Ep. 217: Overrated/Underrated? Rucking, Fasting, IIFYM, Anabolic Window, RETA3, Protein, Deloads + More

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What's happening guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July. I didn't do too much. Hung out with an old teammate that I haven't seen for awhile. He's in town with his wife and his kids and we had them over, did some grilling. It was like 99 degrees out. After I grilled, I made some burgers and some chicken and after I grilled, I looked like I jumped in a lake. I was just drenched in sweat from standing in front of the grill, plus it was super hot out, but great catching up with them. They used [00:00:30] to be our neighbors in Colorado Springs and we hadn't seen them in a really long time. He has a kid that I knew his one oldest kid. I basically left Colorado when he was like one year old.

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Now I think he's like five or six and now he has two other kids. So it was cool to meet them and catch up. But aside from that, we didn't do anything too crazy. It was my dog, my female dog's 10th birthday every year on 4th of July is also the worst day of the year for her because even though it's her birthday and we gave her [00:01:00] a burger, we also gave her brother a burger so we didn't feel left out. She is not a fan of unexplained noises and that includes fireworks. And of course 4th of July, lots of fireworks. And so she is not a fan at all. So unfortunately we had her sleep interfered with a little bit because we sleep with them in the room. Basically, if we didn't sleep with them in our bedroom with her in particular in our bedroom, she would scrape on the door if she heard the fireworks and we'd have [00:01:30] to get up and let her in.

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So we knew that and we slept with her in our room and I try and wrap her up really tight in a blanket just so she feels a little more secure. And sometimes that works and she won't get up. If we hear unexplained noises or whatever it is, there's demolition that goes on in Fort Bragg that we can sometimes hear. There's other shooting ranges and whatnot nearby. So we'll hear shots once in a while. But either way, she's not a fan and we were hoping that [00:02:00] she would just chill, but she didn't chill. She stood up, started walking around. Our bedroom floor is hardwood, so it was just tap, tap, tap, tap dancing. But anyway, she's 10. She still acts sometimes like a little puppy and she's super pretty other than her white hair around her face. Not that that's not pretty, but she's got white eyelashes.

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We joke around saying she wears white mascara and she's got some white on her face, but she's still active and strong and jacked. She's part pit bull [00:02:30] and she's a really good little pup, but crazy to think that she's 10 years old. We've had her since before she was one. So anyway, that was pretty much it for 4th of July. And today we're going to get into a overrated underrated, just changing things up a little bit. I like these because it helps me think outside the box a little bit. I've gone through and selected some ones that I'm going to talk about that I haven't talked about before that I know of in overrated underrated episodes. Probably only done five or six of these ever, [00:03:00] but it's always a nice little change up from Q&As and I get some good topics to talk about. I basically do the same thing as I do for Q&As.

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And by the way, if you want your question or your overrated underrated topic discussed, follow me on Instagram terminator_training and look out for my weekly question or sometimes I do Q&A or sometimes I do overrated and underrated. And you give me a topic, I go through and I tell you whether it's overrated or underrated and then provide some context and I will do that today a little [00:03:30] bit more in depth with some of the better ones. I'm going to try and get to as many as I can and not spend too, too, too much time on any of them. However, no promises. Some of them might need more nuance, but I am definitely not going to get to all of the options that everyone sent me inevitably every time someone sends me a question or they'll tell me what they think is overrated or underrated.

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That's not really how it works, but I've picked out some good ones that I don't talk about very often. So it should be a really beneficial episode for you guys and hopefully entertaining. [00:04:00] So let me know if you guys like these also in the comments. Last time I did them probably eight, nine episodes ago I got some good feedback. So yeah, I would appreciate any sort of feedback on these. It just helps the podcast reach more people. If you think more people can benefit from it, comments help. If you're watching on YouTube, I would really appreciate you subscribing. If you're watching or listening on either Spotify or Apple, I would greatly appreciate you leaving a review or at least doing [00:04:30] the star, a number of stars. I think we have last time I checked, which is like two weeks ago, so it might be higher than this, but on Spotify we have 441 five star reviews, which is pretty insane.

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So really appreciate you guys taking the time to go out of your way and leave those reviews. They definitely help. So anyway, let's hop into today's overrated, underrated. First topic is going to be high potassium intake. I'm going to say this is underrated, [00:05:00] not because you should just go and take in as much potassium as you humanly possibly can, but because most people don't take in anywhere near enough potassium. If you're training hard and sweating a decent amount and you're just generally fit, you want to be healthy and so on, you need a decent amount more potassium than the recommended daily allowance. And I don't even know what that is, but for most people listening to this, 4,000 to 5,000 milligrams would be a pretty solid potassium intake to shoot for. [00:05:30] And most people aren't even close to that. For example, a lot of people just don't eat a ton of food that have super high potassium or they don't eat enough of it.

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They don't typically supplement it. A great way to supplement it would be to drink coconut water around your training or even away from your training. But the highest potassium food I think off the top of my head that I can think of is a potato and it's like almost a thousand. A medium sized potato would be like almost a thousand milligrams of potassium. So [00:06:00] four or five of those per day, which nobody's eating. Not saying you should, but that would be the equivalent of what your daily potassium intake should be if you're an active individual. So shooting to increase it would be a good idea. Coconut water is great. Potatoes are great. Leafy greens are awesome. Greek yogurt, believe it or not, has great potassium content. Something like I think fish, salmon, fatty fish has really good potassium. Everyone knows bananas are solid in potassium.

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They don't have a ton, but compared to other [00:06:30] fruits, they're very solid. There are other fruits with a decent amount of potassium in them. But honestly, a great way to do it because most people are just not going to eat enough of those foods to get it in every single day. A great way to do it would be to increase your coconut water. Coconut water. Yeah, coconut water intake. I was thinking coconut milk, but yeah, coconut water. What I do is a couple times a day when I make my hydration drinks with, I use sodium and other electrolytes just in supplemental form, either element or relight. I also [00:07:00] add eight to 12 ounces of coconut water, which gives me a good 750, 900, close to a thousand milligrams of potassium. And that's the thing is a lot of people don't understand. Everyone talks about sodium these days and sodium's definitely important.

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If you're sweating a lot, for sure, you're going to lose more sodium in your sweat than any other electrolyte, but all the electrolytes are important. Potassium is critical for producing power and muscle contractions. Magnesium is critical for relaxation of muscles. [00:07:30] And also calcium, a lot of people forget that calcium's an electrolyte. Not that you should go out of your way unless your doctor recommends to take calcium, you shouldn't go out of your way to supplement with it, but definitely increasing your dairy intake if you can tolerate it would be a good idea to make sure you're getting plenty of calcium because all four of them are very important. The balance of all four electrolytes is what you're going for. So if you're taking in a ton of sodium, but you're not taking in especially something like potassium, you're probably going to run [00:08:00] into some high blood pressure.

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And a lot of people think it's just because they're taking in tons of sodium. Usually it's because they're eating a bunch of food that happens to have sodium in them, but it's also making them fat and obese and out of shape and therefore their blood pressure is also going up. But sometimes it can be the sodium if you're super healthy otherwise and you're not overweight, but you have high blood pressure, which I have dealt with in the past. Oftentimes it's because your potassium intake is nowhere near what it should be. And bringing that up, you still take in plenty of sodium [00:08:30] because you want to for performance and you're losing a lot in sweat, but bringing your potassium up will help balance that out and therefore balance your electrolytes in general and also help manage that blood pressure. So high potassium, yes, absolutely. But of course within reason, make sure you're not going crazy, crazy high.

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But a lot of people won't hit that. Honestly, most people won't hit that range that I just told them to hit. So increasing your potassium intake overall would be very, very underrated. Next overrated, underrated, deload weeks. [00:09:00] D-load weeks, the concept of deload weeks is underrated. The way most people go about deload weeks is very overrated. So taking a dial back from your training is a really good idea if you're someone who trains hard and consistently. However, a lot of people will A, pre-plan deload weeks and B, plan them out way too soon. I've seen programs and I've seen coaches that do deload weeks every month, basically three weeks on, on week off or one week deload. I've also seen people [00:09:30] who plan them out and the person they're planning their deload weeks out for not very dedicated. So they take built-in deloads, just impromptu deloads all the time because they're just not very dedicated to their craft.

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So there's also a case where life will throw deloads at you. And if you're in special operations or you're training for special operations, you're going to run into these all the time. So you're going to travel, you're going to go to different places that may not have gym access. You're going to do [00:10:00] certain exercises in the field where you can't train for a few days or you have to really, really minimize your training, you have to dial it back. And those are what I call life deloads. And if you're also throwing in pre-planned deloads on top of that, you're probably just de - loading way too much. So although you'll seeloads in some of my programs that are pre-planned, that's just based on the masses, what I predict based on the training leading in, most people are going to need a deload around that time. Some of my programs have plug and play deloads just depending on when you feel [00:10:30] you need one.

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But if you're programming for yourself or if you have a coach and he's just giving you these pre-planned deloads and they're very, very frequent, like I said, every four weeks, every five weeks, every six weeks even, your training between that time should not be so reckless that you need a deload every four weeks or every five weeks or six weeks. It doesn't have to be in order to perform really, really well, you shouldn't need a deload that frequently. Now there's a difference between a deload and dialing back a little bit of [00:11:00] volume and intensity, or maybe you take a week where you don't do a lot of running and pounding, you do some more cross-training, maybe you drop a set off some of your lifts. I wouldn't consider that like a true deload, but that can be very beneficial. And honestly, for most of my guys, when they feel they need one, basically we do reactive deloads.

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And my go - to version of a reactive deload is just to tell them not to think about training for three or four days and not go to the gym, not do anything, just take a break. And that can be really hard for some people, but [00:11:30] if that's really hard for you, you're probably an even better candidate for it. A lot of people just hate the though of not training for a few days. They think their gains are going to go away and that's not going to happen. And oftentimes if you do it and you realize that it's not going to happen and you see how much more primed to perform you are on the backend as well as motivated, you're going to get a little bit more on board with it. So D-loads concept definitely properly rated or underrated, but the way [00:12:00] a lot of people use them, I would say overrated.

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Next one, overrated, underrated, if it fits your macros. Highly, highly, highly overrated. This is not quite as popular as it used to be, but it was very, very popular back in probably like the 2010s, 2015 - ish when people first started to really get into social media. For those not aware, IAFYM or if it fits your macros as long as you are getting the right proteins, fats, carbs and calories throughout the day, [00:12:30] doesn't matter what food choices you eat. So you could get all your carbs from Pop-Tarts and cereal, all your protein from protein bars and protein shakes or whatever. It doesn't really matter what the quality of food looks like. And you'll notice that a lot of people who promote it, not a lot of people do anymore, although some do, but a lot of people who were promoting it were A, very young. B, they didn't promote it for all that long because they probably got through the honeymoon period and realized some of the things [00:13:00] I'm about to talk about it and stopped doing it.

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But C, they're also very genetically gifted and they can get away with a lot of things that not a lot of people can get away with and/or they're on PEDs. And if you're not that, if you're not all those things, which most people listening are not all those things, they might be young, but that's about it. It's not going to work very well for you at least long term. It might work for a very short period of time, but like I said, there's a honeymoon period and after that's over, things are going to kind of go [00:13:30] down the drain. Here's the deal. If you're eating a bunch of crappy food, even if you're hitting your macros, yeah, you're going to still manage your weight, you're still going to be able to manage your body composition. However, you're not going to feel very good. You're not going to feel satiated because most processed food is not satiating and it's literally designed to make people want to eat more of it, overeat it.

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That's how they sell more of it. And it's also full of things besides micronutrients basically. Some of them are like four to five with random micronutrients, but you're not going to really get [00:14:00] a lot of benefit out of them. Whereas if you eat mostly whole foods, animal products, plant products, white rice, potatoes, sourdough bread, et cetera, you're going to get a lot more micronutrients and it's going to be more satiating. So you're going to feel a whole lot better. And yeah, it's going to be less fun, but not everything has to be fun and you don't have to eat just 100% whole foods. You do like 90, 10, 85, 15. And for some people, if they are super active, they have a high calorie need, including some processed foods strategically [00:14:30] would be a solid idea because it can be hard for some people to get all their calories and all their macros in with just whole foods.

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But overall, IFYM, highly, highly overrated. And if you ever try it or if you've tried it in the past, you will quickly learn probably pretty quickly. It might take a few weeks, maybe a month, two months or so, but you will definitely experience not feeling very good and having a lot of trouble sticking to the macros because it's just not satiating. You're not going to feel full, you're [00:15:00] not going to feel content, you're not going to have the micronutrients you need. Next one, overrated, underrated. Having a specific time when you train and fuel every day. Very underrated. Human beings in general, we have a tendency to thrive when we have some sort of routine. Things that we do at consistent times on consistent days on a regular basis. Oftentimes when you're all over the place, you have a very sporadic schedule, you train at random times, you eat meals at random times.

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It's very, very difficult to consistently [00:15:30] stick to whatever you're trying to do. So if you have big fitness goals, that kind of implies you also have big nutrition goals and that you're going to be training on a consistent basis. If you can, if you can fit into your schedule, doing it around the same time would be a really good idea. Now you don't have to get down to the minute or anything like that. Getting too anal retentive with this would be overkill and just stress you out more. But let's say every day you have a certain window where you get your training session in and you have a certain window, you eat your [00:16:00] first meal and your second meal and your third meal. And it's okay if once in a while you miss that window. Not a big deal, but for the most part, you stick to those.

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Your body's kind of going to get used to training at the same time and it's going to perform better. And it's also going to get used to eating at the same time. So you're going to be hungry around the same time. You're going to be satiated around the same times. Also, what I would add to this is sleep and wake times. Anyone who's been listening for a while, you definitely know my stance on being consistent with your sleep and wake times. That is one of [00:16:30] the, honestly, by far the biggest sleep habit you can implement in order to improve it, improve the quality of it. Nobody does it because it's hard and a lot of people aren't willing to sacrifice the instant pleasure things they do at nighttime instead of going to bed. But if you can give it two weeks or so, maybe three weeks, you're going to feel so much better and you're not going to want to go back to your instant pleasure ways.

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Just putting that out there. But this would be a really, really good habit. Again, not getting too too down to the exact minute with it, [00:17:00] but putting some sort of routine ritual in place with these activities would be a really good idea. Because I mean, a lot of people will have, they'll get their training in at some time throughout the day. And sometimes I get it, you probably have to if you have a more sporadic work schedule or something like that. But let's say you train one night at 8:00 PM and then you want to train the next day at 50 AM. Let's say you do a pretty hard workout at 80 PM and then what, nine hours later or so you're doing another [00:17:30] workout in the morning. That's not quite enough time. I mean, you're getting a little bit of food in, hopefully you're getting some sleep in, but still that's not very much time in between two really, really hard workouts.

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Whereas if every day you train at 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM or 9:0 AM, whatever time, and you have a hard workout, then you have another hard workout, but it's about 24 hours later, that's going to make a significant difference. So that's just one example, but getting some sort of routine would be a really, really underrated thing. [00:18:00] Next overrated, underrated low volume and high intensity lifting. I think this is underrated for a lot of people, especially if you have hybrid training goals. But honestly, I prefer it even for people without hybrid training goals. You'll notice that if you follow my programs, you'll probably notice they have less volume than a lot of programs out there. And that is for a very, very specific reason. Volume in the gym, lifting volume is going to be more fatiguing than intensity. So training really, really hard, but not doing too many sets isn't [00:18:30] going to fatigue you as much as doing tons and tons of sets, 18, 20, 22 plus sets per muscle group per week, but not training quite as hard.

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And in order to do that many sets, that much volume, you're going to have to not train as hard in order to sustain it. So when you have hybrid goals, you have to kind of think of your training on a macro scale, a week to week macro scale. So you can't just do exactly what someone who only has a goal of getting jacked does. You can't just do that in the gym. You also can't run [00:19:00] just as much as someone who only has a running goal. These things are pretty intuitive, but a lot of people kind of forget them and they try to basically do a 100% lifting program and a 100% running program, slap them together and they wonder why they're getting injured or not making any progress or just going backwards. That is why your body just can't handle that. These programs are meant to be followed on their own.

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But when you look at things on a macro scale, you have to account for all the things that you're going to do that are going to cause fatigue [00:19:30] and you can't just recover from endles stuff. So if you're doing a little bit less, if you're fatiguing yourself a little less in the gym by doing less volume, even if you're training really hard, it's still very effective. Again, if you're training hard, very close to failure, but you're going to have more bandwidth as well as physical ability, recovery reserves, whatever you want to call it in order to do your conditioning work. So it's a really, really good idea. But even if you're more advanced, I would argue it's still a good idea because here's the deal. Whenever you go and do [00:20:00] a set of any exercise, you're going to have to get mentally prepared for it.

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You're also putting your joints through some stress, some range of motion, et cetera. You're also fatiguing your nervous system. So let's say you're doing 20 sets per muscle group per week versus 10. That is double the number of times you're going to have to get mentally prepared for a set. Yeah, the sets are not quite as hard, but you still have to get focused for them and mentally prepared. It's double the number of times you're putting your body through that range of motion, joint wear [00:20:30] and tear, especially because most people don't have very good lifting technique. And if they can get more out of fewer sets, it's usually a good thing for their joints. And third, you're also putting your body under systemic fatigue. Your CNS is being fatigued. So that adds up and that's just one single week. Two weeks, three weeks, three months, six months, et cetera, doing double as many sets or even one and a half as many sets is definitely going to add up as far as fatigue [00:21:00] is concerned.

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So if you can get more out of less, that is usually going to be a win, especially as you get more advanced. A lot of people think that more advanced trainees need to ad more volume, add more volume, add more volume. I 100% disagree with that because advanced trainees can get so much more out of every single rep and every single set and they're so much stronger. Generally speaking, more advanced guys are going to be more stronger. And therefore every set they do, yes, they're going to get more out of it, which is great, but it's also going to be more fatiguing. So why not [00:21:30] do fewer sets? Still get a lot out of it and preserve that mental fatigue as well as the joint wear and tear, as well as the overall systemic fatigue. So this can be taken a little too far, like really, really low volume Mike Menzer style.

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But for the most part, somewhere in the, if you're a hybrid trainee, maybe somewhere in the six to eight sets per muscle group per week range for lower body. And then maybe 10 to 12, maybe up to 15 for certain muscle groups for upper body, just because you're doing [00:22:00] a lot more on your feet. This is assuming you're running for your hybrid goal. And then if you don't have a hybrid goal, eight, 10, 12 sets for lower body, 12-ish sets, 10, 12 sets for upper body. And taking every set of every lift to one or two reps in the tank, maybe occasionally for isolation movements or upper back movements or short overload lifts, pushing them to failure, maybe periodically for certain people beyond failure for the most part, not really all that necessary, would [00:22:30] be my preferred approach over doing 18, 20, 20 plus sets per week.

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Next one, using shrugs to strengthen upper traps for carrying rucks and minimizing muscle fatigue. So this is partially overrated, partially underrated. Using shrugs would be overrated. Strengthening your traps would be very, very underrated because most guys, I've talked about this a million times, but most guys have imaginary upper back syndrome, IUBS. It is way, way, way more common to have IUBS [00:23:00] than ILS, imaginary lat syndrome, mainly because there's a couple reasons. One, a lot of people will do tons of lat work and like the question or like the example had, a lot of shrugs thinking that the only part of their trap is the stuff they can see from the front, basically the part of the trap that's right next to your neck. In reality, that's like 10% of your traps. And they'll do a lot of pushing. They'll do a lot of overhead pushing.

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So they basically have very, very overdeveloped front delts, [00:23:30] pecks and lats because they're doing all this lat work and maybe decently developed upper traps, but their mid traps, their lower traps, their rhomboids, their rear delts, their teres, even their upper lats are very underdeveloped. Even people who have generally widespread solid muscular development like me, military age males, typically lack upper back development. That is the most common part of the body to be lacking in people who lift on a regular basis. [00:24:00] And there's a couple of reasons for it. I went over one, just doing way too much pushing and lat work. But two, even in programs that have plenty of horizontal pulling, so rowing style lifts. Because guys have stronger lats and because it's more intuitive to mainly make them more lat biased, like even rows, because you can make a row lat-biased or upper back biased, you can make a pull down, believe it or not, upper back biased or lat biased, but it's more intuitive to make these lat biased.

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[00:24:30] So they're doing all these specific lat pull down or pull up style movements and then they're throwing in rows, which are supposed to be for the upper back, but they're just able to lift more with their lats. And so they use their lats because they don't really understand how the upper back muscles, the traps, the rhomboids, et cetera, function. So should you do a bunch of shrugs? No. Should you do a bunch of rows with an upper back bias from various different angles? Yes. [00:25:00] And I have explained many times before the difference between execution for the lats versus the upper back, but I'll kind of go over it really briefly. Generally when you're training the upper back, you're going to be doing more of a horizontal pull than a vertical pull, not always, but generally. And you're going to want to keep your elbows further away from your torso.

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You're going to want to be in more of a prone or semi-prone grip, whether you're using dumbbells or machine, whatever have you, almost as if you're holding a barbell, but [00:25:30] not quite that prone. And your cue is to drive your elbows up to the ceiling. It's not to drive them back towards your hips. And a lot of people do that, that just makes it more lat. And also they have more of a neutral grip and they don't really execute it in a way that I would execute it for lats, but it still uses the lats a little bit more than the upper back. And you really want to think of protracting and retracting your shoulder blades every single rep. So think of your ribcage as like a cylinder. And when you're in that [00:26:00] stretched lengthened position, your shoulder blades are protracted very, very much wrapped around as far as you can, basically as far away from one another as possible.

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And then when you retract or you execute the row, drive your elbows up to the ceiling, your shoulder blades are going to get closer to one another. That is how you execute upper back movements. And these movements should be trained very, very intense, especially if you don't have access to great machines. Most upper back machines, most row machines, even pull down machines have backwards [00:26:30] resistance profiles because most people don't understand that the resistance profile or the strength profile of most pulling muscles is different than pushing and squatting muscles. So they don't set the machines up properly. It's basically heaviest where it should be lightest and lightest where it should be heaviest. Long story short. And so training them very close to failure is a really good idea. Also, the upper back can just handle a lot of intensity. It can handle a lot of volume.

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If you train it on a regular basis, you'll probably notice it really doesn't get all that sore. [00:27:00] And that is just kind of the nature of upper back. If you want to do some shrugs, I prefer Kelso shrugs. So essentially it's just like you're about to do a incline bench row with dumbbells, except you don't do the whole row. Yo just retract and protract your shoulder blades. So you're doing a shrug. It's just going to hit the upper traps, but it's also going to hit the mid-traps, the lower traps a little bit, depending on the angle you're at. And you can go pretty step on those if you want. I just like them a little bit better than a standing shrug for most people. No that standing [00:27:30] shrugs are always bad, but a lot of guys just over-index those and they just forget about all the other parts of the upper back.

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So for a tactical athlete or anyone who is looking to maintain healthy shoulders and elbows and basic function of their upper body, their torso throughout their lifting career or their whatever career, soft career, athletic career, emphasizing upper back for a long period of time and then continuing to keep it in the rotation would be a really, really, really good idea. So [00:28:00] upper back development, very underrated. Next overrated, underrated, intermittent fasting for fat loss. So I've talked about intermittent fasting quite often recently, but not necessarily for fat loss. So I'm going to say very overrated for fat loss. And here's why. When you fast, you're essentially giving yourself permision to have a modified eating disorder. You're basically starving yourself through much of the day. And oftentimes when people do this for [00:28:30] too long, I've talked quite a bit about the fact that you feel good when you're fasting because your stress hormones are high, you're in fight or flight a lot more and that's not great for recovery.

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It's not great for your long-term wellbeing. It's not great for your thyroid, your nervous system, et cetera. But also a lot of people struggle to keep their calories in check. And again, we're talking long term. So no matter what, you have to be in a calorie deficit. Even if you're fasting, you got to be in a calorie deficit in order to lose fat. That's just how it goes, which a lot of people don't understand, but you do. [00:29:00] But if you do this for a long period of time and you fast, let's say 18 hours a day, 20 hours a day plus, it's very, very difficult for a lot of people to shut it off and stay in that deficit because they're so hungry, especially later in a cut. They're so hungry going into that eating window and a lot of people won't be very diligent with their food selection.

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And also just because they're so hungry, even if they are eating whole foods, it still might be very tough to cut it off. Whereas if you're eating on a regular basis throughout the day, A, you're not going [00:29:30] to be in fight or flight all day. You're not going to be super high cortisol running on that. So it's going to be better for your overall health. And B, it's usually going to be better to maintain control of your calories. Now, a periodic fast, maybe once or twice a week doing like a 16.8 or an 18.6 eating to fasting window would be totally fine for most people. It depends on the person, but doing this on a regular basis is just long term. I've seen it play out too many times. Guys become [00:30:00] Skinny fat, they mess their thyroid up. They're cold all the time because their thyroid's all jacked up.

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Their body temperature gets down into 96, 97, especially if you're very, very type A individual. Your already baseline level is high stress. It kind of just compounds it over time. So fasting, my favorite ways to use fasting are one, gut health. It can be very, very good once in a while to give your digestive system a break from eating. It can improve your gut health. Another reason would be [00:30:30] something like if you're on a bulk and you're just sick of eating so much food and you've been doing it for months and months and months, doing a periodic 24 hour fast, ensuring that your overall net intake is still in a surplus can be a really good idea just for a mental break. And another a little bit different reason for it would be something like someone who is just obsessed with eating on a regular basis and thinks they're going to waste away if they miss a meal.

(00:30:56):

Having that person do a fast periodically to prove to themselves that they're [00:31:00] not going to waste away if they miss a meal can be beneficial. And then spiritual reasons and not just with food, fasting from certain things, fasting from usually things that give you pleasure can be a really good spiritual exercise. And it's been used for millennia and spiritual practices. So those are what I like fasting for. I'm not a fan for fat loss. Can it work? Yes. Does it usually work long term? And is it ideal for someone who is very type A and has any sort of performance [00:31:30] goals which also require recovery goals? Not a great idea. Next overrated underrated plyometrics to increase runtimes versus intervals/speed work. So a versus one, if you're saying doing plyometrics instead of speed and threshold work, then highly, highly, highly overrated. Plyometrics can be great and you should do them if you want to improve your running times.

(00:31:52):

However, they're not going to really move the needle all that much in making you faster. They're going to make you a little more durable. They can help you with your running mechanics, your [00:32:00] cadence, et cetera. And that's great, but they are not going to actually make you faster at a two mile or a five mile like speed and threshold work will. So both would be a really good idea. Doing plyometrics instead of speed and threshold work would not be a good idea. If you're only going to do one, doing speed and threshold work will definitely move the needle more, but doing some jumps, skips, hops, honestly for anyone, whether you have running goals or not is a really good idea. Most people lack [00:32:30] power. Most people lack durability. Most people lack general athleticism and plyometrics are a great way to kind of build all those things when they're programmed properly, which is a whole different can of worms.

(00:32:40):

But if you program them properly or you have an expert that you're working with or following a program that programs them properly, then they can be fantastic and I would recommend them to most people. Next overrated underrated, making up lost sleep from the previous night in the early morning or afternoon. Partially overrated, partially underrated. It's overrated if you try to make [00:33:00] up every single hour of lost sleep. Let's say you got four hours of sleep, you usually get seven and a half. That's three and a half hours of sleep that you cut yourself short on last night. If you take a three and a half hour nap that day, in all likelihood, it's also going to mess with your sleep the following night. And you're going to be tired the next day, so you might take another nap and so on and so forth. The cycle continues.

(00:33:20):

However, getting a couple of 20 minute naps in, for example, you're going to be more effective, you're going to feel a little bit better, you're going to negate some of the effects of a bad night of sleep [00:33:30] and that could be a really good idea or even one 75 to 90 minute nap. You one full sleep cycle. So long as you are A, not doing it too close to bedtime. So don't take a nap at 5:0 PM, 60 PM, that would be definitely interfering with your sleep the next night and sleeping for too long. Or some people will take like a 55 minute nap, which means if they fall asleep, which you probably will if you're very sleep deprived, you're waking up right in the middle of a sleep cycle and you're not going to feel very good afterwards. You're just [00:34:00] going to feel super groggy.

(00:34:01):

So either very, very short, 20, 30 minutes max, and you can do a couple of those, maybe one in the morning, one in the afternoon, or even three of them, or go one full sleep cycle. I would only do one of those or else it's going to throw you off the next night. But you're not going to completely negate the... If you have a bad night of sleep, you're not going to completely negate all the negative effects, but you can definitely be more effective and feel better and feel less miserable mentally, physically, cognitively [00:34:30] if you get some strategic napping in the next day. Next overrated, underrated daily walks to support running and rucking. So daily walks, period, very, very underrated because most people just don't walk enough anywhere near enough. They don't spend enough time in nature, they don't spend enough time in the sun and they're just not active enough and they spend way too much time doing basically the opposite of those things connected to some sort of screen.

(00:34:58):

So walking itself for pretty [00:35:00] much anyone is highly underrated. Most people should do more. Will it support your running and rucking? Not to a very measurable extent. However, it's not going to interfere with it unless you're walking some crazy, crazy amount. But let's say you're getting 10, 12,000 steps a day or so. That's not going to really boost your running and rucking ability, but it definitely won't hurt it. And also it's beneficial in many, many other ways that I just kind of went over. So one caveat would be if you [00:35:30] are someone that's looking to get into running and rucking, especially if you are maybe way far out, I talked about this a little bit in my SMU prep episode. If you know you're going to get to where you're doing a lot of running and rucking and you're just not quite there yet, maybe you're building a base starting with a step goal, whether it's 12,000 steps, 15,000 steps along with your running and rucking training can be a really good idea.

(00:35:55):

You're just spending more time on your feet. It's not going to make you a beast at rucking or a beast at [00:36:00] running, but it's definitely going to allow you to get a little more used to spending time on your feet and that's always a good thing. Or let's say you've never ran and rucked before but you want to get into it. But right now you're averaging 3,000 steps a day. The average American I think averages 2,700 steps a day, which is absolutely insane to me. But either way, let's say you're around that. If you start running immediately and you're only used to taking that many steps per day, it might be a little bit of a [00:36:30] risk to injury because you're just not used to spending time on your feet. What I would recommend, especially if you have a lot of fat to lose, if you're very, very overweight and you want to get into running, I would strongly recommend walking a lot first, increasing your walking step count.

(00:36:45):

So maybe you do 5,000 steps a day for a week and then you do 7,000 steps the following week or two weeks later or something like that. And you work your way up to 10,000, 12,000. There's no magic number. Everyone talks about 10,000. There's nothing magic about 10,000. [00:37:00] It's just a good solid goal to kind of shoot for, for general health and wellbeing. But let's say you work up to 10,000, 12,000 steps a day and then you start running. It's usually going to be a little bit more of an easy transition for you. It's not going to make you a stud runner, like I said, but it's probably a good idea to go from very, very little walking to a lot more walking to running, especially again, if you have to lose weight. Next one, Reda three paired with my solid training and nutrition plan.

(00:37:29):

Reta3, for those not [00:37:30] aware, is a GLP basically suppresses your appetite and a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of people are using them these days. Generally my suggestion for RETA3 is only for very, very obese people who have tried many, many times on their own and failed to basically eat in a calorie deficit and therefore they just can't get leaner. They can't lose fat. Main reason being, especially if you have performance goals. So I'm assuming you probably, you said solid diet, solid nutrition plan. I'm not sure if you have performance [00:38:00] goals or if you just want to get leaner. So this could be a little bit different depending on which, but if you have performance goals, the thing about these GLPs is they slow gastric emptying significantly. They basically, in other words, slow your digestion down. So oftentimes food is just going to sit in your stomach for a long period of time.

(00:38:18):

Oftentimes people feel very, very nauseous, very gassy, very girdy a lot of the time. And that's typically because they're just digesting and processing food exceptionally slow. [00:38:30] And that is kind of part of the effect on lack of hunger that plays a role in it. But if you have performance goals, usually that's not going to be super ideal. You're going to have to really do some finagling with your peri-workout nutrition to try and find a way, like basic peri-workout timing recommendations as far as when you should eat things are not going to necessarily apply to you. So you're going to have to figure that out. Not the end of the world, you can do it, but it is one thing to consider. [00:39:00] Aditionally, eventually you're going to want to eat more food. So if you're very, very used to taking REDA three and let's say you need to eat more food, let's say you're micronutrient deficient or you're not eating enough protein, which is very, very, very common in people who take these.

(00:39:17):

It's going to be very difficult for you to either get off REDA three and keep yourself in check or maintain your GLP use and also ensure that you're getting more food in and more [00:39:30] diverse micronutrients and more protein. Things that are going to allow you to build muscle or maintain muscle, maintain your bone density. That's another huge one. A lot of people lose their bone density or suffer from bone density loss when they're using these things because oftentimes, and I know you said you had a solid nutrition plan, which could mean anything, but let's assume it's really, really good. But a lot of people don't. They're eating complete crap food and they go on Reddit three or whatever GLP they choose [00:40:00] and they're still eating really shitty food, very void of micronutrients, but they're eating way less of it. And therefore they're getting even fewer micronutrients than they were before, les protein, less of all the things that they kind of need in order to maintain muscle mass, in order to maintain bone density.

(00:40:18):

And oftentimes these people don't even train either. So they just get really, really skinny and very, very micronutrient deficient. They mess their gut health up. They suffer from bone loss. A lot of them get osteoporosis. [00:40:30] It's just not a very good thing. So all these GLPs, yes, they can be very, very useful tools and they can be lifesaving tools for certain people. But if you're 15, 18, 20% body fat and you're going to go on it thinking that it's going to be like your cheat code or the tool that just opens all these doors for you, think again. There's definitely a lot more nuance to it and a lot more considerations than most people actually take the time [00:41:00] to give when they go on these things and they might lose some weight. They weigh less on the scale. Maybe they look skinnier, maybe their clothes fit a litle better, but lots of bad things go on inside their body.

(00:41:12):

So all that to say for most people, if you're relatively, you're not crazy obese and you can't stop eating and you're about to die. If you don't stop eating, you're going to die, then I would probably steer clear of GLP-1s for the most part. And I am just scratching the surface. There's so much more [00:41:30] on GLP-1s. I could talk way, way longer about it and maybe I will in the future. It's becoming so popular. I never thought it was going to be popular with the type of people that follow me, but it seems like it is because I get questions about it quite often and comments on my posts. So maybe I'll talk about it a little bit more in the future. I'm not an expert on GLP-1s, but I definitely have looked into them and I've seen some complete nightmares. I've also seen some very big time success stories.

(00:41:58):

So there's nothing, [00:42:00] you can't really label it good idea or bad idea. It's all about context. And the way I would use it, if you're going to keep using it, just use it as a tool as far as making sure you're super, super, super dialed in with your nutrition and your training and your sleep, all your habits. And then use that read of three as a tool, like an ace up your sleeve almost instead of just using that as the main tool and then being all over the map with a [00:42:30] bunch of other things, which a lot of people do. Next one, CrossFit type circuits. Highly, highly overrated usually because they are A, the main goal is to just get as fatigued as possible, which I've talked a million times why that's not a good idea. You want to actually get better. You should judge your training on a longterm basis by how much better it makes you, not just how fatigued you can possibly get from these random wads that you do throughout the week.

(00:42:56):

B, it's also typically very high skill movements. So [00:43:00] you're doing these high skill things under extreme fatigue or you're doing them against the clock or you're trying to do as many as you can in a certain amount of time. It's not a very good idea. It's just a recipe for disaster for a lot of people because a lot of these movements they haven't even mastered like not under fatigue. And then they'll do them under fatigue. For example, power cleans or box jumps where they jump backwards down off the box or muscle ups, things like that that are very, very high skill. And [00:43:30] when you do them under fatigue, your skill's going to break down a little bit. But if you already don't have the skill to do them and they're already super ugly, which by the way, they are for most people who do CrossFit.

(00:43:39):

It's just a recipe for disaster and joint pain and long-term misery and messing up your thyroid, messing up your nervous system. Feel super tired all the time, fatigued, you need stimulants in order to get in training. And it's just this intensity based. The whole goal is intensity, sweat, fatigue, soreness, tiredness. [00:44:00] And that is not a very good goal long term if you want to feel good. And if you want to look good, to be honest, a lot of people think that if they start doing CrossFit, they're going to look like CrossFit Games competitors and that's not what happens. CrossFit Games competitors are very, very genetically gifted, extremely genetically gifted. If they did bodybuilding, for example, they would be superstar, like very, very, very good bodybuilders because they just respond to, even though their training is [00:44:30] not really hypertrophy bias, some of it is, some of the stuff they do is more hypertrophy, but most of it's not.

(00:44:35):

And they're doing stuff super intense and they still get jacked from it. Anyone like that is they just have really good genetics. But most people don't. Most people, when they do that, they're going to get skinny fat. They're going to have serious joint pain. They're not going to feel very good and it's not a very good idea. So if you're doing some sort of wad, not necessarily CrossFit type wads, but a wad that has, or a Metcon you could call it, that has lower skill stuff, [00:45:00] maybe like rowing, maybe some pushups, maybe some walking lunges, maybe some kettlebell swings. If you're a little more advanced, maybe some kettlebell snatches or cleans, things like that that are a little lower skill and you're doing it for a reason like I want to get better at doing these things in a condensed window under fatigue, then great.

(00:45:23):

But if you're just doing stuff randomly to get fatigued, which is CrossFit in a nutshell, I'm not a fan at all. And I will [00:45:30] never be a fan because I've yet to hear an argument as to why it makes sense to do 21, 15.9 hang cleans and muscle ups and box jumps as fast as you possibly can. It just does not make any sense to me unless of course you're training for a CrossFit competition, but if you're just a gen pop person, not a very good idea. Next one, the anabolic window. The anabolic window in its truest, oldest sense, in its browest sense is overrated. However, I will get into a caveat [00:46:00] as to why it's underrated. So for those not aware, probably most people are, but the anabolic window is the notion that you should get protein in as soon as possible after your training session.

(00:46:11):

And if you don't, then you're just not going to get the same type of stimulus, the same type of muscle growth and repair from that session. And there are certain cases where it could make sense to get protein in ASAP. If you train first thing in the morning and you don't consume anything prior to training or during training, [00:46:30] getting protein in relatively soon after that session would be a good idea just because you haven't had any protein since the night before whenever you ate dinner, whenever you stopped eating the night before. So you don't have quite as readily available supply of amino acids in your bloodstream. But if you train in the middle of the day, you've already had a couple meals, then you still have plenty of amino acids working for you that'll allow you to start that repair and recovery process. However, there [00:47:00] is something that you should consider taking in if you have performance goals or body composition goals or really anything that you want to maximize recovery and performance, which they too go hand in hand.

(00:47:11):

And that is carbohydrates. So I would consider the anabolic window very, very important for carbohydrates and data supports this as well. They did actually, it used to be kind of understood that if you were training again later that day, getting carbs in ASAP after that training session is necessary. But if you're training [00:47:30] the next day, as long as you're getting enough carbs in throughout the day, you should be good to go. But there was a recent study, somewhat recent study that suggested otherwise. And basically what they did is they had two groups. They were doing the same workouts at the same times and eating the same amount of calories and carbs. One of the groups had carbs immediately after training and they weren't training again till the next day by the way. So one had carbs right after training and also again had the same amount of carbs as the other group, but [00:48:00] the other group delayed their carbs.

(00:48:01):

I can't remember how long they delayed them, but they still had the same number of carbs. They just ate it way later after the workout. And I'm not exactly sure how long this study went, but it definitely wasn't just one workout. It was a continuous thing. And the group that had carbs immediately performed way better in their next session, even though it was the next day and they had the same number of carbs. And I've seen this play out so many times in person without the study that I just know that for a fact [00:48:30] I've tried it on myself, I've tried it on clients. It is very, very important to get carbs in ASAP. Honestly, for most people, if you have big time performance goals, you really want to maximize in the margins. Sipping on carbs during your training session or taking gels, whatever it have you, would be a really good idea because it will replenish your glycogen faster.

(00:48:47):

It'll also kind of dampen the stress response from that training session, even if it's a shorter session and you don't necessarily lose a ton of glycogen. So it wouldn't really make sense in that context. It still can be a [00:49:00] good way to kind of mitigate the stress of the training session because insulin helps blunt that cortisol efect. And long term, it may not make a huge difference workout like one single workout. If you miss your carbs, no big deal. But long term, it's definitely going to pay off as far as recovery and therefore your performance in your next training session. So classic bro anabolic window, overrated, but getting carbs in quickly. And you can mix protein in. It's not like it's a bad thing to also have protein. [00:49:30] You can have a protein carb drink or a meal, something like that. And that's usually pretty practical.

(00:49:35):

But if you're going to focus on one thing, it should be carbohydrates ASAP after your workout. Next one, taking golf lessons if you're terrible. I would say this is very underrated. I am not speaking from experience. I have not taken golf lessons myself ever. I am self-taught and continue to be self-taught. Would golf lessons help me? Maybe, but I actually broke par for the first time the other day and it was pretty awesome. [00:50:00] And I played Pinehurst number two for the first time last weekend and shot 75, three over par, which was very, very... I mean, it's a very difficult course. It was unexpected for me to shoot. I played very well. I made pretty much every putt. I had two chip-ins anyway. Haven't taken them myself, but my wife has taken them. She took three, I think, last summer. And every time she took one, I swear she was like a completely new player.

(00:50:25):

She was five, six, seven strokes better after one hour lesson. She went from [00:50:30] not being really able to get her irons up off the ground. She just kind of couldn't get underneath them. She couldn't hit down on them such that they would actually go high. She wasn't taking divots to being able to take divots and actually hit higher irons. And she improved her driver, she improved her putting, her chipping, short game, everything every single time. It seemed like every single time. So if you're terrible, I would strongly recommend it. I would really, really recommend not going on YouTube and learning from all these different people. It's very similar to fitness. If [00:51:00] you're getting fitness wisdom from a hundred different people or dozens of different people, you're going to hear some contradicting stuff. And if you're not an expert that can kind of filter out the signal from the noise, it's probably going to just lead to more confusion and more overwhelm.

(00:51:16):

Same with golf. There's so many different ways to skin the cat when it comes to golf. And you're going to hear so many different things from different instructors on YouTube that if you're not very savvy with it, even me, I am obsessed [00:51:30] with golf and I've definitely in the past done a lot of YouTube golf lesson type stuff and tried to learn things. Never had an in - person lesson. But even me, I have to stop myself. I have not looked at any sort of instructional YouTube video on golf in a really, really long time because it just gives me way too many things to think about. And I try and experiment with a bunch of different things and it throws me off for a while. I am just pretty comfortable sticking to what I got. Things are working pretty well. It's just going to come down to more reps [00:52:00] for me to get to scratch.

(00:52:01):

But if you're just a complete novice, then getting some in - person lessons would be a really good idea. Next overrated, underrated, reverse dieting instead of straight to maintenance after a cut. Underrated psychologically, maybe properly rated or a little overrated physiologically. And I'll explain reverse dieting real quick. So essentially when you go into a deficit for a long period of time, you lose a bunch of fat, your maintenance is going to drop quite significantly. [00:52:30] So when you're done with that diet, what used to be your maintenance before you started that diet is no longer your maintenance. It's going to be significantly less depending on how long you were in the diet for, how much weight you lost, et cetera. So let's say you start at 3,000 calorie maintenance and you drop to 2,500 calories to start your diet. You go along, you're losing weight, you're losing fat, everything's great.

(00:52:51):

Eventually you're going to plateau. You're going to stop being in a deficit at 2,500 calories. Different duration for everyone. There's lots of different factors that go into it, but eventually that does happen. [00:53:00] From there, you're going to drop your calories again. 2,100, 2,000, let's just say 2,000 for easy math. You eat there, 2,000, maybe you're hitting your goal when you're around 2,000. Maybe you're not. Maybe you still have more calories to drop eventually from 2,000 because you plateau and you still have more fat to lose. Let's say you drop them down again to 1,700 and you finish your diet, we'll say you finish your diet at 1,700. If you jump straight back to 3,000, you're going to get very, very chunky [00:53:30] and you're going to not feel good. You're going to be very inflamed because that is no longer your maintenance. However, if you slowly but surely and incrementally go back up to 3,200 calories or so at a time every couple of weeks, you're still continuing to train and so on, then you're still going to gain a little bit of weight.

(00:53:50):

You still going to gain a little bit of fat. But psychologically it's going to be a lot more chill because you're not going to see the weight just shoot up and you're not going to see yourself soften out [00:54:00] quite as much. So generally if someone gets down to 1,700 and they finish their diet there, their maintenance is probably going to be like, their new maintenance is probably going to be like 2,000, maybe like 2,100. So typically what I like to do is go back up to that maintenance, what I think I predict their maintenance based on doing this a million times with a million different people. But I think someone, let's say, is going to be at 2,100. So we'll go straight back up there. But after that, especially if someone's been in a diet for a really long time and [00:54:30] they're super hungry and they might be a little bit nutrient void and they've been eating super low fat or something like that, getting back up to what you think is their maintenance ASAP and not working your way like 100 at a time to that maintenance is a good idea.

(00:54:44):

But once you get there for a little while, you kind of hold steady. You might gain a little bit of water weight. You might gain maybe a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of fat, but probably not until you start bumping it up a little higher. But from there, you go up 100 to 200 every couple of weeks till you're back up to around [00:55:00] that 3000 ideally. And you're back at your old maintenance, but you kind of stepwise and slowly but surely work your way back up there. So I'm a bigger fan of doing it that way. A lot of people who tout the fact that reverse dining is not necessary are researchers and/or people that actually run the studies and they just go by the data. They don't actually work with people. So they don't really bring the psychological component in. And when someone gets super, super [00:55:30] lean, they are very, very usually not always, but most people are very attached to how sick they look.

(00:55:38):

It's super hard to get down into the mid single digits as a male. Very, very hard. Most people will never touch that. It's a very difficult thing to do and you feel a sense of accomplishment when you get there. And it looks really freaking cool. It looks super unique. Not that women like you being that lean, but you just look at yourself in the mirror. I'm [00:56:00] getting pretty close to there right now. And it's like, holy shit, 0.0001% of the population is able to do this. And here I am. So when you get there and if you go straight back up to your old maintenance and you blow up and you just get super fat and eventually that kind of evens out, but it takes a little while. Initially it's going to be a big time shock and a big time hit to your ego and it can mes a lot of people up.

(00:56:29):

It can make people, [00:56:30] even though they are nutrient deficient and they've lost a bunch of muscle and they're miserable and they're not healthy, if you go back up to your maintenance and you get super fat all of a sudden or not necessarily fat, but you gain a bunch of water weight and a little bit of fat, it can mess with your head so much that you just want to go right back down to that severe deficit and it's not great for your health and it's definitely not great for your mental health. So I'm a much bigger fan of reverse dieting, mainly for psychological reasons, but also a little bit for physiological reasons. I think it's usually [00:57:00] a good thing to kind of keep inflammation at bay and rework that appetite back up in a slow but steady manner. Next one, peptides, BPC157 and TB500 for recovery.

(00:57:13):

These are going to be overrated but not by much. So they definitely work. I have run several experiments on myself on using these peptides and they for sure do help. However, there's a few things that I would say make them overrated. [00:57:30] One is peptides are minimally studied on humans. So we don't know necessarily the long-term effects of them. So I mean, obviously I'm willing to take the risk and use them because I've used them before, but you just never know what you're getting yourself into. And beyond that, the peptide market is kind of the wild, wild west. It's very much a gray zone. So unless you're getting these prescribed by some sort of clinic, which I do, but most people don't, they get them on [00:58:00] gray market websites. You never know A, if it's the real thing, if it's even the actual peptide. B, if it's something else that could cause potential problems in the future.

(00:58:09):

And there's no way to really figure it out. If you take it and it helps, then yeah, I guess you got something at least, or maybe it's placebo, whatever have you, but you just never know. So that's another precautionary thing just to consider before you just dive into peptides. Another big issue, this is kind of the main reason [00:58:30] I think they're a little bit overrated, is because a lot of guys, especially type A individuals that don't like dialing things back, they don't like doing rehab, they don't like doing anything that takes them off their current game. They'll tweak something or they'll have an overuse injury or something similar and they'll use peptides for it. And the peptides help, but they don't change anything about what they're doing. They're kind of using the peptides as a get out of jail free card. And that's not what you should do with peptides.

(00:58:57):

You can't use peptides forever without taking breaks [00:59:00] from it, but if you don't change anything that you were doing before that caused the issue, guess what? That issue is going to come back right when you stop taking peptides. And also it's probably not going to completely heal. It's not like these things just magically, completely heal you. As far as recovery between workouts, I mean, I haven't personally noticed a huge benefit like general recovery, not really injury. I've used it mostly for nagging injuries. So I can't really answer that. I don't think [00:59:30] most people really use them for that. They usually use them for recovery from injuries and things like that. But like I said, they do work. Just make sure you're actually doing things that are intelligent along with using them. It's just like anything. Like I was talking about with GLPs, a lot of people think it's their get out of jail free card.

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They don't have to change anything about their eating or their habits or their training or anything. And that is not a good idea. A lot of people will get on TRT or other anabolics and they'll just use that [01:00:00] As their main tool instead of getting everything else dialed in, putting themselves in the best possible scenario to succeed and using these tools as additional ways to augment their progress or their recovery or whatever have you, whatever we're talking about. So overrated slightly, but it does work. Just do it for the right reasons and be smart about it. Next one, daily mobility work for recovery and increased performance. Highly [01:00:30] overrated. Mobility will make you more mobile. In no universe does being more mobile relate to recovering better. Think about it first principles. In order to maximize your recovery, the things that matter most for recovery are one, by far number one is load management, training, load and volume management.

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Having some sort of reasonable program that anybody has a chance to recover from. [01:01:00] Two, you're outside the gym habits, main ones being sleep quality and quantity, nutrition, hydration, and managing your stress. Those are going to be 99% of the recovery equation. Certain things like massage, sauna, cold therapy, et cetera, can make a small difference if you're dialed in elsewhere. Being more mobile just doesn't appear on that list. It just doesn't. And a lot of people [01:01:30] stretch and they do all this mobility thinking it's going to help them recovery. It just doesn't. There's no mechanism by which it occurs. Improved performance because that was the second part of the second thing you mentioned in the question. Yes, there could be a little bit of a performance improvement from lack of mobility if your lack of mobility is limiting part of your performance that you're looking to improve.

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So let's say you are looking to improve your squat and you right now can't get to depth. [01:02:00] Doing some hip and ankle mobility to allow you to get to depth like hip crease below your knees would improve your performance. Or maybe you are to depth, but you can't get hamstrings to calves, like full astographs. You can't lengthen the quads quite as much as you want to. Doing some mobility to get a little bit lower would maybe not improve your performance, but it can potentially strengthen and grow your quads a little bit. Or another example, let's say you're trying to get 25 [01:02:30] pull-ups and right now you're at 20, but anytime you do too much pull-up training, your shoulder kind of nags or your elbow kind of nags. If you improve your shoulder mobility a little bit, then it could potentially alleviate that. Now going back to that first thing, training volume and load management, it's not a get out of jail free card.

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Just do more mobility and you're going to be good to go. Not at all. But doing these things on a regular basis, definitely for recovery, highly overrated for performance. It's context dependent. It definitely can help. And it's not a bad idea [01:03:00] to do mobility, but a lot of people just over-index it. I talk about this all the time. If you're a regular listener, you're probably sick of me talking about it, but it's just a lot of people just over-index it and they under-index the really, really important needle moving stuff. What's going to improve your performance way, way, way more than doing mobility is doing the things that you want to improve your performance in. So if you want to get better at running, it's running. If you want to get stronger, it's doing the lifts that are going to make you stronger. If you want to get better [01:03:30] at rucking, it's rucking.

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If you want to get better at swimming, it's swimming. It's not doing mobility. Mobility can help. It can be a great way to augment it. It can be like a precursor to improve performance, but it's not going to really move the needle too much. And if you have limited bandwidth in any way, shape or form, I would focus mostly on lifting with a full range of motion because that is not only going to improve your mobility. It is the number one way to improve mobility because mobility is strength through range of motion. It's not flexibility like passive range of motion. [01:04:00] Do that and actually focus on the things that you need to perform in. And if you need to clean it up, like you're still lacking certain parts of your body, shoulders, upper back, hips, ankles, those are kind of common places, then you can do a little mobility work.

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But the opposite, focusing mostly on mobility and thinking it's going to help you recover or perform better, but then forgetting all of the really important stuff or doing that stuff to try and get yourself away from doing [01:04:30] way, way, way too much volume, way too much load is missing the forest for the trees. All right, let's do two more starting with a pretty simple one. Overrated, underrated, hot dog at the turn. I think a hotdog at the turn for the most part is overrated mainly because most courses, when they do hotdogs at the turn, it's just the steamer thing. It's been sitting on the steamer thing all day and it's just not very high quality. You put it on a super old soggy bun with some ketchup [01:05:00] and mustard and it doesn't really hit the spot. However, if it's like a nice bratwurst at a really high classy place with some good toppings, I can get down with that.

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For me, I'm a big fan. It's the morning. I like a good solid breakfast sandwich, bacon, egg, and cheese, something similar. If it is later in the day, I'm a huge fan of chicken salad sandwiches. And certain courses have really, really awesome chicken salads. Pinehurst is one of them. All the Pinehurst halfway houses on all their courses that I've played, [01:05:30] their chicken salad is so good. I don't know what they do to it. It's probably not very healthy, but it tastes amazing. So if you find a great course with awesome hotdogs, awesome. But I'm just not a huge fan personally of most courses hotdogs at the halfway house. And the last and final one for today, one gram or more of protein per pound of body weight. This could be underrated, this could be overrated. If you are, most people listening to this, eating more than one gram of protein per pound of body weight, all it's going [01:06:00] to do is reduce how many carbs you can eat.

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So it's not going to help you gain more muscle past the minimum required intake, about 0.8 grams per pound of body weight, give or take. Eating more than that is not going to enhance your muscle growth or your muscle repair or anything like that. It's only going to take macros away from what you could be replacing with carbohydrates. So let's say you weigh 200 pounds and you're eating 200 grams of protein [01:06:30] when you really only need 160-ish grams of protein. That's 40 potential grams of carbs that you are not therefore able to eat without going over your calorie needs. So that's just like one small example. But when could it be underrated if you're in a calorie deficit and you're struggling with hunger? And also, even though this is not super clear in the literature, it's something I've experienced and a lot of other people have experienced.

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When you're in a calorie deficit, an energy deficit, you potentially [01:07:00] could benefit from a slightly higher protein intake compared to what the literature says. So if you're in that one-ish gram per pound, you're kind of giving yourself a little bit more insurance. You could even go higher than that, especially if you're really struggling with satiety. So there's a little bit of a difference between eating for max performance versus eating for max fat loss. And in some cases for satiety reasons, if maybe eating 1.2 or 1.25 grams of protein per pound of body weight allows [01:07:30] you to maintain that deficit a little more, even if you are taking a little bit of carbs away and losing a little bit of performance for some people, if their main goal is fat loss, then that could be definitely a worthwhile trade off. But if your goal is performance, generally speaking, going much higher than 0.8, you can for certain periods of time go up to one.

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It's just not going to really help you. When you're in a calorie surplus, that's protein sparing so you can actually get away with less protein. And most people mess this up. When they try to go and gain muscle, they increase their [01:08:00] protein and try to eat as much protein as possible thinking it's going to help them gain muscle. It's not. Honestly, it sounds a little bit backwards, but when you're in a deficit, you should be eating more protein than usual. When you're in a surplus, you should be eating less protein than usual. And then at maintenance, kind of right in the middle there. So nothing wrong. It's not unhealthy to go higher than one gram per pound. And like I said, it could be a good idea for certain people in certain situations, but for the most part, a lot of guys over-index protein, just like they [01:08:30] over-index mobility and they think they're doing themselves a surface, but they're really doing themselves a disservice because they're just not able to eat as many carbs because they're just taking those what could be calories from carbs and they're making them calories from protein, but that protein is just not doing anything extra helpful.

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So that's it for today, guys. Thank you very much for tuning in. Had a great time recording this. Thank you for the awesome topics. Keep them coming and I'll be back soon with another episode. Till then, terminator [01:09:00] out.