Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 84 - Training Disciplines, The GOOD and The BAD

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

In this episode, Danny talks about different training disciplines: the good and the bad! We go across different training styles and examine them in depth. We see what makes each discipline distinct and how to take the best out of each to implement into our own training!The 4 disciplines we look at today are: bodybuilding, powerlifting/Olympic lifting, crossfit, and endurance training!---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING:Check out my programs and E-Books! Click HERE!I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE!Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE!Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!-----TIMESTAMPS:“How should I train?” Danny’s take!  1:10BODYBUILDING!  3:20Sensation, practicality, longevity! Aesthetics, the community, relationship with food!  5:24POWERLIFTING AND OLYMPIC LIFTING! What’s the Difference? 14:51Strength building, technique, bare necessities! Anatomical hardships, longevity!  16:30CROSSFIT!  23:52Multi-faceted, community, variety! Programming choices, injury prone, the mental side!  20:10ENDURANCE SPECIFIC TRAINING!  28:36Long term health, minimal equipment! Strength downsides, tedious training!   28:58RECAP of the 4 DISCIPLINES  31:25Support the Show.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga. And today we're going to talk a little bit about how we can borrow from four of what I've identified as the more popular resistance training styles. more popular resistance training styles. One of these styles is endurance training. We'll get to the different styles and why I selected them in a minute. But what today's episode is going to try to do is examine the different styles of training in the kind of underneath the umbrella that is physical culture. So the different ways that people like to train, the different training modalities that have really, really stood the test of time or that are still popular after quite some time, and see what it is that the people who have taken this to the highest level or the people that do it regularly or the people that have made a habit of it have enjoyed, what we can borrow from each one of these disciplines. And also looking at the other side of the coin and examining, hey,

are there things that are quite prevalent amongst these disciplines and amongst the people who practice them that might not be super ideal in the long run? I recently posted a tweet that said, how should I train? Because that's a question that I get all the time. People say, how should I train? What should I do? What should I go after? I'm new to this. I want to start lifting.

What do I do? I? How should I train? What should I do? What should I go after? I'm new to this. I want to start lifting. What do I do? And I tweeted, train with the enthusiasm of a novice, the mentality of a veteran, the intent of a bodybuilder, the technique of a power lifter, and the perseverance of a runner. Whether you practice one discipline or none, you can still borrow from them all. And I really, really like this message because I don't think it's black and white with regards to how you piece together your training. Not everybody wants to compete. So not everybody wants to jump into a box and say, I'm a bodybuilder and I only train like a bodybuilder or I'm a powerlifter and I only train that way. and exercise has the opportunity to be explorative, loaded with variety, and give people the opportunity to keep things fresh, engaging, and try new stuff. And if you don't want to take it to the highest level of any one discipline, I think that trying different stuff from time to time and learning and borrowing from the different disciplines is really, really important. If you're somebody like me,

who really looks at their fitness as just a long-term practice in longevity, you'd probably be wise to borrow from a lot of these different ones, a lot of these different styles. And so today's episode is all about breaking this stuff down and taking a really good look at what we can learn from these four disciplines. Now, the four disciplines I have selected for today, to keep things simple, are bodybuilding, powerlifting, slash Olympic lifting, CrossFit, and endurance sports like running or obstacle course racing. These are things that I think are somewhat similar, but also quite a bit unique, enough so that we can draw some interesting things from each one. can draw some interesting things from each one. I didn't make Olympic lifting and powerlifting their own category because while when you get down to the minutiae, they are extremely different. Some of the commonalities and things that I really appreciate about both sports are very much the same. So I decided to just combine them into one. So let's go ahead and

open up with our first examination, our first case study. And that is what can we learn from the practice of bodybuilding, right? That may help us not just improve our muscularity, but, you know, really borrow some of these concepts and apply them to other endeavors, whether it's in our personal life, our business life, our fitness, whether we're not bodybuilding actively. So you'll see some themes here, but let's open up with bodybuilding and what I really like about it and what I've borrowed in my own training and what I do with my clients. The first thing I love about bodybuilding is it has quite possibly the largest variety of lifts of any of the listed disciplines, right? Powerlifting would, of course, have the lowest amount of variety, but bodybuilding has a ton of variety because we like to select different movements using

different machinery or equipment from free weights to dumbbells to machines, even kettlebells and bands when it comes to bodybuilding training. So we start off with a huge variety of equipment and a huge variety of lifts. If you want to build your biceps, you can do hammer curls, seated incline curls, machine curls, preacher curls, rope curls, not to mention the plethora of different pulling exercises that are also going to hit the biceps. So bodybuilding is awesome in that it provides people who practice it

with a ton of variety. What's really great about this for personal trainers is even if you're not a bodybuilder, doing a little bit of bodybuilding training is a really great way to expand your exercise library. And most of the people that you work with, if you're working with gen pop clients is really, really a good call for helping them build some muscle, build a more robust metabolic capacity, because more muscle, you're going to burn more calories, lots of good stuff happens there. And it also tends to be really safe, which brings me to my second point. And that's that bodybuilding does a really good job of focusing on technique, sensation, mind-muscle connection, and training close or proximal to failure.

So let's first talk about technique and sensation. While sensation does not directly lead to muscle growth, and while having a good mind-muscle connection does not directly lead to muscle growth, it certainly helps, in my opinion, to be able to focus on what it is you're trying to train. For new and advanced lifters alike, really being able to hone in on what it is you're trying to train. For new and advanced lifters alike, really being able to hone in on what it is that you're trying to accomplish with a given exercise and really focusing on the intent and the technique is a great, great place to start with regards to maximizing your training, building not just intermuscular

coordination, right, like feeling my biceps, but intramuscular coordination, being able to do something like a pull up and engage all of the musculature of my upper back, the stuff that supports my scapula, bodybuilding is good for this stuff. And so I think it's an exercise, or rather an exercise discipline that lends itself a little bit more to general population fitness than people might like to admit. A lot of people come in and say, oh, I really want to be more functional. And bodybuilding is at face value, like the antithesis of functionality, right? We look at bodybuilding and go, well, you're big and jack, but what can you do?

And I think that bodybuilding training can be a really big part in a general population functional, quote unquote, functional fitness program. The other thing I love about the discipline of bodybuilding is if you want to compete at the highest level, you have to have a really good focus, obviously, on your nutrition to get to that level of leanness. And while most people never, ever want to be stage lean. Understanding the importance of nutrition, nutrient timing, and some of the concepts around substrate utilization are really, really valuable for anybody who wants to get the most out of their training. And bodybuilding, I think, does this better than any other discipline. In many ways,

nutrition is more fundamental to the sport of bodybuilding than even bodybuilding itself, right? If you want to compete at the highest level, it's every bit as much a discipline in nutrition and nutritional education and nutritional acumen as it is training acumen. So I think that bodybuilding training does a really good job of giving people an understanding of SECO, how energy balance work, right? SECO, calories in, calories out. You got to be in a deficit to get lean. You can build muscle best at maintenance or in a mild surplus. That's all stuff that we probably should apply to all of the future disciplines I'll mention. But I really like that bodybuilding has a focus on nutrition. But there's two sides to this coin, and we'll talk about that a little bit more when we get to the cons. The last thing that

I love about bodybuilding is I think that it tends to be something that you can do for a really long time. And if you're not doing bodybuilding training as the bulk of your training, it can be a nice way to supplement what it is you're already doing. If you just want to look a little bit better, you can incorporate some specialization training around some muscle groups that you want to improve. And it's not rocket science. As long as you're training hard, adding weight to the bar, doing some more reps, doing a few more sets, you can expect that with good nutrition, you'll gain a little bit of muscle.

That to me is awesome. And bodybuilding went first because it, in my opinion, is a discipline that of everything I'm going to mention, we can borrow the most from. And so I really, really like everything that I just listed with regards to bodybuilding. But here are some of my critiques. And again, this is my opinion. If you disagree with me, I'd love for you to send me an email. Let me hear what you have to say. Send it right to me at Danny at coach Danny Matranga.com. I really, really would love if anybody has constructive criticism for the podcast in general, or just wants to hear some critiques,

send them my way, or has some critiques, I should say, as I segue into my critiques of our first discipline here, which is bodybuilding. The thing I don't love is that it is, of course, exclusively focused on aesthetics at the competitive level. Now, if you want to just do bodybuilding training because you enjoy it and you like looking a little bit better and you're not entirely obsessed with how you look, I think that's pretty badass. But it may have the possibility of creating some type of dysmorphic image in your head about how you look and how you should look and you want to look like all the other bodybuilders and why don't I look like this

guy and why don't I look like that guy and I'm not saying that anybody who starts and pursues bodybuilding for a long time is going to develop an inadequacy complex about how they look but it's not entirely uncommon for people who do a lot of bodybuilding and spend a lot of time bodybuilding to also build a little bit of a complex about how they look and perhaps even have some dysmorphia around how they look. You might be the biggest, most jacked person in your friends group and in your family at the gym you go to. But for a lot of people, it's just not enough. There's always a little bit more to do. There's always a little bit more muscle to make. There's always a little more fat to lose.

And for some people, that's amazing. That's the best part. But for a lot of people, it can be a struggle to balance the emotions of not entirely ever being satisfied with how you look. And that is kind of at the root of bodybuilding is always wanting to look a little bit bigger, a little bit leaner. And I don't necessarily love that. Another thing I don't love about bodybuilding, and it's less about the action itself as than it is the community. And that's just the prevalence of

steroid use. There's nothing wrong with an adult choosing to use steroids, in my opinion, to change how they look. I think that if you want to put that in your body, that is totally up to you. And you shouldn't be judged for that. But if you're going to be selling programs, posting on social media, and you're enhanced using performance enhancing drugs, and you use drugs to look at the way you look, and you're selling coaching or you're selling programming, but you're not disclosing that you're on drugs, while we can assume as trainers and coaches, like we can discern, we can tell the difference between somebody who's enhanced versus somebody who's not, younger lifters can't.

And so people with large platforms who are enhanced, who sell supplements or who sell workout programs, but don't disclose that they're on drugs, which I'll be honest, probably do every bit as much work as the nutrition and the training. When you really dial in the drugs, it can make an incredible difference on your physique. And a lot of these guys have dialed it in pretty well. So that's something that I don't love about it. Another thing is genetics. And quite frankly, this applies to all of them, but probably most so bodybuilding. And that's the genetics do play a role in what your physique is going to look like, what muscles develop more easily,

what muscles develop with a little bit higher degree of difficulty. And you can't necessarily change that easily. You can't modify your genetics. You can apply a little bit more volume to certain muscle groups that perhaps genetically you might struggle with, right? But if you're genetically predisposed to have small calves, no amount of training is going to give you the best calves in the world. So there are some limitations there. And I always advocate for not using your genetics as an excuse, doing the best you can. And again, genetics play a role in everything else I'm going to mention.

But it definitely seems to play a big role here. And then the last thing, again, the other side of the food coin, bodybuilding at the highest level, in my opinion, is effectively competitive starvation. You have to get so, so, so lean to compete in most shows that you have to be in a caloric deficit for an extremely long amount of time to get that level of leanness. And that's not great

for your body in the long run. And it's probably not great for your relationship with food in the long run. And I think that bodybuilding puts your relationship with food and how you look at eating through the most aggressive stress test possible. And even if you stop bodybuilding competitively, possible. And even if you stop bodybuilding competitively, the permanent stain that it can have on your relationship with food doesn't always wash out. I can't tell you how many people I've worked with that are former bodybuilders or were bodybuilding at a earlier point in their life that still to this day have a terrible relationship with food. So I don't think that bodybuilding at the highest level is ideal for creating a long-term great relationship with food. But I do think if you are able to strike a balance and you're able to have off seasons and seasons where you're

training hard and not training hard, it's a great thing to do. So that really summarizes what I do and don't like about bodybuilding. Again, all of these critiques aren't a dig. They're just a careful examination of what I would call a worst case scenario outcome if you take something to the max. And I don't think if you start bodybuilding to look a little bit better, you're going to all of a sudden be this self-obsessed, you know, neurotic food person. I don't think that's a destiny for anybody who begins bodybuilding, but I think it's important to look at, hey, what do these disciplines teach us that is really, really good? And what are some of the potential side effects of obsessing or, you know, kind of

specializing in these disciplines that a lot of people seem to have after doing them for a really long time? And maybe we can learn from some of those to, you know, make sure that that doesn't happen to us. So next, let's take a look at powerlifting and Olympic lifting, right? So the difference between the two, let's just go ahead and cover that first. Olympic lifting is an Olympic sport, right? And generally speaking, when people compete in Olympic lifting, they're not necessarily all competing to try to go to the Olympics. That's, of course, extremely, extremely, extremely difficult to do. But they will be doing lifts like the snatch, the clean and jerk. Powerlifting, on the other hand, is not an Olympic sport.

There's lots of different federations. It's a little bit more popular for, um, what I would call recreational competition. Just people who are going to pick up, uh, uh, something to do because powerlifting is a little bit less technical than Olympic lifting. And the lifts that we focus on for powerlifting are the bench, the squat, and the deadlift. And those are oftentimes referred to as the big three because they are the focal point of the sport of powerlifting. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast.

And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. What I really like about powerlifting is it's simple, it's easy to pick up, it's easy to teach, and it's a great way to build a foundation of strength. In the same way that I believe general population clients can benefit from bodybuilding and building muscle to help them have a more robust metabolism, more confidence, a little bit better physique, I think the same can be said of becoming a little bit

better at squatting, deadlifting, and pressing. And not just those movements, but training for general strength, whether it's a push, pull, a squat, a lunge, a hinge, any of this stuff, working to progressively overload and build strength is amazing. And the kind of underlying concepts and mechanism that make powerlifting effective, like really focusing on technique, really focusing. And again, anytime I use powerlifting, you can exchange that for Olympic lifting. So power Olympic lifting really focus on technique. They focus on really hitting your rest period so that you can train hard and with intent in that set, because it's probably going to be heavy and require a lot of focus. They focus on a long-term progressive overload where we're putting

at, in many cases, five pound plates, two and a half pound plates on the bars to eke out just the smallest amount of progression. And I think that that attention to detail is really, really important. And I think that building strength and building capacity with those movement patterns that are really fundamental and organic, like picking something up, doing lunges, pushing something, pulling something, that stuff really, really matters. Another thing that I love is it doesn't require a ton of equipment or complexity. While there's a lot of technicality built into it, like somebody who is deadlifting for CrossFit, right? Like we'll get to CrossFit in a minute, but say you're doing a deadlift for time.

That is such a different exercise than doing a deadlift as a powerlifter. There's so much more technicality, focus, and intent that goes into pulling that weight one time than doing it submaximally for like, you know, a time constraint AMRAP or something, if you will. There's so much baked into powerlifting,

and I love that it doesn't require a ton of equipment to be really complex and have a lot of layers that you can dive into. For example, if you just had a bar and like 500 pounds of bumper weight, you could commit yourself to becoming incredibly strong at the deadlift, the squat, the bench press, the clean and jerk, the power clean, and the snatch. And really only ever need like those pieces of equipment with the exception of some accessory work that would certainly help. But you know, it's very, very simple. And especially now with everything going on with gym closures and COVID and whether or not gyms are going to stay closed or reopened or if they are open, are they going to reclose having a barbell on some bumper plates at home

and being able to just lean into getting freakishly fucking strong by just going after it the way you might in a powerlifting focus block or an Olympic lifting focus block or even just a general strength training focus block. That type of shit is really, really nice to be able to have, right, available to you at any given time if all you have is a barbell and bumper plates. So that's what I love about powerlifting. What do I not love, right? What are the cons? Well, not everybody is built, right, because we all have different anthropometry, we all have different limb lengths, different shapes and sizes. Not everybody is built to be a great squatter to be a great bench presser to be a great deadlifter and especially to be great at the olympic lifts and i think that a lot of what

power lifting has um injected into the space is almost the like deitization of the big three like we fucking bend over bend the knee and bow to the bench squat and the deadlift they are holy they are to speak against them as i am now is sacrilege you just don't do it you don't pad mount the big three if you want to get big just get good at squats deadlifts and bench press bro that's all it fucking takes just put some weight on the bar and drink some fucking milk like that's really how simplified a lot of people look at this shit but having trained a lot of people i can tell you for a fact there are some people that you don't want to put a bar on their back and load it up heavy

their body just doesn't agree well with that it might have to do with ankle mobility hip mobility previous injury just general anthropometry not everybody can squat ass to grass, especially tall people. Not everybody can rip 405, 500 pounds off the ground because a lot of people have stubby little arms and long legs and it puts a lot of torque in their lumbar spine, right? Not everybody's built to bench press a shit ton of weight because they have shoulder elbow issues. So what can we learn from that? Hey, bench squatting and deadlifting are incredible movements. Barbell bench squatting, barbell squatting, barbell bench pressing, barbell deadlifting, right, aren't necessarily

the end all be all, but training a push, a pull, a squat, a lunge, and a hinge are. And powerlifting reinforces the importance of those fundamental movement patterns, and that is positive. We don't necessarily have to do them with a barbell if we're not going to compete. But I believe you should do some type of squat or lunge. I believe you should pick something up off the ground, whether it's a deadlift with a conventional barbell or a hex bar, right? Anything like that. Even a kettlebell swing.

And I think you should press, whether it's overhead with dumbbells or horizontally with a barbell like you do in powerlifting. I think that those fundamental movement patterns need to be trained and they should be reinforced. I just think it's really important that we make sure people understand that that does not have to be done with a barbell to be effective. The last thing I will touch on with powerlifting is I have worked closely with and know many people who have taken powerlifting very seriously for a short period of time, and it has really hammered their body. And while I don't think powerlifting and Olympic lifting are inversely proportionate with training longevity, like I do think you can do them for a very long time and do them well. I think that most people don't have the capacity or the ability and the acumen to do them for a long period of time without having some

joint issues, some pain. So, you know, if I were to pick a discipline to do for the rest of my life, powerlifting might not be that discipline based purely on the fact that progressively overloading with weight and really just focusing on always lifting heavier and heavier and heavier, aggressively overloading with weight, and really just focusing on always lifting heavier and heavier and heavier. It's not guaranteed to hurt you. And it's it's certainly not any more dangerous than being a sedentary fat fuck, my apologies. But quite frankly, I'd rather have joint pain and be strong than be overweight and have joint pain for being overweight. And let's call a spade a spade. A lot of powerlifters are just fat, strong people. Like, I'm fucking sorry. Like it's not super healthy sport if you're just fat and picking up heavy shit. So, Hey, it is what it is. There's a lot of unhealthy quote unquote,

less than healthy power lifting people, but getting fucking strong and practicing that sport is a good idea if you can do it without destroying your body. And I think a lot of people can. And if you feel like you're running your body into the ground and we'll get to this with CrossFit because CrossFit is an exponentially bigger perpetrator of this, in my opinion, than power lifting and Olympic lifting. Um, you know, I think power lifting is a really good endeavor. So those are my critiques. And again, all that, all these critiques are kind of a stretch. I love all of this shit. I think it's really important. I want everybody to do it. I want more people to do it, but I want people to understand what we should borrow and what we should maybe be on the lookout for as we integrate this stuff

into our life. So getting into the bad boy, the Darth Vader, the infamous one in the mix, CrossFit, right? If you bring it up, people freak, but there is a lot to like about CrossFit. Yep, I said it. There is a lot to like. And here's what I think is good. What I love about CrossFit is that it incorporates elements of nearly every other type of physical fitness. There are aerobic demands. There are endurance demands.

There are hypertrophy-specific demands. There are certainly strength demands. hypertrophy specific demands. There are certainly strength demands. And I like that it focuses on elements of building aerobic fitness, strength, and musculature. I think that that's badass. I also really like the community that CrossFit fosters amongst the people who practice it at various boxes. I love that there's a variety in the training. And I think that that's really, really cool. But that's where the list of stuff that I like ends. And I do have some critiques of CrossFit. And one of them is that it just appears to consistently be inundated with weird programming

and just strange choices. Like, hey, we're going to do cleans 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then run a mile and then come back and do cleans 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 and it looks cute on paper and it's fun but that's not fucking programming that's getting cute with numbers and that happens a lot with crossfit and that's why for general population i think going in to a crossfit box um you might find yourself in over your head really really quick with movements that have a high degree of complexity. When we talked about powerlifting and Olympic lifting,

we talked about how just a barbell can open a door for an incredible complex style of training that requires a lot of focus, intent, and really hammering down technique, not over the course of a training block, but over the course of a training career, right? You might get better at power cleans by virtue of becoming better at the technique, not just necessarily getting stronger. And while CrossFit doesn't throw technique entirely out the window, it's pretty challenging to keep technique in focus when you're doing a lot of the programming that you'll find at typical CrossFit boxes where things are constrained for time or, you know, you're doing a clean and then you're climbing a rope and then you're going for a run. And there's a lot of amazing CrossFit coaches out there. There's a lot of CrossFit coaches who are extremely intelligent, well-educated, understand exercise, understand exercise science, understand physiology, understand nutrition.

And those aren't the people that I'm talking about. And those aren't the boxes that I'm talking about. And those aren't the boxes that I'm talking about. But there's a lot of people who do this shit just straight up wrong, silly and foolish. And they get a lot of people in way over their head, doing stuff that they're not prepared to do physically. They haven't built the requisite amount of muscle or technique to even be working on something like a clean to even be climbing something like a rope. You know, they're not well aerobically trained. So they get fatigued extremely quickly after doing traditional aerobic work. And then upon returning from half mile or a mile run,

you put a barbell immediately back into their hands. That to me is a little bit too risky. And again, I looked at powerlifting and said, hey, I don't know a ton of people who have done powerlifting consistently for 20 years and haven't had some bumps and bruises along the way. I'm not saying they're broken people, but there are some bumps and bruises that are going to happen. Same thing happens with bodybuilding too. But I have, of course, CrossFit isn't even 20 years old, I don't think, but I have not met anybody who has done CrossFit for more than 5 to 10 years. Nobody. And the people I know who have pushed it to the max and have trained the hardest,

a lot of them are very, very broken people. A lot of them have an obsessive, compulsive desire to exercise. And so those are my critiques of CrossFit. And again, I think there's a lot we can borrow from this that's positive. I really love the incorporation of other styles of fitness. I love the base that you're focusing on building a base of strength, of musculature, of mobility, of aerobic fitness. I love all that. my training resembles anything. It's almost a fusion of CrossFit and bodybuilding in that I do go for a run. I do like to play the occasional sport like basketball, flag football, spike ball. I like to do gymnastic style work or mobility work. I really like to focus on training my core. I do a lot of bodybuilding too. I do a lot of deadlifts and bench press. I borrow from all of this stuff. And that kind of inherently makes my training look a little bit crossfitty because CrossFit is kind of borrowing from all of these

disciplines. But if you're going to do it, you got to do it right. And to close things up, guys, we're going to talk about endurance training, specifically running or obstacle course racing. What I love about it is great for your aerobic health and fitness, right? When we do powerlifting and bodybuilding, we train our heart and our vasculature, of course, but our primary focus is our muscles and our tendons and our ligaments. With aerobic training, we're doing a really, really good job of training our vasculature and our heart. Our heart is a muscle. We're training these things to be stronger and function better. We're also increasing the density of our mitochondria, which is great for long-term health, additionally great for aerobic fitness, right? You can do endurance training pretty much anywhere as long as you got your running shoes on you. You can hop on and go for a run. And if you

don't overdo it, right, and we don't dive too deep into the crossover effect of doing too much exercise, I think, or too much aerobic work, I think that a little bit of cardio will only make you better at everything that I mentioned above. The downsides to excessive amounts of cardio are that you will have a very hard time building and maintaining muscle because think about adaptations to exercise. If you want to be a great runner, it pays to be very economical. And to be economical, it requires you to be able to move the lightest amount of weight possible over the greatest distance in the shortest amount of time. And having a shit ton of muscle is not an ideal body

for endurance training. If you're doing something like obstacle course racing, you probably want to have extremely high relative strength, where you have a little bit of muscle, but you have a ton of strength to kind of work in concert with your existing aerobic fitness. So you can do arduous tasks over the course of many, many miles. And training to get to that level of aerobic fitness and capacity, in my opinion, can be a little bit boring. Pounding the pavement and going on runs for me is kind of not my cup of tea. I know some people that love it. It's their release. It's how they get away from the world. And I respect the hell out of those people. I think that's awesome. But in the long run, I don't think it's the best for keeping your training fun. And I don't think it's the best for long term body composition composition because to become a great runner, most people

will have a hard time building a lot of muscle. And I think having a good amount of muscle is really, really valuable for your long-term health. So guys, let's just run it back and digest here again. If you do any of these things and you do them well or you're enjoying them, this is not a personal attack. This is an examination on these disciplines, the pros and the cons associated with all of them. And I would so much rather you do any one of them than be afraid to do any of them because I fearmongered you into, you know, taking a quick examination of the potentially bad sides or the less than ideal outcome. So starting with bodybuilding, what I love, lots of variety, great focus on technique, teaches you how to train close to failure, really big focus on nutrition,

tends to be something you can do for a long time. You can supplement other training modalities with it. It tends to be lower on the risk of injury than other training modalities in my experience. And it's great for general population fitness. What do I not like? It's really, really focused on the aesthetics. It's hard to discern who is and isn't enhanced. Genetics do play a role on your ceiling and what muscles you can and can't develop more or less easily. And if you take it to the highest level, it can certainly impact your relationship with food. Powerlifting and Olympic lifting. I think they're awesome. They're simple. They're easy to pick up. They don't require a ton of equipment. You can build a tremendous amount of strength. It doesn't require a ton of equipment. I think everybody should work to get stronger and

powerlifting and Olympic lifting are amazing vehicles for that. What I don't love is that the bench squat, deadlift, clean, jerk, snatch are not ideal for everybody. Those types of movements with a barbell aren't ideal for every body. Some people's bodies might do better with bench squatting and deadlifts with something like a dumbbell or a different implement. I'm not hammering the principle of the bench, the squat, and the deadlift. I'm hammering a little bit of the way in which we go about loading those up for every single person. I also don't love the fact

that as far as longevity goes, powerlifting wouldn't be at the top of my list. And it can put some unneeded wear and tear on your body. I've seen it happen. It's happened to me. It's happened to clients. It's happened to friends. And a lot of people can do it well for a really long time. So if you want to do it for a really long time, you have to take your recovery, your mobility seriously. And you have to train with intent. And I think that powerlifting can be a long-term thing, but I don't think most people are patient enough to make it one.

As for CrossFit, I love that it incorporates every other facet of fitness. I think it's probably the most well-rounded. I think the community and the amount of variety is awesome. I just think that some of the programming, some of the schemes, some of the ways people lay this stuff out is foolish. And the amount of stuff that is going on in a given workout, there might be too much competition and it couldn't, it could be less than ideal for long-term training longevity. As far as endurance training goes, I love the aerobic and vasculature health benefits. I love that you can do it anywhere. I love that it can make everything that I've mentioned earlier better. And what I don't like is that it's quite honestly boring as fuck. Pounding the pavement drives me nuts, and I don't think it's ideal for your long-term body composition. Otherwise, guys, that's it.

That's my examination of these disciplines. That's what I think we can learn from them and borrow from them and apply with our clients, apply in our own training. And why I think that you should train with a variety of different methods and modalities across your training career. It's not bad to go, hey, I did powerlifting for three months, I got really strong, I kind of got bored of it, my body started breaking down. So then I shifted over and did a bodybuilding style block for a little bit, built up some muscle,

let my joints, you know, have a little bit of a rest from the heavy weights and then hit something different. I think it's all awesome. I think as long as you're doing something, you're going to be better off than if you're not. And I think if you can borrow and learn from all of these things, you'll have an awesome lifting career and you'll be able to lift for the entirety of your life and have a better quality of life for it. So guys, thank you so much for listening. If you want to do me a favor, and it really would be a favor, it would help me out a ton. Share this podcast, leave me a five star rating and review on iTunes. If you listen on Spotify, a five-star rating and review on iTunes.

If you listen on Spotify, share it to your Instagram story and tag me. I want to get this out there so I can reach more people and help them live a healthier, more fit life with better performance and longevity. And every single one of you viewers has been invaluable in helping me do that so far. And I really, really hope that we can continue to do that together moving into 2021. I know that it has been a crazy year so far, but you know, here we are recording this on January 12th. Let's start over.

Let's take a deep breath and enjoy the new year. Happy new year for me. Have a great rest of your day.