The Nick Bare Podcast - 058: If I Had to Start Training All Over Again

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

In today's episode, I'm laying out eight things I would do if I had to start training all over again. I am sharing things I did right as well as things I did wrong. You will hear about what I've learned through years of strength training, marathon preps, and nutrition with simple yet effective lessons that will optimize your performance and progress. This episode inspires you to take incremental steps to achieve exponential results. Enjoy! Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Topics: 0:00 Intro 0:32 Welcome 5:25 What I’ve done right and done wrong 7:02 Get serious about strength training 17:57 Run earlier but run smarter 26:34 Eat properly to fuel your training 39:56 Prioritize strength and power 49:19 Train for performance over aesthetics  55:47 Hire more good coaches 1:02:43 Take the bulk/cut cycles with a grain of salt 1:12:27 You have to fall in love with the journey

In today's episode of the podcast, I am talking about if I had to start training all over again, this is what I would do. There's eight things that I'm going to lay out that I have learned and refined over the last 15 years of serious training that I want to share with you guys today to implement as soon as possible. Today's episode is titled, If I had to start training all over again, this is what I would do. And the reason I want to record this episode is because I see questions all the time. I get DMs, I see comments on photos or videos,

we get messages, and it's a lot of questions from people who are just getting started with training and fitness and diet and nutrition, or from people who have been doing it for a long period of time, but are still confused. Because as I've seen the industry in the fitness space evolve and change, since I first got started in 2009, 2010, 2011 timeframe, there's been a lot of change.

there's been a lot of new information that has come out and has been public and a lot of that information is very polarizing and can confuse a lot of people. I mean, sometimes I'm confused with all the stuff that comes out. So what I did on my Instagram about an hour ago is I just made a post. And I said, I'm about to record a podcast titled, If I had to start training all over again, this is what I would do. I'm curious to hear you guys' thoughts, and I think we can all contribute some great advice here.

So what would you share? And I'm just going to go through some of the comments that have been left already and read a few because I think there's some great things here. So just going down the list. Learn basic compound movements and try to get as strong on them as possible for at least two years before thinking about cutting weight.

Understanding that there will be good days and bad days, months of great progress and months of no progress. Play the long game. Be patient. Be consistent. Consistency and discipline is the most important. Keep it simple. Would be my thing if I had to start all over again.

Another person said, play the long game. I tell myself to eat more. especially more protein. Let's see, what else we have here? There's some really good stuff. Run your easy days, easy. Run your hard days, hard. Have a goal, show up, be consistent, progressive overload,

eat your body weight in protein. Function over aesthetics. Log everything. Don't compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter, 10. That was from Mr. Rob Libsit himself. Take recovery more seriously. Build brick by brick. Take ownership of your diet. Run your own race. Never feel stupid for asking someone in the gym if they can help you with an exercise. It's a great one there from Demi. There's a lot of good stuff.

focus more on maintaining my mobility. I saw a few different mobility comments here. Patience pays. Train with purpose and intention earlier. Oh, here's from Brady Oak. It's got to be some good stuff here. The goal is to be your best. Do not compare yourself to other people's physiques ever,

maybe for motivation, but never with the expectation to someday look look just like them. Intensity is king. You must give your body a reason to change. Exercising is not training. They are different. You can't exercise your way

to a crazy, strong, an aesthetic physique. That takes hard training. No way around it. From Ian Fons here. It's not that deep. Essentially meaning people are overthinking what's the perfect, most optimal way

when intensity and consistency is all you need in the early stages. Beautiful. Some great stuff right there. So I'm going to go over some of mine. A lot of what I'm going to be talking about are things that I've done right, things that I've done wrong, things that I think I would have changed, and then things that I believe I would have sustained

from my early days of starting to train and eat right, eat healthier, eat more. This is all my personal preferences and advice, but I do believe it's going to be useful to many people. So a high-level overview, what I'm going to be talking about in this podcast. Number one, get serious about strength training from the beginning. Number two, run earlier but run smarter. Number three, eat properly to fuel my training.

Number four, prioritize strength and power over hypertrophy. Number five, train for performance over aesthetics. Same goes for fueling. fuel for performance over aesthetics. Number six, hire more good coaches. Number seven, take the bulk and cut cycles with a grain of salt. And number eight, fall in love with the journey, not the destination. So those are the eight things I'm going to talk about in regards to,

if I had to start training all over again, this is what I would do. Okay, so diving into the first thing. Get serious about strength training from the beginning. Now, if you've been following my content over the last couple years, you've seen me talk about hybrid athlete training, which is the combination of strength training, resistance training, being powerlifting and bodybuilding, and a crossover with endurance training,

primarily running. So strength training and running being a hybrid athlete training. Now, I really only started talking about the term hybrid athlete training in 2019. But if I looked back at my training, starting in 2007, 2008 and 2009, the last couple years of high school before going into college, I was training this exact same way. I was running and strength training. When I first fell in love with fitness, you know, after playing team sports, it was the gym. And I remember this gym like it was yesterday. It was this

This temporary mobile home structure that was right off of our gymnasium in our high school and it was the gym that was available for us to use

at school in Plyra, Pennsylvania once the school day was over. Some kids would go and attend their sports practice or games. Some people would go to the gym, some people would go home, some people would go to work. I would go to the gym, which was this, like I said, mobile home, detached garage-style gym where all these garage doors would get thrown up. It was old equipment. It was grungy. It was raw. There was like

stained and nickel back and creed playing over the loudspeakers. It was a fucking vibe, man. I can imagine and picture where all this gym equipment was laid out in a relationship to the door and the windows. And I just remember bench pressing, overhead pressing, and bicep curling daily. And that's where I fell in love with the gym, was that gym. And then that kind of evolved into one of my first jobs, which was working at a gym, New York Fitness, which was right across the street from my parents' house growing up. And I made smoothies there. I sold memberships. I trained there. It was the biggest gym in Plyra, Pennsylvania at the time, and probably still is. And then I started running in high school because I signed up for

cross-country in preparation to go to college on an Army ROTC scholarship. So I knew once I would go to college, I was going to be running. I was going to be tested on my physical fitness. And part of that physical fitness assessment was running, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups. So I've been hybrid athlete training for as long as I can remember. But it wasn't by any means to the extent volume, intensity as it is today. And it's been the last couple years. I was running just to survive when I got to college and in the Army RTC program and then joining the military after graduating from college.

But one of the things I do want to address, I think it's really important. It's why the first thing I'm talking about is getting serious about strength training from the beginning is because if I look at my physique now, I did not build this physique by just running 50, to 75 miles a week. I not build a chest and back and shoulders and arms by just running. I built the foundation of my physique through strength training, through bodybuilding, lots of volume, lots of sets, compound movements, accessory movements. That is how I built the foundation of my fitness.

It's how I built the foundation of my body and my physique. that's how I learn different movements and how to utilize my body to perform these different movements over extended periods of time. I'm glad that I got really serious about strength training early on. Now, I was still running here and there,

but it was, I mean, a few miles, maybe every couple days based off of if I was in Carl's country season or what we were doing in the Army ROTC program. but everything I did in the beginning where I fell in love with fitness, where I built the foundation of my physique, like I said, was through strength training.

And when I got to college, I was even more obsessed with strength training and bodybuilding. I mean, ultimately, that's what led me to starting bare performance nutrition. I was obsessed with the bodybuilding industry and the supplement space and using and creating supplements and eating like a bodybuilder, eating chicken, rice, and broccoli

every two and a half to three hours and carrying my gallon water drug around campus with my aminos and electrolytes in it. That was me in college. I did my first bodybuilding show in 2012 which was towards the end of my

junior year of college right before I started BPN, actually. So when I was in high school, when I was in college, I was running, but I was running because I had to. And I was running the bare minimum of what would get me to a point where I could actually sustain a run through cross-country practice. Or like I said, for the two-mile Army PT test that we would get. evaluated and assessed on every couple weeks. I was running because I had to.

So running was always part of my training, but it was never a serious part of it, my training. The serious part of my training was bodybuilding. It was strength training. I was obsessed with the weights. I'd be the guy in the college gym with all the other frat bros, even though I wasn't in a frat,

but I was around that circle of the basketball shorts below your knees. We didn't really have stringers back then from what I remember, but we would cut our own t-shirts and make them into tank tops. And I mean, there were just like threads over your shoulders

that were holding that thing together. And we were all doing bicep curls, a ridiculous amount of barbell shrugs. Barbell shrugs in a college gym was like the ultimate alpha ego weightlifting move, a lot of bench pressing, very little leg training, if I'm being honest, a lot of upper body, which is probably why we were wearing basketball shorts below our knees.

But that's how I built my physique. And that foundation taught me a lot about diet. That foundation taught me a lot about training, building muscle, building lean muscle. but I say more importantly, it taught me how to perform movements and be very aware of my body. You know, when you do a movement properly, after you start building some muscle and you get more comfortable with it, you can feel that muscle will contract and move and squeeze as you go through that movement. And as you go through that movement, especially in higher,

rep range is you get a pump. And that's why we talk about the mind muscle connection. That's why the pump is so important, these muscular contractions. If you look at someone who just get started training, they oftentimes

struggle with the movement because they can't feel the movement. That mind muscle connection is just not there. And that's normal. That's expected. But as someone starts training more and more frequently, and for longer periods of time,

that mind-muscle connection gets stronger. So when you go into a gym and you have some muscle that you've built and you're moving through the movements and you're moving through the movements with proper form, you can feel the contraction. And you can activate. You can feel those muscles activating as you're moving through the movement.

So you can make these small modifications with your hands and your arm placement. and your shoulder retraction. And you make these small movements all throughout your body to maximize the contraction in the mind-muscle connection and it allows you to have better, stronger workouts. That's where I learned how to do that. That was through a bodybuilding style training

with some supplementary strength and power training. but I'm so glad that that's how I built the foundation of my fitness and then I layered on more advanced cardiovascular conditioning afterwards. Now I'm not saying it's the perfect way to do it or even the right way to do it, but I'm glad that's why I approached it because, like I said, it taught me how to move my body, taught me how to execute movements properly, feel the contraction

and it built a really strong base, a really strong foundation of muscle and strength and size to build off of moving into the future. Number two is run earlier, but run smarter.

Now, piggybacking off of what I was just talking about, I am glad that I had some background of running in high school through cross-country, when I was in college during the Army ROTC program. And then when I went on active duty in the military

when I was at Fort Benning for a year and then Fort Hood as an infantry platoon leader. Now I remember to this day being at Fort Benning and there were some really fast second lieutenants, some really fast Army officers that I was surrounded by. And when we'd go out on our runs, we would do what was called ability group runs. So there'd be an Alpha group, a Bravo group, and a Charlie group.

And each one of those groups was broken down based off of how fast you would run your two-mile assessment for the Army PT test. So you could run in these ability groups and run in formation based on off of how fast you were compared to the other people in your platoon or your group. And even if I had to run in B group, I would put myself in A group and just hold on for dear life. And I remember running an A group with some really fast dudes and they'd be cooking. I don't know what the, you know, mileage pace was now, but it was fast for me back then.

And they were moving, they were running fast in formation, holding conversation. And I remember just barely holding on trying to breathe. And someone making a comment this one time, his last name was actually Boone. But he was Merlin Boone. And he was like, man, bear. Because everyone used to call me Bear that. Even in high school, everyone called me a bear. No one ever called me Nick.

Like, bear, like for a bigger guy, you're really holding pace with us up here. And I couldn't even respond because I was trying to breathe to maintain pace with them. But I'd always push myself. So from high school to college to post college and then into my civilian life,

I've always been running, and I'm glad that I've built a strong foundation of running early on, which I would highly recommend. Now, to start running, you might look at my mileage now and say, well, I don't have time to run 50 to 75 miles a week, nor do I want to run 50 to 75 miles a week, because it might take away from what my other goals are in that moment of time. And that's okay. You don't have to run high intensity.

you don't have to run high volume. You don't even have to run if you don't want to. But maintaining a level of cardiovascular conditioning is important for many reasons, not only for longevity and just the positive impact that makes on your lungs and your heart, in your mind, and your body as a whole. But maintaining some sort of level of aerobic conditioning allows you to hold a level of fitness that you can build off of into the future. So even back then, those earlier days, my mileage wasn't crazy high.

We were running a few days a week, a few miles at a time. But if there's one thing I would have changed is that I would have learned how to run smarter. I wouldn't have put myself in that alpha group. I would have put myself where I belonged in that Bravo group. You've probably heard me talk about to the ultimate extent that I could ever talk about it, the MAF-180 formula. The Maffetone 180 formula. And the reason I've talked about this so much in the past is because it game-changed my running ability.

It taught me so much. And I wish I would have discovered this earlier because it would have helped me become a better runner. it would have helped me mitigate risk of injury early on. I would have built a stronger aerobic base, and I probably would have liked running more earlier. Because when I first started running for those first couple years, I hated it because it was just a struggle fest because I was running my easy runs way too hard.

And as we know, the way that you get faster is by actually running slower because we need to build this aerobic foundation, this aerobic base. The MAF-180 formula is where you take 180 minus your age, and that will give you a number. And that number is your max aerobic heart rate, which means that when you go out on these,

what are deemed easy runs, you don't want your heart rate to exceed your max aerobic heart rate. and what this does is it allows you to train the aerobic system at the right heart rate threshold so you can build an aerobic base and that base gets stronger and stronger and stronger the more time you spend below your max aerobic heart rate that's how you actually end up getting faster you become more aerobically efficient so one of the best ways to do this is to wear a chest strap heart rate monitor and sync it to your smart watch. I wear a Garmin.

I've rotated between the Garmin Phoenix series. Right now I'm wearing the Garmin epics, which I love. But you can sync your Garmin to your chest strap heart rate monitor and then watch in real time from your watch to ensure that you are running below your max aerobic heart rate. I was running my easy runs way too hard. And if I would have run my easy runs easy, easy meaning below my max aerobic heart rate, I would have, like I said,

built a stronger aerobic foundation. I would have gotten faster. I probably would have enjoyed running more. I probably would have experienced the runners high years and years and years prior to when I actually did. So it's running. the right amount of miles, which depends on your goal and when you're getting started, at the right intensity, meaning easy runs, easy, hard runs, hard.

And I really want to reinforce that, just like someone said in, I think it was Rob Lipset when I was reading those comments, you can't compare your chapter one or your year one to someone else's chapter 10 or year 10. So if you look at someone on social media and they're running 70 miles a week it would be wrong, it would be ignorant, it would be dangerous for you to just start running and start running 75 or 70 miles a week

based off your comparison to the person you're watching because your aerobic foundation isn't there yet and you're going to get injured, you're going to get hurt, you're going to have these overuse nagging injuries that flare up all the time, time. So find your chapter one, find your day one, your year one, and be in that and learn and adapt and grow and slowly progress where you're adding mileage and you're getting faster. But you've got to be patient. It's the hardest part about running. It's a hardest part about

training. And it's the hardest part about fitness as a whole for a lot of people is you got to play the long game. You have to be patient. And if you want to get faster, if you want on a fast marathon, you have to apply endurance. And endurance requires patience. Number three, eat properly to fuel my training. My

food background, nutrition background, is quite interesting. I've shared this story before. But in 2014, I had a pretty severe eating disorder. I was starving myself. It was killing me. I mean, my organs were slowly shutting down. I was in and out of the hospital.

It was pretty severe. So I had a really unhealthy relationship with food early on, which, if I'm being honest, still visits me every once in a while, depending on the stress that I'm going through in life, I'm training for something specific. That eating disorder taught me the ability of extreme discipline and control. And I can apply that for good and I can apply that for bad.

Meaning that if I need to train for something, I can be so controlled and disciplined to avoid all temptation and resist anything that's going to derail. me from making progress. I can just tunnel focus on what needs to get done in order to get to where I want to be. That's the positive side of it. The negative side of it is that sometimes this control takes over and is all consuming in other areas and responsibilities of my life that I didn't want it to consume.

So if I'm super stressed in terms of something we're doing in business, I will be all in. Sometimes I teeter that line of being all consumed and I will neglect responsibilities and my personal health, my friendships, my family, other aspects of my life that are very important. So that eating disorder taught me a lot about myself early on and it still can never. negatively impact my life in different ways, especially around food. I would say I now have a healthy relationship with food that can be unhealthy during certain periods of my life and seasons that I'm going through. I'm very aware of that. And then when I got to college and like I was earlier talking about, became obsessed with

the bodybuilding space, the fitness industry. it was such a fun time between 2009 and 2013 the online fitness space was evolving and growing it's just like a fun fun stage and chapter a lot of it was new for a lot of people

there was new research coming out new companies were popping up new products were being developed the Arnold Fitness Expo was I'd say at its peak then and that's when YouTube fitness

actually became pretty popular shortly after I started sharing my life on YouTube and that's when the if it fits your macros era really started and I'm not sure if you're listening this podcast right now

or watching this podcast when you found the fitness space or how old you are but during those years like probably to refine the time frame 2011, 2012, 2012, 2013, if it fits your macros or IIFYM became really popular,

especially on the online YouTube fitness space, which really just broke down the concept of calories in versus calories out. If you want to gain weight, you have to be in a chloric surplus. If you want to lose weight, you have to be in a chloric deficit. It's the law of thermodynamics.

It's science. It works. But it got taken a little too far, I would say, where people were trying to fit into their diet whatever they could, regardless of quality

or source of food, to either gain weight or lose weight. And because of the law thermodynamics, it worked. You could eat Twinkies and Pop-Tarts and Burger King and donuts and you could still make progress in terms of your body composition and even performance. People were getting shredded

stepping on stage for a bodybuilding competition at 6% body fat with striated glutes and shoulders and abs. And they did that. They got to that point because they dieted for 16 to 20 weeks, hit their protein goals, prioritize protein, but then fit in all these other things into their diet

to just make sure they hit their calorie goals. And again, because of the law of thermodynamics, it worked. So I kind of fell into the fitness space, the nutrition space during this time, because it just so happened. This is kind of like when my fitness pal was becoming a thing, I guess, and more popular. Everyone had my fitness pal downloaded.

Everyone was tracking their macros and their calories. You know, you track your macros and calories. you can either balk or cut or maintain and everyone's weighing their food at the time. And that same kind of year time frame is when I signed up for my first bodybuilding competition in 2012, me and my brother did one together. And this was the first time we actually started tracking our calories and started tracking our macronutrients. And we both got absolutely bone shredded by utilizing the, if it's your macros approach, and I mean, I was still eating Pop-Tarts and some of these deemed unhealthy foods weeks leading up into my show,

even though majority of the foods in my diet were chicken, rice, green beans, broccoli, tilapia, sweet potato, eggs, oats, bananas, stuff like that. I'll still fitting in all these other things to get creative with my diet and kind of fight some of these temptations and cravings. But what I learned through this whole area and the reason I want to share these stories is because what if it fits your macros taught me? One was really how to utilize the law of thermodynamics, how to gain weight, how to lose weight. it taught me how to track my macronutrients. It taught me what serving sizes look like in terms of, you know, a cup of rice is 200 grams, a cup and a half of rice is 300 grams, what seven ounces of chicken looks like on a scale, what a cup of broccoli looks like when it's weighed out.

You know, the way of a plate is portioned down with your different, you know, protein sources, carbohydrate sources, fat sources, taught me a lot about nutrition. But I would argue and say that a lot of people took the if it fits your macros era a little too far. And their diet,

even though they were hitting their caloric goals and their macronutrient goals on a daily basis, the sources of food they were consuming were very poor. And even though their body composition goals were being attained and achieved, performance ended up going down, decreasing, plummeting based off the quality of food they were consuming.

So my approach to nutrition has evolved over the years, and I really no longer eat to build a certain physique or modify my aesthetics, but I now eat food to, fuel my performance. And I wish I would have understood this better earlier, how to really eat to properly fuel my training. So my approach now is pretty simple. I don't overcomplicate things. I have the foods that I enjoy.

I lean more towards whole natural food sources as much as possible. Cage-free, eggs, past, to raise chicken, grass-fed meats, organic fruits and vegetables. I do a lot of rice. I do a lot of potatoes. Do lots of beets.

Eat a lot of steff's sourdough bread. But I don't really gravitate towards processed foods any longer. And for a few reasons. One, I don't crave them. And two, there's like an association between these whole natural food sources and how they make me feel and how they fuel my performance,

as opposed to processed foods, how they make me feel and how they don't feel my performance. So like I said, I now approach nutrition from a more simplistic perspective. Number one, I prioritize my protein intake, at least one gram of protein per pound of body weight. I then follow that up with ensuring I'm consuming enough calories to fuel my training of that day, fuel my training for the upcoming days, and to optimize my recovery. I've learned that carbohydrates in sodium are some of my best friends, especially during bigger endurance efforts, workouts, and training blocks. and I have also learned how to fuel for the goal,

whether that's performance and ensuring, like I said, I've consumed enough protein, calories, carbohydrates, and sodium around my training, how to fuel for the goal being weight loss. You know, a lot of people say, I just can't lose weight. Well, you can,

it's either that you're not tracking your calories properly, you're not actually in a chloric deficit, or you've just done so much damage to your metabolism over an extended period of time, do you have to build the foundation of your health, of your metabolism, of your body, before you can go into a deeper caloric deficit. And then if you want to gain weight, you just have to eat in a chloric surplus. I also hear people say on the flip side,

I just can't gain weight no matter what I do. well, you can, but you just got to eat more. And that's very unique and specific to the individual. You might have to eat a lot more. And there's ways to do that depending on like the source of foods you're consuming, how dense they are based off their volume. Fats, dietary fats are more chlorically dense than say proteins and carbs. But learning how to eat properly to fuel your training.

to make can make the biggest difference early on. And it doesn't have to be super complicated or complex. You know, we look back at the I-I-Y-FYM era, which was so simple. Hit your macronotrients, which will ensure you hit your calorie goals. It doesn't matter where the food comes from. I'm not saying you should do this. But when you follow those rules based off science and the law of thermodynamics, you achieve the outcome you desire.

And sometimes we overcomplicate anything and everything to add in all these variables that we think will make incremental changes when in reality they don't, we don't have to complicate it. But we do need to fuel our training to ensure that we can show up, perform, and recover. So number four is to prioritize strength. and power over hypertrophy. This is something I wish I would have done better at earlier on that I didn't do. Now, the first thing I talked about was get serious about strength training from the beginning.

Strength training can be bodybuilding and powerlifting for the way I describe it. I guess I should have said get serious about resistance training from the beginning. But now talking about prioritizing. strength and power over hypertrophy. So strength and power normally comes from more of these multi-joint compound movements

like the bench press, the barbell squat, and the deadlift. You can even think of overhead press. And typically when you're doing these movements, they are more programmed in structure.

and typically people are doing these movements to get stronger to work up to a one rep max it's a good way to assess your strength in the progress you're making around your strength and normally people are working towards these sets with lower rep ranges

around strength and power hypertrophy or bodybuilding style training is normally, you know, three to five sets, eight to 15 reps per set. It's higher rep ranges. You're going to build more muscle with more volume and higher rep ranges, but still using a moderately heavy weight. And when I first started training, I was doing these. multi-joint compound movements, but I wasn't doing them in a properly structured or programmed way. I was just going to the gym, very little warming up, which was another one of my early mistakes, not prioritizing warming up or mobility early on.

And I would do, you know, three to five sets anywhere from five to 15 reps. but I wasn't following a strict program or a structure, like I said. And I was still doing a lot of high volume. I was practicing the technique of progressive overload. And I was getting bigger. I was getting stronger. And it all worked out well. It was all fine.

Can't complain about the progress I made early on. But here's the but. this is where a lot of things changed for me in terms of where I would consider the chapter of my life where I built some of the best muscle density of my entire life. And when I got to Texas, I was training at this gym. I believe it was called Gym X. And this is right when I started my YouTube channel. So I was carrying a camera around in this gym.

and I ended up getting kicked out. It was in Temple, Texas. I got kicked out because I had my camera out and someone complained saying that I was filming them, which I wasn't. At the time, I was filming myself in my bright neon tights, deadlifting in the corner of the gym. If you've been following my YouTube channel

for a long period of time, back in the 2014-2015 era, I would wear these bright green neon tights that would show way too much of everything to everyone. I don't know why I wore those, but I did. And when I got kicked out of that gym for filming, I went over to the field house in Temple, Texas, which is a badass gym.

It was super gritty, super raw, old school bodybuilding, powerlifting gym. Equipment was used and run down. It was sick. This is where I fell in love even more with, I don't want to say fitness, but strength training. Like raw strength training. And I met this man there. His name was Dale.

And Dale saw me deadlifting and filming my workouts. And he walked up to me and he said something along the lines of like, you know, You're strong. You can be stronger. You have a lot of potential. But I don't think you're training properly. So he started training me really around the deadlift, just around the deadlift. And he gave me workouts to do that were structured, that were programmed.

And my deadlift went from, I might have been doing 450 when I got into that gym. And maybe in a year, don't quote me. on this, just like throwing out round numbers, maybe in a year, I got the dead lift up to like 600 pounds. Like crazy progress just by following a structured training program that really didn't feel like a lot of volume, but it was structured well for me to make progress faster than I previously was. And while I was working with Dale, and he told me about strength training and all these different

methods. Yes, I got stronger, but during that time, I felt like I built some of my best muscle density of my life. And I was still supplementing all of that training with bodybuilding style workouts and hypertrophy, which he didn't like. He always told me I had so much more potential to be a better powerlifter if I didn't ruin it with all my bodybuilding work. But that's just like goes back to what you love doing. You got to love how you train, the way you train. And if you don't, you're not going to want to do it anymore. You got to do what you love.

You got to follow your heart, your passion, your goals. And then when I transitioned out of the Army, because when I was training at the field house, I was in the Army, transitioned out of the Army. Me, Preston, Joe, signed our lease for our first warehouse in Round Rock, started building out our gym and our HQ for BP. I was training so much when we were there. We had our own gym then. And we were spending all of our time from like 6 a.m.

until midnight every day in this facility, packing orders, building on the HQ, creating content, working out. We'd work out in the morning. We'd work out at night in the evening. It was super late and dark. It was so much fun.

But I was deadlifting all the time then. and I was barbell squatting all the time then. And I got really strong. Like the strongest of my life. That's when I hit a 700 pound deadlift was right when I was getting out of the military. And I had a lot of heavily structured strength training workouts in my normal routine. I was the strongest I've ever been. I was the dentist I've ever been.

Like so much muscle density. and I would attribute a lot of that based off the way that I was training because I was prioritizing strength and power over hypertrophy. Now I was still bodybuilding, I was still adding in these higher rep movements and sets and exercises,

but the foundation of every workout when it first got started was strength and power. And it was heavily, Like I said, structured and programmed to facilitate progressive overload and making progress, but I built so much muscle density. And that also taught me a lot about training and that more isn't always better and that you need these rest or delode weeks to keep making progress.

but that was like one of those chapters that was a eye-opening experience in terms of like what actually moves the needle in your fitness, in your strength and making progress. It's when I prioritize strength and power over hypertrophy. Number five, train for performance over aesthetics. Same thing goes for fueling. Eat for performance instead of aesthetics. Kind of going back a few.

Number three, eat properly to fuel my training. If it fits your macros would be eating for aesthetics. Eating for performance would be choosing whole natural food sources, choosing quality that is going to make you feel good. It's going to make you perform well and it's going to optimize recovery. There's a difference there because you can eat. eat for aesthetics and you can eat garbage, but in the right quantities and still build a physique, lose body fat, gain body fat. But what I'm talking about now is training for performance over

aesthetics. When I first started training, it was primarily for aesthetics. I wanted the bigger chest. I wanted a wider back. I wanted bigger arms. And then at one point, I wanted bigger legs and bigger glutes. I just wanted to be bigger. I wanted my sleeves to wrap around my biceps. I wanted to be swole. I just wanted to be as big as possible. And I was eating that way.

I was training that way, which was fun then. And don't get me wrong, I still love bodybuilding, workouts, the bodybuilding. space and industry. Once a bodybuilder, always a bodybuilder. No matter how many marathons I do, or triathlons or ultras, no matter how many miles I log,

I will still get the urge to go into a gym and get a pump. It's just in my DNA. It's in my blood, and it always will be. Truly, hybrid. But the training, for performance over aesthetics. One, performance goals are more sustainable. They're healthier. This is a personal opinion here. They're more enjoyable. I have so much more fun training for a

marathon, training for a PR in the gym on a big lift, as opposed to training to step on stage for a bodybuilding competition. I did my first bodybuilding competition in 2012. when I was in college, I did my second bodybuilding competition this past year in in 2020, in Orlando, Florida, two completely different experiences. Because in 2012, I was in college, I was single, I was by myself, I could be selfish with my time. In 2023, life looked a whole lot different. I was an operator in my business.

I was and am a husband. I was and am a father. I had more responsibilities. And if you've ever done a bodybuilding competition or trained for and set aesthetic goals, you probably know that it's all consuming. You can say that you're all in, but you end up being all consumed by food,

lack of food, the scale, what your body looks like or doesn't look like. It can be a negative place. And through my bodybuilding prep experiences and then my experiences of training for performance goals, I have just found that training for performance over aesthetics, again, it's more sustainable for longer periods of time. It's more enjoyable.

you can have a social life. It's more rewarding selfishly and selflessly from my experience, like I said, personally. And if you train for performance, body composition and aesthetics will follow. When I go into a marathon prep, the last thing I'm focused on or care about is my aesthetics and the way my body looks because I'm strictly worried about and care about getting faster, hitting paces, feeling comfortable during these 22 mile marathon-paced workouts, recovering for the mileage that I'm accumulating throughout the week and throughout the block of prep.

But whenever I go into one of these preps and I prioritize performance, my body composition naturally changes based off of the training that I'm doing and the diet that I'm consuming to fuel that training in the best way possible. And when I trained for strength goals or in a hybrid approach and I'm performance focused, the aesthetics and the body composition changes naturally happen based off the training that I'm applying,

the stimulus that I'm applying to my workouts and the diet that fuels that training. Now with that being said, I still get the itch from time to time more frequently than I'd like to admit to do another bodybuilding competition. I would love to eventually do another bodybuilding competition. But right now in this chapter of my life, it is not the right time based off my responsibilities in business, it with my family, and just other aspects of life as a whole. it's not the right time because it's all consuming. And I know that if I trained for performance goals, it will support the other areas of my life.

And it's more sustainable well beyond a 12 to 16 week prep to step on stage extremely lean to gain some of that weight back the next day. So trained for performance over aesthetics. Number six is to hire more good coaches. If you value your performance and you value your time, hire a good coach. Now, I will say there are a lot of coaches out there who are offering their resources and their time in exchange for your money. There's more bad coaches, there's more mediocre coaches than there are good coaches. coaches and there's, I'd say, very few great and remarkable coaches.

I've worked with a bunch of different coaches, only in the last couple years, too. When I first started training, I didn't have any coaches I was working with, but I took the initiative and I had the self-responsibility to educate myself. If you can't hire a coach, if you can't afford a coach, that's okay. But if you want to make progress and you want to save time, you want to maximize your performance, you have to have the discipline and the drive to self-educate. There's resources all over line everywhere where you can teach yourself about diet and nutrition, in reaching your body composition goals and training,

no matter what you're training for. All the resources are at our fingertips. They are all out there. But it's all useless. If we don't take the initiative to self-educate, go find those resources, consume those resources, and then apply those resources to our training,

to our diet, to all the things. But if you can, if you have the ability, you have the resources, which may be a luxury for some, hire a good coach. A good coach is not have to be extremely expensive. I will say that. I have hired many great coaches, not even good, great and remarkable coaches that are not ridiculously priced. I would say the first coach I ever had who didn't charge me anything was Dale.

Dale from the field house in Temple, Texas. He took me under his wing. He mentored me. He taught me all about strength training. I mean, to this day, I remember how he taught me to approach my one rep max. And he considered it a 10-5-3-1-1-1 approach. So the first set was 10 reps.

and the second rep or set, let me back up a second. The first set was 10 sets. No, the first set was 10 reps. The second set was five reps. And then 10, 5, 3, 1, 1. So that last set was one rep of your projected 1 rep max. The 1 rep max you were going for on that given day.

And that would be consistent. considered your 100%. So if 500 pounds was what you were going for that day, that last set of one rep was 500 pounds. The previous set was 90%. The set before that was 80% of that 500 pounds. And 70%, 60%, 50%. So that first set of 10 reps was 50% of 50% of your,

projected one rep max for that day. 10, 5, 3, 1,1, 1. That's the way Dale would coach me through a projected one rep max for a max out day. They would have me do. I love that approach. I've shared that approach many times over the years. But Dale is someone who taught me things that I didn't know. And there's something about having a coach who's,

monitoring your progress, who you can talk to, who is providing you feedback in real time based off of your mechanics and your injuries, your progress, your successes, your failures, your hits, your misses. It's really powerful. And I made a lot of progress in a short amount of time while working with Dale. Very grateful for Dale, still to this day. And I've worked with other coaches over the years as well. I mean, you guys know I brought Jeff Cunningham on the podcast multiple times. Jeff has been my running coach since my first sub three marathon. And Jeff has helped me go from a 324 marathon to a 239 marathon from 2021 to 2020 to

2020, 2003, December, 2023, that we hit at 239. But I couldn't have gotten there

without Jeff. I guess I could have, but I didn't know what workout to do. I didn't know how to approach tempo, lactate threshold,

critical velocity. I didn't know what paces to hit, what workouts. Having Jeff's guidance and mentorship made the biggest difference in my running. And I wish I would have had the ability to forward think earlier on when I first started training

to hire a coach. Because when I started hiring coaches, it made the biggest difference. I made massive leaps in my performance. Massive leaps in my performance. But they have to be good coaches. one of my favorite things to say is you have to be careful with what advice you take and who that advice comes from.

Everyone's willing to give you advice. Everyone's got an opinion. But if you follow the wrong advice for long periods of time, you're going to stay in the same position. You might even decrease your performance or your progress. But you have the right people in your team, you have the right people in your corner,

you can make incremental, exponential progress. Number seven is take the bulk slash cut cycles with a grain of salt. You don't hear many people talking about balking and cutting anymore. But that could be based off of like the echo chamber that I'm in and the circle of training that I appreciate and love. You know, in the training that I appreciate and love. I'm in now compared to what I was in years ago, which is endurance, hybrid training. People aren't balking and cutting like they are in the bodybuilding space.

So maybe I shouldn't say it that way. Maybe I shouldn't have described balking and cutting that way. Maybe balking and cutting is still just as popular as it used to be, but this is not in the fitness circle that I'm actively involved in. I'm not sure. I don't see as many balking and cutting questions as I used to but again

that could be based off the content that I'm creating, producing, and sharing because when I first got really in the lifting balking and cutting was like waking you up and going to sleep. It's something you just did.

You know, you turn the clocks forward you turn the clocks back. It's something you do every year. A bulk and cut is something you did every year. A bulk is when you gain size, you put on weight, you're in a caloric surplus with the intent and goal of not just gaining weight, but gaining lean tissue, gaining muscle.

And the intent of a cut is to lose body fat, not just weight, and maintain as much lean tissue or muscle as possible. So in the bulk, you're trying to gain lean tissue. And the cut, you're trying to maintain lean tissue, but cut away as much body fat as possible. And I like a different approach now, where I like to stay in like a gaining phase for a long period of time, and then potentially going into a a leaning out phase. But I'll explain how I approach it now.

The reason I say take it with a grain of salt is because most people balk and cut incorrectly. First off, most people don't give themselves enough time to properly bulk. When you're bulking, you should be in a chloroic surplus. you should be gaining weight, you should be getting stronger, you should be putting on more muscle,

you will gain body fat during a caloric surplus and a bulk, but the fat that you gain should be minimized as much as possible. So whether you're balking or cutting, it is really important to not necessarily just monitor the scale, but monitor your performance,

and it can also be a really good idea to monitor body fat percentage gain or loss by doing something like a Dexas scan on a regular basis. So you have some objective data to reinforce if you are doing things the right way

at the right pace and speed. But a lot of people will bulk way too fast and they'll just watch the scale and put on a ton of body fat really quickly. Not bulk long enough. I think a true successful bulk

or gaining phase needs to be at least six months. So that's the first mistake is people go into a bulk. They don't bulk or stay in a surplus long enough. They gain too much body fat and they're not training hard enough

to put that surplus of calories to work in order to gain lean tissue. As an experience, athlete or individual, it is harder to gain lean tissue. When you first get started training, you're going to gain lean tissue or muscle faster. So that's the first mistake a lot of people make. The second mistake a lot of people make is that when they go into a cut, they're too aggressive and there's not enough patience.

Trust me, it's easier said than done. this cut that I went into for my last bodybuilding prep, I was way too aggressive. And through that process, I lost a lot of body fat. I got super lean, but I also lost significant lean muscle mass and tissue as well because I was too aggressive

and I wasn't patient enough in the dieting process. A lot of that was because I saw the negative impact that my diet, my all-consuming diet, in bodybuilding journey was taking on my family, my friends, my business, my entire life. So I was trying to expedite that process as fast as possible. But whether you're balking or cutting, if you want to do it the right way, you have to be patient and you have to ensure that you're achieving the goals that you intended to achieve. And like I said, again, that is a lot of building lean tissue.

minimizing fat gain, losing fat, maintaining lean tissue. Now, the approach I take now, because I used to do the whole bulk cut cycle, which can work, but I'm not really an advocate of it anymore. I'm not a fan.

I like this more so just consistently good gaining phase and gaining for long periods of time. months, if not at least one year, where you potentially stay in a slight caloric surplus, your strength training really heavy, but you're also still incorporating cardiovascular conditioning. So let me explain the way that I approach it now. I don't really intentionally go into gaining phases and dieting phases,

but I let my performance dictate the results and I let my goals dictate my performance. So right now, I'm not training for a specific goal around anything endurance related. I'm going to be doing some races this year, but it's not like a, I'm going for a crazy PR and a marathon or a half marathon or an ultra. I'll still do races. I'm still running a lot. I'm still running about 50 miles a week right now because I love running.

But I'm in a slight caloric surplus. I'm hitting the gym really hard. I'm strength training, resistance training from a strength and power approach, as well as a bodybuilding hypertrophy approach. And I'm slowly gaining weight. I'm watching the scale. I'm watching my performance in the gym. I can see it in the mirror when I look at my body.

I haven't done a Dexas scan, which I should do just for some objective data. But I know that as I'm gaining weight and I'm in this gaining phase and I feel really good, I'm still running, I'm maintaining this aerobic base. My body's getting more comfortable at running at heavier weights, a larger load, that when I eventually set the goal of a new marathon PR or an endurance PR, not really sure when that's going to be, but when I do, my training will reflect that goal. So I will maintain my diet.

My diet will change a little bit to facilitate the weight that I want to run that next race at. I will pull back on strength training, resistance training as a whole. My endurance training will increase. My weight will naturally start coming down because I pulled back on potentially some calories. I pulled back on my strength training and I increased my cardiovascular conditioning and running. So my body composition will manipulate based off the training. My weight will change based off of the training in my diet. And everything I'm doing and all the...

progress that I make will happen because I'm focused on performance as opposed to aesthetics. That's how I kind of look at my gaining phases and my leaning out or cutting phases. I let my performance goals dictate the process and the journey to get there. But right now I'd say I'm in a gaining phase because I don't have a very clear performance goal that requires me to run in a certain speed over a certain distance. And the last thing I'm going to talk about is you got to fall in love with the journey, not the destination. There is no destination when we look holistically at our fitness, our nutrition, our diet goals.

Because building your body, building your health isn't this thing that it compounds, over time, yes, but like say you go into a six month prep of very strict dieting and training and you completely transform the way you feel and the way you look. Well, after those six months, if you don't maintain what you were doing,

you will lose a lot of that progress. So you have to keep building because that consistency does compound. You have to keep maintaining your training and your dieting and all those habits that you've been practicing to get there because if you don't, everything goes away. You don't build it and then it's like, you know, you build a house, for example. You do all the work. It's there. You walk away.

The house stands forever. Unless something tears it down. Your body isn't like that where you build it and it gets to a point. but you have to keep putting the work in. You have to keep building for that house to stand upright. You have to maintain it. You have to take care of it. Now, we can create these small micro destinations along the way,

and that's the way that I like to approach my training and my fitness. As I'll set these micro goals where one might be a marathon PR. One might be a bodybuilding show. one might be a PR in the gym one might be a weight goal one might be a 100 mile ultra or a triathlon maybe you want to do a high rocks

or some sort of other competition a Spartan race these micro goals allow us to focus for chapters and training blocks and seasons towards a certain micro destination

but as soon as that goal is accomplished and that outcome is achieved, the work doesn't stop. We go back to a building phase or a maintenance phase, or we choose another micro-goal, another micro-destination, and we keep doing that over long periods of time over and over and over again. By choosing these micro-destinations, these micro-goals, or you just call them goals in general,

that keeps things interesting, fun, engaging, That is the journey. The journey is learning and applying and practicing and doing. You have to find a way to fall in love with the journey. Because if you find a way or you get caught falling in love with the destination, what happens once you achieve that destination? What happens when you achieve that outcome? What happens when you run your first marathon?

What happens when you lose your first 20 pounds? What happens when you go a full year of not drinking alcohol or not having a binge or a cheap meal? Once you achieve that, it's like, I'm good now. I'm just going to go back to drinking. I'm just going to go back to eat McDonald's every day. No, you used to keep building on top of that. This is a game, a play of longevity and patience. forever.

So it's a personal responsibility to find a way to fall in love with the journey because there is no destination, there is no outcome. You can create these goals along the way that build and build and build as bricks in this house that you're building being your body and your health. But find a way to fall in love with the journey and you will be able to do this forever. So those are the eight things that I wanted to talk about. If I had to start training all over again, that's what I would do. That's what I would focus on from the very beginning.

Hope you guys enjoyed this one, and we'll see you in the next one.