to say because there's so many great aspects of it and there's so many aspects that are just annoying and needless and reasons that I wouldn't instantly go live out there.

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I love the weather. It's amazing. [00:05:00] I love the scenery and the landscape. You can be in the mountains one hour and you can be in on the beach the next hour and kind of everything in between. It's just beautiful. However, that one hour may not be an hour going from the mountains to the beach because the traffic's insane, absolutely insane. And the people who are in the traffic are just negative and they like to honk on their horn and just lay on it for no reason. They like to flick people off, they like to [00:05:30] do stupid things, cut people off. They get pissed when other people cut people off, and anyone who's been out there knows what I'm talking about. It's quite annoying. For example, one day I went to train with my coach, Jay Faria, which was by the way, an amazing experience. I have been listening to Jay's podcast for seven years and I've been reading his articles for two decades.

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So he's been coaching me for a while, but I had never met him in person and I went and got two lists with him in person. It was [00:06:00] absolutely great. But anyway, I went to Gold's Gym in Venice, which is without traffic, about a 40 minute drive from my mother-in-law's house where we were staying. So my trip down there on the first day took about 40 minutes. There was no traffic. It was like two o'clock in the afternoon, so not really rush hour or anything like that. Not that it really matters in California. Sometimes traffic's just crazy at random times, but my drive back was around, I think I left at four 15 and [00:06:30] it took me an hour and 40 minutes to get home just because of the traffic I took, the PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway. It was absolutely beautiful, but it took forever.

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So that's one downside. The price, cost of living is another downside. It's just needlessly expensive. My wife and I were waiting for our flight in the airport coming back to the east coast the other day, and my wife was hungry and I wanted coffee. We didn't get a chance to stop on the way down to the airport because even though we left way, way, way [00:07:00] early, it took us twice as long as it's supposed to take to get to the airport because you guessed it, traffic. So we got, she got a burrito, a breakfast burrito. It was not really all that big, decent size, maybe like eight inches long and not very thick. I'm describing a burrito by the way. And I got a coffee, just a small coffee, and it was like $37 without the tip, and I always leave a tip to people like that.

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Basically there were two options, Starbucks and there were like a [00:07:30] hundred people in line in Starbucks, and for whatever reason, the Starbucks did not have online ordering options, so we would've missed our flight if we waited at Starbucks. So we went to this little hole in the wall, Mexican place, and yeah, 37 bucks for a flight, for a burrito and a coffee, and neither of them were all that good. So prices are crazy. Government is not ideal. There's some stupid rules out there, but hey, I mean you never know. Maybe someday I'll live there again, there [00:08:00] are people out there that I really love being around and just the vibe like driving on the PCH when it's beautiful out, you're driving home, even though it's taken you twice as long to get home, crank some music or listen to a podcast, whatever, put the windows down, it's frigging amazing.

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And there are also some beautiful golf courses out there. I got to play only once in California this time I was going to play another time, but Jay invited me to train the following day after our first training session, so I couldn't say no to that, so [00:08:30] I went and did that instead of playing golf because it's just a whole several hour ordeal to go train at gold's because of the drive time and the potential traffic. But either way, I don't know if I've said overrated or underrated, but I'm going to say properly rated because the pros kind of balance out the cons. So let's hop into the next one, which is overrated, underrated, BPC 1 57, which is a peptide, I would say BPC 1 57 is properly rated. In my [00:09:00] experience, it seems to work pretty well, but a lot of people think it's just this get out of jail free card for doing dumb stuff and overdoing it in training, and you take BPC 1 57 and it enhances your recovery, makes you feel better, it heals, stressed out, inflamed areas faster than they would've otherwise heal.

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And for that reason I would say it's a little bit overrated and over indexed. It's not this magic thing that you can just do whatever you want and put your body [00:09:30] through the ringer and hope that BPC 1 57 kind of saves you. That's not how it works. It definitely can enhance the healing process, but it's not this panacea and peptides in general. I got a lot of peptides, just people who wrote up peptides, and I'll kind of cover that here too. Some peptides work really well and are fantastic and I would consider them probably properly rated, maybe even underrated for some of them. Other peptides are not so great, they don't [00:10:00] really do all that much. And also there's a lot of gray area with peptides. The human research on them is very, very minimal and we don't really know the long-term effects. I would say for the most part, in my opinion, in my experience in listening to peptide experts talk, they're relatively safe.

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They're not going to mess you up, but at the same time saying peptides in general is like saying is food underrated or overrated food? Some of it's really good, some of it's not so good as far as [00:10:30] taste. Some of it's not so good as far as health and vice versa, so you can't really just put a blanket overrated, underrated on peptides. I would say though, generally a lot of people think they're these amazing things and they can benefit you, but again, they're not going to override all of these bad decisions, whether it's training decisions, lifestyle decisions, or a mix of both. So for that reason, I would say overrated and I would say BPC 1 57, although I've had great experience with it and some [00:11:00] clients have and other people have too. I would still say it's a little bit overrated just because it's not quite what a lot of people think.

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It's next one, overrated, underrated, carb cycling. Carb cycling in the sense of performance. So like most people listening to this probably have performance goals and maybe a secondary goal of body composition. And I would say some people probably have body composition goals or more so than performance goals. Either way, in a performance sense, carb cycling is highly underrated because a lot of people just don't use it or [00:11:30] they don't use it to its full potential. And I have written three articles recently on my website. I'll try and link these in the description all about carbs and carb cycling and why it's important and why it's beneficial.

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If you're more than a beginner trainee, carb cycling can be really, really beneficial for you because generally speaking, if you have performance goals, especially like hybrid or selection prep, some days you're going to be doing a lot more volume and you're [00:12:00] going to be expending a lot more calories, you're going to be requiring a lot more glycogen, which is stored carbohydrates in your muscles and on those days it just makes sense to have more carbohydrates in your diet and probably more calories, but usually calorie cycling, carb cycling, I kind of use the two interchangeably because usually when I manipulate my clients or my calories, it's via carbohydrates. I don't really touch the other macros. I sometimes do move fat around for more advanced guys just depending on the situation, but for [00:12:30] the most part it's higher carbs and therefore higher calories on high output days and then lower carbs and therefore lower calories on lower output days, you can do carb cycling without manipulating calories.

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If you manipulate the other macros, you can basically eat the same amount, but sometimes you have higher carbs, other times lower carbs, and that can be more of a lifestyle thing. A lot of people feel like they can think more clearly, they feel sharper on lower carbohydrates, but also they want to train and get really good training sessions in and get great results and no matter what, [00:13:00] if you are after really quality training sessions and maximum muscle growth and just feeling vigorous with your physical expenditure, carbohydrates are going to absolutely be probably the number one factor for that as far as diet is concerned. But at the same time, maybe some days you don't really care as much about training, but you want to be really sharp. You want to think really clearly, you want to focus really well. A lot of people find they can do that better on lower carbohydrates, kind of keeping their insulin levels a [00:13:30] little bit lower throughout the day.

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And in that case, carb cycling could be used as well. The more niche population or the more niche I would say scenario that would be overrated would be influencers selling their carb cycling strategies or their carb cycling. Join my six week carb cycling challenge where everyone can just get shredded six pack abs in six weeks for the beach as if everybody is six weeks away from being shredded and going the [00:14:00] beach with a six pack. It's not some magic thing that just defies the laws of thermodynamics. It's not something that you're going to implement carb cycling and you're going to just get super jacked and super shredded at the same time. Yes, you can. Recomp takes a long time though. And also recomp for a lot of people is I kind of would prefer going through a gain phase than going through a cut phase or vice versa.

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For most people probably starting with a cut phase to get leaner so they're more insulin [00:14:30] sensitive than going into a gain phase would be a better option. But either way, whether you're eating in a calorie deficit, whether you're eating at maintenance, whether you're eating for performance, whether you're eating in a surplus, trying to gain muscle, honestly across the board, carb cycling can be very, very beneficial. And lastly, another great use case for it is a lot of people they prefer to eat more on certain days of the week. Maybe they have social obligations, they're going out on weekends and they prefer eating more carbohydrates, [00:15:00] more calories in general. And then when they're more busy during the week, they have an easier time just eating a little bit less overall and maybe eating lower carbs. Your body's not on this 24 hour clock where every single day you have to eat the same thing.

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You can cycle your calories up and down, and as long as the net result on a long-term basis, usually a week by week basis is a good way to track it. As long as it's hitting, whether you're looking to lose fat and you're in a deficit or you're at maintenance or you're in a surplus looking to gain, as long as those net [00:15:30] calories are appropriate, then you're going to hit your goals. So I really like carb cycling a lot if you couldn't tell. And again, it's not really something I would recommend for a brand new person who's never tracked macros before, but if you are a little more advanced training wise as well as tracking macros wise, it can be a great option. Next one, overrated, underrated. Push pull, leg split push pull leg split. The split itself is underrated, I think the way most people use it.

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However, [00:16:00] doing it six days a week is overrated. So why it's underrated generally splitting, especially if you're a little bit past your early intermediate stays, so like intermediate to more advanced, splitting different body parts up day by day would be a good idea. Generally speaking, I mean, you can absolutely do an upper lower, you can do a full body split and be totally fine. However, a lot of people really don't like training full body and adherence is a lot easier when you like what you're doing, you're looking forward [00:16:30] to it. I personally love going to the gym and doing a push day. I love going to the gym and doing a pull day. I love going to the gym and just doing a leg day. Not everyone's like that, but I do and a lot of people do prefer that, so splitting them up as such would be a totally fine option.

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I really, really like it a lot. If it's programmed well when it's not programmed well, AKA the way most people do it where they go six days per week, Monday through Saturday, push pull legs, push pull legs. [00:17:00] If you think about it, if you're training with any semblance of intensity, A, you're hitting your first leg day of the week, not too bad. It's after two upper body days, a push day and a pull day. However, there's some systemic fatigue involved in that. Just because you're not really training your legs on those days, it does not mean you're just not generally you're CNS is a little bit fatigued, you're systemically fatigued, you're a little bit mentally fatigued. So going into that first leg day, a little bit fatigued, not really all that ideal leg days should be if you're training [00:17:30] properly, your hardest training day, the day you want to focus most on and also just the most fatigue inducing day.

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So you want to be relatively fresh for most of your leg days, and that's the first leg day. Think about the second leg day after five straight days of training, two push days, two pull days and a leg day. And then, oh, by the way, on day six, you have to go hit legs again. There's no possible way that you can sustain quality leg days week after week after week. If you're training hard [00:18:00] at all in any form or especially a lot of guys will go and do a ton of volume, like tons and tons of sets on all of these days and going into that leg day, you're just going to be smoked, especially after a couple weeks of it with one rest day, that's just not enough time to recover and then hit those six straight days again, especially two if you're doing conditioning.

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Now, how to make it better. One, I like to change up the order a little bit. I like to start with legs because like I said, hitting legs [00:18:30] fresh is usually a good idea. You want to be relatively mentally fresh, able to focus, feeling physically good. So I would do something like legs, rest, push pull, rest, legs, rest, push, pull, rest. So it's going to be asynchronous, it's not going to be to the seven day work week you can make it. So it's to the seven day work week by doing a push pull legs AB where you go Monday, Wednesday, Friday, legs, push pull, hit your second leg day, your leg day B on Saturday, and then the following week is Monday, [00:19:00] Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and you're starting with, it would be push pull, legs push. So you're hitting basically one week you're hitting two leg days.

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One week you're hitting two push days. One week you're hitting two pull days. You can write this out. It kind of looks a little bit, it's easier to follow if you write it out, but I like that as well. So if you add some rest days in, and especially if you're doing a lot of conditioning as well or any conditioning really any performance-based conditioning, [00:19:30] as long as you're not doing it six days per week and you're not doing those leg days after multiple days of training for most people, if you're more advanced, you want to hit leg days after a rest day or a really light conditioning day or something like that. And then oftentimes if you're super advanced, you're really strong, you'll probably want a rest day after or a really easy conditioning day after your leg day as well. So just something to consider, push pull legs a great way to split up different body parts, but not a great application of it to do it six days per week, [00:20:00] most people do.

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Next one, overrated, underrated zone two. So this one is going to be interesting. I would say zone two, the actual zone itself is overrated thinking you have to be in this perfect heart rate to get the benefits of it all the time. The concept of doing low to moderate intensity training on a regular basis for a longer duration is I would say underrated or maybe properly rated because a lot of people are catching onto it these days, [00:20:30] but a lot of people kind of overthink the specific zone as if zone two is where all the adaptations happen, and if you go a little harder or a little easier, you're crossing some into no man's land and it's just defeating the purpose of the workout. Now, if you're trying to do zone two and you're running or doing a lot of high volume conditioning, you generally want to stay in that zone two.

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But if you go into zone three for five minutes out of a 90 minute zone two run or a zone two conditioning [00:21:00] session, it's not a big deal or seven minutes or 10 minutes or 11 minutes or whatever. It's not like you stop getting adaptations once you cross over zone two. And a lot of people think that it's like this perfect thing that you just have to nail every single time, and it's not. It's a spectrum. So you're getting these mitochondrial adaptations, you're getting the heart health adaptations, and you're getting, if you're doing something like running, you're getting the actual time on your feet that give you some soft tissue adaptation so you can tolerate that impact, that [00:21:30] repetitive stress. That's all really, really beneficial. But it's not like you have to hit this perfect window of heart rate every single time, again unless you're pushing the limits to the absolute max volume, almost max volume that you can possibly recover from.

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If you're a high level runner, yeah, you probably want to be very, very precise with your heart rates and your efforts, et cetera. But if you're not, you're just training for general physical fitness, general physical preparedness, and that involves some conditioning. [00:22:00] Don't feel like you have to hit this perfect little tiny zone. So for that reason, I would say zone two itself is overrated, but doing the type of training that most people consider zone two, low to moderate intensity, long duration on a regular basis would be underrated if not properly rated just because it's more popular. Next one, rice and grinds as a main source of carbs. I actually think this is underrated mainly because rice and grinds are just so easy digesting and if [00:22:30] you have any sort of gut health issues or if you struggle to digest things like whole grain products, brown rice or whole wheat bread or anything like that, which is honestly more people than most people realize, a lot of people don't digest those foods very well, and those foods do have more nutrients in them than things like white rice or rice and grinds.

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But it doesn't really matter if you're wrecking your gut every time you have it or if they're just pro-inflammatory for you, or if you eat a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, not that oatmeal [00:23:00] is bad, but some people, including myself, will eat a bowl of oatmeal and they'll want to take a nap afterwards. Ideally, you don't want to take a nap after breakfast. That's not an ideal breakfast. So if you can make a switch to an alternative like rice and grinds for breakfast or really anytime of day, even though you're not getting a ton of nutrients in that actual carb source, it's a great source of energy. It's a great way to kind of fill up your glycogen stores and it's easy digesting. You feel great afterwards. And also [00:23:30] you can get nutrients elsewhere if you're relying on your starches to get a good portion of your nutrients, micronutrients, I should say.

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Then the rest of your diet is all over the place. It's in shambles. If you eat plenty of animal products, both meat and animal flesh as well as things like eggs, dairy, and so on and so forth, you're getting a great wide variety of nutrients. If you eat plenty of fruits, if you eat plenty of vegetables, likewise, you're getting plenty of really [00:24:00] essential micronutrients for health, wellbeing, vigor, et cetera. So you shouldn't be relying on like, oh, I need all these other extra nutrients from my whole wheat bread or my oatmeal or whatever it's now, of course you can eat those things if you handle them well, but in my experience, a lot of guys don't. And therefore I would recommend considering an easier digesting carb source as your main source of carbs. And in my experience, the two easiest digesting carb sources are white rice, which doesn't have a lot of nutrients [00:24:30] and rice and grinds, I would say rice and grinds for me at least, and for some of my clients digest even easier than white rice, which is saying a lot because white rice is widely known as the easiest digesting carbohydrate in existence.

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So as long as you are also again eating those more nutrient dense foods alongside your rice and grinds. So for me, what I do is I mix some frozen berries as well as banana into it, and then I eat it with eggs, egg whites, et cetera, and I'm getting a nice mixed macronutrient meal with [00:25:00] plenty of micronutrients and I'm good to go. So I would say for me, 75 to 80% of my carbohydrate intake is probably white rice and rice and grinds. And then I also eat some potatoes and yams and I eat plenty of sourdough bread. Those are really the only carb sources besides fruit fruit's not really considered like a starch. It's more of a pseudo carb source. I mean, you're definitely going to get carbs from fruit, but if you're trying to get all your carbs from fruit, you're probably going to struggle.

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Just the fiber's really high. But I do that. [00:25:30] I feel great. My labs look great, and I perform really well, and I know plenty of people do the same thing. Honestly, you don't even need to eat carbohydrates, period to live your life. I mean, I would definitely recommend eating carbohydrates if you have performance goals and if you want to lift hard and train hard and so on and so forth, but you don't need to. So to say that you need some sort of starchy carb with a high nutrient profile wouldn't really be all that accurate. So [00:26:00] I say send it if you like Rice and grinds, a lot of people are hitting me about rice and grinds by the way, and I love it. Glad I'm turning you guys onto it. It is honestly just one of the best things ever invented for performance nutrition, so keep sending it.

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Next one, overrated, underrated, dedicated time for mobility and stretching. Overrated, especially in the tactical community, especially in the hybrid community. People think that it's just this thing that you have to do or else you're so screwed. The [00:26:30] main reason I think it's overrated is actually a couple of reasons. One, people over index it in that they think it's going to help them recover. Mobility makes you more mobile, stretching makes you more flexible. The main difference is mobility is like controlled range of motion. You have stability in that range of motion. Flexibility is more passive range of motion. So like bending over, touching your toes, that gravity is kind of doing the work there. And both of these things are definitely important. You want to be decently flexible. You want to be decently mobile, you want to be as mobile as you possibly [00:27:00] can be for what you like to do and what you need to do.

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You don't have to be as mobile as a Cirque de display dancer, but you got to be mobile enough to train with full range of motion and not get hurt anytime you get into an end range of something in an unexpected scenario. But you don't have to be extra, extra mobile. And the best way to improve your mobility is to lift weights with a full range of motion. And then beyond that, if you have shortcomings, which most people will do some dedicated mobility drills for the areas that you kind of fall short [00:27:30] for a lot of guys, it's shoulders, it's hips, it's ankles, and those are probably like the main one, upper back as well, thoracic mobility, but being more mobile and being more flexible don't have anything to do with recovery from training, they just don't. So doing a bunch of stretching, doing a bunch of mobility will make you more mobile and flexible, but it's not going to enhance your recovery, especially because a lot of guys will think that they have to do this and they dedicate a bunch of time to it, [00:28:00] and also they cut themselves short on sleep or they once in a while eat a thousand calories below their maintenance or they forget to drink water or they overtrain.

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They just train way, way, way too much, way, way, way too hard. And they try to use mobility sessions as a get out of jail free card. That's just not how it works. You're way better off for recovery, getting great sleep, getting great nutrition hydrating, managing your stress, and also of course managing your training load. So that's one reason. Another reason some guys will, [00:28:30] I call these mobility kings, I've talked about it in the past, but just to rehash it, guys will go to the gym for say a 90 minute session and they'll spend either just as much time or more time warming up than they do training, and their warmups are usually like weird mobility drills and whatnot. The things that's going to move the needle the most is your actual productive training, the stress you're putting on your system, whatever you're trying to do that day, whether it's strength or power or speed or agility or endurance, that's what's going to move the needle.

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So if you're spending [00:29:00] half of your gym time doing mobility or even more, I've seen guys go to the gym for 90 minutes and spend 60 of those minutes doing prep in mobility and a lot of people call it prehab and maybe they add another 10 minutes to the cool down so they get like 20 to 30 minutes of actual training that is stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. That is terrible prioritization if you have time in your day to do some extra mobility in the morning or the evening or whatever it is. And also [00:29:30] you can do a brief warmup that gets you prepped but isn't some crazy overkill thing, way less time than it takes you to actual train, great. But if you are over indexing mobility that much where it's pretty much limiting your actual fitness gains because you're just not spending enough time or effort or bandwidth on the actual training that's going to move the needle, then that's a major problem as well.

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And lastly, some guys will do all these cool mobility drills. They'll get super duper mobile, [00:30:00] but then they go and they don't lift with a full range of motion. They don't get into a deep squat, they don't get into a deep press, they don't lock out their pull-ups, they don't go all the way to a dead, hang on, pull-ups. What is the point of doing all that mobility if you are not even lifting with a full range of motion, which by the way would make it so that you don't have to do as much mobility? It just blows my mind, it bewilders me. And again, it's not a bad thing to dedicate time to mobility, just make sure that it's not like your number one priority unless your priority [00:30:30] is just to be a mobility king. You want to be super mobile but you don't really care about performance, sure, do a bunch of mobility but don't over index it such that you are limiting your fitness gains because you're doing so much mobility and not enough actual training.

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So that's my thoughts on mobility. Next one, overrated. Underrated, Voodoo's five by five. Alright, so TF Voodoo, Dave Walton, great dude, love him. He is known for creating a workout called the five by five. Essentially what it is [00:31:00] is a five mile ruck or 100 squats with that ruck five mile run, 100 air squats all basically the clock starts when you step off for the ruck. It doesn't finish till you do your last air squat. So it's all this one big workout run squat, or sorry, ruck squat, run squat, and I think it's overrated for a training modality. I think it is a probably properly rated if not underrated for a benchmark session where you test yourself to see how [00:31:30] much you've improved over the last however long since you've done the last one. I give one of my clients every so often just to see how far they've come.

(00:31:38):

So doing it in training, it's just not very specific. So if you want to get better at rucking, if you want to maximize your rucking progress, doing structured ruck training as a standalone thing would be a much better option. So a seven mile ruck, a nine mile ruck, 130 minute ruck, whatever, if you like to use distance or duration with certain pacing strategies. [00:32:00] So if you're training for selection, absolutely throw some running portions in ruck running portions. If you're not training for selection, you're just rucking for general fitness, I personally do not recommend ruck running just randomly for your regular training and your regular fitness. Again, unless you're three or four months from selection, then you can actually start doing ruck runs because you're going to need to be fast under a ruck. A lot of guys are against it. I am not against it.

(00:32:23):

I think it's definitely a good idea to go to selection and go and try and crush. And by the way, to crush, you're going to have to do some ruck [00:32:30] running to get better at running. The best way to do that is structured running training kind of as a standalone thing. So repeats tempo, work long runs, long runs with quality hill work, et cetera to get stronger legs and just be a more capable individual lower body wise. The best way to do that is structured strength training. So three by five to seven squats and things like four by five dead lifts or something like that and other accessory [00:33:00] movements in the gym where you're training somewhat close to failure to get stronger. You don't want to be training a failure every time to get more jacked. You want to be pretty close to failure with most lifts.

(00:33:08):

There's definitely some nuances. Not every lift should be taken to failure and so on and so forth. I've talked about that a lot in the past, but essentially what this is doing, oh, and lastly, the muscle endurance aspect. In order to improve your muscle endurance for rucking, the best way to do that is rucking to improve your muscular endurance for running. The best way to do that is running. It's very, very specific. So doing [00:33:30] all these high rep squats with a ruck on and without a ruck on, yes, it's going to definitely fatigue you and it can be a good idea to pre fatigue your leg sometimes by doing high rep lunges, squats, et cetera before your runs. But it should be very, very intentional and specific and it should not be every single time you run, but those high rep squats are not going to really translate to leg muscular endurance for running a rucking.

(00:33:55):

So what this workout is is kind of putting them all into one and because you're [00:34:00] not doing these things standalone, you're doing these things as all combined into one workout, you're not going to get the same results. And also this workout is very, very fatiguing if you go hard and most people with type A personalities are just going to go hard unless they have some sort of structure and they're able to modulate their intensity and kind of hold back generally as far as I know, this workout is supposed to be every time you do it, you want to beat your last time and that's just not sustainable and it's more fatiguing than it is actually [00:34:30] stimulating versus doing these workouts most of the time as standalone. And then maybe every six weeks or every eight weeks, you test yourself on more of a gut check.

(00:34:39):

I would consider this more of a gut check workout than like a training workout. So for that reason I would say overrated as a regular workout but underrated and super fun and enjoyable and exciting to look forward to as a benchmark testing type session, time trial type thing. I do five by [00:35:00] fives every six weeks in my T eight 50 program. I don't do them, but I have it as an option. You can do it every six weeks. We have a testing week, I do new blocks every six weeks, and at the end of each block there's a bunch of time trials and Gym maxes and things like that, and five by fives are in there. You can check the link in the description for that program if you're interested, but that's my thoughts on the five by five Love voodoo, but I'm not a fan of doing that on a regular basis.

(00:35:25):

Next one is leg blasters overrated, underrated, and he wrote in here 20 [00:35:30] squats, 20 lunges, 10 jumping squats, 10 jumping lunges, and oftentimes guys will do this multiple sets in succession and I would say highly overrated unless you are training for a leg blaster competition or a competition of some kind that involves a ton of high rep lifting slash jumping involved in it, and I don't really know many competitions that have that. Just going back to the last one, doing all of these high rep lunges and squats and especially jumps, they're [00:36:00] not really going to get you what you think they're going to get you. They're not specific. If you're trying to do this for leg muscle gains, you're much better off lifting in a hypertrophy rep range in the gym. If you're doing this for strength gains, you're doing way too many reps and you're not resting long enough.

(00:36:14):

It's definitely more of a specific muscular endurance workout, but again, you're going to get better muscular endurance for these actual things, not necessarily running, not necessarily rucking compared to running for leg muscle endurance and rucking for muscle endurance. [00:36:30] So oftentimes these are in programs just to make people really tired and feel accomplished like they just did something really hard. There are lots and lots of things that you can do to make yourself feel tired, but just because you feel tired does not mean you're doing something beneficial for yourself. Oftentimes things like finishers and crazy metcons that are just super long or just have really high skill lifts or you're just chasing the fatigue, oftentimes you're just going to get more fatigued than actually [00:37:00] stimulus from it, and that's not really ideal if your goal is to actually improve at specific things. So a periodic leg blaster maybe doing this, I would not do the jumps by the way.

(00:37:11):

Jumps for high reps, especially under fatigue after you've already done these high rep squats and lunges. Jumping for cardio is not an ideal thing. It's more of a plyometric power thing to get the most out of jumps and to keep them safe. You want to keep rep ranges low and you want to do max effort and you want [00:37:30] to go into them not fatigued from other stuff that you just did that's ideal for jumps unless of course you're jump roping, that's a little bit different. That's more of a cardio thing or doing pogo hops or really, really low hops that aren't very impactful, that's one thing, but throwing in jump lunges and jump, what is it? Jump squats and jump lunges after you're already smoked from leg blasters, especially if you do multiple sets of this. Not very intelligent. So for that reason, all those reasons I would say leg blasters are overrated.

(00:37:58):

They can be used as a pre [00:38:00] fatigue method occasionally if you want to prete your legs before you do a run or something like that just to get used to running on fatigue legs, that's one thing, but it wouldn't be something I would recommend doing regularly. Next one, overrated. Underrated b jj to get some extra cardio. I would say underrated because BJJ is not just cardio, it's also really good mental training. It's community based, like you're hanging out with the boys, you're moving your body in ways that most people don't move their body. There's a competition [00:38:30] component to it. There's a cool manly fighting component to it. And so yeah, it's great for cardio too, but even better for all of those other things. I would say B JJ would be awesome. I personally am not into it and I don't really plan on getting into it, but I know some people who are and I think it's really freaking awesome.

(00:38:51):

Now, if you're training for selection or something like that and you're a couple months out and you want to really maximize your selection chances, that would be a solid time to put BJJ [00:39:00] on the side burner and it's not going anywhere. You can pick it back up when you're done that way, you're focusing on more specific selection qualities like rucking, running general strength, et cetera. You're not putting yourself at risk to hurt yourself. I know the better your rolling partners are, the less likely you are to hurt yourself. The better you are, the less likely you are to hurt yourself. But it's always possible and it's just an extra added fatigue that can interfere with your more needle moving training. The training that's really important for selection prep. But [00:39:30] other than that, if you're into B jj, I think there's so many great aspects of it that I would say absolutely continue doing it or if you're thinking about starting, it might be a really solid thing to do, but it's not just limited to b jj.

(00:39:45):

If you want to go play pickup hockey or pick up basketball or you want to go golf with the boys or you want to play pickleball, whatever, it's, these are all great kind of fun play things like adults in my opinion just don't play enough. They don't do anything that's enjoyable [00:40:00] and mentally challenging and involve some decision-making, involves some change of directions, involves some overall athleticism and things like BJJ and the other things I just listed involve all those things and it's really, really good for you overall. And again, the community aspect is huge too. You're making friends with your fellow BJJ players. I don't know what BJJ role mates, I don't know what it's called. Someone's probably trying to hit the computer right now, but anyway, you're [00:40:30] communicating with people, you are laughing, probably you're joking around, you are getting serious when you're about to roll or you're about to do a serious drill or whatever it is.

(00:40:39):

And all that stuff is super beneficial for your overall health, wellness, longevity, especially your mental health. So I'm all for it. Next one, overrated, underrated running in kit. Overrated running in kit, and this is coming from someone who used to run in kit basically at least once a week, sometimes more than that for regular training, not [00:41:00] even training for something that involved running in kit. Here's the deal. Most people have at best like mediocre so-so running technique, running mechanics, and a lot of people are worse than that. Some people have absolutely dog shit running mechanics and when you add load to your frame on already not ideal mechanics, you are just exposing yourself to more and more impact and eccentric stress and increasing your injury risk. And yes, it [00:41:30] makes running harder, it makes breathing harder and maybe doing it for short sprints or if you're doing some sort of stress shoot or preparing for some sort of stress shoot or if you're preparing for something that's going to involve a kit run, doing it during a short period of time leading into that, it's probably a good option.

(00:41:46):

But doing it on a regular basis, just because it makes running harder does not mean it's a good thing. There are tons and tons of other ways to make running harder that are either not any more impactful than regular running or even less impactful. For [00:42:00] example, running uphill makes running harder and also it reduces impact. So whether you're doing longer hill repeats or you're doing short hill sprints, running uphill will make running hard and it will reduce the impact because every time you step your foot is landing above the normal running surface. If you think about flat versus a little bit of an incline, also it shortens your stride. Also, it makes it so that the acceleration and the deceleration, it kind of puts a rate limiter on it. So [00:42:30] you are not honestly, like most people get injured when they're starting their runs or when they're finishing their runs.

(00:42:35):

If they're running really hard and really fast, the hill decelerates for you and also you can't accelerate as fast because you're going uphill gravity and things like that. So there's lots of different benefits to going uphill. You can also run harder. Just running faster or harder will make running harder. So I would say walking the kit, absolutely, totally fine. Going for a ruck where you walk, [00:43:00] unless you're training for selection, again, totally fine, but trying to make running harder and breathing harder by putting kit on and going for a long run and doing this on a regular basis, again, if you're not training for something specific, would just be needless and overkill and not what I recommend for most people. Next one, overrated, underrated Titan supplements. SOCOM stacks. Okay, so I am not super privy to everything that they offer, but I do know they offer SARMs and they're a popular thing among core students and [00:43:30] probably maybe group guys, I don't know, maybe even other branches.

(00:43:33):

Here's the deal about SARMs. SARMs are kind of like a knockoff of actual real anabolics real steroids, and also they don't have prolonged human trials on SARMs. I do know because I've seen it among a lot of my buddies and teammates and guys in the Q course. I've seen labs of guys coming off SARMs or even late in a sarm cycle. It is not good. It's a dumpster fire. Their lipids are all jacked up. Cholesterol [00:44:00] is super high, their liver enzymes are all out of whack, really, really high, not great. Their testosterone is often very, very low because it shuts you down. Even though it's not testosterone, it still can act as almost like a pseudo testosterone in that it shuts your natural production down, not forever necessarily, but for the time being and afterwards, you're going to feel terrible. Additionally, you might gain a little bit of strength depending on what you take.

(00:44:26):

You might gain a little bit of endurance. It might give you a little extra boost, but A, [00:44:30] it's really short-lived. It's only going to happen while you're on that cycle. It's not going to continue to happen afterwards. And B, it's nowhere near as much as doing a testosterone cycle or something similar or maybe a couple different things. Not saying that you should do that instead, but I am saying if you had to choose, if no matter what you're going to use peds, why not use the real stuff that's going to A give you better results? B, it's been studied on humans. It's been being used for a really long period of time. D, it's [00:45:00] not oral or C, C or D. It's not oral, so it's not going to mess with your liver. I mean there are definitely oral peds like real steroids. What is it called?

(00:45:12):

Var. A lot of people take var. It's kind of like a mild steroid and that can mess with your liver a little bit, but doing injectable stuff, it's not really going to pass the liver, so it's not going to really mess that. It can mess up your lipids. If you take testosterone, it's going to shut you down. So again, I'm not recommending to do this, but if you're going to do it no matter what, [00:45:30] why not take the real stuff that actually works really well? So I have just seen lots of firsthand experience with guys not getting what they wanted out of his arms. Maybe they get a little bit more jacked. They oftentimes retain a lot of water, so a lot of the weight that they gain, even though they look more jacked, it's just intracellular water in the muscle cells. And then again, as soon as they come off, you're eventually going to have to come off or else you're just going to ruin your health when you come off.

(00:45:56):

Even if you do do a post psychotherapy, you're [00:46:00] still probably not going to fare all that well for a while. So it's like this very temporary pleasure thing, almost like scrolling on Instagram, even though you're going to feel terrible afterwards and it's not all it's cracked up to be. I would consider S SARMs to be a little bit longer term because you're on 'em for, I don't know, 8, 10, 12 weeks. But it's a similar thing. You're just trading future success and future health and eventually probably getting to the same place. It's just going to take you longer if you stay natural for [00:46:30] temporary pseudo success that you think is like, oh, cool, I look super jacked. I am performing really well. I'm always stronger, but it's not very long lasting. So I would steer clear of SARMs in general. I know a lot of people are going to do it anyway, but it's in my opinion, a huge mistake.

(00:46:50):

And if you're going to do something like that, why the fuck not? Use the actual real stuff that is going to give you better results and also is safer and more effective. [00:47:00] Next one, overrated, underrated, intuitive rest days. It depends on the population overall. If you're very in tune with your body and you're objective about your training and you've trained for a long period of time and you're just really, really dialed in, intuitive rest days is a really good idea. However, telling a lot of people to do intuitive rest days just ends up being, I'm never going to take a rest day. I always feel like a constraint, especially type A guys that are hard charging that think the more they do the better and they don't [00:47:30] have a great understanding or a full understanding of what it means to actually recover and allow your body to grow and progress and adapt, which oh by the way, doesn't happen while you're training for them.

(00:47:43):

Not the best idea. Believe me, I have been in the intuitive rest day camp before and what ended up happening is I barely ever took rest days and I sold myself short on potential fitness gains. So there's a certain population that these can be great. There's [00:48:00] another population where scheduling your rest days and actually adhering to that schedule would be a good idea. Now if something acute happens, even if you have scheduled rest days and something like you have a really bad night of sleep or you're super duper stressed out, or maybe for whatever reason you eat half the calories you normally do, it would be a really good idea to either take a rest day or dial it back significantly when things like that happen. In that case, the act of doing it would be underrated, like [00:48:30] a really good idea. That being said, again, not a lot of people are going to do that.

(00:48:34):

Actually, I shouldn't say not a lot of people period, because a lot of people period would just take way too many rest days. And that's another issue with this one is like if you struggle with consistency and you are just afraid that you're going to overtrain and you don't train anywhere near hard enough to be even close to over-training, you look for excuses to not train intuitive. Rest days are a terrible idea. You're always just going to convince yourself that you need [00:49:00] a rest day. Most people listening to this are not like that, but I figured I'd cover that one. So either way, if you are in tune enough with your body and you're smart and something crazy happens in your life that makes it so that you probably shouldn't train, you're not going to really recover, you're not going to get much from that workout, nor are you going to recover really well.

(00:49:17):

Taking that intuitive rest day would be a great idea, but the actual practical application of it is a lot easier said than done, at least for guys that I've been around, at least for my former self as well. So overall, partially [00:49:30] underrated, partially overrated. Next one, overrated, underrated, pre-workout, highly overrated. Mostly because a lot of guys will take pre-workout, but they will forget about all of the other things to do around their training that will actually really move the needle as far as getting them as maximally prepared for that training session as possible. The best three things you can do for pre-workout are make sure your carbohydrate source is proper, the timing, the dose of carbs that you're getting [00:50:00] prior to training, making sure you're well hydrated, water sodium especially, but all electrolytes are important and getting a great night of sleep the night before, honestly, getting continuous great nights of sleep leading into that training session, that is absolutely going to enhance your training performance more than any pre-workout in the entire world, like by a long shot.

(00:50:20):

And it's also going to enhance your recovery, especially if you follow up your workout by rehydrating and getting carbs in, getting some protein in and getting a [00:50:30] good night of sleep. Those will move the needle way more than just loading up with stimulants that are in pre-workout focused formulas and pump formulas and whatnot. Also, the stimulants that are in that will kind of keep you in a sympathetic state for a lot longer after your training session than otherwise. And being in a sympathetic state, a fight or flight state is great while you're training. And believe me, taking stimulants prior to your training session once in a while is totally fine getting ramped up for it. What I would do is just add some black coffee to the three things I just talked about, [00:51:00] and you're going to be a little better off. You're not going to be quite as ramped up and you're not going to be as ramped up for as long after your training session.

(00:51:07):

You need to be in a rest and digest parasympathetic state to recover. The faster after your workout, you can get into that state the better. So if you're taking 300 milligrams of caffeine or more than that, some of these pre-workouts these days have more than that, or they have a bunch of different types of caffeine or they have caffeine and other stimulants mixed in. It's just going to ramp you up. You're going to feel good for your training session [00:51:30] and probably after, but you are kind of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies because you're not going to recover as well. Again, recovery is super important. You have to train hard, but you also have to rest hard in order to make the progress that you want. So I would say a lot of guys also get kind of addicted or very, maybe not addicted, but more reliant pre-workouts.

(00:51:52):

They almost can't do their workout or they really, really struggle to do their workout without taking their pre-workouts. That can be a problem too. You don't [00:52:00] want to be reliant on any other substance. You should be able to go train and get a good training session in maybe not a right home to mama training session, but a solid effective training session that is enough to give you the stimulus you want and also allows you to recover and adapt from it without really taking anything exogenously other than again, just being hydrated. Well fed, well rested. So for that reason, I would say pre-workout is highly overrated. You can use it. I would say if you're going to use it, I [00:52:30] would use it just a couple times a week for a couple sessions, and also I would make sure you're not cranking a bunch of caffeine on your other days.

(00:52:37):

So you're just always super highly caffeinated. You're taking 500, 600, 700 milligrams of caffeine every day. A, you're not going to really feel your pre-workout all that much. B, you're probably going to be super tired and run down because you're just over sympathetic. You're just fight or flight way too often. So it's going to be really hard for you to get up and work out without just cranking more stimulants and kind of kicking the can [00:53:00] down the road, making it worse and worse and worse over time. Not to mention this stuff can affect sleep. You might not sleep as well, you probably won't sleep as well if you're taking pre-workout all the time and you're cranking a ton of caffeine. So it's just kind of a slippery slope to take it on a regular basis. And for that reason I would say take it once in a while if you want, but overrated overall.

(00:53:22):

Next, overrated, underrated, doing intervals on an assault bike slash rower, et cetera. Instead of running. I would say this is underrated, [00:53:30] especially if you don't have running goals, if you have running goals, doing intervals, most of them should probably be running repeats, even some short sprints, whatever it may be. But if you just have general fitness goals, I would recommend and you don't care about running at all, I would recommend doing them, not running for more people than doing them running. Again, going back to the kit running thing, most people just don't have great running form, and it'd be one thing if people were willing to treat it as a skill and improve their running form, but in my experience, most people don't. They just [00:54:00] continue running on bad form and they don't do anything about it because everyone goes into their training sessions thinking, I need to get a workout rather than I need to actually improve my skill and get better at this.

(00:54:10):

And yes, sometimes that's beneficial going and focusing on getting a workout versus getting more skilled at something. But if you are doing something like running that is a high skill activity and the cost of having a skill breakdown or a mechanical breakdown is potentially not just slower runtimes, but also maybe getting [00:54:30] injured, an overuse injury of some kind, that can be a problem. So for the majority of humans, maybe not most people listening to this, but majority of humans in the world, they'd be way better off doing it on an air bike or a rower or a skier or something similar like that that allows you to go really hard but isn't impactful and doesn't require a ton of skill. And also the cost. I would say rowing does definitely require some skill to do it properly. Most people just again, don't care, but the cost of doing rowing with poor skill [00:55:00] is a lot less problematic.

(00:55:03):

You're less likely to hurt yourself if your rowing form sucks versus if you're running form sucks because there's no impact. So because of those things, I would say highly underrated and if you don't care about running, I would lean towards doing intervals, at least most of them on a non-running modality. Next one, overrated, underrated icing for shin splints. Highly overrated. So icing is kind of an old wives tale at this point. Icing will [00:55:30] reduce inflammation. Yes. So say you have shin splints and tomorrow you have to go run for whatever reason. Maybe you're doing a multi-day event or something like that. You have access to ice and you want to go perform tomorrow. Icing can be a good solid solution to that because it's going to blunt inflammation, but because it blunts inflammation, inflammation is part of the recovery and adaptation process. It's an important part of it.

(00:55:54):

So if you blunt that you're literally just prolonging how long it's going to take you to actually recover and heal, [00:56:00] I like to use the heuristic icing helps you feel better, but not heal better. Same thing with NSAIDs. Anything like Advil or other, they're going to make you feel better, but they're going to reduce inflammation and therefore prolong how long it takes you to heal and recover and adapt and get back to baseline. It's like to maximize muscle growth, you generally don't want to take an ice bath within a couple hours of finishing your training session because it's blunting that recovery process basically [00:56:30] by reducing inflammation. For shin splints, you want to kind of go with a root cause approach. Generally that's going to be a, you stop running for a little while, you do some cross training and allow your shin splints to heal over time by not icing them.

(00:56:46):

You can definitely keep active and you can walk if it's not painful. You want blood flow down there, but you also don't want to continue subjecting them to impact by running on them. That's just going to prolong how long it takes them to heal. But from [00:57:00] there, you want to really, when you get back into running, ease back into it and also treat running as a skill like I was saying earlier, if you treat running as a skill and you work on most of the time, especially if you're shin splint prone, you get back into running your first several runs back, shouldn't be like, I have to go run this pace for this amount of time. They should be, I need to go work on my cadence. I need to improve my running mechanics. Maybe my upper body's all over the place. Maybe I need to fill myself and maybe send it to an expert so they can give me some [00:57:30] gate advice, gate analysis so I can improve.

(00:57:33):

Most people, like I said, just continue to run on their poor mechanics, and if you do that every single time you get back into running after you have shin splints or runner's knee or Achilles tendonitis or other things in the lower legs that bother guys who run, you're just always going to be prone to getting them. So what I would do is take some time off, do some cross training, do some walking if it doesn't bother you. But when you get back into running, really, really take the skill aspect seriously, do some strides, [00:58:00] do some running drills, potentially a skip B skips, and just be more mindful when you're running. A lot of people will distract themselves, they'll put some crank up music on or they'll listen to something while they're running and that's fine once in a while. It's totally fine if you have great running mechanics and it's just natural to you, but if not, you're just distracting yourself and you should be focusing on the actual act of running and doing it very well.

(00:58:24):

And for most people, honestly, it's just bringing their cadence up. In almost every case. [00:58:30] When I get a new client, their cadence is significantly lower than I'd like to see it, and we have to work on bringing it up. The best way to do that, honestly, you don't have to do anything crazy. The best way to bring your cadence up is every time you run, try and get another step or two per minute. Over time, you're going to work your way up. A mistake a lot of people make is they know their cadence is low. Say their cadence is like one 50 and they hear, I got to get my cadence up to 1 75, 180, which is a pretty solid range, but they'll throw the metronome on a metronome app or whatever [00:59:00] that beats at a certain beats per minute to match up to your steps per minute, and they'll throw it on 1 75, 180 and they'll go in one run from every other run in their lives.

(00:59:12):

They have gone 150 steps a minute in the next run, they'll go at 175 to 180 a minute. That is not ideal. That is a massively novel stressor to your body. You're just not used to it. And even though eventually you want to get there, you don't want to get there in one run because it's just going to throw your body [00:59:30] for a loop and you're probably going to hurt yourself even though your cadence is where it should be. Eventually doing that in one run is not a very good idea and guys do that a lot, so I figured I I'd mentioned that one. But icing shin splints, highly overrated. Honestly icing anything again, unless you have a competition or you have to perform the next day for whatever reason is overrated. I would much rather see someone take some time off and do some light blood flow, AKA walk, maybe some tib raises, some calf raise, definitely some tib raises and calf [01:00:00] raises to strengthen that area and ease back into running and treat it as a skill.

(01:00:05):

Next one. Alright, let's do a couple nerd out ones to finish this off. We're going to do some equipment talk. So lifting equipment first one is prime. I would say Prime is the best equipment line in the world to be honest with you. However would I say it's overrated or underrated? I would say it's underrated for people who don't really know much about equipment but would benefit from using better equipment even if they don't even realize [01:00:30] they're using this amazing equipment underrated for them. Most people don't even have any give a fuck about lifting equipment, machines, et cetera, and they just get on 'em. Oftentimes, they don't even mess with the settings or anything like that. They just go and they lift and they check the block. Big mistake in my opinion, actually taking some time to set up the machine properly and adjust some settings would be a really good idea.

(01:00:51):

But prime equipment, even if you don't do that, you're still going to get some great stimulus from it and it's probably not going to mess you up. You'd be better off if you did make those adjustments. But [01:01:00] for the average person who doesn't care about it, underrated for people who are equipment nerds or really into machines like I am and a lot of people are a lot in the, I wouldn't say a lot of people are more of a niche thing, but I would say it's properly rated just because most people I think would agree that prime equipment is the top of the line. I don't think anyone can touch it. They do fall short on certain ones, like their incline press, their plate loaded. Incline press is not my favorite, that's really all I can think of off the top of my head. But [01:01:30] their leg extension, their leg curl, their dip machine, their row, honestly, their chest supported row is definitely the best one on the market and so on and so forth.

(01:01:41):

There's lots of different machines that they have that are freaking great are just top of the line. So I'd say they're properly rated, but if you have access to prime stuff, by the way, it's really easy to identify prime stuff. If your machines are black and green, then it's probably a prime machine and you are a really lucky person. I don't have any prime machines in my gym, but [01:02:00] every time I go to a gym that has prime stuff, I go way off my plan and just try and hit as many lifts on prime stuff as I possibly can just because it's that awesome. Next one, arsenal Equipment Arsenal is overrated, highly overrated. They only have a few machines that are really solid. Their leg press is great, their presses are okay. I don't mind their slight incline press. I'm not a fan of their steeper incline press.

(01:02:25):

Their T-bar row kind of sucks. Their chest supported row kind of sucks. Basically most of their equipment [01:02:30] is not great, but some of it's really, really, really top of the line. I am convinced, fully convinced that they have two engineers that make their machines. One guy is a biomechanics expert and he also lifts himself. He probably tests the machines out after he builds them. The other guy is probably really good at engineering things in general, but probably doesn't lift, probably doesn't know much about biomechanics. And I would say the guy who doesn't know much about biomechanics and doesn't lift probably makes a good 75% of their machines [01:03:00] and the other guy makes 25% of the machines. That's at least what it looks like to me because some of their machines are amazing. Some of them miss the mark by a mile. So for that reason, and I say they're overrated because a lot of people just aren't privy to this.

(01:03:16):

They're not quite as nerdy as I am or as some machine nerds are, so they don't really understand that. They're just like, oh, arsenal expensive. Other Arsenal stuff's good. This whole gym is a really nice gym and it has tons of arsenal stuff, so it must [01:03:30] be really good. And that's not really the case. I have tons of Arsenal stuff in my gym and most of it is either decent or just trash. So for that reason, overrated. Next one, Atlantis Equipment. Atlantis equipment is properly rated, I would say would say properly rated. Atlantis is probably number two behind prime. So without boring you guys to death, because I know not everyone's into machines like I am, I would say [01:04:00] Atlantis is number two. The Atlantis pendulum squat is probably the number one or number two pendulum squats in existence. Their hack squats amazing. Their presses are really good, their rows are really good.

(01:04:11):

So I would say Atlantis is right behind prime as far as top of the line machines. Alright, let's do one more. Recovery runs overrated. Going back to the poor run mechanics thing when you were going out for a workout, any sort of workout, even if it's really light, [01:04:30] it's going to be a stressor on your body. So you got to factor that in any sort of recovery workout in general, unless you're staying in zone one, basically just above walking, maybe you're going to have at least a little bit of a recovery cost from that training session. So if you have to recover from your training session, it's not a recovery session. You shouldn't have to recover from your recovery workout. Furthermore, if running is the modality you choose, unless you're a top tier, high level runner, a lot of people will argue like, [01:05:00] oh, all these running programs and all these big time, high level runners do recovery runs.

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Why are you so against recovery runs? Because they're big time, high level runners. They're really, really skilled. They're very, very good at running. The stress that an easy run causes to a really pristine running mechanics individual versus the average person that has far from pristine running mechanics is night and day. So they can go out for an easy run and it doesn't really beat their joints up, it just gives 'em a little blood flow. They [01:05:30] actually stay in zone one even though their zone one is probably faster than most people's zone two, maybe even zone three for them relatively, it is more recovery promoted. I still would argue that they'd probably get better recovery if they did cross training for that session or if they walked just kind of like did a brisk walk or something like that. It'd be less impact, but still it can be potentially beneficial for a very high level runner.

(01:05:54):

For most people, they don't need to add more training in order to recover. If you're already [01:06:00] training like kind of burning at both ends, you're training super hard. You're maybe doing three or four lifts a week, three or four conditioning sessions a week, you're doing some speed work, some long runs, some tempo work, lower body upper body lifting. Adding another run in that week for recovery purposes just doesn't really pass the common sense test because you're going to have to recover from that session. Even if it's very light, it's still going to have some sort of cost to it. And the main cost, again, in this case, beyond just the fact that [01:06:30] it's an actual workout, is the impact component. You're exposing yourself to more impact and more eccentric stress. So for the most part, I would say for almost everyone, definitely everyone listening to this recovery runs are overrated.

(01:06:43):

If you want to recover better and you're not sleeping seven to nine hours a night at relatively similar times, wake up in bedtime. If you are not eating properly, if you're not eating enough calories, if you're not eating enough carbs, if you're not eating enough protein, if you're eating way too much fat, which is pretty common for a lot of people, [01:07:00] if you are not managing your stress well, if you are not managing your overall training load well, but you think recovery runs are going to help you recover, you are completely missing the forest for the trees. Get those things dialed in. If you end up getting to where you're a very, very high skilled runner and you have great mechanics and you think a recovery run might help you, you can give them a try. But for the most part, nobody has any business doing recovery runs.

(01:07:25):

Almost nobody has business doing recovery runs. If you want to go for an easy run, that's one thing, [01:07:30] but don't consider it a recovery run because it's probably not helping you recover. You're probably going to have to recover from it even if it's a little bit. And that's it guys. I am Dun skis with this one. I really had a fun doing that one. Thank you guys for the awesome topics. I'll probably do another one somewhat soon. I might even make a part two because I got quite a few topics. I'll have to look. But I am again probably going to make some more single topic episodes here coming up. And I've got some interviews coming up I'm super pumped for. I'm going on some other people's podcasts, [01:08:00] so I'll be sure to share that as they come out. But thanks guys for tuning in. Hope you have an awesome week. And again, check out that program. It's on sale if you're interested. Talk soon later.