Ep. 204 - Q&A: Gut Health, Carnivore Diet, Shin Splints, Strength Loss on a Cut, PEDs & SARMs + More

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Yo, what's going on guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is going to be a q and a episode. I feel like it's been a little while since I've done a q and a, used to do q and as all the time. It probably hasn't been that long, but either way, we're going to do a q and a today. I actually got a lot of questions. Usually I get a lot of questions, but I got some questions that are a lot less redundant than usual, so there'll be some solid questions that I haven't addressed in a little bit throughout this episode, and I'm looking forward to it before we hop in. [00:00:30] The soft prep bundle is on sale, so every single item in the soft prep bundle, which includes all three Jack Ls, both run programs and both selection prep programs, it's actually easy to say it that way instead of listing 'em all out.

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So Jack L 1, 2, 3, 2 and five run advanced and ruck run Lift and SFAS are all on sale. 25% off that is an automatic sale, so if you [00:01:00] want any single one of those programs, oh, additionally in there is the soft prep recovery guide that's also in there ebook 67 page ebook. That will make any of the programs that you follow a lot more effective because it'll show you how to do the right things outside of training, which are equally important. Honestly, probably more important just because a lot of guys really struggle with those things. So anyway, that's all 25% off. There's a bunch of codes and links in the description down below. You can get any single one of those items. You don't have [00:01:30] to get the entire bundle. You can pick and choose and go from there, but that will be on sale for approximately five to six days. I'm not exactly sure a hundred percent when this podcast is coming out, but it'll be about five to six days after it releases. That sale will continue. Jump on it. If you're interested in a program or multiple programs, now's your time to do it. Go from there. So anyway, let's hop into today's questions.

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First question, if [00:02:00] you're doing long runs on a trail, should you walk up the steep uphills to stay in zone two? You could if you want. I mean, it depends on your fitness levels. If you can stay in zone two and you maybe run really slowly up the hills fine, or maybe if you just go into zone three for a little bit, technically in zone three based on your heart rate, you're probably going to be totally fine. It depends on how much you're running. If you're running a ton and maybe you're struggling to recover or you're just doing a high workload overall and running is part of it, that's [00:02:30] one thing. But in general, if you have a couple of iacc sense and either you walk to stand zone two based on your heart rate or you don't walk, maybe you go at a nice slow jog and you cross into zone three, you're probably going to be fine.

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If you're really struggling to recover, might be a good idea to dial it back and it's probably not just your zone two run that is pushing you over the limit, but it could be a factor. But I talked about this in a recent [00:03:00] overrated, underrated episode about how zone two, like actual zone two looking at your heart rate on a watch is kind of bastardized at this point. It's been bastardized just a lot of people think it's like this perfect target that you need to hit no matter what. You have to be in zone two for your zone two run to matter, and it's more of a spectrum. If you go a little bit higher than zone two on some of your runs, not a big deal. Even if the run is supposed to be aerobic zone two, long base building run, whatever [00:03:30] you want to call it, still usually fine.

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If you are a little below zone two also totally fine. You don't need to have this perfect range target that you hit every single time. You're still getting a lot out of it, and if you're spending say 80% of your zone two session legitimately like in zone three, higher ends of zone three, a lot of people do because they don't like their pace to kind of stay aerobic because they're [00:04:00] starting out and their pace is slow compared to other people and they care too much about their pace and so on and so forth. That's not a great thing, but to think that one hill ascent or a couple hills ascent that puts you a little bit higher heart rate are going to kill you. It's not really the case and I wouldn't worry too much about it. So long answer short, you could or you could not.

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It probably isn't a big difference maker unless of course you're doing, you're talking about really long hills or [00:04:30] you have tons and tons and tons of hills and you're just in zone three for way more of your run. So think easy run if you have to walk a little bit to keep it easy, great if you can stay running the whole time and it's relatively easy also. Great. Next question, thoughts on the carnivore diet, especially for cutting. Not a fan at all. I would strongly recommend, I mean if you have serious food intolerances, you can't eat carbohydrates because they jack you up, you have an autoimmune [00:05:00] issue or something like that. It can be a good idea to do a very, very significant elimination diet and the carnivore diet's probably the most intense elimination diet there is, but just following it because you think it's going to be some magic thing to help you cut, it's just not my recommendation.

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You're missing out on lots of different micronutrients that you could get from fruits, vegetables. You are missing out on performance and recovery and getting pumps in the gym by not eating carbohydrates [00:05:30] like starchy carbohydrates, white rice, potatoes, whatever have you, and it's just not all that useful. It's not worth it for most people if you don't care about performance and your goal is just to lose as much weight as possible. That's the thing when you're on the carnivore diet, your weight is going to drop a lot faster than it would on even if you were eating the same amount of calories, but you were eating a mix of different macros because when [00:06:00] you don't eat carbs, your muscle glycogen basically runs out and so you have no muscle glycogen and with that water will go with it. So you're holding less water in the muscles because you're holding less glycogen in the muscles and therefore your weight on the scale will be lower.

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But it's not because you're leaner and muscle glycogen is really, really important if you want to perform well and have really good workouts, having a meat-based diet where you eat mostly meat [00:06:30] and then you also add some fruit at minimum, add some fruit. But I would also probably consider adding maybe some cooked vegetables depending on how those feel in your gut, and I'll also really recommend for cutting maybe some potatoes and sweet potatoes. White rice is okay too, but it's way less, it's more dense like you're going to get more carbs per like fist size of white rice than you will for a potato, and it's also less filling than potatoes, less satiating. So having a little bit of carbs, at least around [00:07:00] your training, you're going to perform way better and you're going to feel better. I think for most people and just those fruits and vegetables to get more micronutrients and fiber are what I would recommend doing as long as you were eating in a calorie deficit, you can have carbs, you can have, honestly, you can really eat anything.

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I would definitely keep it clean. You're going to feel better that way and it's going to be more satiety inducing and also it's going to provide you with more micronutrients, but I don't mean clean like just meat. So that's [00:07:30] my strong recommendation. You can try it if you want. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying it and seeing if you like it, but forcing yourself to do it because it's the best option or something like that would not be my recommendation. Next question. How possible is it to build back muscle used to bench 3 45 and now at 2 95 while in a cut? So if you've lost, I'm assuming you've lost that much weight or that much strength on your bench in a cut, you're definitely doing something pretty [00:08:00] significantly wrong. Yes, you're going to lose some strength. Maybe for you 3 45, I would say getting down after a really long cut down in the 3 25, maybe three 15 range might be a little bit more reasonable, but to be all the way down to 2 95 on your bench, either you've been cutting for way too long or you're in way too significant of a cut or you're not eating enough protein or maybe you're just not recovering well, not [00:08:30] sleeping well.

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Maybe you're over training losing 50 pounds on your bench again, unless you were just really, really, really fat or something like that. I still, I don't see that being a normal thing. So the thing about cutting with, it's probably not just muscle loss if you're losing that much bench too, a lot of it is leverages you're just a smaller individual and if you're in a calorie surplus or deficit for a really long time, you have a little bit less CNS activation. [00:09:00] That could be it. It could be more transient, but still I would say you're probably doing something too extreme and I don't know exactly how possible is it to build back muscle vary. I mean as soon as you get out of your cut, if you just keep doing well, assuming you're training reasonably, which I still don't think you maybe are just given how much strength you've lost, but if you start eating a surplus, you should gain that strength and muscle back pretty much immediately.

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A [00:09:30] little bit of muscle loss in a cut is normal, a lot of muscle loss and a lot of strength loss. I would just consider getting out of that cut relatively soon. Now, if you were a 3 45 bencher years ago and you kind of fell off and maybe you were benching in the low three hundreds and then you went into a cut, now you're 2 95, that's one thing, but if in this one cut you lost that much, something's a little bit fishy. So I would get that checked [00:10:00] out and address it. So like I said, as soon as you get back into eating more calories and training reasonably, your strength is going to come back or it absolutely should come back if you do things right. But yeah, hard to say. I would say do some troubleshooting and figure out why you've lost so much strength in that bench.

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Next question. When does the next block of T eight 50 start? So the next block, we'll start on Monday. Let's see, it [00:10:30] is a week from this Monday. So this Monday is going to be the 16th. It'll start on the 23rd of March and it'll be another six week block. All the blocks are six weeks, so you could jump in on the last week of the current block because it's mostly testing. You can see where you're at as far as two mile five mile times your RMS and things like that, and then start with block one. It's not like the blocks changed significantly. You can really honestly step in whenever you want and [00:11:00] be totally fine. Is it perfect? No, but I would say the best two weeks to join are either the last week of the current block, which is this week. If you're listening to this right now, it's this current week or next week, the very first week of the next block, next Monday, the 23rd.

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Next question, doing a small bulk. I'm getting shin splints while running with a good base. Is it correlated? It very well could be, but generally it's not unless you're doing, it depends on your definition of small. Some people's small bulk is like they're gaining two pounds a week, and that's not [00:11:30] a small bulk that's gaining mostly fat. It's not really healthy. You can only gain so much muscle at any given time, but assuming you're still running the entire time, if you're eating a calorie surplus and you're lifting and you're trying to gain weight, the weight gain if you're doing it right should not be so much that it's all of a sudden causing shin splints if you have a solid base so you could potentially just be doing too much or maybe you had some aggravation in those shins [00:12:00] that began before you started bulking and they're kind of lagging and they're just catching up to you, you're actually just feeling it.

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Oftentimes, the overuse and injuries and issues with running the issue starts well before you actually start feeling it. It takes a while for these things to show up. Oftentimes guys will say like, oh, I hurt my knee today running unless you had some crazy issue going on today or you really overdid it, or you have some sort of acute injury like blunt trauma or you twisted it [00:12:30] or something like that. Generally that injury started several runs ago and is now catching up to you. Now you're realizing it. That's usually how overuse injuries work. So it could be that. It could be the fact that your small bulks not a small bulk like I said, but yeah, hard to say. I would definitely, regardless of what caused it, I would take some time and just do some non-impact training for a little bit. Maintain your base, maintain your intensity if you're doing intense stuff, but taking [00:13:00] seven days, 10 days, maybe 14 days where you just do biking and rowing and swimming or whatever you prefer.

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Instead of running kind of the same general guidelines like maybe you do a speed session, you do a tempo session, you do a long session, say you're doing that for running, you can just translate that to a non-impact version and just give your body some time off that leg. You can definitely do. I would strongly recommend continuing to walk and keeping your step count high, assuming it's lower than a two out of 10 pain to [00:13:30] walk, which for most people it will be, but just taking some time off running. It's not the end of the world. People have to do it all the time and it's just kind of part of the process. But the biggest mistake would be to just continue going and allowing it to get worse and worse and worse, which of course seems obvious, but a lot of people do that and even I have done that in the past, not with shin splints, but with my calf issue.

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Last year when I was training for my Ultra, I should have stopped running several weeks before I actually did stop running [00:14:00] and I know better, but I was programming for myself. I didn't have someone chirping in my ear telling me to be smart because I'm stubborn and when I program for myself, I do what I want to do, not necessarily what I need to do and so on and so forth. Even as a programming expert and fitness professional, that would tell my clients different. I still do it sometimes. That's why I am being emphatic about just give it some time and let it heal. Next question. Do you do any cool downs [00:14:30] after upper body day and lower body lifts or do you just leave the gym? I leave the gym, but then I do my cool down. So I have this big softball field across the street from my gym and it is starting to get nice out, but I even do this in the winter, but now that it's nice out, I do it with my shirt off and I usually go a little bit longer.

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But basically I just go over there really, really light, super slow walk and I focus on doing some deep diaphragmatic breathing, usually box breathing like four seconds, inhale, four second hold four seconds, [00:15:00] exhale four second, hold at the bottom and repeat for like five to 10 minutes. One, it allows me to separate the intense really sympathetically or fight or flight driven training session that I just had from the rest of the day where I want to be in the opposite state. I want to be relaxed, rest, recover, digest, et cetera, parasympathetic. That is where recovery occurs, and the more type A you are, the harder charging you are, the more you have to emphasize [00:15:30] and be very intentional about bringing yourself out of that sympathetic state, especially after training. So if you have some sort of cool down, what this allows me to do is basically I get some more steps.

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I get some sunlight, which is nice and calming. I'm in nature, which is nice and calming. I'm getting light movement. It's non strenuous and I'm kind of mentally separating, okay, I was just really ramped up and focused for that training session, but now I need to go function for the rest of the day [00:16:00] and I also want to recover for this session. So this is my way of separating myself from the session and the rest of my day. There are other things you can do. You could do the same thing like box, breathe, but you could just lie down on your back if you want, maybe throw a towel or your shirt over your face that looks a little weird in the gym, but there's nothing wrong with doing it. You could sit on a exercise bike or you could hop on a treadmill. If the weather's bad, I would strongly recommend getting outside because most people just don't spend enough time outside.

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I don't spend enough time outside [00:16:30] unless I'm very intentional with it, and this is one of the ways that I am intentional about it. So that would be my recommendation. But you can also do stretching. You can do some foam rolling. You can just do some light stuff that separates you from the training session for the rest of the day, and you will not after just one time, but eventually when you continue doing this, make it a practice. Practices are things that you do on a regular basis. You'll start feeling better. You'll start feeling not just like you're recovering better, but you'll also start feeling better after [00:17:00] your training session for the rest of the day. It can be really tempting, believe me, to be super ramped up. Maybe you just had a sick workout and you were crushing prs and you were all ramped up and you're super motivated.

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It's really, really enticing to just hop in your truck, blare the music that you were just listening to drive home and continue. But generally speaking, when you do that later in the day, you're going to crash and you're going to feel terrible, and also it's prolonging how quickly you're getting into that parasympathetic rest and recover state. [00:17:30] So even though it's tempting, I would definitely fight that temptation and do something to separate yourself. Doesn't have to be that, but something similar. Next question, I'm in a rut. What are the best ways to get back motivated in killing it? So you probably, I don't know if you've heard me talk about motivation before, but if I had to rely on motivation to do everything that I do, like my training, my work and so on and so forth, I would get almost nothing done because yeah, I'm [00:18:00] motivated sometimes, but I'm definitely not motivated.

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Every time I sit down and do a podcast or sit down to write an article or go to the gym or go out for a run, sometimes I don't feel like doing it at all, but when you build a habit, you just have a habit of doing it no matter what. You do things based on right and wrong, not really based on whether you're motivated or not. If it helps to be motivated of course, but it's not a factor that needs to be in place, then it just becomes automatic and you do it over and over again and you [00:18:30] get the long-term benefits from it. So one is to stop relying on motivation. However, like I said, motivation's really nice and the best way to cultivate motivation is action. Generally speaking, you're going to feel more motivated to continue doing something once you've already started it.

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The startup cost is oftentimes the highest thing, and once you can get past that little bit of inertia at the beginning, you start feeling better and you start feeling like, okay, I'm going to continue doing [00:19:00] this. This feels good. This's not as bad, not always. Sometimes that doesn't happen, but sometimes it does. But either way, like I was saying, even if it doesn't happen, you just continue doing it because it's the right thing to do and it's going to bring you closer to your goals, whatever you're doing. So that's one thing. Another thing, generally when you get in ruts, it's not just like all of a sudden you fall off a cliff and you just lose. You just stop eating healthy immediately. You stop sticking to your sleep habits, you just stop training [00:19:30] all at once and you just fall off a cliff. That is usually not how it works.

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Ruts are usually a slow and gradual thing. You slip up once you have one lapse in judgment, maybe you're really dialed in for the most part, and then maybe one day you let something slip, maybe you skip your workout or you shorten your workout or maybe you have a meal prep in the fridge, but your buddies are going out and so that day you're like, yeah, it's just one day I'll go out and grab it and then maybe a little bit more the next day and then maybe a little bit [00:20:00] more the next day, and you do these little minor things that start to compound and then they start to become habits. James clear the author of Atomic Habits, which by the way, if you haven't read, you definitely should, but if you haven't, he says it's the two day rule, the two time rule, I think it's called the two time rule.

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Once you do something once, as long as you don't do it again, then it's not going to become your new normal, your new habit. Once you start doing something back to back. So say for example, I'm supposed to train tomorrow and I [00:20:30] skip it, if I get back to training the next day, great, I didn't build that habit. It didn't become my new tendency, my new normal moving forward. However, if I don't train tomorrow and then I am down on myself and go to train the next day and I'm like, yeah, you know what, I'm not going to train the next day either. Then it starts to become a slippery slope and it's of course not just with training, it's with basically everything in life. So if you can in the future, once you get out of this rut, which I'll kind of talk about here in a second, you can [00:21:00] remember that be like, okay, I missed last time.

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That means I'm not missing this time, whether it's day-to-day thing or whether it's like you do something three times a week and you skip one day. I am going to make sure that I do this another day this week, even if it's not my normal day. Getting out of the rut is the same thing. It can happen a little bit faster, but for the most part it's usually going to be very, very small things. Jordan Peterson is a big fan of people who are super depressed and they won't [00:21:30] even leave their bedroom. Basically the first thing he has them do is get up out of bed and walk to the bathroom. It seems so ridiculously simple and minor, but it's better than just laying in your bed all the time. So when you're trying to get out of a rut, just give yourself small tasks that are wins, even if they're really minor wins.

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You don't have to tell people about this, but depending on how deep the rut you're in, there could be something that's really, really small like, Hey, today instead of just letting all my dishes pile up after all my meals, [00:22:00] I'm going to clean up after myself and I get that win. Maybe I haven't gone to the gym in four weeks, five weeks, I'm going to go to the gym for 10 minutes one time and then I'm going to go to the gym another time for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and so on and so forth. That's kind of minor stuff for probably a lot of people listening to this, but if you've been in a RU for a really long time, it could be big wins and you start gaining that momentum, compounding those wins, you start feeling more motivated by taking action [00:22:30] and over time you slowly increase the challenge and you do something a little bit more difficult and you get back to where you were in the first place.

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So just like you got into the rut really slowly, I would try and get out of the rut slowly and methodically. Now, you could also just completely make a decision right now to get the fuck out of the rut. That is another option, and it is up to you. You could just decide in the snap of a finger to change [00:23:00] your disposition, change your mentality, and get back to crushing and killing and being motivated. Like you said in your question, either of those are options, but no one really is going to come save you. No one really feels bad for you. It's up to you whether you get out of the rut and you can do it slowly and methodically or you can just decide right now without really any other actions other than just starting to take action to get the fuck out of the rut.

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So best of luck. Next question, what are the elements we should consider for optimizing gut [00:23:30] health? So I'm not sure what you mean by elements, but I will talk about some of the important things to consider, I guess maybe elements when you go about gut health and by the way, gut health, I used to just scoff at it and I used to think it was so ridiculous until more recently. I've actually had some serious gut health issues. They're definitely on the mend, if not perfectly gone by now, but over the summer it was pretty rough. I was nauseous all the time. I had no energy, I lost a bunch of muscle because I couldn't eat enough. [00:24:00] All I could do is eat shitty ass food or at least that's what I kind of told myself. I broke myself out of it and with the help of a coach have figured it all out.

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But it is a major thing and if you are either in soft or you're about to go into soft or you're former soft, you probably have either if you're about to go in, you're eventually going to have not great gut health probably unless you act on it beforehand. If you're in soft, you probably are already struggling with stuff. If you are [00:24:30] former soft, most soft guys that I know that are no longer in have gut issues whether they acknowledge them or not, and gut issues don't just always present in the gut. You could have terrible gut health and the result of it is you feel brain fog and depression and you feel like terrible moods or maybe your knees hurt for no reason because you're systemically inflamed, or it could be more gut like every time you eat X food you have the shits or you [00:25:00] get constipated all the time, or you have GERD or you have heartburn.

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A lot of people think that having heartburn is normal after meals. It is common, but it is not normal. That is not how a normal human body should function. That's healthy and high functioning. But anyway, what I would do is focus on gut friendly foods. So meat, any sort of meat, basically non-processed meat is going to be a great thing [00:25:30] for gut health. Probably the most universally gut healthy food that you can consume is meat. People with really bad gut health when they do elimination diets, like I was talking about earlier with the carnivore, typically they just eat meat and a lot of their gut health issues get way, way better, at least the symptoms do. But meat's great. You can do really clean starchy carbs, so white rice, potatoes, yams, anything that's really super easy digesting and that does [00:26:00] honestly fiber in this case, you want maybe if you already have poor gut health, you want to maybe keep fiber a little bit lower than other people who have high functioning guts just for the time being, but fruit is totally fine.

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People with poor digestion sometimes struggle with vegetables, especially raw vegetables. I certainly do. I can have a salad a couple times a week, but if I go to ham on the raw vegetables, it jacks me up for sure. Oftentimes cooking them can help, but again, everyone's a little bit different. [00:26:30] Generally, meat starches and fruit are going to be your go-tos. Any sort of processed food that comes in packages that has a big long ingredient list is not going to be great for your gut health. Does that mean that you can't ever eat that stuff? And if you do, you're going to have terrible gut health no matter what? No, it doesn't mean that, but for the most part, it's not going to enhance your gut health and if you already have issues, which by the way a lot of people do, whether they know it or not, again, that's something to consider is not eating that stuff.

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Generally when you travel a [00:27:00] lot and or you eat a good amount of sushi or you eat other things that are not fully cooked, especially in foreign places, who knows how sanitary they are, you're going to have some sort of gut health issue that either develops and then compounds over time. If you continue eating crappy food and just treating your gut health like you don't care about it, or you can get things like parasites where you have a couple of pieces of sushi. Oftentimes I think it's really common [00:27:30] in tuna, raw tuna is you get parasites and until you actually do an anti-parasitic protocol of some kind, you're just going to have those parasites and they're just going to bother you and you're probably not going to know anything about it. A lot of people that have parasites have no fucking idea. They have parasites, but they have all these symptoms and they're not sure where they come from and they think they're just normal and they're not normal.

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But anyway, I don't know how I got to here, but generally speaking, whole foods that come from the ground come [00:28:00] from animals are going to be your best bet. Veggies are a little bit hit or miss if your gut's bothering you, again, keep that fiber a little bit more in check, but those are going to be the go-tos and then doing your very best when you're traveling to eat fully cooked food. I'm not saying you can ever have sushi again, but just know that you're potentially getting yourself into some gut issues or some parasites if you're a regular sushi eater, basically, no matter what. That's just how it is, but I think you definitely [00:28:30] can do things to mitigate it and keep your gut healthy, but at the same time getting way, way, way too into the weeds only eating meat. Going back to the earlier carnivore question wouldn't really be my recommendation, but just being mindful of it and if you have all these random issues and you have no idea what's going on, maybe seeing some sort of holistic health doctor and letting them do some labs on you and seeing what's going on might be a good idea.

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Next question. You talk about edge running at selection, edge running, I think I call it blade [00:29:00] running. What would you consider that to be? So I call it blade running. I've never called it edge running, but probably the same thing. Essentially you are on a good day, fit enough, physically capable enough to pass on a bad day, maybe not so there's no exact times for runs and rucks and whatnot, but I would say just based on my experience, blade running would be something like if you can run a 37, 35 mile, maybe 38 minute five mile and maybe a [00:29:30] 14 minute, two mile 14, 15 2 mile, and then if you're ruck pace, if you do a 12 mile ruck and you're at two hours, 50 minutes or slower, I would consider that blade running maybe two hours, 45 minutes or slower. If you have a bad day and those are your good day times, your bad days, you're probably not going to make it.

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If you have really good days, great, but that is kind of on the edge of what I would consider. And then maybe for calisthenics, something like if you can do eight dead hang pull-ups, I think the minimum's six, [00:30:00] but if you can do eight and barely, there's no way you're getting nine and maybe you have a strict grader who makes you hold it at the top for longer than you're used to or something like that, then you could be in trouble. And then pushups, I don't even know what the minimum pushups is. I don't think it's a huge, I don't think it's massively scrutinized for selection, but if you're doing less than 40 pushups, 45 pushups, probably you're blade running, you want to be able to get to where you can do these things. [00:30:30] You want to be able to get to where you can crush all of the gated events on not a great training day because not every day while you're there is going to be great.

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A lot of people say you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training. I have not. It does depend on the person, but personally I usually put better performances up at selection when the stakes are higher than I do in training. Not everybody does, but some people do. So it's not like this universal thing that no matter what, you're just going to shit the bed [00:31:00] when you're at selection. Some people do rise to the occasion, it's a real thing, but the conditions there are not going to be great. So if you're well fed, well rested, well recovered going into a 12 miler before you go to selection and you get a two hour 48 minute 12 miler, who's to say that day five when they do the long ruck? Not that it's always on day five, but just for example, when you do the long ruck at selection, who's to say you're going to be able to do that again?

(31:26):

So another thing that I would consider blade running is inability [00:31:30] to climb a rope with a really good form. Some people can get up a rope when they're fresh and they just muscle themselves up, but you want to get to where you can easily climb a rope over and over and over again under fatigue, and that is purely just a practice thing. It's going on YouTube watching a couple of videos of how to do it properly and then going and practicing and practicing. It's a skill thing, just like any skill it can be built and if you can't climb a rope under fatigue, you might struggle. That being said, I don't know [00:32:00] if there are any go or no-go events at selection that really require you to be able to climb a rope. I think I want to say the whopper, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.

(32:12):

So there's no real exact definition of blade running, but that's kind of some criteria I would consider. Next question, looking at going to US Air Force selection in a couple of months. Would ruck run lift work? Yep, it's a solid one for that. You'll just have to do the programming includes when to do [00:32:30] swimming, but it doesn't include the exact swim workouts, so the only thing you'll have to self program is like, okay, today it says to do an easy swim. I will do whatever easy swim is necessary to further prepare yourself. Today it says to do a higher intensity swim. That's what I'll do today. Today it says to do skill work and underwater stuff. I can't program that like it would be a massive liability for me to tell people to go do breath hold stuff, but pool skills, if you see that, go do your pool skill stuff [00:33:00] in a safe manner and so on and so forth.

(33:02):

Everything else is programmed, so it's definitely appropriate for really any selection other than buds. I would say it's not quite as ideal for buds just because buds is mostly running and swimming and not all that much rucking. There's definitely way more rucking and ruck run lift than is necessary for buds and probably not enough swim work, but for everything else should work well. Next question. Do you plan on making a Jack Iselle amphibious version? Probably not. Only [00:33:30] because going back to the last question, most of the go or no go things, most of the events at these selections I should say, that get guys, so whether it's like C-D-Q-C-A-K, A dive school or buds or something similar, typically it's not because they can't swim on the surface very well, typically it's because they freak the fuck out underwater, which is understandable. Being underwater means you can't breathe and they put you in stressful scenarios [00:34:00] underwater so you can't breathe and then they add stress to your day.

(34:04):

Not easy stuff. The thing is, if I were to program that for the masses, I don't even do this for my clients, my one-on-one clients, I allow my clients to go do their swim, their pool work, but I don't say, Hey, go do 15 crossovers or go do several 50 meter subsurface or go do this kind of breath hold work underwater. I'll give guys above ground breath hold work to do and work on, [00:34:30] but that's a lot safer than doing it underwater, and you'd be surprised, I don't know if you'd be surprised, but it happens a lot guys will go and they'll do their underwater stuff and you definitely should do that. You want to practice that and get comfortable with it, but guys will go and they won't have a buddy or their buddies just doing it with them, and so they're not capable of actually grabbing them and doing lifesaving measures and even if they were, they'll go and they don't have oxygen, they don't have an a ED.

(34:59):

Those [00:35:00] things are required if you're doing any sort of underwater stuff in the army for on an army base, you have to have a dive medic that is dry on the surface, not in the water. You have to have a dive supervisor that can be in the water with you but can't be doing the exact same drill as you. So if you shallow water blackout, the dive supervisor will grab you, hand you off to the medic, and the medic who has to have oxygen plus an A ED will do is work on you. People don't do that oftentimes when they're [00:35:30] preparing for these things, and I get it, it's like a lot of logistics and it's unfortunate that it's not easier to do, but it's also like a serious dangerous thing. All that to say, if I program that, it would be massively irresponsible of me because if someone was following my program and they do too many crossovers or whatever it is, CO2 tables and they die, then I'm fucked.

(35:53):

So that is the main reason I don't have serious water programming, serious CDQC or [00:36:00] Buds Prep just because there might be programs out there that have this stuff and if so, I guess more power to 'em, but I just don't feel comfortable doing that type of stuff. So no, not yet on the amphibious stuff, you could easily follow any of the Jack Elles and just substitute some swimming stuff in just based on what you're training for. And that's the other thing too, is the amphibious training. Training for BUDS versus cd QC can be totally different. [00:36:30] It's not the same swim requirements and the same underwater comfort requirements. So yeah, I appreciate the interest, but probably not going to happen at least anytime soon unless I can find some sort of way to do it in a safe manner that doesn't make me super liable for people's lives.

(36:51):

Next question. Best program to shed fat, build muscle and get faster. Alright, my man. Alright, so the best way to shed fat is to follow any program in [00:37:00] a calorie deficit. As long as you're in a calorie deficit eating enough protein, you're going to shed fat building muscle and getting faster, probably a couple options. If you're a little bit less advanced, I would say like two and five mile. If you don't care about running or sorry, rucking and you want to just get a little faster at the two and five mile and you want to do some strength training to support it, but you'll also build some muscle, unless if you're relatively new and not super advanced, two and five mile would be a good idea. If you're a little more advanced lifting wise, I would say Jack L [00:37:30] 3.0 or Jack L 2.0 would be very solid or you could do one then the other.

(37:36):

Honestly, you could do all three of those programs. If you're going to do all three, I would say start with two and five mile and then go to jack L two and then go to Jack L three. That would be a good order. You could do it in a order, but that would probably be my preferred way to follow it. But again, yeah, I mean any program that has a reasonable amount of lifting, a reasonable amount of running and you follow in a calorie deficit, you're going to shed fat, you're [00:38:00] going to build muscle and you're going to get faster. Next question, advice for jet lag from working police shift work, rotating nights and days, et cetera. Yeah, this is brutal. It's one thing to have the same shift, like if you're on reverse shift or late night shift, overnight shift, whatever you want to call it, and have to do that just continuously and you can stay on your non-work days, you can stay on that schedule rotating back and forth.

(38:25):

It blows my mind that the police force is so uneducated, [00:38:30] not you that's asking this question, but people who are in charge of you, people who are in charge just in general of cops are so uneducated about the value and the importance of sleep that they do this. They rotate back and forth. It's just throwing your circadian rhythm for a loop. That being said, you got to pay the bills and we need people like you out there. So how to mitigate it, do your very, very best to dial in everything other than sleep. Consistency. Of course, that's just [00:39:00] not in your control going to bed, waking up around the same time. The main reason he calls it jet lag in the question is because it's literally like jet lag when you're going to bed and waking up at different times all the time. A lot of people do this by choice, by the way.

(39:13):

They are really dialed in throughout the week and they stay up super late and sleep in on weekends that give themselves jet lag. It's actually called social jet lag, but it gives you jet lag like symptoms. But since you can't do that, just try and be as dialed in as you can on your pre-bed routine. [00:39:30] Try and get light at the proper time of day. However, if you're waking up in the evening and you're working overnight, you want to expose yourself to some artificial light. They do make artificial sun lamps that you can have in your house, and this would be, I would strongly consider getting something like that. But even if not, when you get up, try and turn as many lights as you possibly can on make it so your body knows it's daytime, just like it's important on a regular day to get outside after [00:40:00] sunup to set your circadian rhythm.

(40:02):

It's kind of the same thing except in the reverse, but you don't have that natural light, so you got to find some artificial way to do it. Pre-bed routine, something calming, something that does not involve screens, something that's very relaxing, whether you're going to bed in the morning after a night shift or you're going to bed in the evening like normal people do because you're working the next day, whatever it is, something before bed that's going to just dial you back. Really focus on your nutrition, really focus on your hydration, really [00:40:30] focus on listening to your body. I probably wouldn't follow a program as it's laid out. Just if you have one of my programs, you probably want to dial it back a little bit just because my programs aren't crazy high workload for the most part, but they are assuming that someone is not working like this.

(40:48):

So what I would do, for example, whatever program you may be following instead of following it on a seven day split, maybe you just bump that out to 8, 9, 10 days. So you still do say there's [00:41:00] seven days of training each week, like most programs have, you just do those over 8, 9, 10 days. So you take extra rest days as necessary based on your work shifts and things like that, or you could follow it as is, but just dial back the volume. I would say volume would be the number one thing to dial back in the gym and then maybe dial back the intensity on your runs because run intensity is going to be more fatiguing than run volume. Generally speaking, stress management have some kind of [00:41:30] go-to stress management tactic in your case, I would strongly recommend something like yoga nidra. Yoga nidra is really good for calming the nervous system down, but not in a way that's going to put you to sleep more of like a focused but calm manner.

(41:46):

So when I don't sleep well the next day I always do yoga Nira because it just is a lifesaver. It just gets me through the day even though I'm not well rested the way I like to do it. So there's a channel, [00:42:00] Ali Boothroyd on YouTube has really, really good yoga nidra videos. She makes I think a couple per week. She's got like eight minutes all the way up to two hours. You don't have to do two hours, but if you can do a 20 to 30 minute one at least most days, even if you are feeling fine, even if you did get good sleep that night, that would be a strong recommendation. It's just a really good stress management tool, but finding something that calms you down, puts you at ease, de-stresses you is going to be massive. Essentially, [00:42:30] you are just focusing on every single possible health and recovery and performance enhancer minus going to bed and waking up at the same time is what the long story short of that answer would be.

(42:41):

So tough one, but hang in there and do your best. Next question, should I be putting money into a Roth or a traditional 401k or both? Yo, dude, I appreciate the fact that you think I'm a finance expert and that you should maybe take finance advice from me, but [00:43:00] I strongly would recommend against it. I am absolutely not a finance expert and even if I was, it's still up to you. So we use a CPA and we also have a financial advisor and he does most of the stuff for me. My wife's really into it. She would give you a better answer for this because she's really tied into these things. She understands it all, but I absolutely do not. I am really good at saving money and trying not [00:43:30] to splurge on too many things, but I am definitely not a long-term investment type of expert.

(43:37):

So again, I appreciate your trust in me, but I would probably ask someone else. Next question, my gym doesn't have an SSB safety bar squat. Is leg press a good replacement or would something else be better? Leg press can be fine. I mean, if you don't like doing barbell squats, I'm guessing you don't like doing barbell squats because you're opting for a safety bar, which for most people is a little more appropriate, but if you don't have that leg, press is fine. Hack [00:44:00] squats fine. A pendulum squat is fine. Not all gyms have hack squats and pendulum squats, so that's another factor. Most gyms have leg presses, but belt squat is also great if you have a belt squat, I would say that's probably number one for most people if you do it right. The thing is most people don't really belt squat the way that I'd like to see them do it.

(44:19):

They kind of turn it more into a hinge or like a sumo squat, but any other machine squat is honestly fine. Whatever you have access to and whatever feels best for you doesn't [00:44:30] bang your knees up, allows you to drive your knees out over your toes. You get a nice quad pump, but also just doesn't destroy you for several days after and doesn't mess up your lower back, which most machine squats won't mess your lower back up for the most part. Leg press can be a little bit iffy, but it's totally up to you. I would just choose, and you can also rotate, so maybe you do leg press for six weeks and you work on that and then six weeks goes by and you throw pendulum squat in for another six weeks and [00:45:00] then hack squat and then so on and so forth. So leg press totally fine, but it's also up to you.

(45:06):

Next question, how many pounds should you aim to lose per week on a cut? I like to go with percentages on this one just because you could say one to two pounds, but if someone weighs 135 pounds versus if someone weighs a hundred or 290 pounds can be a little different, but one to 2% of your body weight is usually pretty reasonable. If you care more about performance, lean towards the 1%. If you don't care as much about [00:45:30] performance, you just want to get really lean, you can go up to 2%. If you're going much higher than that, you're probably losing muscle or you're just going to be miserable the whole time. So for example, if you're 200 pounds, that would be one to two pounds per week care about performance closer to one pound or four pounds per month. You can kind of track it more on a monthly basis.

(45:49):

If you're weighing yourself every day, you can definitely see trends and you can track it on a weekly basis, but your weight's going to fluctuate regardless. So if you're tracking it monthly, that would be about four pounds a month, give or take. That shouldn't be like, it's probably not going to be exactly [00:46:00] perfect for everyone all the time, but that's a decent rate, and again, if you just don't care much about performance, you could lose six to eight pounds throughout the month and be good. That's again, for a 200 pound person, just apply that to whatever your body weight is. Next question, can you get jacked and strong with just kettlebells and pull-ups now you really can't. I mean, even if you have lots and lots of kettlebells, once you get more advanced, you're still not going to be able to apply [00:46:30] enough stress to certain parts of your body to get strong, especially.

(46:34):

Could you get jacked? Yeah, you could get more muscular. You could definitely build muscle on these things, but strength, you're just very, very limited to strength because even if you do have a 200 pound kettlebell, which they do make by the way, what are you going to be able to use that for? Would it be a good way to build leg strength if you could hold it in the gobble position? Yeah, I mean, you could build leg strength from it, but at the same time, holding it [00:47:00] is going to be basically impossible in a goblet position. So you're definitely going to want more access to more things if you want to get strong, and even ideally if you want to get jack to build muscle, I don't think a gym membership is that much to ask. It's one of, in my opinion, the most worthwhile investments that you can possibly imagine.

(47:24):

You are going to be healthier, you're going to feel better, you're going to look better, you're going to live longer. You're going to be more [00:47:30] functional in life. Your mental health's going to be better, and you're going to have better mobility. You're going to have to try and reinvent the wheel a lot less than if you're just trying to do all your workouts with a kettlebell and and the list really goes on. It's just going to enhance basically every aspect of your life to spend 30, 40 bucks per month, maybe 50 maybe. I don't think even a hundred bucks per month would be that bad of an investment. I luck out, my gym's really cheap, but [00:48:00] I would pay four or five times what it costs to continue going there because it's an investment. It's going to pay dividends down the road, and I would strongly recommend considering it or more.

(48:12):

So over time, grab more equipment for your home gym and make it so that you can actually do more things than just pull-ups all day and kettlebells all day, especially because if you're just doing pullups for all of your pull movements, you're going to have really overdeveloped, lats and underdeveloped [00:48:30] upper back. You can make pullups more upper back, but it still wouldn't be what I consider an ideal upper back exercise. You definitely want to do some sort of row, but that can just jack your shoulders up over time. So can you get jacked? Yes, technically, will it be very seamless? No. And would I recommend potentially considering an investment in a gym membership? 100%. Alright, let's do two more. [00:49:00] I've got a group call with my boys here in a second, so we'll do two more. Next question, please. Can we have an ebook of workout finishers, like 10 to 20 minutes worth to end a session?

(49:11):

Yeah, so probably, I'm guessing this person has not been listening to the show or following me for very long, but I am not a huge fan of finishers in general. Just throwing random finishers in as an ebook, like pick and choose randomness, I'm even less of a fan of, [00:49:30] yes, it'll make you feel tired. It'll make you feel sore, it'll make you sweat, it'll make you feel accomplished. That's generally what finishers do, but they don't typically enhance your fitness. They don't have track. It's hard to track your progress when you're just doing random as finishers after every session or even just after some of your sessions. Certain finishers can be appropriate, some sort of arm farm or some sort of metcon that's very [00:50:00] strategic and well-planned and more relevant to the training goal and what you're doing. But just an ebook full of finishers would just be going against all of my programming philosophies and values, and therefore you're not going to see that for me, unfortunately.

(50:17):

Next and final question is a good one. Peds and SARMs for enhanced recovery. If sleep quality is an issue with a hectic schedule. So it seems like the intuitive thing to do [00:50:30] for sure. Okay, my hormones are going to be a little bit jacked up. I'm not recovering as well, so taking a little bit of assistance might be a good idea. However, it is not a good idea at all because it is only going to address part of your health issues. So first of all, SARMs, I would completely take those out of your even potential buying options. SARMs are just no bueno. They will crush your liver. They will [00:51:00] shut you down. So eventually, if you take SARMs, you're eventually going to have to get on testosterone, most likely. Not always everyone's different, but that can happen. They also are not great for your lipids, your cholesterol, and other very, very important stuff for heart health and longevity.

(51:17):

You're kind of just putting a complete mystery substance into your body that has not been studied on humans extensively enough to know that it's actually safe and honestly, objectively I've [00:51:30] seen so many guys labs on SARMs coming off well after SARMs that are just complete soup sandwiches that I would strongly recommend against SARMs no matter what. Taking something like testosterone, like TRT in this case would be a kind of an intuitive thing to do. Okay, I'll get a little bit of help even though my testosterone is going to naturally be low. That being said, it's just one hormone. So just because your testosterone's high does not mean you're otherwise [00:52:00] healthy. When you add testosterone, exogenous testosterone to an otherwise soup sandwich bill of health, it jacks up other hormones. It jacks up like it makes you more inflamed. It can make your hematocrit raise, which puts you at higher risk of heart attack.

(52:17):

Basically, the best environment to add TRT two is an otherwise clean bill of health. You're healthy overall. You have really good habits. Your testosterone's [00:52:30] low for whatever reason you've tried to bring it up. Ideally, you try to bring your testosterone up naturally for a long time, and if it doesn't work, at least you have all these really good habits in place. So then you start taking TRT and you're already on the right path doing it as a get out of jail free card, which I would consider this like, Hey, I have a hectic schedule. I'm not sleeping much, so let's take some TRT and just like get out of jail free a little bit would not be a great idea. And so what [00:53:00] I would do is really try and think about why you're not sleeping enough. I understand hectic schedules and maybe have lots and lots of stuff to do, but most people can make some sacrifices in their lives to get a little bit more sleep, and you're going to feel better that way.

(53:17):

You're also going to improve your health in other areas besides your testosterone, and it's probably going to bring your testosterone up, but strongly recommend not throwing a bunch of peds, even my mild stuff like TRT [00:53:30] at an otherwise unhealthy lifestyle and an otherwise unhealthy internal environment in your body because it's, yeah, you're going to have higher tea, but you're going to be just as unhealthy if not even more of a mess because testosterone on an unhealthy body is just not what you want. So that's my recommendation and that is it guys. Thank you guys very much for listening. I will be back soon with another episode. Until then, Terminator out.