Barbell Shrugged - [Goal Setting] The Exact Process for Measuring Progress for Your Goals w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged #641

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   The best objective measures for measuring progress How to use subjective measures to see success How subjective measures should be used to build training programs What specific measurements matter most for muscle How to know if you are overtrained and under recovered    Connect with our guests:   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   Dan Garner on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Please Support Our Sponsors   Eight Sleep - Save $150 on the Pod Pro and Pod Pro Cover   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking about subjective and objective measures for tracking your success and seeing your trajectory in the weight room and your fat loss and all the ways that you can actually measure success if you hate standing on a scale, you hate tracking numbers while you're working out, don't worry, we've got tons of ways.

This is actually the behind the scenes of our Diesel Dad mentorship and rapid mentorship goal setting, weekly goal setting that we're taking a deep dive into. What's great is that we also have Coach Travis Mash on the show today. He's talking about how he measures these objective and subjective data points to want for his PhD, but also so he can go win national championships and crush people. Before we get into the show, I wanna thank our sponsors. The coolest of all time sponsors has just joined the show.

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effective digestive enzymes ever. That's masszymes.com forward slash shrug and use the coupon code shrug to save up to 48%. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, Dan Garner. Not here today. The lab genius is on an airplane coming back from LA. What's he doing in LA dan garner supposed to be in canada yeah he's in his basement getting jack reading labs he's all the way out there in la

hanging out with the stars what's he doing i feel like he needs to have a little star on hollywood boulevard him and andy both like what the hell i met Andy, nobody in the whole world knew it. And now, like, everybody knows him. I know. Galvin went on Huberman and was, like, number one in health for, like, two straight weeks. That's crazy. That's our last podcast. Not fitness. Health.

All of them. Yeah. Andy and Dan both have the unique ability to make complicated things seem easy it's very simple right brilliant yeah andy smashed on that show like the it was like so well laid out he like he went through it the whole realm of exercise physiology and like movement science like in a very systematic way explaining it all very very simply like it was like a perfect overview for someone who has no background to be able to like show up knowing nothing and walk away like with a very comprehensive understanding of how to train and how training works.

Mash. I'm actually, uh, this is very pertinent to you going through and getting your PhD. Um, for many years, I would say like most of the years until, um, we all started working with Galpin like very closely and like seeing the actual work that he does on a daily basis. I had no idea what somebody like Andy Galpin did on a daily basis. Like I've been to his lab, but like when I go to Andy's lab, I show up and he's like, that's what a muscle fiber looks like. I'm like, sick. That's like a colored piece of something. Yeah. I don't know what it is. And he he's like look in the x-ray i'm like sick

that's like a closer up version of something i don't know what it is how do how am i supposed to know if that's a type one or a type two or whatever sweet smart dude keep doing smart people things i don't know what you're talking about and then how would i talk to him every day and we're doing i shouldn't say we and he's doing like real science and we are helping him every day and we're doing, I shouldn't say we, and he's doing like real science and we are helping like real people and combining these things. And he takes a hand. We've got this like lab thing, don't lab-based nutrition and supplementation and getting into people's guts and like all these things. Um, I'm like, wait a second, this is what you guys do every day. Like we do this coaching thing. It's of rad but you like i feel like i'm for the

first time i've had like a real insight into uh what real scientists do every single day of their life and it's insanity it's crazy how much different like i would be so annoyed if i was andy galvin and turned on instagram i'd be like, what in the world is happening? Why is anybody posting anything? Like, stop making content, everyone. Just let me do it. Yeah. I actually know.

You don't know anything, right? Yeah. Like, I actually know. Please stop. It's what I study. I know. I bet he gets super frustrated because. But I actually notice it a lot with you.

Not because of what you're posting because I can see how much of your attention is taken by your PhD and your coaching right now. Right. It's like very obvious to me how focused you are on all this stuff. It's very different. You have to be. Yeah, man. It's very different. You have to be. Yeah, man. It's so different.

Yeah, with a family, you have to be because you want to give time to your kids and your wife. What's left over is your athletes and your studies. Yeah, it's really, really cool. On today's episode, if you're kicking it with us, still wondering what the hell we're going to talk about today, today we're going to be talking about subjective and objective measures of performance and how you can set up a week, set some goals. And it's not

just the metrics that you're hitting, whether it's increasing the weight on the bar, but also the subjective feelings that you have about where you are headed in your program. Doug, I want to kick it to you because you've really built out our coaching program. Um, and one of the things that, uh, I love is really the behavioral side of watching people actually change and transform in the process. Um, and the sheet that you've created, uh, I'd love for you to walk through kind of like those high level pieces, um, that we're checking in on, um, each week on both sides. And then we can break into some of the stuff that mash is building in his athlete tracking stuff. Yeah. I mean, as you said, the objective stuff's kind of easy. That's

like what we're all training for. We're in the gym, we're lifting weights. Presumably, presumably if you do more reps with a certain weight or you put on more weight than you've done before, like you're objectively getting better because you can see the numbers are going up. Like if you did a one-rep max, you did 200 and then you did you did a 100 max with 210 or whatever it is like you you very objectively know that you got stronger uh subjectively it's a little tougher as a coach to know where your athletes are at if you if you don't quantify subjective measurements and you just ask people like how are you feeling and they say the most common response is pretty good it doesn't really tell you anything yeah and uh if you if you're asking people how they're doing um and they just give you a response but you're not you're not

quantifying it then they don't know if they're feeling better and better and better over time you can't show them look like you've we've been rating how you feel about your body or about how confident you are or about your mindset or about your energy levels or whatever it is and look six weeks ago you're at a three and then you're at a four and then you're at a four and a half and then now you're at a five and a half and it's only been six weeks you went from a four to a five and a half and they and they go wow yeah i am getting better and so there's there's almost like a feedback loop there where someone will because they can see that they are on paper feeling better, they actually further feel better because now they believe they're feeling better. Does that make sense?

It's like they're convincing themselves. And then on top of that, as they're making objective progress, if they were to subjectively say they don't feel any better, but they saw that they got stronger or they saw they improved their mile time or they saw that their body fat went down or their weight is dropping, but there it'd be weird to say like, you're not feeling any better about how you feel about your body when you just dropped 15 pounds. And so, so they themselves, by,

by putting out these subjective, these subjective ratings consistently, they are going to want to, um, they're almost feel obligated to say like, I used to be at a five, but now I'm at a six and now I'm at a seven because they can see the objective measurements improving. So they, and they don't want to, they don't want to be like a problem child and say they they're feeling worse as they're making obvious objective progress. And so, uh, it actually, actually feeds back into how they're feeling by quantifying it every week. They have to have those numbers go up because it would be weird for them not to if they're making objective progress. And for the pure fact that they actually bumped their subjective ratings, it actually further makes them convince themselves that they're feeling better.

Did I explain that well enough? Yeah. Yeah, I think that, um, one of the things that, because, uh, we ask people, I mean,

we break it down into, into, it's five different pieces. Um, but one of the biggest things I think is like, um, actually forcing it by checking in, you almost force somebody to feel better because they they know

it's coming so they they want to be be trending in the right direction like most of the time when somebody will join our programs like they're not joining because they have great body composition and feel amazing like it just doesn't nobody's nobody needs a coach that's like, that's got it all dialed in. Like they want to not feel like crap. So those numbers are so low at the beginning, but because they know that as they see the progress happening physically and those objective pieces, uh, increasing or getting better, they're getting closer to their goal week by week. Like you almost, it is possible to lose weight and not feel good if you're just in a mindset where you just don't want to grow as a person. But if you're doing it and doing it well, you're hitting your goals and you feel great about your goal and getting closer to them

but they don't have to always flow together was it dan made the coolest comment he said that calories are going to define if you gain or lose weight and then mike macros are going to determine what you look like micros are going to determine how you feel so like you know you could lose weight i guess and feel like shit if your micronutrients aren't in check. But luckily, you guys have got it all down pat. Well, I want to hear about your system. What do you do on – I know there's crazy amounts of objective things

that you're tracking. What do you track on the subjective side from a daily basis to monthly, whatever it is? I pulled it up. We do from like a daily basis to monthly, whatever it is. I pulled it up. We do it on a daily basis. And we look at body weight first thing in the morning. We look at sleep, like how did someone sleep on a scale from one to five, you know, five being perfect. And one being, I didn't, you know, I slept terrible. So then we look at like, how many meals, that's not really subjective, that's objective. How many meals do they have before practice? And I'll

explain why we do all this as soon as I'm done. And then we look at like, how does, you know, your excitement to train, now we're talking subjective, on a scale from one to five. We look at muscular soreness before training, scale from one to five we look at your fatigue and then we're then subjectively how much non-workout related stress and or anxiety are you dealing with right now five being unbearable one being none at all and so and then i really believe the subjective is my why so like you know when i objectify you know i look at something like a vertical leap and all of a sudden someone's vertical leap is way down or someone's velocity is way slower. I go back to the questionnaire and I find out the why. And what it does, it opens me up for conversation. So if someone is off big time on their velocity, and then I look and see that

their non-workout related stress or anxiety is higher than normal. I can say, hey, man, hey, Ryan, let's schedule a meeting for tomorrow and let's try to figure out what's going on. And then it opens me up to help those athletes in more ways than just in the gym. So that's the way we use it. Shrug family, some very cool news coming out of Walmart. You didn't expect to hear that, I bet.

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Pick up some supplements. Get your New Year kick-started, right? Friends, I'm so stoked. We have rollback pricing. Whoever knew that that was going to be a thing at Barbell Shrug? One of the ways yeah when you're um when you're coaching people as well um there's does their subjective ratings do those guide a lot of the objective things based on kind of like are they are they training too much is there too much volume does it point more

to sleep i feel like for for, if their energy is down, we can really target the two or three things that we need to tweak in their program to be able to change that around, like stress, sleep, or training volume for the most part. Those are the three really big things that are going to lead to lack of energy. How do you use the subjective to, uh, adjust the objective measures? First you gotta, you have to draw correlations. So like, you know, I have a, my, you know, Excel sheet has got it to where I can easily draw correlations between what's happening in the subjective along with like what's actually happening, you know, with their objective data. So, so I can,

once I draw that correlation and I can see, Hey man, over the last two months, every time you have, you tell me that you had a bad night's sleep, this is what happens. Your, your, you know, your velocity data takes a dip. And the cool thing too, Anders is like, sometimes people can like, you know, do poorly with sleep. They can like do poorly on their diet. And then that very workout isn't affected. It's two days later. So we can draw correlations between, you know, is it, does it happen right away? Two days, three days. And then what helps more than anything for us, it helps me get by it.

But look, you cannot go out and drink if you're trying to make the difference. Here's why. Here's what the subjective data you've given me in relation to what we're measuring is telling us. Yeah. I think it's a really interesting piece. Do you ever go the other way where you like intentionally are crushing them in the gym and expecting the numbers to go a certain way on the subjective side? Like you play with them in the opposite way as well. Absolutely. Because at the end of their, when they're done with the workout, they, they answer two questions. They rate their perceived exertion. So like, you know, on a scale from zero to 10 at this point with 10 being, I destroyed

them, you know, zero being nothing happened. And then we take that and we times it by the, um, how long the workout was in minutes. And so that gives me an equation and there's some pretty good data that can like actually rank it. Meaning like, um, I'll tell you on, if, if that score is like less than 150, it was a light session. If it was 150 to 450, it was moderate 450 to 600. It was a hard one. And then greater than 600, I crushed them. And so here's the thing is that I take that and I look at my intent for the workout. So if my intent was to crush you and you give me, you know, a 150 to 450,

I did not do my job. And so, like, you know, you probably – if I were coaching you, Anders, that would probably happen because you're capable of lots of volume because of CrossFit. Yeah. However, it can happen the opposite too like i could you know i could have an easy session and you tell me 600 then you know then my my intent for you was skewed i didn't do a good job so it just helps me hone in my you know my individualization which at my level of coaching is everything.

You know, you cannot put these people on one program and not make adjustments. It just won't be optimal. Yeah. Yeah, and for the program that we run with Dan and Andy, one thing that's really interesting is how we have to try to optimize. Like the way that we break these things down from like the fitness training, sleep stress. There's like a detox piece to this thing.

If people are running around with a bunch of heavy metals and stuff in their body and need to get that out, like we have to have like periodized, like focused time of sitting in a sauna. Like one of my, one of my good buddies that's in the program, like we have to get them in the sauna all the time. And in order to do things like that, like the training volume and a lot of the pieces that everybody wants in their

program, like I want to get jacked. I want to, I want to put on weight or I need to lose weight. Go first. We need to get, we need to get you in the sauna and we got to get a lot of the stuff out of your body. And that becomes like a really important piece of how the program is structured. And obviously like Dan and Andy do a great job of building a lot of this stuff out. But, um, a lot of times I think maybe not even a lot of times, but having like a really clear focus of those specific training blocks and, and an ability to go, well, your energy is going to be a little bit different because we're not focused on just purely lifting weights right now. We're not in a fitness heavy block. We're in a getting healthy block, which is really, really hard for people until

you start to see the subjective numbers because what are we going to test every single week? You can't draw blood every week and do a stool sample every single week. That's why we do it like every six months. But you can lift weights every day. So when you're testing this health thing or when you're like transforming health versus just like throwing a program at somebody and saying go work out a lot, being able to periodize blocks in there, um, for whether it's like detox or improving someone's sleep. Like, uh, I think that that

is a really interesting thing and why those subjective pieces matter because sure. It may be like someone goes from getting six to eight hours of sleep now over a two month period. And they've built the systems for all that. That's awesome. But if their energy doesn't get better, like we got to figure out why, or like if their, their mindset hasn't changed and feeling more optimistic in their day, like now we've done it. Now we've done, now we have to go solve that problem next because they're getting eight hours of sleep, maybe eight and a half, but they still don't feel good when they wake up. Where, how do we, how do we track that problem down to the next one? Like now, instead of going into a, let's go get fit and lose weight phase. Now it's like, well, now we've got to go into an eight week, like stress phase.

Well, that's weird. Like now, now I need you to actually go even slower, maybe do some like breath work and meditation because it's, it's different. You can't just go bang away in the gym when we've got these like much bigger rocks to move towards your, your overall health. Totally. Yeah. Or like sleep quality, like getting them to,

you know, like me, like I, I've definitely been sleeping better and it's helping in so many areas, but still I know that I need to go get a, like a sleep. What's it called? Where you go to the, I know that I need to go get a sleep. What's it called where you go and they watch you sleep? Sleep study.

Yeah, I need that. It's called Galp and they got that right now. Oh, really? Yeah, actually we send those. It's great. We're working with his other company. Uh-uh. Yeah, and he also invented a robot that'll sit in your room and

artificial intelligence your your house so it'll optimize your sleep what yeah that's he didn't do it with dumb people either people that like hang out on the moon like legit space station astronauts yeah andy doesn't seem to be the guy who does anything with dumb people so or dan or dan yeah um i knew andy was brilliant like within like two minutes of meeting him like i literally like never do i ignore my wife but when i met him at chris's like wake thing in tennessee like like i was like totally captivated by him like and i was like this dude is smart but it's super cool to be able to uh put those programs together and actually have like a real focus for it and um i think that at the beginning of of a lot of the stuff the the process seems a little bit slower than like i need

to lose 20 pounds and we lose eight in week one of water and inflammation, you're like, I'm crushing it. But when, if, if, if the goal is like optimizing your health, which is, you know, we've been doing this thing for like six months now. Um, and, and seeing people get really healthy, which is really awesome. Um, the program has to be like different. Um, it has to be structured different. And I think that those subjective measures get even more important than like, where's the scale at? Um, if the focus is on fat loss and fitness, I think that those metrics get a lot easier because it's like today, if you're trying to get strong today, you squat 500 tomorrow, you're going gonna squat 505 or whatever it is right it'd be awesome if somebody squatted that much crazy freak um but for the most part if you're if you're doing the fitness

there's very hard objective measures that you're happy everyone's been happy when they see five more pounds go on the bar but if you're doing something that's like a more health-focused thing and you're able to have like a more global approach to what your health actually looks like from sleep and stress, spending time just working on your sleep should make you a much happier person and make your mood about life and your mindset, the clarity that comes along with that,

getting rid of the brain fog, like all of that stuff makes a massive difference for me when I was able to get off of like 60 ounces of coffee a day, which I told, dude, I told Tina's trainer that last week and he was like 60 ounces of coffee. I was like, it wasn't pretty. Is that like five cups? That's like three giant Yetis. Five cups, 60 divided like three giant Yetis.

Five cups? 60 divided by eight is not five. Eight ounces a cup, right? I got 12 ounces. It's like eight or nine cups. All I know is that I have way more stimulus than that. Dude, get ready. Notice I say stimulus. I have way more stimulus than that. Dude, get ready. Notice I say stimulus.

I don't say caffeine. Like, whatever gives me a little edge, you know. For sure, you know, you guys have got two of my athletes now. I mean, that's how much I value what you guys are doing. It's like with Ryan, you know, it's super important because when you get down to the last you know one percent you know that's what's going to separate who's going to Olympics and who's not it's going to be one percent and so I know that this is probably worth more than that so I'm excited to see what happens and it's not it got two so far and I think there's a couple more of my athletes who are about to join your guys' programs.

It's such an advantage, man. I feel like it's almost like it's darn near steroids because you're optimizing each person's physiology. It's brilliant. Yeah, you're never really going to know what's going on internally unless you run labs. You have to get the numbers. If you want to build a nutrition or supplementation program that's actually truly individualized

then then you need data to do it you can't just guess uh you know what i was gonna say a second ago andrews was you can you can take these subjective measurements and do it systematically like we do like with our with our fat loss clients we do body mind energy and hunger just to see how they're feeling about their body and their joint pain and their fitness level and how they look in the mirror and then their mindset's like their overall level of hope or excitement or optimism or motivation or whatever it is. Energy, especially for fat loss clients, totally is relevant, especially if they're on reduced calories.

If they're in a hypochloric state week after week after week, like you want to make sure the energy is high enough to where they feel good about showing up to train every day. Same with hunger. Like if their hunger is like, they're giving you a subjective rating of like, or 10 is like, I I'm totally full all the time and I feel great. And one is I'm starving all the time. Like, like you gotta be like in the seven, eight range for making some progress if you want to be losing body fat, but if you're like a five or four or three, then in my mind,

you're kind of just waiting to be done with the program because you're fucking starving all the time. So you gotta, you gotta find that balance where they're, they're hungry, but not too hungry as an example. So there's like the, the weekly systematic stuff like that.

But, but really anytime you want to see how somebody feels about something, you can just ask them to rate it. Like even, even like with my wife, like if I say like, um, I want to see how somebody feels about something, you can just ask them to rate it. Like even, even like with my wife, like if I say like, um, I want to take a nap, she might say like, like, where are you at? I'll be like, uh, I'm like a six. And she'll be like, okay, well, can you wait 45 minutes until we do this other thing? And I'll say, yeah, no problem. But if I say I'm like a nine and a half, she goes, okay, go, go ahead and go do it right now. Like just, just that, that, that being able to calibrate at that level really helps.

You don't have to explain yourself. You just give your number, and then they go, okay, I get it. You're really, really tired. You're really not tired. Instead of trying to put a lot of words to it, you just give it a rating, and then you just know. So if you write a training program for somebody, you could say, how effective do you believe this program is going to be for you? And if go six and a half you go oh wait why why only six and a half

you know like if you just said you think this training program is gonna work they go uh yeah i think so it'll be fine you know i mean like if you can have to have them rate it and then now you can have a conversation about why it's six and a half why isn't it a four or why isn't it a nine you know like if you're doing front squat say how'd that feel like how hard was that rep for you and they go um eight and you go oh shit like okay well it felt like an eight it looked easy or or it looked really you're you're in your sticking point for three seconds and you said eight you can go heavier than that like like why do you say that like it really helps you calibrate to where people are at in a way that just asking them how they're doing or how they're feeling or what they believe just doesn't do.

But I like the idea of quantifying many, many things throughout the day. Agreed. I think you're talking about, like, you're actually teaching someone to auto-regulate. Like, you're teaching them, like, what it means. How does trust really feel? And how does great really feel and how does great really feel? Like most people do not have any idea of what, like what it means to be trashed versus like feeling great.

Whereas like Ryan, one of the qualities that he has that most people don't is his ability to understand how his body is. And so, you know, like teaching these other athletes how he thinks has been such a beautiful thing. And I could only do that with subjective, you know, subjective questionnaires and then actually velocity. So, like, it shows me, are they really trashed or are they not?

And so now they can see how they feel and they can quantify that. And it helps them in their brain understand you know what is it when i'm trashed you know when they're like one girl we have a girl who's one rm can range over 20 on any given day it's i've never seen anything like it like that's how it's up and down she can be and so but now we're learning that so it's really helped us make better decisions and to keep from, you know, getting hurt. Yeah. Actually,

how does he describe it when he is coaching or not coaching, but when he's talking to other athletes, telling them about your system basically, cause he's been with you so long and understanding it so well. How does he describe it to, to people? I'd love to hear like from an athlete's point of view, what, how he teaches them. Yeah, we should get him on here.

But, like, he talks about it being fluid, meaning, like, you know, that the program is for sure it's just an outline. And, like, what we do with it on a daily basis is very individual. And so that's what he talks about. Like, he's very good. We communicate so well. Like, when he tells me it's not in the cards, I know it's not in the cards. I don't doubt him.

I don't think, oh, you're being a sissy. Like, none of that. Like, I know it's not in the cards. And so, it's just, man, if every coach could develop that trusting relationship with one another to, like, know that, you know, then you wouldn't need velocity it would you know uh sorry general area but like it's never gonna happen but but but like it would be it would definitely limit what you need to like coach an individual you know an individual athlete

yeah i feel like a lot of the stuff for me uh just personally is like understanding the long game like realizing there's going to be like seasons or like periods that just they're hard and you're gonna get beat down um like i know uh whether it's trained it's it's less about training now and more about work of like i'm about to go into and it's almost like many things start taking the back seat because you have to like buckle down and stay so focused knowing that like sleep is going to be effective. It's going to be hard. It's going to be draining. It's going to like, it's actually going to beat the crap out of you. And even if, if you're in the gym doing this, um, you're going to feel like

crap for many periods at a time. You're not going to like wake up every day and be so stoked. I mean, maybe even like in my fitness life right now, like training's hard because work's hard. So there's less energy to go do it. Like the last couple of weeks, I've only trained twice each week. It's like, why? Well, traveled twice. Like spending time in airplanes beats the crap out of you. It's like, why? Well, traveled twice. Like spending time in airplanes beats the crap out of you.

It beats the crap out of me. When you're grinding hard in one area of life, you don't have all of the other areas of life to go perform at. So understanding that balance, and that really, to me, is like, well, it's not like I'm so concerned about my fitness right now. Because fitness is like not the actual priority. Like I just need to eat well. I need to sleep well. I need to make sure that I'm in a good headspace. Because there are priorities that I have to focus on.

I think that's one of the things that we do really well with the Diesel Dad program. It's like, is getting people's priorities aligned. Because they don't understand how fitness can fit into their full uh like the busyness of their life because it's it's something that like you know i think i wrote an email the other day to to the team or posted up in our facebook group it's like fitness really should be like the fourth most important thing in your life. But the less you focus on it, the more important it has to be. So if you neglect your body and your nutrition and all of that for long enough, it's going to go to crap. So then it becomes more important than your job because you're sick and you can't perform well at your job.

And then if you're not doing well at your job, well, then you're not really being the husband that you need to be. And you're not being the dad that you need to be. And it's all because you're out of shape. You're overweight. You can't actually go play with your kids. You can't be a part of their life in the way that you want to. So now fitness has to be number one. You have to go lose the weight. You have to learn how to get strong. You have to learn how to have some sort of physical life so that you can get up and go play and like just not turn the TV on and be a crappy person. It's like that. It's just not that's, that's how the hierarchy works.

But if you're in shape and you're at a body weight that you feel good at, and you feel like you can get up and go play and go do all this stuff. Well, fitness needs to be fourth because it's the, it's the piece that feeds the top three. So you can actually get up and go run and play and be outside and do all the fun stuff. Then you can actually still have time to be a decent husband and you can still perform at your job and, and, and think at a high level to get the things done that you need to get done. And then, well, what's left? Yeah, you can go work out like three days a week and stay in really good shape and eat really well. And all of that at the top can just be fueled by being like a relatively optimized, healthy person

that's capable of doing all this stuff and having energy levels, sustainable, good energy levels throughout the day. If you're not in good shape, you're going to get punished. Like I've multiple times people because of this diesel death, they're like, I'm going to be a new dad. What's the best thing I can do to be a dad? They're like probably expecting me to be like, teach your kids about moral, I don't know what they want me to say, but I'm like, you should just be in really good shape because you're not going to sleep

that much. Like the best thing you can do. But I can't think of a single thing that a single goal that you could focus on where being in the best shape of your life, entering it shouldn't be the goal. Like at what point is being in great shape, not the biggest asset to everything that you're going to do while doing that. And it doesn't exist.

I don't care if like you're trying to go play chess, whatever it is where you sit all day long, you're still going to be a better thinker. You're still going to have better energy. You're going to be able to be more focused for a longer amount of time. And you're going to be able to like have the mental ability to push through hard things. Totally.

It's like the gasoline for your car. You don't think about the gasoline being important, but without it, the car doesn't run. You're not going to be a good dad. You're not going to be a good husband. You're not going to do good for your business if you don't have fitness. It's your gas, man. I found that out. The hard way, right?

You found that out and wound up in the hospital. Yeah, like, you know, just taking on too much. This semester has been so much better. Like, you know, I've worked out more. I'm sleeping way better, you know, and I'm a better husband, a better dad. You know, we haven't had any arguments other than still a year ago last summer. So, like, like you know that was when the breaking point when I argue with my wife who we never fight and so

it was out of character for me it was me feeling bad about myself but it all led to because I was being unhealthy because I wasn't sleeping because I wasn't working out like I didn't have the energy to do all these things that I've been used to so you just get out of shape and you can't do it yeah yeah I feel like that really that really was like uh almost when like the the whole idea of the diesel dad was created uh like in my brain because it was like in the middle of COVID and I was like yeah I get out of shape right now I have to be up at like 5 a.m every day and then I still have to be able to operate and work after the kids go to bed because I'm dad during the day. So I've got eight hours of

babysitting going on in the middle of the day every day. How in the world are you going to be able to focus from 5 a.m. to like 10 p.m. And you got gotta perform all of your work and the bookends of that. And somewhere in there still be a dad and somehow still be a husband. You can't do it. If you're 40 pounds overweight and not feeling good, like you just can't do it. It just doesn't work. And, and all of that, it's like, what's the best thing you can do if you're about to enter into a pandemic where you have to watch your kids for eight hours a day. Oh my gosh. It's like, what's the best thing you can do if you're about to enter into a pandemic where you have to watch your kids for eight hours a day? Oh, my gosh. It sounds awful.

It sounds awful. That's why we outsource to the daycare so they can watch them for eight hours a day while I get to think about work. The only thing you can do is to seriously be in the best shape possible and be as healthy as possible. And if you don't have it, that thing gets moved up the hierarchy. And you don't want fitness to be number one if you've got real things going on in your life. You're 25. You don't have things going on in your life. It's fine.

Let fitness be number one. You don't have stuff to do. We've all been there. That's great. Those times are amazing too but you don't want to be 40 years old have and fitness be staring back at you as the number one thing that you need to get right because the next next decade is going to be hell horrible yeah i'd imagine at some level it's counterintuitive for people that are already out of shape to feel like i'm already out of shape

i'm already so tired all the time if it is covid and you're and you're doing the all all early mornings late nights you're burning the candle both ends you get full-time parent full-time job uh you would think training would make you more tired rather than less tired but that's sometimes in the short term that can be true but in the long run you're to be way better off for it. It's hard to get started for sure, but it's going to give you more energy rather than less. Like expending more energy gives you more energy, which is kind of counterintuitive, but it always works out in your favor in the long run to expend that physical energy to get it back in the future.

Yeah. Well, it's also like – Investment. Yeah, it's the investment right if you put it in like something has to something has to come out and it's going to be some sort of better version even if it's just overcoming the hard thing like that that that's a massive thing for so many people it's just of course it's gonna suck of course it's hard of course at the beginning it's like another thing that you need to do. But at least you're overcoming the hard thing, doing something the harder way, because right now, the opposite choice or the the the opposite,

the alternative choice is to sit on the couch and do nothing and keep feeling the way you do. So at least you start moving the ball in the right direction. Totally. Just this past week, I spent a whole week studying about the effects of exercise on like depression, anxiety, cognitive function. It is honestly the best thing you can do for any of those things. Like even there's some studies that would equate exercise being more important for depression than like antidepressant medication. And so it's actually looking at it right here, the majority of studies would agree that exercise, you know, if you have to choose one or the other, is going to be superior. The only problem is that, you know, because most people don't follow through with exercise,

doctors just say, okay, antidepressants, which is sad. It's like, that's them giving up on your ability. Now, let me be clear. There are times where you need both, guaranteed. If you read the book by Dr. Rady, the whole spark, you know, a lot of times there's room for both. I'm just saying, if you had to choose, most things we say exercise being more important yeah ray is the man i love that show that we did with him his book is so awesome

my favorite still of all time yeah um what um bash what when you start to get into kind of like program design and actually like building out how far back are you looking at like the, the subjective pieces to figure out how to write, say like next week's training or just intent for the week? Well, I mean, I look at like, there's like two things I look at a lot and it'd be like key to chronic,

you know, workloads. So I look at like any particular day as be like key to chronic, you know, workloads. So I look at like any particular day as looking at 28 days prior. So you look, you know, you don't want to take too many jumps. And so then in those 28 days, I look out, you know, what happened in the subjective and what correlations were made. So it's, I look at quite a bit on each, almost every single week, on each of my top athletes. I'm really looking at that. It's super funny because we look at the subjective ratings,

especially when Dan and Andy and we're all building out the initial programs. The subjective stuff gets looked at a lot. We actually make a very big point in the um kickoff calls like take your time we like really need to know how you feel about where you're at um because it's very telling i think it's also just it's very telling of how far you can push somebody how far you need to go um those pieces just actually add up into what the real story is. I think Doug and I've talked tons of times about just like the meta feelings about where you're going. It's like everybody has stress. Everybody feels tired. There's all of those feelings and emotions. Everyone has them. But if you're stressed because you're busy at work, because your business is growing, you feel great about your stress and how tired you are.

Exactly. If you're just stuck in mud and you're just spinning your wheels all day long and you don't care where you're going, you can see it. You can see it with your clients all the time. It's like, they're just battling this thing that even if they won, they don't care. And that is, that's a rough place to be in when you're, when you're working really hard towards a goal you don't care about and you can't get out of your own way. And, and even if you got to the final destination, you'd put your hands up and go, just who cares? It just doesn't mean anything. Like that's, that's a really rough road to be on. And I, I think in those subjective ratings, all of that stuff comes out. And that's, that's really where like the,

that intersection you're talking about with radio, like mental health plays a big piece of it. And hopefully fitness can turn that around for some people. But those subjective ratings tell a big story about where people are at. Totally. I know. Cause Andy's on me, you know, like you guys have Grimsland, he's part of your program. And like, and he's like on me about him getting his questionnaire in, you know, I'm like, which I did.

I actually text Ryan and I included his mom on the text. You're asking me to get this turned in. Game over. Yes, because, you know, USA Way actually paid you guys. They paid a portion of his stuff. That's how important, you know, we both believe it is. But I'm looking at, like, these studies, too. Like, man, any father, athletes aside,

if you're talking about, like, justaz like it's so important here were the findings on cognitive function and like they affect like working out positively affects executive control like for example planning scheduling working memory task coordination everything you need to be a ceo it's like if you're not working out it's not going to be as good as it could be so if your business is important i feel like you know you should probably like you're gonna need to work out i mean this is and this is a brief this was like a 2010 study so it's not like it's like you know 30 years old it's like uh 12 years that it's obvious how important it is you know and even like um you know even like stretching like you know because

you guys take such a holistic approach how important that is to once again executive control so yeah you need to work out and if you can't then you know you will you might go backwards for a second because you'll be a little bit more tired but it'll be very shortly within weeks like you'll be a better everything father you know better husband a better like you know ceo like you guys like you you know anders like if you didn't work out you would not be very good at barbell shrug need to learn how to work out some more put that in the schedule travis mash where can people find you mashley.com and you can go to how thank god go to instagram mashley performance man got his account back oh thank you lord i feel like accounts are getting hacked all the time now. Yeah, I've been hearing about it a lot lately.

Allie Gilbert got hers. Go follow. Really? Allie Gilbert. I don't know what her – off the top of my head, but go just look for Allie. She's been on the show twice. She's awesome. Go follow her.

She's gone? She got hacked last week. She had to start back at zero. Oh, man. I mean, it's so – It's terrible. They got me because, like, I had to get my vaccine, the booster, the day before. So that morning at 6 a.m., somebody sent me an email.

So I was feeling terrible. It was early in the morning, and I clicked on that shit. Within seconds, they had me. I'm like, it was too late. Gone. Man, gone. Crazy. Anyway.

Doug Larson. On Instagram Instagram Douglas E. Larson make sure you get over to follow Dan Garner the man in the plane right now at Dan Garner Nutrition I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner we are barbell shrug the barbell underscore shrug if you would like to work with us get over to diesel dad mentorship dot com for all the busy dads getting strong lean and athletic and you can get over to dieseldadmentorship.com for all the busy dads getting strong, lean, and athletic. And you can head over to rapidhealthreport.com. Once you get inside there, you'll be able to watch a 90-minute video of Dan Garner reading my labs. If you're interested in optimizing your health,

it's rapidhealthreport.com. And if you're hanging out in Walmart, you should go over to the performance nutrition section because my face is on the box in three different products and you can come kick it with us. We'll see you guys next week.