Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Are You Doing Too Much? How Do You Even Know?

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

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This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 167, sitting here with Echo Charles, about to answer some questions that have been submitted and provide some courses of action, some possible guidance, some recommendations. And actionable steps, we'll see. We'll get some actionable steps as sure. Okay. First question. First inquiry. I attended an echelon front roll call event. And I have been on the path ever since. For the past few years, I've been. I've been waking up every morning to get to the gym and will lift for an hour to an hour and a half of a bodybuilding style routine. With most sets to failure, shout out to echo for that advice. You're welcome.

I have been seeing great results with this style program. During my time on the path, I've done 75 hard, and I have maintained most of the disciplines from that program. The program consists of two workouts a day. One has to be outdoors, drink a gallon of water, maintain a diet and reading. My second workout usually consists of a fast-paced walk or rock. I would like to increase the intensity of my second workout. I started running three and a half miles three times a week. I was wanting to implement some Metcon style workouts or using some of the workouts from

Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. My concern is about overtraining, especially since I'm approaching 40. Would this be too much volume? What kinds of workouts would you recommend to help my cardio and with my mental toughness? Thank you in advance. And thank you for all the wisdom you have passed on. Cool. Well, I think you're a pretty good example because you incorporated Metcons into your workout later in life.

Yeah. You're probably over 40, huh? When you did that? Yeah. About this point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not than right before. And I think they're definitely beneficial for a bunch of reasons. But one thing that you can do when you want to incorporate these things is if you're really using them for, cardio and for that fueling system of cardio, which isn't an endurance, three and a half mile run, which is a different fueling system. Anything that you like, there's a bunch of things that you can do and body, doing like lightweight, easy, quote unquote, easy movements.

Like a burpee, right? A burpee. You can always do another burpee. Yeah. Like you can literally always do one more burpee no matter what. You're never going to not be able to do a burpee. realistically speaking right uh jumping jacks like you you're not going to get muscle failure on the jumping jacks yeah some level of of pliometrics right like you can do pliometrics and look can you burn yourself

out on pliomper yeah you can but even if you're just doing jumps you know jumps over the bar just little jumps things like that jumping rope right you can kind of always do a little bit more jumping rope and then you get things like the air bike things like the row or where you're not extremely taxing your muscles in a way where you're going to get muscle fatigue in this particular case in my opinion tell me what you think you're not looking for muscle fatigue you're looking for muscle usage that that fails due to cardio that's not failing due to muscular muscular failure so And I think what you could do in a situation like this is you you could start off by doing really short bursts of super high intense but low weight work, you know, even if it's just like 20 seconds or 30 seconds of all you got on an air bike or 30 seconds of as many burpees you can possibly do. And then rest until you're ready again.

Like take a legit rest. and then just over time make that rest a little shorter, make the work a little longer, and eventually you'll get to a point where you're getting some, even the first one, you'll get really good work. You go to two minutes of burpees as hard as you can. I don't care who you are. If you do them as hard as you can,

you're going to be freaking tired. Cardio tired. Now listen, if you're not muscularly strong, you can also, you can work your legs. If your legs aren't strong, your legs get tired too. But eventually you can maybe, if you want, you can add a load, right? You can start throwing a kettlebell swing in there.

You can do something that, again, we're looking for a sustainable weight that you can do many, many times. And then you can add that over time. And you can start doing things like kettlebell swings, maybe some light, you know, cleans or snatches with a kettlebell. These things are, they shouldn't be, you're not going super heavy, especially in the beginning. But you're using them to get your cardio activities going. And then, you know, over time, you just decrease the, decrease the rest time and or increase the amount of time that you do something for and or increase the reps that you do something and or increase the weight that you're doing. And those are a bunch of ways that you can start to add some metcom, some metcon activities into your workouts. And I think if you're aiming for like, eventually, you're getting to between five and 15 minutes of,

really high intensity work, maybe with some breaks in there. You know, if you're doing rounds that are three or four minutes long and you're doing three or four of those rounds or you're doing five minutes straight or something like that and you can get to a point where you're going to get some really good cardio work and you'll feel that. Is this guy doing jiu-jitsu? I don't think he's doing jihitsu, but you'll feel it in situate. Like you'll feel your cardio get better for these short bursts things. And by the way, that will help your three and a half mile runs.

Yeah, it will. You'll get stronger and faster all along. So that's kind of my assessment here. But then what we have to pay attention to because the actual question that you had was like or the statement that you made is you don't want to overtrain. Right. So I think you're going to be able to get away with more of this than you might think because it truly is just looking to tax your system in a very specific mode, not your endurance mode and not your explosive weight. lifting mode you shouldn't be getting you shouldn't your goal is to not be sore the next day like muscularly sore the next day that's not the goal the goal is that you work that metabolic

region of work and you stress it out so that it becomes stronger and stronger over time yeah it's true i the without going too deep into the it depends right? because it does depends on how much volume you're doing because even when you say lift for an hour whatever it depends like what lifting you know i like metcon but i started metcon for a reason just so i would i wouldn't be dying in the later rounds in jiu jitsu so there was like a reason tethered to it you know it wasn't metcon just so i can get in quote unquote better shape arbitrarily um i don't it starts to become hard to answer any question when you don't have like a reason why you're getting in shape or whatever especially like metcon metcon is like a performance scenario you know

it's like because there's better ways to get cut up yeah yeah for sure um metcons are good though i'm not well yeah i mean depends on what you mean by good depends on who you are depends on what your ultimate goal you know but yeah if you want to maintain or grow muscle and lose body fat and metcon's not that good really you know especially when you compare to the good stuff yeah yeah um so it just depends on what we're doing um i like metcon for the performance so now now when you go do jiu-jitsu and you do hiking mountain climbing you got to you know playing with the kids all that stuff all it all it all becomes a lot easier and you can do more of it so that's good to me the mile the cardio stuff even super low intensity um is good so yeah don't get too crazy with it all of a sudden

yeah yeah don't get too crazy but you know one thing he's run three and a half miles three times a week one thing that you could put into this and i don't know if i specifically mentioned it but sprinting. Sprinting is awesome. And you do, you know, measure do four 40s, you know, doesn't take much time at all. But you'll get faster. Yeah. And you're, and then you start doing six 40s.

Yeah. And then you start doing eight 40s. And then at some point you're doing 10 40s. Yeah. And it takes you with, with a rest in there. And now it takes you 10, 15 minutes. And you're getting some really good work. And that's going to benefit you all across the board.

It's not the same and you're not going to feel the same way you'll feel when you do a hundred burpees for time, which is different. But again, I guess when we talk Metcon, we're talking 100 burpees for time. But the sprinting will prepare you for that as well. Yeah. So I would say to answer the question of is this too much volume? If you do too much too quickly, it'll become too much volume. Yeah. But like just like how you kind of laid out there as an example where if it's like you just do actually I would even go less approaching 40 years old I would do this I'm going to add some sprints. I would do like four sprints once a week to start with for literally 40 yards rest 40 yards rest 40 yards. I'll say this do it after your after your run. Yeah. And the reason is because I want you warmed up dude. I don't want you going out there. I'm freaking blowing a hammie because 40 year old dudes blow hammies like and Achilles like it. So that.

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