The Nick Bare Podcast - 147: Top 5 Most Valuable Fitness Tips to Thrive

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

In this episode, I'm covering five crucial lessons I've learned from over 20 years of my fitness journey. I outline the importance of combining strength and cardiovascular training, the differences between fueling for aesthetics versus performance, the necessity of balancing hard and sustainable training seasons, and the perils of overtraining. CHAPTERS:00:00 Introduction00:41 My Fitness Journey: From High School to Now02:55 Current Focus: Ironman Arizona Prep04:29 Five Key Lessons from My Fitness Journey06:25 Strength and Cardiovascular Training: A Balanced Approach08:31 High Rocks Training: The Perfect Balance12:34 Bodybuilding Prep: The Challenges and Learnings14:36 Marathon and Ironman Training Insights23:57 Post-Ironman Training Plans29:41 Fueling for Performance vs. Aesthetics37:09 Introduction to Bodybuilding Nutrition and CrossFit Performance39:40 The Role of Food as Fuel42:58 Balancing Hard and Sustainable Seasons55:29 The Importance of Doing Less01:06:12 Redefining Progress Beyond PRsORDER MY BOOK HERE:https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210FOLLOW:Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFEhttps://bpn.team/memberIG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is loosely titled, working title. I always say working title because as I make my notes, this is just the working title I have at the top of those notes. But as we go in and edit the episode and prepare to publish, sometimes that title becomes refined. So my working title is, five things I learned in the last five years of my fitness journey. Now, I've been on my fitness journey, if you will, for much more than five years. I really found the gym when I was, I'd say, 16, 15, 16 years old. And this started with just working out at our high school gym, Pomeyra, Pennsylvania,

and then graduating to a commercial gym, this gym in Pomerah, Pennsylvania, where I'm from, was called New York Fitness. And then I eventually started working at New York Fitness.

I sold memberships and I made smoothies. Loved making the smoothies. And then from there, I got really serious once I got the college. It fell in love with the gym and strength training and bodybuilding. And that's where, you know, my love for health and fitness and performance and the gym really

started and has obviously evolved and transformed to many different domains and types of fitness since then. I started when I was 15, 16 years old and now I'm. 35 years old. So I've been on this journey, if you will, for a little over 20 years, give or take now. And I've learned a lot. And the goal of this episode is to share my experience with different training and nutrition focuses specifically over the last five years. Because over these last five years, my focus on training and nutrition has become more refined. And I've push the limits and boundaries of my body through ultramarathons and a bodybuilding competition

and marathons, triathlons, high rocks, and honestly just training for fun, not training for any specific event or race. Now, at the time of this recording, it is November 3rd, 2025, I am 13 days out from Ironman, Arizona. It's a full Iron Man that I'm doing. This will be my third triathlon that I'm training for. My first full Iron Man was in 2019. Then I did a 70.3 in 2021. And now Iron Man, Arizona, November 16th, 2025, 13 days out.

And all in, this will be a 18. week prep. I'm really proud of this prep. I've learned a lot in this prep, especially with this one because I don't have a coach for this prep. Over these last 18 weeks, I have

programmed my own workouts, the swim, the bike, and the run. And I've really enjoyed that. And I've applied all the things that I've learned in my experience to building the structure of this programming. I mean, and I'm really proud of the fitness that I've built, the programming that I've

kind of put together, building fitness, building performance, getting stronger, getting faster. But I'd say more importantly, staying healthy and recovering well without this entire build over these last, what will be 18 weeks. So the goal of this episode is to share my experience. a few things, five things specifically that I've learned over these last five years. Now, this is not necessarily specifically targeted to training for a tape of race or competition. You don't have to be training for an Iron Man.

You don't have to be training for high rocks. You don't have to be training for a marathon to learn from these five things I'm going to share. but I will use my experience from previous races, competitions, preps, and builds to reinforce some of the lessons that I have learned. And I want to also kind of share that this information, these five tips, it's primarily coming from anecdotal evidence, meaning that it's from my personal experience. However, it's also supported by research that I've done over the years.

For five to ten years now, I've been diving into published studies, listening to podcast, reading books. I went to school for nutrition. I earned a bachelor's of science degree in nutrition from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2013. So for many years, this has not only been my work, but it's been a deep passion of mine. health, fitness, performance, body composition, improving the way that you show up for your workouts, but also in the way that you show up for your life and the way you feel. You know, health and performance, which I used to think were the same thing. And they can be, but as I'm going to discuss throughout this episode,

there can be a very clear difference between health and performance outcomes based off of training goals and the application of. So the first thing I've learned in the last five years of my fitness journey is that strength in cardiovascular training are complementary, meaning I think the best weight, to train. The best way, the most optimal, the healthiest for longevity of life and also quality of life is incorporating strength and cardiovascular conditioning or endurance. Lifting and running. I used to really categorize this as hybrid training. but it's lifting and running. It's the athlete model. And this may come across or seem obvious,

and maybe it is for some people, but I want to explain why it might not be as obvious. Now, like I've mentioned in the beginning of this episode, I've trained for a lot of different things over the last couple years. the best that I felt in terms of just health, vitality, energy, recovery, sleep, the best I've looked in my opinion. And when I've performed my best in a much balanced way and approach,

it's when I've been balancing strength and endurance pretty equally. I'd say like 50% strength, 50% endurance. So if I look at, and I have some notes in referencing right now, if I look at some of the things I've trained for over the last couple years, one of the more recent events, high rocks. Now, if you're not familiar with high rocks, it started in 2019 in Germany and then made its way over to the United States, and it's become very popular, very fast.

It's different from CrossFit in a sense that it is very predictable. You know exactly what the competition is. Every time there is a competition. CrossFit, there's a lot of different variables. You might not know what's being tested or what events are included in the competition. And another difference between Hirox and CrossFit is that CrossFit requires a lot of skill being Olympic lifting. High Rocks does not. There's no Olympic lifting in high rocks.

A high rocks event, it's eight stations or eight rounds, and each round includes a one kilometer run and then a functional movement. Some of those functional movements are the rower, the ski, wall balls, burpee broad jumps, sled pulls, sled pushes, sandbag lunges, farmers carry with kettlebells, It's very predictable. You know exactly what the event is. I trained for Hirox Dallas last year. And in my opinion, this was, of all the things I've ever trained for,

arguably the perfect combination, in my opinion, of balancing strength, aerobic conditioning, and hit training, high-intensity interval training. Because what a week looked like in terms of high-rox prep, I was spending time strength training in the gym, upper body and lower body, typical and traditional strength workouts, multi-joint compound movements,

bench press, barbell squat, deadlift. I was focused on some hypertrophy or bodybuilding work, which I love. I'm at my core, a meathead. I do a lot of endurance preps and races and competitions, but I believe at my core, what I love, it's throwing weight around in the gym.

I am, and always will be, a meathead. I love the gym. Like I mentioned, that's where I fell in love with fitness. And that's what I got out of this high rocks prep. I got to scratch that itch of, strength trading and bodybuilding. But also, in my high rocks prep, I was running every morning, zone two, aerobic running with one speed workout a week.

And then there were these high rocks circuits built in. I would do about two to three of those a week. And this is where I was incorporating some more aerobic work, aerobic conditioning, and more hit high intensity interval training. Heart 8 was getting jacked up. I was spending time on the ergs, the bike erg, the skier, the rower. I was incorporating some of the functional movements like sled pushes, sled pulls, perpy brawl jumps, ball balls, stuff like that.

That, in my opinion, was a great balance of strength, aerobic conditioning, and hit. So if we're thinking about what's an optimal way to train, I would argue that training for a hierox is an optimal weight. train because strength and cardiovascular training are complementary. Now, if I look at the bodybuilding prep that I did in 2023, this was great for body composition. I looked great. I was lean. I got down to 6% body fat.

I felt great in the beginning because you start leaning down. You start feeling, you know, just more agile and functional. I'm spending all the time in the gym. I'm still running, or I was still running during this bodybuilding prep with reduced running mileage. But the deeper I got into the bodybuilding prep, the weaker I became. And I felt horrible towards the end. So I share that to say that I don't think bodybuilding preps, especially competitive bodybuilding preps where you're trying to get down to single digit body fat percentages are sustainable.

are healthy, are performance focused, and with all that being said, it's an suboptimal way to live, train, and perform, in my opinion. Because towards the end of it,

you are arguably at your weakest. You feel horrible. I felt horrible. I was consuming 16 to 1,800 calories those last couple weeks. to just shred as much body fat as possible off to step on that stage. I looked good, felt insanely bad. So I would put the bodybuilding prep in the not optimal way to train

because strength declined, aerobic conditioning declined. I got weaker. my endurance became softer. I was losing fitness the deeper I got into that prep. A marathon prep, which if you followed my journey over the years, my first marathon I ever ran in 2018 was three hours, 57 minutes.

The following year, I ran slower. I ran four hours, 15 minutes. And then from there, I committed to getting faster. and I eventually got my marathon time down to two hours, 39 minutes, which I ran at the California International Marathon, CIM, in 2023. The marathon prep, again, this is all anecdotal and from personal experience. The marathon prep is majority endurance training.

it's high volume running mileage for me got up to a little over 70 miles a week most of those miles are easy aerobic zone two zone three cardiovascular conditioning miles getting the volume in and then once a week there was a speed workout that rotated between tempo and critical velocity on the track and then on the weekends you have your long runs for me for me to get faster, I knew that I had to get a little bit leaner. And for me, that meant pulling back on strength training during these marathon preps. What I like to do during a marathon prep is still lift weights one to two times a week. And really, that's to maintain strength and size and durability, stay healthy.

But the reason I'm not including it every single day is because I hold on to size. pretty well. And a way for me to get smaller, leaner, and faster is by reducing strength training. That's how I have approached my marathon preps in the past. So there's still some strength training incorporated,

which allowed me to stay healthy and durable, but the primary focus is and was running. So I would say, you know, that had a decent balance, not as much strength training as I would prefer,

the Ironman prep that I'm in right now, it is all in on endurance or cardiovascular conditioning. This is the least amount of strength training I've ever done in my life since I started training. I am spending 20 to 22 hours per week between the swim, the bike, and the run. my running mileage throughout this prep has been about 60 miles per week. I topped out at 65 miles last week. That was my peak. Right now, I'm in my last week of real workouts, and then the end of this week, I start my taper.

I'm doing a 10-day taper going to Iron Man, Arizona. One of the reasons I've pulled back on a lot of my strength training, really all of my strength training other than some core strength in this prep. One again, just like applying to the marathon, I wanted to lose some size to get leaner and faster, but it also comes down to just time. You know, I'm married, my husband.

I have two young kids. I have a three-year-old daughter, one-year-old son. I'm the CEO of a business responsible for 45, full-time employees. It's a demanding schedule and finding a few extra hours per week to incorporate more strength training on top of the demanding schedule of the swim bike and the run was just hard to fit in. Now, what I could have done is pull back on some of the endurance training and incorporated more strength training, but I just didn't apply that to this prep. I had a really strong base in build of strength coming into this prep.

I was sitting heavier than I normally would. But one of the main reasons to incorporate strength training throughout an endurance build is that it helps you say strong, healthy, and durable. It can reduce and limit the risk of injury. Now, when I started this Iron Man prep, I was actually coming off of an injury. so I was nervous going into this prep actually that I was going to kind of reflair that previous

injury and thank God we're 13 days out I stayed healthy throughout the entire build and prep but I built and laid a really strong strength foundation of durability coming into this prep I laid that foundation for a few months putting on size getting stronger spending a lot of time the gym, knowing that going into this prep would be really demanding on my body. What I have found, actually, throughout this prep, and one of the changes I made about midway through is that as training volume increased, I started the prep at about 16 hours of training per week, and I topped down at 22 hours per week. When I started reaching 19, that, 20 hours, even 21 hours a week of training,

I started pulling back on intensity, some of these speed workouts, because I was finding that I was leaving some of these speed workouts, especially when I was really going hard, that I would feel these just little tweaks here and there in my lower body, which for me kind of is like this reinforcement of, if you keep pushing this,

an injury may occur. So I pulled back on a lot of my intensity running-wise midway through this prep and I applied the intensity to the bike. So I did more V-O-2 max bike workouts to get that heart rate up but not as taxing on the lower body.

And I found that I could get that on the bike as opposed to forcing it on the run with a risk of injury. So I was one of the changes that I made throughout the prep. So I share that to say that throughout all these different preps and builds I've done,

high rocks, bodybuilding, triathlon, marathon. I have felt the best. I think I've looked my best and performed the best during the high rocks prep. And if we break it down, it was the best balance of strength,

aerobic conditioning, and intensity. High intensity. interval training. I felt really good during high rocks prep. And when I'm not in a preparation for a race or competition, that is my preferred way to train. I am logging a bunch of easy, slow, aerobic miles. I'm in the gym doing strength and bodybuilding workouts. And occasionally I'm throwing in some hit training, some high intensity interval training. Now, I want to caveat, got to all that.

To say that if you have a very specific goal, I've always shared this and said this, if you have a very specific goal, that goal requires specificity around training and nutrition. We're seeing that right now in the Ironman prep that I'm in. This prep required a lot of specificity around the run, the bike, and the swim. and over what will be 18 weeks,

I have built a lot of fitness. This is some of the best endurance shape and conditioning that I've been in my life. It may be the peak of endurance conditioning that I've ever experienced. That's been a ton of just zone two, even zone three work, a lot of aerobic work.

My base is insane right now. I've seen my easy runs while effort stays relatively the same. My heart rate has decreased significantly over these last, what will be 18 weeks, so I've gotten very fit. But it's come at a cost of reduced size, strength, muscle, but a specific goal requires specificity around training and nutrition. Now, I've already built out my post Iron Man training routine that I want to share with you guys. After I finish this Iron Man in 13 days, I don't have another race on the calendar.

There's no competition on the schedule. I don't know what I'll do next. What or when. But I'm going to go back to a balanced off-season, if you will, training approach. training in a way that I love, training in a way that promotes hormonal health, metabolic health, quality of life, sleep, recovery,

a social life, like a really strong social life. I'll be honest, when I'm in a big prep, like an Iron Man prep, my social life is non-existent because when I go into a prep, I go all in. That's just the type of person I am. I go all in when I commit,

to a very specific goal for better or for worse. But coming off of this Iron Man, I'll be training for just quality of life again. And this will be a very complimentary strength and endurance training approach. So here's what I have listed off right now of the way that I plan to set up my routine post Iron Man, which I'm so excited for.

I'll break it down by day. now this is obviously going to be loosely held there's room for flexibility I'll move days around but I just like having this structure laid out so that when I wake up in the morning I know generally what I'm going to do

but it's not necessarily a role it is a rhythm a weekly rhythm so Monday this is my only day of the week where I'm training twice a day. So I'll run seven miles in the morning, and in the afternoon I'll have a push workout, chest and triceps. Tuesday, lower body strength. This is where I'm doing a lot of volume, high intensity, barbell squats, barbell lunges, uh, leg extensions, leg curls, leg curls, leg press.

I just want to get some big legs again. My legs are lean right now. My legs are functional. They're fast, but I want to build them back up. I've lost a lot of weight in this prep. I've lost, I'd say, 20-ish pounds.

And I can even feel it when I'm sitting in a chair. My butt hurts because I've gotten so lean. So I'm going to incorporate a bunch of barbell squats in again to build my butt cheeks back up so I can sit in a chair with no pain. Wednesday, it's just a run.

It'll be roughly eight to ten miles. Thursday, we have a pool strength workout. This is back and biceps. This is where I'm really going to be focused on barbell deadlifts. I love deadlifts. They've always been my favorite lift. My PR on the deadlift is 700 pounds. I can promise you I'm not touching that again.

But I'm curious what we can get the deadlift back. to. I love deadlifting. Thursday, or not, that was Thursday, Friday, uh, five mile run and shoulders. This won't be two workouts. It'll be back to back. So I'll go run five miles and write into a shoulders workout. And then Saturday will be in a long run. It's be 10 miles at the minimum. But it depends how crazy I'm feeling or who I'm running with. And it could be much longer than 10 miles. But Saturday, I just like, I love having a Saturday, early morning long run. I've just always enjoyed that. And then Sunday is my off day. This is where I'm not waking up extra early to go train. What I have been doing in this Iron Man prep that I've really been enjoying, you know, Sundays are my light days.

I just have a one hour recovery spin on the bike. So I'll wake up at 5 a.m. on Sundays before the family's up. And I will do 15 minutes of red light therapy. I'll do 15 to 20 minutes in the sauna. Now, do three minutes in the cold plunge. For my sauna, I said it at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Cold plunge, 45 degrees Fahrenheit. So that routine takes me, say, 35, 40 minutes.

Then I'll eat breakfast. The family's waking up then. we get ready to go to church. That's in my Sunday recovery routine. And that's been a great way to start the day. Red light therapy, sauna, cold plunge, breakfast. Man, that's a beautiful one. So that kind of equates to 30 to 35 miles a week of running and lifting four days per week. And that gets me back to roughly a 50-50 split between strength and endurance. my favorite way to train. And I believe the best way to train

for performance, for health, for quality of life, for a healthy balanced social life, strength and cardiovascular training are complementary. The second thing I learned in the last five years of my fitness journey is that fueling for performance and fueling for aesthetics

are not the same. They are not one in each other. Now, when I started my fitness journey, like I said, I was 15, 16 years old, and then when I started working at that gym, New York Fitness, this is when I was exposed to the bodybuilding world and pre-workout and the Arnold Fitness Expo, and then when I went to college,

that's when I went just all in. I became obsessed. It's funny because the first pre-work I ever used, which if you're roughly around my age, mid-thirties, and you started lifting weights and going to the gym around the same time as me,

you probably have experienced no explode, or NO explode. This was a problem. pre-workout back in the day. I'm not sure if it's still a pre-workout by BSN supplements. It was in this red, like loosely transparent bottle. It might have been like one of the first pre-workouts on the market, but it had a very specific taste and smell. And I was somewhere this past weekend, I can't remember exactly where. And I got a whiff of No explode and no explode.

And it took me back to my bedroom in my parents' house growing up, mixing up my pre-workout in my room, getting ready to go to the gym. I just say it transformed or transported me back there so quickly. And that was the time frame of when I fell in love with that part of the sport and the lifestyle and bodybuilding. And I share that to say that, I learned about nutrition around performance, around body composition, from a bodybuilding perspective. This was eating clean, and it was eating every three hours. Because the thought process then was if you don't eat every three hours, you go catabolic and you start burning your muscle up.

And it was chicken, rice, and broccoli prepped and stored in Tupperware containers in the fridge. I mean, I had like dozens of Tupperware containers of chicken, rice, and broccoli weighed out. And like sodium was viewed as this horrible thing. So we were all using low to no sodium seasonings. There was a seasoning called Mrs. Dash. You know, it was just a bodybuilding mindset around nutrition. It was high protein. It was lower fat, moderate carb, but protein was the king.

And then when I started exploring more of the endurance space, training for marathons, and then triathlons, that was actually a really hard pivot to make. Taking this bodybuilding, body composition, aesthetic focused nutrition model, and then trying to apply it to a performance focused model. And to be honest, I found that it didn't work.

Certain aspects did, but it didn't fuel the training that I was doing. As I was kind of preparing these notes, I was thinking back to a race I was at a few years ago. It was the last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine. And at this point, this was 2023. I had a grasp and understanding of how to fuel,

how to properly fuel endurance training and endurance events. How to maximize carbohydrate intake, and utilize electrolytes to fuel performance. But that took a lot of time and experience and learning and failing and making mistakes. And I ran to this guy at the last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine, and he brought all of his food that he was prepared to consume during the race. And it was tubware containers of chicken, rice, and broccoli. he was going to eat chicken, rice, and broccoli throughout this entire race.

And I don't share that to say he was wrong, but I'm assuming he came from a bodybuilding, body composition, aesthetic-focused background. And that's all he knew, because I was once there too. if when I was into bodybuilding and lifting weights and that lifestyle and then I just got thrown into an endurance race, well, if all I know is nutrition for that specific type of sport or activity, I would just apply it to this new sport or activity. Chicken, rice, and broccoli, and I had the conversation with them, like, hey, that's going to absolutely wreck you. throughout this next couple

hours and days if you go that far, there's no way you're going to be able to eat chicken, rice, and broccoli. Or are you going to want to eat chicken and rice and broccoli to debrief into this race? You've got to get creative. So here's these gels, here's these bars,

here's these powders, peanut butter and jellies. When it comes to the ultraspace, the diet approach and strategies is so, different from what you would assume is health in sport and performance. But I think a lot of us come from, I'm just assuming, a lot of people start their fitness journey, not all, but many, in the gym. And it's to look better, it's to feel better, to build confidence, get stronger. so for many of us we learn about nutrition through the lens of bodybuilding and body composition

and aesthetics and fueling for that type of sport and lifestyle is very different than fueling for performance. I was recently listening to a podcast. It was the Mayhem Athlete podcast and it was titled, Why Bodybuilding Nutrition Kills CrossFit Performance. And honestly, after listening to that episode, that's what sparked the want to make this one of the lessons I learned in the last five years around fitness. And one of the great points they brought up in this podcast was that the traditional bodybuilding diet or bodybuilding nutrition, it could. consists of over-consuming protein and under-consuming carbohydrates and fat.

Because that's just what is needed for the results and dire desires that you want to get out of bodybuilding. It's more protein. Protein is going to help recover and build lean tissue. There is a thermic effect from protein. So your body, it utilizes more energy to break protein down. and you want to be leaner, and there's less energy demands with bodybuilding than, say, endurance training. So you don't need as many calories.

You don't need as many carbohydrates. You don't need as much fat. You don't need as much energy and fuel based off the energy demands of that training. But you can't apply that to performance, whether that's cross-fit, high rocks, or endurance training. Because as athletes who require more energy. who are expending more energy or more calories, we need more carbohydrates, which are the most easily utilized source of energy that we can consume.

We need more fat just to get more calories in and for hormonal and metabolic health. And if you apply a bodybuilding nutrition dieting approach to a lifestyle, a sport, a type of training that requires more energy, you're going to fail. You're going to experience being under-fueled and under-nourished, which equates to under-performing. You know, the way that I look at food,

I think when you've been training for so many years and you're signing up for races and competitions and you're trying to find ways to get faster or to get stronger to get better, you start looking at food as fuel. You start looking at food as feeling. Like I know if I eat this, I'm going to feel this way.

Versus if I eat that, I might feel another way. If I eat something that is, for lunch, for example. My lunch every day is 300 grams of jasmine rice, eight ounces of either a lean ground beef, venison, bison, chicken sometimes, throwing some buffalo sauce in there.

When I eat that, it digests very well. I feel really good. It provides me energy. I know I can train one to two hours after. Versus if I go to you know, some random restaurant on the side of the road and I pick up a cheeseburger and French fries, I know I'm going to feel like trash after that. I'm going to be tired, lethargic, my stomach's probably going to hurt. I'm not going to have a good workout or even be able to train in one to two

hours. So when I look at food, I look at it now through the lens of, this is fuel. This is how I'm going to feel. I know I'm going to feel after eating this type of food. I look at food and naturally just think of macronutrients. Well, there's roughly this much fat probably, this many carbs, this much protein. And this is how it fits into my diet and my nutrition protocol for the day. I look at food and I think of how is this going to digest, going back to how am I going to feel? and how will this contribute to my performance, whether that's for a workout coming up

or the energy I need for a meeting or work or even how is it going to affect my sleep and recovery. So I look at food now through the lens of all of those things. And that's why when I think of my training, if I'm focused on performance, If I'm training for an Ironman, and if I think of body but nutrition, moderate carb, lower fat, high protein, I'm looking at that thinking, well, this isn't the fuel. This isn't going to equate to the feeling that I want.

This isn't going to equate to performance that I need, the energy, the calories that I need. So there's a big difference between fueling for aesthetics versus fueling and eating for performance. They can be similar, but they are oftentimes and most likely very different. The third thing that I learned and my last five years of fitness is that we need to balance hard seasons and sustainable. or building seasons. What does that mean? So when I say sustainable or durable seasons, this does not mean easy seasons.

So there aren't seasons of, and when I say seasons, I'm talking about training. How are we approaching our health, our nutrition, our workouts, our training. There are hard seasons where we might be in this very specific focused prep or build, chasing down a race or a competition. And then there's the building, sustainable seasons.

I'm about to go into a building and sustainable season after this Iron Man prep. I also would like us to look through this lens. This is not necessarily just talking to competitive athletes. You don't have to be someone who does race after race after race or even a professional or amateur athlete for this to be applicable. I think this lesson right here is applicable to the everyday individual. And here's why. training, health, fitness, performance, and nutrition,

it is not exclusively reserved for the professional athlete. This is a personal responsibility we all have. We all have the personal responsibility of stewarding our health in our bodies. This is focusing on training. This is working out. It's moving our bodies. This is prioritizing our health. health. This is prioritizing what we consume, our nutrition, our diet, not eating like a

slob, taking accountability and responsibility of that to be able to perform. Maybe not to tow the line and run a fast race, but it's to perform for ourselves every single day, our jobs, our work, our families, our relationships, everything. It is a personal responsibility. It is a personal responsibility to be able to show up and perform. This is not reserved what I'm talking about for competitive athletes. There are going to be hard seasons in life where you're challenged, and then there's more sustainable seasons of life, not necessarily easy seasons of life because I don't like that word or term, and I don't know if there's ever easy seasons of life.

Now, for the last two years, 2024, 2025, I've only put one race or competition on the calendar, each one of those years. 2004, it was High Rocks, Dallas, 2025 is Iron Man, Arizona. I know a lot of people who will send me their race schedule for the year, and they're not pro athletes,

their everyday individuals who work full-time jobs, who are married, who have kids, and their race schedule is like six to ten races per year. To each their own, but I don't know how you're doing that in showing up for your other responsibilities. I just don't, but if you can find a way to make it work, that's good on you. truly for me it is one race or competition a year and i like to go all in on that thing because when i'm prepping it's anywhere for for four to six months for a specific race or competition i go all in i focus and then once that race or competition is done i then go

into a sustainable durability building season. This is right. I pull back on my volume. I pull back on intensity. I have less of a tight grip on my life in trying to control every little variable for a performance focused outcome. And I go back to, like I mentioned in the first lesson I learned,

what works the best? When do I feel my best? When I perform my best? And when do I look my best in my opinion? and this is a balanced approach of strength and conditioning, strength and endurance training. So this is the way that I have approached, you know, going into hard seasons, performance-focused seasons, the last two years.

And this is probably an approach that I'll take for the foreseeable future. Like me and some of the guys were already talking about 2006, a race that we would like to put on the count. and go throw down on. And that'd be the one race that I prepare for for 20206. And I go all in on it. And I put a big prep in and I'm focused and disciplined. And then when that race is done,

I go back into a sustainable base building, durability, get healthy season or approach. Why sustainable seasons? Well, during a sustainable season, a base building durability season, this is, in my opinion, where you promote more of a health-focused lifestyle as opposed to a performance-focused lifestyle,

which we'll get into. But in these sustainable seasons, you can prioritize, or I, at least in this case, can prioritize all the other aspects of my life. Marriage, family, kids, vacations, work. Like I've previously mentioned, when I'm in a prep and I'm going to build,

I try not to become all consumed, but I'd be lying if I said that that just doesn't happen. I'm an all-in type guy. And when I commit to something, I go all-in, and at some point it does start to all-consume me, where I want to control every variable,

from nutrition to sleep and recovery, in training, and it starts taking over parts of my life, at a detriment sometimes. So I'm in these hard seasons, I can be all in, I can be focused. And then when I go back to the sustainable season, it's more of a balanced approach to life. And it allows me to really reset, recover, so when I go back in another hard season of training or chasing down a fitness goal, of race, a competition, I'm then ready for it. I'm mentally, physically, emotionally prepared. But if you just go from race to race to race to race,

and you're always in the hard season, and you never take these sustainable durability base building seasons, which trust me, I've taken this approach in the past, you end up just burning yourself into the ground. And you show up for the next race season or the next prep or the next build, not excited, not recovered, not energy. to put in the amount of work that's required to lead into that race or competition.

Now, there is a difference between health optimization and performance optimization. Are they mutually exclusive? I think they can and cannot be. You know, like, for example, in this Iron Man prep right now, I am eating, sleeping, training, living to optimize performance.

And I know that if I got blood work done right now, a lot of my biomarkers would be off or out of range because my health is not a focus right now. My performance is a focus right now. Same thing, going back to a bodybuilding prep. You know, I've said specific goals require training, nutrition specificity. In my bodybuilding prep, at the end, I looked my best, but if you got my blood work taken,

probably all of my biomarkers would be out of range because you're pushing it to the extremes. Health and performance can be synchronized, but a lot of times I think you end up choosing one over the other, especially for those of us who are not professional athletes. for those of us who don't get paid to train and eat and sleep and recover as it's our job because in my case, I'm sure many other people's cases, we are trying to fit this training for a performance-focused goal around our already busy, crazy lifestyle. So we are sacrificing things like sleep.

to go train. You know, right now I'm waking up at 4 a.m. every morning to make sure that my run is done before my family wakes up. And then I train my second or third time later in the afternoon. And by the time the day is over, I'm pretty tanked. I'm pretty exhausted. So sleep is not being prioritized right now, which means recovery is ultimately not being prioritized right now, which means I don't feel my best right now, but it's what has to be done because this goal does matter to me,

and I have committed to it, so I'm going to do what I have to do to make sure it gets done. But I can promise you, once this Iron Man prep is over, I'm going to be prioritizing my health again overperformance, which means I'm going to be sleeping more to feel better,

to ultimately perform better, because my routine and my schedule allows for it and has more flexibility and open space. So does health and performance optimization have to be mutually exclusive? Absolutely not. But for many of us who also live busy full lives with other responsibilities and things and people we have to show up for, something has to be sacrificed. And in many cases, our health ends up being sacrificed. I would say primarily because sleep ends up being sacrificed.

So that, in my opinion, is the reason, the necessity of balancing hard seasons. And when I say hard seasons, again, this is a season where you might have a training specific goal, a race, a competition, something you're trying to achieve. Balancing those seasons with sustainable seasons, base building, seasons, strength seasons, all seasons, not easy seasons, but seasons that promote health, longevity, quality of life. The fourth lesson to share, more is not always better, and more being volume and intensity of training. You know, my tagline, my life mission, BPN's motto, it's go on more.

And when a lot of people hear this, and this is one of the reasons I wrote my book called Go and More, when people hear this, they think that we are and I am just promoting, do more, do more, do more. And that's not the case. Go on More is all about doing more of the right things at the right time, in the right place,

for the right reasons. It's being intentional with what we do more of. It's not just do more, do more, do more. Go on more is an outcome. Part of go on more is an action. Sometimes to achieve the outcome

of go on more, you're actually going to have to do less. You're going to have to be aware, have honest conversations with yourself, and maybe do more recovery and do less of the work so that you can experience the growth and the outcomes of go on more. But some people just look at going more and think, we and I are just saying, do more, do more, do more.

That's not the case. There is a critical component of intentionality behind those three words, go on more. because there is a point of diminishing return when you try to do more and more and more. This can be applied to all aspects and areas of life, not just training. I would argue that the restraint and discipline required to do less, especially for type A driven individuals, is actually harder than doing more.

In the way that I used to train, more was always better. and I would I would even know it you know like it'd be I remember 2017, 2018 just getting out of the army you know I didn't meet Steph

at this point yet wasn't in a relationship no kids fresh out of the army building BPN and I would do a big workout in the morning or a run

and a second workout in the afternoon and sometimes it'd be late at night, and me, Joe, and Preston wouldn't have anything else that we had to do. My body would hurt, and I knew that I shouldn't train, and that if I trained, it would actually probably hurt me more than help me. But there was something in my head that was saying, just go train again, just go train again, just go training again. So I'd go train for a third time and be a horrible training experience and workout.

I'd feel horrible the next day. but as driven individuals, and if you're listening to this podcast, and if you follow my content, chances are you're a very driven, disciplined, type A individual. You want to achieve. You want to perform. Sometimes we are the people who have a harder time restraining in being disciplined to do less, and that it's actually easy for us or easier for us, to do more.

It's been a problem for much of my life when it comes to fitness is learning how to restrain myself and do less because there is a point of diminishing returns. You can't just keep adding on more volume and intensity to your training and expecting greater returns over and over and over again. You get to a point where you actually start experiencing declines in performance. There have been many fitness preps that I've done in the past,

especially ones where I haven't used coaches. This Iron Man prep is different. I think I'm at a different time and experience in my fitness journey and understanding proper programming. But in the past, when I haven't been working with a coach, which is one of the reasons that you can and should work with a coach, is that when I haven't worked with a coach in the past, I haven't been disciplined or restrained

with the amount of training that I should be doing, so I'd add more on top of. And I've been in preps before where I've seen the deeper I get into a prep or a build, performance decline. I'd get slower. I'd get weaker. I would watch my endurance

just become softer over time. So I would do more and more and more because I'm seeing my performance decline. I'm thinking, well, the only way to get past this and dig out of this plateau and this decline is to add more volume, add more intensity on top. And as you add more on top and more on top and more on top, you see more decline.

Point of diminishing return because the truth is more is not always better. there's a really thin red line that you have to teeter when it comes to pushing the limits of performance and then going too far, doing too much, and seeing a decline as opposed to a growth. I think back to a marathon prep that I did where I started before this Iron Man prep. And we slowly increased running mileage. So I had my daily run at nine miles a day. And I felt very strong.

Felt very strong. And then we went from nine miles a day to 11 miles a day because we're trying to get running mileage up to a certain point to build a certain level of fitness. And from going from nine miles a day to 11 miles a day, everything fell apart. Overuse injuries flared up. I wasn't recovering properly, just two additional miles a day.

That's how thin that red line is that you're teetering to maximize performance and ultimately go over the red line and experience a crash, a burnout, over-training, under-recovering injuries. More is sometimes required to progressively overload a stimulus to facilitate an adaptation of growth in fitness. However, when it's done too quickly at not the right time, it can result in catastrophic destruction of your performance, the outcomes, and your ability to recover. This is why, like I said, it's important or can be important, hire a coach. Because having a coach, having a third party, unbiased opinion to come in and structure

your training that has the experience, an experience coach, and then follow your progress and make sure that you're progressing at the appropriate rates in times, not doing too much. and that third party individual being able to say, hey, let's pull back. Let's stay disciplined. Let's restrain because as athletes and as they have said, type A driven individuals, we want to do more. Even when we know we're not supposed to. Give me a few extra miles. Give me a few extra reps of 800s on the speed workout.

give me a few extra hours of training this week. Now you're not ready. It's not the time. Let's build into this. That's the importance of having a coach. Because many of us, myself included, fall into the comparison pandemic. I have fallen for this many times when, for example, I'm training for a race or competition and I see someone online who's training for the same race or competition.

and they're running more than me weekly. They're running faster than me. They're running their long runs earlier in the prep than I'm running mine. And it's really easy to see this and compare where you're at what you're doing to what they're doing and adjust your training program

or protocols to catch up to them. That's often when everything falls apart because more is not always better. again, this is the importance of having a coach, but if you don't have a coach, staying disciplined and restraining yourself from thinking that more is better in terms of volume and intensity,

which can eventually end up to burnout, injury, over-training, under-recovering. Sometimes less is actually the more optimized way to train, not just for performance, but for health and quality of life outcomes as well. All right. So the fifth and final lesson learned in the last five years of my fitness journey, that is that progress is not determined, not only determined by PRs.

Progress is not only determined by PRs. I used to argue against this. that you were only progressing based off the number of races or competitions you had on the calendar for that year. And you were only progressing as if those times got faster, if the place in which you placed got better, if you were becoming more impressive. And I'm speaking to the performance focused individual who is and was me, but my mindset had, has shifted around progress over these last five years. I think PRs or personal records is part of the story of progress.

It's a critical data point in measuring progress, but it doesn't tell the whole story. It's just part of the story. I used to always need a race, event, or competition on the calendar to be training for. and I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to have a race event or competition on the calendar to always be training for. This is not a bad thing by any means. I'm a huge proponent of it. But right now I don't have a race every month on the calendar.

It's one race or one competition a year that I can focus on before going into a sustainable base building durability season. part of that mindset shift for me has been how do I keep making progress in my health, fitness, and performance schools in a way so that it doesn't take away from my other life responsibilities and priorities. How do I keep making progress in my fitness, in my health, in my performance schools so that it doesn't affect my job, my work, my work, my health, my health, marriage, my family, how I show up for my kids. I'll be very honest and I'm extremely aware of this. I've learned this in this Iron Man prep as I'm deep into the prep right now. I'm 16 weeks

into this prep at the time of this recording. When I get home at night after training and working a full day and as I mentioned, one of the things I've had a sacrifice to make sure that I'm getting everything done is sleep, I'm exhausted when I get home. And at this point in the prep, I'm not happy with the way that I'm showing up in terms of physical, mental, and emotional energy for my wife and my kids. I'm very aware of that, which is one of the reasons I'm excited for this prep to be done

and the race to be done in two weeks, because I've learned in this prep in the season of life that I'm in right now, running and leading a business, married, kids, leading a family. An Iron Man prep is and was probably the most time and energy demanding preparation I could have done. And I learned a lot in this prep, truly, a transformational prep. Not necessarily in terms of fitness and performance, but mindset may not have been this smartest or best time to do this prep. But I learned that very strongly. The mindset shift is how do I

keep making progress in my health, fitness, and performance so that it doesn't take away from my other life priorities and responsibilities. Learning that the hard way in this prep, that's progress. I'm sure I'm going to hit a big PR, this Iron Man, and I'm planning on it. But that's not the win for me that I experience in this prep. The win for me is realizing how hard it is to balance all these different goals. And that's the progress

that I've made. I think one of the reasons that we typically prioritize that PR as the main data point for progress is because it's easy to measure progress through PRs.

And if we really want to see progress, we do have to track it. We have to measure it. Ways that we can easily track and measure progress. So there's objective and there's subjective data points. We can track and measure nutrition. We can track and measure training. We can track and measure quality of life. We can track and measure biomarkers, like a biomarker is objectively measured data point. Quality of life is more objective. Training has objective and subjective data points and nutrition is primarily objective data points. Very clear. Like, this is how we ate, this is what we ate, and this is what happened. This is how we trained. This is when we trained and this is what happened. But I do think it's

important to track our progress if we want to see progress. It should be tracking our nutrition. It should be tracking our training. It should be maybe journaling or just making notes of what we're experiencing in life, the quality of life, how training and nutrition and these goals and fitness and health it's impacting and influencing other parts of our life, our family, our relationships, our work. But something that I'm really confident in saying and I stand firm in is that everything doesn't have to be optimized.

When we're chasing down PRs, and that is the only way to measure progress, personal records. I'm at fault of it myself, but when I go all in on a goal, I'm chasing down a personal record, I will white knuckle and try to control every variable in my life to make that PR happened. I will optimize everything possible. We live in a world right now, especially in the health and fitness space, where we're being told how to optimize training, how to optimize sleep, how to optimize diet, what we should eat, what we shouldn't eat, how we should train, how we shouldn't train, what's the best way, what's good, what's not good. And to be honest, it's a lot of information to take in. sometimes when I'm enjoying training in nutrition in this lifestyle, this fitness health lifestyle the most, it's not following what's most optimized,

it's just following what I love the most, what I love doing the most. And if you're doing what you're love, it's going to be enjoyable, it's going to be sustainable, you're going to make progress, objectively and subjectively. Regardless if you,

hit a PR or not. The PR just tells part of the story. But it's not the entire story. And honestly, it ties back to the first lesson I learned. And this is very specific to me individually. What I've learned these last five years of my fitness journey is that I love, I love the balance of strength and endurance training. A pretty even 50-50 split.

Occasionally like going after a performance-focused goal, a race or a competition, and that's fun. And I experience breakthrough, and I learn a lot through those preps. I really do. But where I'm really enjoying training, and I'm enjoying life,

I'm having fun, and I'm making progress that I can measure, but then some that I can't measure. It's just a way that I feel. When it comes to fitness and the way that I'm training, it is a split between throwing weights around in the gym and log in miles.

That for me, that's the perfect balance. And it's taking me a lot of years, many years, to figure that out. and I've only been able to figure that out by dipping my toes in all these different things. And I think that's what we're called to do is try different things, see what you enjoy, being, you know, applicable to diet and nutrition and training and health, figure out what works for you, what you love, and do more of it. And if you can find that thing,

find that way, find that structure, that's progress. It might not be a PR. Maybe it is, but that's progress. So those are five lessons that I've learned in the last five years of my fitness journey that I wanted to share with you guys. Hope you enjoyed it. And as always, go on more.