The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How Home Gyms Help Develop Healthy Kids | PPP #67

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

My 14 year old son and I respond to a listener request for exercise ideas. My son shares a message for teenagers on the benefits of exercise.

If you want to hear people's stories from all walks of life, if you want to learn from their process that helped them through good times or strife, if you want to make progress in your home, at work, or other areas of your life, you've come to the right podcast, and I'll be your host. My name is Kevin Pinnell, and guiding teams through tough times is what I've done most. Thank you for listening. If this is your first visit, I'll try not to disappoint. If you're a returning subscriber, well, let's get to the point. Let's get started with this episode of the People Process Progress Podcast in 3, 2, 1. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Episode 67, Home Gyms and Healthy Kids of the People Process Progress Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Pinnell. This episode is actually from a listener request. So thank you, listener from the Richmond, Virginia area who found me on Facebook, for asking the question about home gyms and getting kids into fitness.

And so I'm going to start kind of touching on again, something I've touched on here is in 2017, I started kind of a renewed focus. I'd been kind of in shape throughout my life, got into a place where I was really in shape, especially when I was in the Navy, went to dive school a little bit after that when I did some races. And then got really out of shape and really stressed out by being in public safety and emergency management and being on call and life stuff going on. And there was a catalyst for me when I did the MRF in 2017, which was May 2017, and realized I am in horrible shape. I'm not doing well, feeling well, mentally, physically, spiritually. And again, I've mentioned my buddy, Mike, who got me in the Jocko Willink Jocko

podcast. Then I started waking up every day and getting after it. So when I got this request to talk about home gyms, I thought, you know what, let me not just be anecdotal as I have before of you can do these things and those things and that will work, but let me pull my own data. I went back through my Facebook feed to look at, because I started posting my workouts and sharing that. Jocko does this picture of his hand thing. I did that a couple times or of me out there being sweaty or whatever. And then I realized, you know what?

Let me actually post the workouts that I do. So every day I actually share those and post them. So I went back and did a count, and I'm going to share some of that data. And, of course, this is from me and my posts. So these data are subject to variability in reporting. A great mentor of mine always said when we do public health reporting. So in other words, the people in this episode is me, the process I'm going to talk about, or the exercises I did, I broke them out into we'll figure out what

were start times that I use durations, I'll give some feedback on what worked well, what didn't my top 10 workout types. And kind of the average duration of those, what I think worked really well for me and I think will for others. Some feedback that I've gotten when you share for your own accountability by saying, I did this today, here's the exercise I did. You also start to help other people be inspired to do that. And so I'm proud to have done that and hope that you all through hearing this, if you're already on track, good job, way to get after it, way to get on it. And

if you're not, maybe consider starting tomorrow, as you'll hear, going for a walk has been one of my top 10 things to do, you know, whether you had a hard day the day before you're tired or whatever, but we can all do it. So for me, again, I mentioned May 2017 is when I realized, man, I did a MRF with some folks and I had done the MRFs before. So you know what, I wasn't starting completely from scratch, but it felt like it. And the MRF, for those that don't know, is in honor of Lieutenant Michael Murphy, who was a Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan. And the workout is you run a mile, you do 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, then you run another mile. It's very hard. I've done it every year for probably the past four or five years at least.

It's a killer. And so it wasn't right away that I said, you know what, I need to change. I was changing jobs or looking to change jobs, still stressed out, not great at home, you know, because of me. And so it wasn't until July, actually, that I posted my first workout. So I kind of got on the ball before then. But for me, what I could find was that. And it was a bodyweight workout. You know, it was the old push-ups, pull-ups.

And how I started was really simple. I had had a pair of 35 pound kettlebells that I'd kind of used years before and hadn't used as much, you know, recent times before 2017 in July. And I got a piece of pipe and I cut some holes in the rafters in my shed, really, it's really a big shed, it wasn't really a garage gym, so to speak. And I put that up there. And I got some straps, they're WSS kind of military workout straps. They're like TRX, but they're not. In fact, unfortunately, that company I don't think is in business. And there was some stuff between those two, but I love them. I still have them actually. But there's straps you can put on there to do lap

pulls and push ups and dips and ring, you know, ring type things. And I loved them. So July 2017, I started that journey, get up in the morning, my first one was at nine, it wasn't anything crazy. And then I then I typically got up, you know, at like quarter to quarter to six or six, and sometimes in the afternoon, not quite as steady, and just kept going at it. And as you all know, making something start just requires doing it once. Then you do it a lot. Then it's a habit. And before you know it, it's a lifestyle.

And for me, since that time, I have shared my son, who will join us here in a little bit to give his perspective on getting kids into working out, which was the other part of the request here, joined me later in September of the same year. He started getting up. It was an early workout. It was at 6.50 a.m. And we did a Tabata. And I'll get into what those are, what that is in a little bit. But it's really cool. And again, to me, what that speaks to is when you share your process, you're getting up, you're setting that example, especially in the home. Hey, I'm getting up and exercising every day because I need to make a change. Your kids and those around you will follow suit. But you have to set the example. So a whole bunch of workouts later, here's the data that I have captured on myself. So since I kicked things off again in July of 2017, I've done about 910 workouts. And again, my numbers pale in comparison to others.

And they're a lot more than others, right? Because we're all different. That's a total workout time of about 538 hours and 16 seconds, right? Excel formula is hopefully accurate. Interestingly, too, is I'm also calculating because a huge part of this is my time in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that I started the following year in 2018. And since then, so each Jiu Jitsu class is about an hour, I have done rolls. And that's the grappling right where you're actually you're in grappling combat

with other people trying to choke or stop joint locks or do that to others about 640 times. And I got that number by saying, here's the number of classes I went to times about three and a half or four rolls a class, some some classes, you roll seven times, some I only rolled once or twice. But that's humbling to me. So I shared a few months ago in November, I earned a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And at that time had been, you know, five, almost 600 rolls, probably right, I've done more since then. And I'm at the low end new guy end of the scale, right? Not brand new for sure as a blue belt, but still a new belt, new blue belt. And just think about folks that go up in skill to purple and brown and black,

how many thousands of roles they have. It's amazing. It's humbling. It's pretty awesome. So again, for me, for me, this is my lifestyle is getting up and exercising and I don't always eat the healthiest stuff or, you know, I still drink alcohol and sometimes I stay up too late. I'm kind of a night owl. But this core of knowing I'm going to get up and do something tomorrow or I'm going to do something, you know, later or I'm going to have a recovery day or stretch or something like that is worth every ounce of sweat, every painful joint. It just is. And so if you're not in the workout mode now, I highly suggest you get in that mode, get up tomorrow and go for a walk, do some pushups. You don't need a lot of equipment. When I started, I had maybe a 10 by 20, maybe space in the front part of that big shed. The rest was full of a lawnmower and tools and

all that. It was a concrete slab. I had some kettlebells. I got some sand filled dumbbells. I just started adding. I had another great friend that got me for free this standard weight plate set and bench and then added and added bought some bigger kettlebells some mats a dip stand and you can get stuff now it's more expensive right because last year gosh the home gym industry just exploded which is awesome i think but unfortunately it's because gyms themselves were hurting so bad but it doesn't take a whole lot and so i'm gonna just run down some things that i think are interesting. I'll share with you all. My most frequent start, these are times.

So the formulas I did, what were the times I started, right? What was the most frequent, the earliest, the latest? What was the median? Then I'll go into durations, right? What was the most frequent duration I worked out? The shortest, the longest, the median. And what were those workouts? My active years and things like that.

And so for me, my most frequent start time is 7 a.m. That's because that's the time that I've done jiu-jitsu most often and with a couple other 7 a.m. start times in there. So that for me is the most frequent. So not crazy early, not the 4.30 or 5.30, although I have plenty of those, not 4.30 but 5.30 and 6. The earliest for me was 12.30 a.m. It was a late night in a hotel gym,

went there, had to get some stress out. And so went and worked out there. Um, the latest was eight 20 PM. I hit that assault bike kind of the end of the day, right? It's always good at the end of a work day or whatever kind of day you're having to burn some stuff on. And I'll tell you what, that assault bike, uh, will help you burn any sort of emotion out and leave you crying in a puddle. Um, the median 7am, right. And that's between, uh, like yoga, which I do pretty regularly, whether it's a full class or a short stretch class routine, uh, or jujitsu again. So for me, that's the most frequent type of workout, uh, that I did at 7am. Duration wise, the most frequent is an hour. Again, that's how long jujitsu class is. The shortest I actually found was like a minute.

And that's because we me, my wife and my sons did a challenge. Can you do 10 burpees in a minute, right, which is a good average, because then another challenge that I do myself is do 110 minutes. And that's a great challenge, work your way up to that. You know, you can scale that those kinds of things, but we did a one minute, Hey, let's see if we can all do it. We did it. It was pretty cool. One of the longest workouts I had was about four and a half hours. And that's cause I was moving. So moving boxes, you know, for, for half a day, at least, um, when we moved actually here to where I am in Southwest Virginia now, uh, recorded that. Cause you know, if you're moving boxes for four

and a half hours up and down steps into a pod or a moving truck, you don't then need to hit the gym, and that counts. I have that as chores woad workout of the day. So that's pretty legit. My median kind of duration is about 26 minutes. So I have plenty of workouts. Like again, you do 100 burpees in 10 minutes, that's a tough workout. If you do, in addition to, you know, a quick burpee challenge in a short amount of time, there's a thing called a Tabata that was developed by Izumi Tabata in the 90s. And he found that if you do super intense than rest, super intense than rest, and it's four minute interval workouts, like five days a week was his part of the research. But for 20 seconds, you're going all out jumping jacks or pushups or assault bike or something, then 10 second interval rest

for eight total rounds. You get a killer workout and you do cycles of that. And it's just a great workout. So if you're interested in Tabata, T-A-B-A-T-A, go check that out. You can mix in all these different kind of exercises, kettlebell swings, whatever. It doesn't matter. It's a great time saver. So I'm a huge believer you don't need a lot of equipment and you always have time. And so take that for what it's worth. So what are the top 10 workout types that I have done? By far, 229 of these that I did are Metcons or metabolic conditioning.

So I counted workouts I did that was anything where I use a combination of body weight and cardio and kettlebells. You know, sometimes if I just did like dumbbells, and maybe mix in a couple things, I just counted that as weights, but metabolic conditioning, the things that I do most, I'll swing a kettlebell a couple times, do some air squats, do some pull ups, maybe sprint, you know, 300 feet and come back. Those kind of things are very kind of CrossFit like. In fact, CrossFit really popularized Metcons or metabolic conditioning. They changed me. They changed my body, my conditioning.

To me, I did that too, if I when I used to go to a gym, not my garage gym, if I did bench press, I would finish my set, stand up, do air squats at the end of the bench, do some crunches right there on the floor. I'm not big on looking around and looking at myself in the gym, whatever, I don't go to a gym really anymore. But when I did, and as I was transitioning into building up my garage gym, that's what I would do. I would highly recommend that if you go to a gym, stay active the whole time, get your money's worth, save yourself some time. Think of a Metcon, right? If you're the old school chest and tries back and buys lifting weights,

that's great. But build in some conditioning in there and you'll get an even better shape. So Metcon for being metabolic conditioning was the way to go. It transformed my fitness level, my body, my strength, my endurance, and it just, it's good too, because you can get up or the night before you can think, okay, what do I want to do tomorrow? Okay, I'm going to do 10 kettlebell swings. Then I'm going to do 20 air squats. Then I'm going to do 20 pushups.

Then I'm going to do five pull-ups. Then I'm going to sprint, whatever, right? And you can mix up so many different workouts that way. And again, it gets you, you get to to some strength, some cardio conditioning, some muscular endurance, a whole mess of things. So my second top of my top 10 workout types is jujitsu class already touched on that. But I've been going to a lot. Supposedly, if my numbers are good, I've gone to 171 classes, which again, compared to other folks that have been around for a while, that's not a whole lot. My third most popular is body weight. Huge fan of the old school jams, push-ups, pull-ups, air squats, flutter kicks, crunches, anything you can just use your body for.

Box jumps, right? So you need a box, but actually I've done it on my front steps before I built my own box or plyo boxes, wooden boxes, but you don't need anything. And that's fantastic. And you can get a killer workout and get in really good shape with just body weight work. My fourth occurrence that happened the most that I've done workout type is stretch and recovery, right? So whether I've had a work a long week or frankly, I'm being lazy. I have this thing called the stick. It's got two rubber handles on the end and like plastic rollers in the middle. They have similar ones of those and target and everywhere else. I got mine when I was getting ready for a 10 K in Richmond. Uh, this, uh, you know, they have like where they sell all the merch the night before the race

and it's great. It hurts a little bit cause you push and you roll your muscles out, but it's fantastic. I also have the hyper Ice, Hyper Volt kind of hammer thing that massages your muscles and works out kinks, and that works fantastic. Or I'll just do a light stretch with a strap or do a 10 to 15 minute yoga that's not a full yoga class. And for me, I'm pushing 47, but even if you're younger,

working in recovery days is a huge deal, whether you're using a foam roller or just stretching or something, I highly recommend it. It'll keep you in the game, whatever you're playing, whether it's just the fitness game, jujitsu or sports or something else. Following my own stretch and recovery days, yoga. I'm a huge fan of yoga. Nick Gregorius, I probably killed his name. He's a jujitsu black belt. And I heard this quote from Joe Rogan talking about him saying, yoga is the martial art you do against yourself. Couldn't be more true. Great thing is if you belong to a gym, there's probably yoga classes. There's free yoga online on YouTube and Amazon. That's where I get it almost all the time. There's actually a yoga

for BJJ product out there, which is really good. You can get yoga wherever you want. Yoga, fortunately, is very accessible. You can start yoga wherever you want. Yoga, fortunately, is very accessible. You can start at varying levels. I actually just watched a documentary, Relentless, about Diamond Dallas Page of old school wrestling, WWE. He has Diamond Dallas Page Yoga, DDPY, that's changed lives. Check that out. I haven't done it yet, but just judging in what that man put into his own money, his own time, changed people's lives. Highly recommend checking that out.

But yoga works. It's no doubt. It is crazy hard. I can go deadlift 300-something pounds and do that, and that's kind of hard. And then I'm using no weight at all, just my own body, moving it, trying to hold myself up, and I feel like I'm going to die, start shaking. It's crazy. The next thing for me, my kind of in the middle was weights, traditional weights.

I like those, right? Even if usually I'm doing deadlifts or something else, I still turn it into a Metcon and do something else. Some days, though, I'm like, you know what? Let's go old school, do just some dumbbell chest stuff or curls, you know, kind of get the gun show going. But I count those as where I'm primarily using only weights, bench,lift squats, things like that, which I do really like. I just typically don't just do that. But when I do, it is kind of nice, honestly, because it's it's not a rest day because you're still working when you're when you're pushing that. I do probably do more higher rep, not max weight stuff these days. But I'll go out there and jack some steel as they say every now

and then right after weights is resistance bands and so there's many different flavors i have a set that are have the little carabiners on each end so you can switch the handle for your hands or the strap for your ankle it comes with the thing you can put in the door hinge so in your office i've done plenty of workouts i've posted those where i'm working out in the office all day, every hour, do some sets of whatever. And resistance bands are awesome. They also travel extremely well, right? You roll them up or kind of like a hose.

You just throw them in your bag. They squish together. You can get a killer workout. And they have some that go up to 100 pounds. Some of those things are crazy hard to do. Mine, I think the heaviest one I have is 35 pounds. So I usually just do kind of higher rep stuff. But resistance bands are fantastic.

They're also great for shoulder mobility, legs, things like that. I put as a supplement to wristbands in my garage gym. And you can do this anywhere. One, I mentioned that door holder. So it's a loop with a ball and you put it from the outside, kind of in the gap of the door above the hinge, close the door, super solid. The other thing I did in my garage gym is I put eye bolts. So I put one down on the bottom.

So if you can imagine, I clip one end to the eye bolt and kind of where the molding is on the bottom in my garage. And then there's a strap that goes around my legs so I can sit there and kind of kick backwards and sideways and forwards and kind of work different joints therapy stuff and then I put another one about kind of waist high so you can do chest stuff on there you can do shoulder rehab stuff but the eye bolt make sure you put it in a stud because certainly you don't want that thing popping through the drywall and smacking you but it's a great supplement to resistance bands because it anchors the bands and you can turn that now into lat pulls or chest things or punches or whatever.

It's just great. The next thing, the seventh most popular thing that I did or highest occurrence was walking, right? Going for a walk. It's low impact. You can start doing it now. And it's good for recovery if you had a long day the day before for self-induced or work or something like that. But going for a walk is fantastic. I happen to live in a very beautiful part of the country in the mountains here in southwest Virginia. It's also a good opportunity for your significant other.

For me, my wife and I will go for a walk. We'll take the kids. We'll take the dog. So you get a lot out of it um in addition to walking since i've been here we've actually gone hiking quite a few times and sometimes with a weighted pack sometimes just with the supplies i take and as a corpsman in the you know emt got my med supplies self-defense stuff survival things all those kind of things so um my last two have to do with jujitsu. My second to last most current thing is open mat. So the open mat, a class is typically you warm up, you do some warm up rounds where you're not going kind of full speed against each other,

then you learn to move. Then at the end, you go more full speed ish still not going level 5000 spazola. I know I did when I was brand new. But so the open mat, the difference is it's not really a structured class, you're going there and just kind of saying, hey, do you want to roll? Hey, do you want to roll? It's almost like a social for jiu-jitsu. It feels like prom because everyone's kind of looking around if you don't know each other. And, you know, you say, hey, you want to roll? And for five minutes you guys grapple against each other.

And that's it. It's pretty cool. So I've done those not super often, but pretty often about 24 times and drills. So I count BJJ drills separately because that's when I, on my own have, especially when the, when gyms were closed and just as a supplement practice, what's called, you know, Virginia Jiu Jitsu movements. So whether it's bridging or where you're on your back, it's kind of like a hip raise, but you turn sideways, getting someone off you or shrimps, which is again, hip escapes and there's other movements and things like that. But, but I do those to supplement and it's like

anything else. If you want to get good at it, you got to put the work in even in addition to class or regular stuff. So that's a big reason. The other thing is I had knee surgery last year on my left knee meniscus trim. And so some of these movements, particularly bands and drills, I couldn't do jujitsu or I couldn't do squats or I couldn't do this or that. So I supplemented workouts with those, but for me, that was my top 10 again, by far metabolic conditioning or Metcons where you combine weights, kettlebells, um, body weight stuff, cardio, mixing that in, um, is what just worked for me. You can certainly stick with the traditional stuff where you're just going to do some weights, but

I think it's a great combination to build strength and endurance all in the same workout. You can do it in relatively short amount of time. I've been blasted in 15 minutes or had a relatively easier time, you know, going on 45 and the intensities is really up to you. Um, the other thing for me that was interesting is, is my years, 2017 wasn't quite as productive because that's the year I kind of got back into it. Uh, 2018, uh, 2019 and 2020 actually last year was my most productive when I did the most workouts. I didn't take tons of days off during the month. For example, the kind of full year of my lifestyle of getting up almost every day, I did 268 workouts. I was off about 97 of those days, which is like eight days a month. So when at first when I saw 97 days, you know, or 100 days when you're not hitting 365, and again, some people do, could be I missed data, but I took days off for sure.

But that's eight or 10 days off per month. And so if you're getting after it every other day and you're giving yourself a break or you have an injury or you have an illness. And again, in this time, I had appendicitis, kidney stone, meniscus surgery. Life happens. And some days you're just like, I just don't want to do it. But if you stay regularly on track and you work hard, you like me, we'll get up and get after it and then you'll keep doing it. And then it'll be something that you expect of yourself. So then when you don't do it, you definitely feel it.

You don't, you don't feel the same mentally. You're not as clear. You don't feel accomplished like you do after you put in a good workout in the morning or the evening. You know, if you're an evening workout person, do that. As far as the home gym, like I mentioned earlier, I started in a big shed. Some people have them in their basement or they turn an office into it, particularly last year. Check out Quora or Reddit.

People have done so many great things in setting up their home exercise space. You don't need a lot of space. All you need is a floor, right, if you get down to the essentials of air squats and push-ups and crunches. And that can be your entire workout, and you'll get in great shape if you do it all the time. And then you can build up. And now I'm very fortunate that I have kind of a short bay in my garage. It's kind of like a big golf cart bay, but a whole car fits in there. But anyway, that's got the horse stall mats on the floor, a free weight

rack and a bench, weight racking and weight racks. You can go all out and spend a few thousand or you can spend a couple hundred bucks for like a squat stand. If you're doing that, you do not have to spend a lot of money. Having a salt bike because my wife loves me. I think that means she loves me. We're debating between a salt bike and rower. So great for just a super quick, how fast can you do a mile? How fast can you run this many calories? And it will just smoke you. A pull-up bar. So instead of a pipe in the rafters that I started with, I've got a pretty nice Titan

Fitness with multiple handles that I anchored to the wall. And an assortment of medicine ball to do wall balls. Again, a lot of CrossFit movements. So I looked up CrossFit and movements and things and did those as well. I've got resistance bands, dumbbells. Again, dumbbells these days as of February 2021 are super expensive compared to what they were a couple years ago. But they work pretty well. So that's for me, my journey into fitness, things that have worked for me, things I would suggest that could work for others. As with any fitness advice, make sure that you're healthy enough to start. But start right, take the step, talk to your doctor if you need to, if you're if you're

in not in good health. If you're just kind of like I was and let yourself get off track and eating horribly and being stressed out and staying up too late and maybe too many drinks and maybe this or that, for whatever reason, just start tomorrow. Start drinking more water. Get up. Whatever time gives you time to get a workout in before you go to work or school or whatever you're doing. And just start because I guarantee you, it will change you for the better. It will make you faster, stronger, feel better. It is a therapy that reduces stress in a great way. So I highly recommend it, but enough about me and enough

about my workouts. And hopefully these have been helpful. Let's hear about the second half of the requests in this episode called home gyms and healthy kids. And joining us now is my oldest logan who is going to help us again that's the other half of the request from one of the listeners in richmond is how do you get kids into fitness so logan's here to tell us logan thank you for being on the show yeah it's good to be here so logan i was looking at the data i think we talked about a little bit when I picked you up on the way back from football practice. So you, the first time I saw, kind of started getting up in the morning. It was in September of 2017.

We were at our old house. We had that shed, the pipe for a pull-up bar, which actually I really liked. Yeah. It was pretty cool. But not a lot of equipment, right? So we started with not a ton of equipment but that's okay but really what i want to share is um kids in fitness getting kids into fitness what made you start and want to come out there and exercise well it first started you know i was small i definitely wasn't

like i always was the skinny short. And then I got into football. And then, well, I think I'd been in football for a little bit. But I was like I couldn't keep up with the other kids. And I figured, you know, my dad is working out. He's getting stronger. So, you know, if I get stronger, then maybe I'll be able to keep up with everyone and just have a better well-being. Do you remember what you started doing first like um i think we talked about some things but what do you remember kind of how you got into it when your first movements or exercises um just stuff that you know you could do at your

house or like anywhere just like push-ups pull-ups squats sometimes I would use the curls but I'm or just go on a run you know stuff that you didn't really need a lot of equipment for and what did you think was the hardest when you started the pull-ups definitely you know I couldn't I could maybe do one but it was like a kipping pull-up and yeah yeah pull-ups i think most i guess i don't know if it's fair to say most but a lot of people can't do them because they are hard which is wild right think about just me and my body in a bar pulling my you know up over my chin i know you've gotten a ton better at pull-ups through repetition like anything else right so now you're knocking out the pull-ups how many many pull-ups are you doing now? At most, I could probably do 15 no-kipping,

and then I do 10 when I put them in my workouts. Wow. So you realize it's sports, and that's, for me, for folks listening, kind of that's the gene that I have. Growing up, I was also thin and in shape, but couldn't gain weight until I was a little bit older. And then, of course, when we get older, as you all know, if you're older and listening, it's hard to not gain weight so the fitness helps um

so Logan with sports how did exercise help you and did it help you keep up more and get the speed and the fitness that you mentioned that maybe you didn't have before you started working out yeah definitely after I worked out I was a lot more athletic you know I had more muscle and then when I got older I would gain more muscle um but the most thing is that I was able to keep up with the kids now and I could you know run as fast as they could or at least you know not trail so far behind or maybe in football i could block better because i had more muscle and more strength yeah i remember your coaches mentioning when you came back for season two they were like has he been like you start filling out uh which feels good right you put the work in and um what else did it do for you not just for your sport but being

faster being able to keep up being able to do more did that have an effect on your confidence and kind of your mental health as well uh yeah definitely you know after you work out you feel really good like oh i just worked out or oh you know i'm stronger today than i was yesterday and also like other people will see it, they'll be like, oh, you've been working out. It's like, yeah, that feels really good. Right. So it's been a few years, right?

So September 2017, kind of the first recorded. Certainly you're an active kid, like other kids running around and playing, but kind of actual focused, structured workout. And since then, you have taken on both because you're older, smarter, stronger, faster, used to working out more. So you program your own workouts.

More big on the chalkboard and the whiteboard, right? Writing your workout out and then doing it, marking it, things like that. How have you felt over the past few years about your development? And what do you think helped you stick with it so much? Once you start working out, it's like, it's like a, like once you start brushing your teeth every morning, it's like something that you just do and that, you know, something that just sort of happens. And then you're like, oh, I forgot to work out. Let me go do that.

Like it always something that just stays in your mind. Do you have kind of a personal accountability? You're like, oh, I need to go do that. Because when you don't work out, mind do you have kind of a personal accountability like oh i need to go do that because when you don't work out how do you feel definitely sometimes when i don't work out it's like oh i didn't work out you know i feel bad because like i definitely could have worked out or like you get rid of that like feeling that you have after you work out. Like I just worked out or like I feel a little bit worse because I didn't do what I had planned today. Like you didn't accomplish a goal.

Yeah. Maybe that you felt like you really should have done. So for folks, if kids are listening, they're not active now, what would you say to those kids? And especially after the last year, right? So last year was weird, right? You couldn't see your friends as much. It was hard. You kept working out.

But so to the first point, for someone, regardless of what year, pandemic, no pandemic, what would you say to someone that's not active that thinks they can't do it? How can they get started? Definitely by asking people. I would ask my rec football coaches and then I would ask you. Definitely asking people, what can I do to maybe get stronger or lose weight or gain weight you know muscularly um some of the best things that you can do is just start a habit right of getting

up just doing simple stuff like like i did starting out just push-ups pull-ups squats and if you can't do push-ups you can also look up workouts that you could do right depending on what sport you play or how much weight you need to lose and stuff that's a good point yeah and for so you're like others if they're young and they're teenagers or younger listen to this or with their parents you know certainly don't look anything up without your parents permission right there's the caveat but yeah for sure um there's so much and i mentioned this earlier when i was talking about in particular yoga there's free yoga on youtube and amazon and all this kind of stuff and workout wise both on the crossfit website on other websites there's tons of exercises we now also have some posters right that have

movements particularly dumbbell movements you do a lot of those yeah uh we're fortunate we got some dumbbells before last year early last year before i got too crazy now they're super hard to find yeah uh inexpensive as i mentioned earlier um but yeah there's there's references you can get and have those up in your gym they seem to be really helpful like i've seen you do exercises that i know are from that from that poster um and then it seems like your knowledge has gone up of course because over the years you've done a whole bunch of workouts and so now you know movements even though we reference them and now you're starting to share those with some of your friends my friend comes over maybe well every week unless i have like him or me has after school practice like he plays baseball i play football and wrestling so maybe we'll do

like different workouts that day or do less or more reps but um definitely getting him over it's like better it's more fun to work out with someone maybe compete even or like having a friend come over really improves morale? Yeah, especially after this past year. And again, you know, in coordination with people's comfort level and distance. And a lot of times, of course, now it's cold. Fortunately, with our garage gym, we can open the door. You know, you guys do sprints a lot or runs outside. But even like gyms now where there's other people working there and sports.

And that's one thing, too. So sports, very different, right? outside um but even like gyms now where there's other people working there and sports um and that's one thing too so sports very different right you were fortunate to do some wrestling stuff um mostly conditioning right inside with masks on all that stuff um now football outside right um how did you how did your habit really your lifestyle of fitness get you ready for we just talked about this as well both sports are hard right wrestling and football right um how do you think it helped you get ready for wrestling first wrestling is definitely cardio cardio and then yeah cardio you know sprints runs or even just like rolling around on the ground like getting those movements of like double legs or single legs like they teach you in wrestling um definitely if i hadn't have worked

out it would have been you know i would have been breathing hard you know like working out really gets you on like another level that, you know, some kids they have, like they're just naturally athletic, but you know, I wasn't. So definitely for wrestling, it was a lot.

What do you think were some exercises specifically that helped you get ready for that? Uh, mostly probably high rep, like, uh, the battle ropes, those really get you breathing running running is a great cardio exercise um you know also for strength because wrestling does require strength you know um bench press deadl, stuff that will really improve your kickoff or your, like, pushing someone off you

or being able to last the whole round. And you, so you did jujitsu a little bit too, right? So you had a little bit of grappling before that. Right. For folks that may not have dumbbells, doing squats, stuff like that, do you think the kind of, you do high rep air squats a lot too? You also do those hanging knees to elbows a lot.

Yeah. Do you think that helps your core and your leg strength and your endurance? Yeah, core, leg strength, those get maybe not as much, but they're still something that will definitely improve your overall core and leg strength. What about football, right? A lot of legs still. This year you're still doing defense, corner, and some quarterback action.

Yeah. Action on offense. What kind of exercises or the exercises that you did, right, in the preseason or offseason, what do you think helped you the most get ready for football in middle school? Probably just the most simple exercises like the curls. You know, those will help your throwing. Or just practicing leg movements like around the gym, maybe setting up cones you know just moving

your legs as fast as you can to get around those will really improve your footwork um i think that my overall workout that i'll do is i'll put in weights and then i'll put in body workout and i'll mix those together for like maybe i'll do like 300 pound bench press to get your arms warm and then pull-ups push-ups and v-ups which is feet to fingers um and then i'll go back to weight so i'll go back to deadlifts and curls and then i'll do that maybe four or five times that's one um which probably didn't surprise common theme since you're my son and we same gym membership but is the metabolic conditioning or metcon so combining weights and cardio and sprints and jumps

and pull-ups or something like that right it's a combination so you're not just sitting there like doing bench and then sitting there right and then doing something else and then sitting there it seems like you're always moving which of course for there's some breaks in football between plays. But you're moving, you're moving fast wrestling. You're just going right. So you're going other stuff. You're going. I know one thing for us to want a pretty hilly area.

Right. So we're not here is is pretty tough um what do you think you've gained from your now years and and putting on muscle and the habit that you're in not just for the sports but what do you think you've gained as a as a teenager from the great habit that you've made for yourself and health and fitness um i think i started definitely started at a great time to start working out you know i was like 10 or 11 when i started working out so i've been working out for three or four years that's just been like there's so much that I did gain. And I think the most that I've gained is self-confidence. You know, you feel good about yourself.

You know that you are athletic enough to do these sports. And when you get to the field or to the gym, you know that, oh, I can keep up with these people. Like I am athletic athletic how has exercise helped you during the pandemic uh well the pandemic first of all you know you're just sitting mostly you can't you can still go places but you can't do as much as you could have uh in the past before the pandemic um it really boosts like you know sometimes you get really bored so you can be like oh i could go work out and then work out you could do a long workout so that it takes up some time um or you know invite your friend over to come work out with

you what about on some of those days which you know we all have adults and kids you've been home constantly you're not seeing people normally not hanging out with your friends how how does exercise help deal with that with the stress with being bummed out with whatever well definitely when you're working out you're like exerting all that emotion, you know, maybe anger that you had, like how I didn't get a good test grade. You go work out, you push, push, and then you get like really tired depending on what you did. And then it's like, oh, I'm chill again. Like, it's fine. I just worked out. You know, you feel like, oh, you know, I feel good because I just worked out. And then you feel relaxed.

Nice. So in addition to being ready for sports, self-confidence, you can be chill. So because I'm cool like that. Logan, thank you so much. What do you want to tell kids out there? You know, I think you've explained some kids out there um you know you've i think you've explained some really good benefits um i think you're a great example for other kids for your brothers right that are probably out there wrestling like they always do

um i think it's a great habit we have a family of taking on as regular exercise right usually in the morning but other times too um what what can some kids take away from this as we close out the episode that you want to kind of impart um probably confidence that's the whole point you're confident that i can go work out today you're confident that you can invite your friend over you're confident that i can go to school and get good grades because you know if you're out there and you're not feeling yourself you're not going to get anything done you know if you can't feel like you can't do it then you're not going to do it 100 or you're not going to do it at all um you know be confident in yourself and feel good nice thank you logan thank you everybody listening to the show uh hopefully this has been helpful the episode 67 home gyms and healthy kids uh just get started just take the first step uh adults listening

try and set that example uh and if you're a kid listening, same thing goes, right? Build yourself confidence, get ready for sports or just health, help deal with the stress or anything that's going on. We all wish you the best. Thank you again, Logan, for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Stay safe out there, everybody. Wash your hands and God.