Weights and Plates Podcast - #32 - 3 Ways to Condition, Improve Your Work Capacity, and Burn More Fat

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Coach Robert and Coach Trent discuss the value of conditioning in a strength program, and three ways to implement it based on your goals. While the idea that you can "condition" or exercise off excess calories persists (unfortuantely), though we know fat and weight loss are primarily driven by your diet, there is a role for conditioning in the life of a lifter and general purpose athlete.   Regular exercise, such as walking, hiking, or riding a bike, increases metabolic rate and improves tissue quality, keeping your joints lubricated and your connective tissue pliable. Luckily, for the lifter, the type of exericse chosen doesn't have to be too specific -- just something that increases the heart rate for a period of time, whether it's a short, intense HIIT workout or a 45min walk at a brisk pace. Any of these conditioning modalities will fulfill the need for basic cardiovascular endurance and increased metabolic rate.   For the sport athlete, or a powerlifter training for a meet, the conditioning should be chosen carefully based on the needs of the sport. A powerlifter can benefit from HIIT conditioning that will improve his ability to recover between sets of, say, 5x5 squats during an accumulation phase. On the other hand, that conditoning should be reduced and eventually phased out as he peaks for a meet, since the meet does not have any cardiovascular demands to speak of.    Coach Robert and Coach Trent discuss three ways to add conditioning to your program. Two to four session each week, after your lifting, you can do: Low intensity steady-state cardio (LISS) for 30-45min, such as walking, hiking, or cycling, on natural trails or on the treadmill. High intensity interval training (HITT), such as prowler pushes, tabatas on the aerodyne bike, or EMOM sprints on a rower Circuit training, selecting 2-4 movements done for 4-6 rounds, with short rest between rounds or done consecutively, pausing only to rest as needed. These can be bodyweight movements, like air squats, lunges, pushups, chin-ups, or burpees, or they can be light loaded movemnts such as kettlebell swings, weighted pushups, dumbbell curls, etc.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com [e-mail]

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Howdy, howdy. Welcome back for another exciting episode on training this week. That's what we're going to talk about. Yeah, so we're going to take a quick break from our episode with Dr. Pewter. We are going to come out with a part two with him. We're just trying to sync up on schedules to record that second bit,

but we're going to finish that one out on disordered eating. So that will be coming up probably next time in the schedule, but we're going to take a quick break and talk about conditioning, right? Yeah, that's right. All right. So, yeah. So, so what's on, what's on your mind? Are you like trying to do an Ironman on me or something?

Yeah. Tomorrow. You're going to start doing, you're going to start doing marathons or? No, none of that shit. You know, conditioning is an interesting topic because when I first started, you know, getting involved with quote-unquote fitness or going to commercial gyms, the dominant paradigm was that you had to lift weights, you had to quote-unquote do cardio, and you had to eat either a low-fat or low-carb diet. And the low-carb started to – or the diet part started-fat or low-carb diet. And the low-carb started to, or the diet part started trending more towards low-carb.

So yeah, it started at the turn of the century. So Atkins was still relatively new, still had a lot of low-fatters in the game at the time. Oh, yeah. And the idea that you had to do cardio to lose weight was a dominant one, and it still is to this day. People correlate fat loss with how much their cardiovascular system is stressed and how often. I see it all the time.

There's always this question of, why aren't you giving me enough? What's enough? They feel like their heart rate needs to go up and they have to sweat a whole bunch every day or they won't lose fat or they don't deserve to eat. You know, there's this, I have to earn my right to eat through activity. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. And I, it's funny, I even encounter a lot of folks who are pretty familiar with our world of starting strength and, um, understand intellectually that, you know, losing weight and losing body fat is primarily a, you know,

that's a behavior thing. You know, that's a, what you do in the kitchen type of thing. Um, but I, I've encountered, I over and over, I encounter lifters who are familiar with all those concepts that we talk about on this show. And yet when it comes time for them to, to, you know, trim up a little bit, they're like, well, I'll just like throw a bunch of cardio into my program. Right. And then I'm just going to trim right up. It is like, well, wait, wait a minute here. So the, yeah, there's this disconnect keeps coming up over and over. Well, we need to go back to the basics of, um, energy balance. So the majority of the calories that you expend throughout the day, the calories you quote unquote burn throughout the day, a lot of that is influenced by vital functions. It's the result of vital functions, breathing, heart beating, lungs

contracting and relaxing. These are things you can't consciously do. Your heart's beating whether you want to or not. You're taking air in and out whether you want to or not. These vital functions have an energy cost. You have to burn calories to be alive. So when you're sitting on your ass, beating yourself up because you didn't give yourself a heart attack on the treadmill earlier in the day, remember that the fact that you're sitting on your ass alive requires calories, okay? Yes. And that accounts for two-thirds of it, just vital functions, right? Then, you know, another 15% or so, remember these are estimates, nobody's actually measured an exact percentage when it comes to these things, these are just estimates. Another 15% of it is what's called the thermic effect of food or diet-induced thermogenesis.

So, yes, eating food burns calories because what happens to that food once you eat it? You have to chew to eat it. You know, the muscles of your jaw contract, right? Yeah. Your finger muscles contract to pick the damn thing up, put it in your mouth, right? So that's where it starts, right? Then when you swallow it and it goes into your digestive system, you have to digest and absorb all those nutrients. That has an energy cost, right? So they say that accounts for about 15%, which is one of the

reasons when you cut your calories too low for too long, your metabolism down regulates and you end up adapting to the lower calorie diet. The bigger part of that is loss of muscle mass too. Right. So you're losing muscle mass and you're eating less. So you're going to burn fewer calories. Yeah. And, and doesn't it like, it's actually a question I've had for a while. All right. So like when I eat a pound and a half of brisket at Rudy's barbecue and I get the meat sweats, is that, is that also like part of the thermic effect of food? Like, because, or is that where I just feel hot and sweaty? And I mean, am I like excreting, like, you know,

am I just like throwing off extra body heat from trying to digest all that protein? I mean, fuck, I don't know. It's probably not cool enough in the room and you're eating a hot meal. I mean, there's a lot of things that influence that. But sure. Spicy barbecue sauce is what it is. Yeah, or that. The sissy sauce? Hey, this morning, I was sweating bullets eating oatmeal because I have my temperature at 75 degrees and it's 100 outside, you know? Yeah. Madman eating oatmeal in the summer.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of reasons for that, but we can say that, you know, if you want to make it sound cool. Okay, cool. If it's thermic effect food, why not? So what you're saying is I need to go pound, like, huge amounts of meat every day? Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. Keto, keto, keto. It's carnivore.

Yeah, carnivore. That's where I'm going. Yeah, well, you can change his names every few years. There'll be a new one soon. So the last slice of that pie is physical activity and exercise or training, you know, depending on which one you're doing or if you're doing both, right? So we'll just put it all under the broad umbrella of physical activity. That's about a quarter, 15% to a quarter of the calories you burn, you know, at most. If you're a pro athlete and putting in, you know, two-thirds of your day to physical activity or you're, you know, a laborer, that's going to be a little bit on the higher end.

But you can't forget that vital functions eat up a bunch of calories. Most of the people listening to this are not professional athletes. You might have some day laborers here. But in general, activity has, you know, a smaller role in energy expenditure. So you do not have to earn your right to eat through activity. Now, obviously, if you're more active, you can eat a little more. But you're not going to double your calorie needs just by being more active, you know, unless you're going from couch potato to you know mba level practice on basketball every day you know you're spending six hours of continuous vigorous activity which is you know

it's basically hit of some sort you know mixture of aerobic and high intensity when you're doing traditional sports you know that have a lot of directional changes and whatnot yeah um but most people aren't doing that you know you're not going to go train like an athlete you have a job you probably have children you probably have other things to do so at best you might get an hour in and that might earn you a snack you know but not getting that hour in doesn't mean you have to cut your calories in half and eat nothing and uh i find that that line of thinking is still prominent today as much as it was, you know, two decades ago, three decades ago. It's this idea that you have to earn your right to eat through exercise. People have gotten even more specific with it where you have to earn your right to eat carbs through exercise, right?

Right, yeah. This comes from people taking a scientific concept completely out of context. So, carbohydrate intake and VO2, your oxygen consumption, and your heart rate, which is also tied with your oxygen consumption. As you consume more oxygen, your heart rate tends to, or as your heart rate increases, your oxygen uptake increases. And this is tied to energy expenditure. You know, your VO2 is tied to energy expenditure if you're performing steady state aerobic activity, right? So when they do a VO2 max test,

they put a mask on you and they're measuring how much air and CO2 you're breathing into that mask. Then they're estimating how much O2 you're taking in. And based on that, they can determine calorie needs. They can also determine whether you are burning mostly carbohydrates or burning mostly fat. It's called substrate utilization. And without going into the complex exercise physiology shit about this. You're looking at respiratory exchange ratio. That's the ratio of VCO2 over VO2. And just to simplify without going into a bunch of physiology, RER of 0.7 is equivalent to burning 100% of your calories from fat in theory. And an RER of 1.0 is equivalent to burning 100% of your calories from carbohydrate in theory. You may see numbers greater than one. You may see numbers

below 0.7. Typically, if you're on keto, you might see it below 0.7. We're not going to go into the whys of that today. It's beyond the scope of this episode. You may also see RERs greater than one. If you're in anaerobic activity. If you are doing a long run and you start sprinting at the end, like a VO2 max test where you're on a treadmill and the incline keeps going up until you can't run anymore, that very end, you're going to see numbers greater than one most likely. The problem with this is there are things other than activity, the activity you're doing that can influence it. If I'm sitting here hyperventilating, for instance, I'm producing more carbon dioxide. Remember, that's the top, that's the numerator in this equation. So I can easily make that number higher just by hyperventilating. you will also drive up your respiratory exchange ratio so if i just drink a gatorade and then put the mask on and measure my bco2 over bo2 uh you're going to see a higher number it's going to say

that i'm a better carbohydrate burner so now we're getting into this whole fat burner carb burner thing right if you eat more fat it has no impact on your RER because you just store it. That's the theory at least, right? Now, if you go into keto, you're going to get lower RERs, which is going to suggest that you are a better fat burner. But what does that really mean, right? What does that really mean? Well, hold that thought. First, when you are resting, your RER tends to be lower, which means you're either going to have a mixed diet, you know, like let's say if it's 0.84 or something, that's a number I remember from a textbook, you know, it's probably a 50-50 fat to carb ratio, right? Yeah. That's saying when

you're sedentary, it's closer to that 0.7. So when you're sedentary, based on this RER measurement, you're burning mostly fat, right? And if you are doing an all-out effort at anything, you're going to see numbers 0.91, maybe greater than one, right? Which is going to suggest that you are burning mostly carbohydrates. So people have taken this to the point where I don't deserve to eat carbs when I'm sedentary because I am burning mostly fat. I'm just going to get fat from eating those carbs. That's not what that means because guess what? If you start eating carbs, that RER goes up because the more carbs you eat, the more carbs you burn. And that's based on,

you know, the weight, based on these types of measurements, right? Right. So it's not that simple, right? I could be sedentary and eat, you know, a piece of watermelon and then all of a sudden I have an RER of 0.9, you know? I'm just throwing a number out there, you know? So for all you academics, it's not a literal statement. I'm just throwing a number out there to illustrate it to those people that don't academia speak, you know? So, yeah, so that's the problem, right? It's not that simple, you know? Just because you're sitting on your ass doesn't mean that you've lost the right to eat carbs and that you have to do something very hard to earn the

right to eat carbs. Remember, your brain takes in about 130 grams of carbs a day, plus or minus for the person, you know. So you need that. Your heart likes carbs as well. It's beaten all day. So yeah, vital functions are a big chunk of our energy expenditure, and they could use carbohydrates for energy. Just because you're sitting around doesn't mean that, oh, you know, I'm only burning fat. Okay, so that's that part of the equation. The other part is, so let's say that, you know, you go on keto, right? You pull out all the carbs from your diet, and then you start getting lower RERs, right? Because you're not eating carbs. You have nothing to stimulate that.

Yep. And then you start releasing ketones, try to use that for energy, right? So, then the whole argument is, oh, I'm a better fat burner now. Well, what does that really fucking mean? It means that you're good at burning the fat that you're eating. It has no impact on the fat that's stored subcutaneously, you know? That is sensitive to energy balance, specifically having a negative energy balance over a long period of time. And I always explain this in a way

where you have a math problem, right? So let's say your baseline is 2000 calories. And let's say that you need 500 calories pulled out of your diet each day for a full week to lose one pound of body fat. This is not how it works for every single person, but plus or minus, you know, some people 200, some people 1000, you know, we all know that there's the guy that looks at a donut and gains weight. And there's a guy that takes fucking cream out of his coffee and loses

it, you know? Yeah, right, right. So we don't need to get into all that. So let's just use that 500 number for the sake of illustration. So if you go from 2,000 to 1,500 and you lose one pound per week, let's say you go from 1,500 to 1,000, you may lose two pounds per week. Now you're going to go from 1,000 to 500 to lose that three pounds. Okay, then what are you going to do? Zero. Eventually you run into a wall, right? You can't cut more calories. So, at the end of the day, depending on how large you are, you're looking at one to three pounds of body fat loss per week. You know, I've always heard one to two, but I've worked with people that have 100 pounds to lose, and I've seen larger numbers happen. You know, typically, I say half percent to one percent of body weight is pretty good per week. But my point is that

just because you're better at burning dietary fat doesn't mean you're going to lose subcutaneous fat any faster. So, you know, you don't, again, you don't lose the right to eat carbs because you're inactive and you don't have to erase carbs from their existence in your diet because you have weight to lose. You know, it's an oversimplification of these concepts, right? So we've kind of beat that. I've kind of beat that to death here. So let's move on to this whole conditioning argument, right? So remember, this is a quarter of your energy expenditure comes from the activities you perform throughout the day.

So I like to put physical activity into a hierarchy, right? First, are you moving around throughout the day? You know, are you walking? What's your step count? That's the easiest thing to look at these days with these newer phones. They typically measure it without even knowing it's usually turned on. How many steps are you walking a day? I think eight to 10,000 steps is the general recommendation that I've seen over the years. I tend to throw it at people. It's a good round number, but I think that's like two to three, I think three miles, close to three miles. Last time I looked at it, I could be wrong.

But, you know, it's quite a bit of walking, but it's not continuous. You do it throughout the day. You get up, you walk around, you park further away at the parking lot. You know, you take stairs instead of elevators. You find excuses to walk. This is easy shit that is built into your day and doesn't require you to go to a gym or make some special effort to, quote, unquote, be active, right? Just be active in your life, okay? So that's the low-hanging fruit.

So that's at the bottom of the hierarchy. Now let's say you're doing that. Let's say you move around all day, right? And you're getting 8,000 steps a day under 10,000, right? But, you know, you want to do a little more. You know, two to four days of, you know, quote-unquote cardio, as they call it, or conditioning, as CrossFit has changed the word to, that pretty much means moving continuously at a, you know, pace that's actually kind of hard to very hard, right? So, you can go for a jog, you can go for

a hike, you can ride a bike at a pace that makes you sweat a little bit and gets your heart rate up and you can kind of hold the conversation, but you know, not really. Yeah. And then there's, you know, the all out sprint or high intensity interval training where you, you know, go all out, then you do a nice little short bout right after. So, you know, if you're doing a bike, you go all out on the bike, then you do slow pedaling or you do an all out sprint running, and then you do a slow jog or a So, you know, if you're doing a bike, you go all out on the bike, then you do slow pedaling or you do an all out sprint running, and then you do a slow jog or a walk. You know, that's quote unquote conditioning, right? You know, that could be very, that's very good for your cardiorespiratory system. And it's also very good for when you have to do something

like that in life, right? Like, let's say that, you know, you live in a place with, you know, an extreme climate like I do. It's pretty hot here. I happen to hike in the summer. A lot of people don't. So, let's say you hike less in the summer. You know, you still, you want to be conditioned for that so that you don't go on your first hike and have to stop all the time. You know, that's what got me doing conditioning. I got sick of that. I'm like, it's beautiful out here and I can have to keep stopping, you know, and I'm strong and I'm not fat. What the hell's going on here? You know, that's what got me doing conditioning. I got sick of that. I'm like, it's beautiful out here and I can have to keep stopping, you know, and I'm strong and I'm not fat. What the hell's going on here? You know, I just sit around too much, you know.

You know, if you have to walk your dog and you live in a hilly area and every time you walk your dog, you're breathing heavy and, you know, the same walk every day is not going to cause an adaptation. So you need something harder than that. That's where the more difficult, vigorous or moderate to vigorous conditioning is useful, you know? Sure. It also helps you not breathe heavy in between squat sets. Five sets of five is a lot more manageable when you're fairly conditioned. Yeah, I was about to say, like, that's a, I think that's an underrated, you know, reason to do conditioning is that it not only will you be breathing less when you do those five sets of five squats, you're not going to be so blasted by the end of that, that you just can't do anything

else, right? That you're, you're saying you're essentially sandbagging, whatever, whatever else you have to do in your program after those five by five squats, because you'll be, you know, you'll, you'll be tired, of course, but you'll have some gas in the tank. Absolutely. Yeah. So it carries over to your training. It carries over to your life. Let's say that you have to move and you're doing it yourself. You don't want to hire movers.

You're lifting, so you can lift the couch, but can you walk with it down a flight of stairs outside and maybe 30 steps away from the building? Because you can't park on the street or for whatever reason, you know, you need to be able to do these things. And lifting helps you, you know, lift the weight, be able to run with it too. This is why I like strongman stuff that, you know, not all of it, because some of it, you know, can be pretty risky for the recreational lifter slash exerciser. But, you know, I like the idea of it because you're essentially doing conditioning with weights. Yeah, right. I was about to say, there's kind of a sneaky third way to condition too. I mean,

you have mentioned it, but I've stolen this idea from our buddy, Dr. Darren Deaton, double D. He comes from a CrossFit background as well as a starting strength background. And in CrossFit, there's a lot of, you know, essentially hit circuits that they do, taking body weight or can be weighted movements, and just, you know, tossing them together into like two to four movements done for four to six rounds, either with a very short rest period in between each round or doing each round, you know, successively after another pausing only to rest as needed. So for instance, you know, you get to the end of your lifting workout and you could do, you could pick like, uh, walking lunges,

chin ups and pushups and just pick up, you know, pick a rep count for that say you're going to do 15 walking lunges five chin-ups and 15 push-ups and do five rounds of that with a minute to two minutes of rest in between each round right that that's it's not really like cardio right it's not that much that's not many reps it's somewhere in between what we would consider like a strength training range of repetitions but we're nowhere like, this is not the same thing as walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes or, or, or jogging on the treadmill for 30 minutes. But, you know, your, your heart will be pumping at the end of that. And, uh, and you know, you kind of have, it's kind of a blend of the two, right? You're going to get some arm work in there. You're going to get a little extra quad work and glute work from those lunges.

And you're going to get your heart rate up too. It's kind of a fun way to do it. Absolutely. And this is not to be confused with endurance training. Just like there's strength exercise and strength training, there's endurance exercise and endurance training. Yeah, right, right. If you're a strength trainee, you could do endurance exercise, quote-unquote do endurance exercise, and you can still train.

You can't endurance train and strength train at the same time. This is another concept that gets totally twisted and dates back, whether people know it or not, this dates back to an old paper from the 1980s, 1985-ish, by an author, an academic author named Hickson. You can find this on PubMed probably or Google Scholar. And they looked at strength training versus endurance training versus combo training. And the strength training was five sets of five squats and five sets of five bench. So it was, you know, similar to what we do, whether that squat was deep or correct or not. That's a whole nother discussion. But, you know, it was they did their five sets of five on the squat and the bench. And then the endurance group did some sort of continuous endurance activity that was progressive in nature. continuous endurance activity that was progressive in nature. So yeah, so these research participants, they went for 10 weeks on all three study conditions. So they trained for

strength for 10 weeks and had to wait to the bar. They trained for endurance for 12 weeks and progressed that. I can't remember exactly how they progressed that. I'm assuming they probably tried to cut the time shorter to keep the volume the same if I had to guess, but I don't remember exactly how they progressed that. I'm assuming they probably tried to cut the time shorter to keep the volume the same, if I had to guess, but I don't have it in front of me. And they did the combo training where they did the five sets of five squats, five sets of five bench, and what the endurance group was doing. So what they found was that after about the first, oh i think it was at the first six to seven weeks they saw improvements in strength and the strength groups they saw improvements in

endurance and the endurance group they saw improvements in both in the combo group however in the last two weeks and i'm guessing this would have continued uh there was a loss of strength in the combo group, which is interesting. The strength endurance group, as they called it. And you would expect this because you're doing a lot more volume in the endurance activity. You're spending more time doing it. Your muscles are performing a greater total number of contractions. So you're going to adapt to the thing that you're doing more of.

You know, it just makes sense. to adapt to the thing that you're doing more of. You know, it just makes sense. But again, they were training both of those completely opposite stimuli, right? Yeah, right, right. That is not the same thing as you doing your quote-unquote cardio for 30 minutes with no attention to whether it progresses or not. You know, that's just basically you exercising in addition to your strength training. You can do endurance exercise.

Now, that said, if you're preparing for a meet and you're doing a bunch of singles, just like you're going to take out the bicep curls and tricep extensions and all the accessory shit when you get to triples and singles, eventually you've got to take the conditioning out, too, because you've got to maximize recovery for that, you know, four- to six-week period leading into a meet. That's a short period of time. You know, you should, four to six week period leading into a meet. That's a short period of time. You know, you should still walk though. And, you know, the bodybuilders have talked about that

too. You should still walk, you know, you should still, basically the way I would prescribe conditioning is the further you are away from one RM in your training. So let's say you're in an accumulation phase or doing a hypertrophy program or spending a bunch of time on nonspecific work, you're far enough out from a meet, that's when you want to do more higher intensities on the endurance side. The closer you are to 1RM, you know, performing in a meet, mock meet, maxing out for whatever reason or even getting on stage for a bodybuilding show, when you're at that point of peak performance on the strength side, that's when you want to spend more time doing lower intensity endurance

activity and less time doing the higher intensity stuff. Because the goal at that point is to hold on to muscle mass and maximize the expression of strength if you're on the platform. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, and I think that when to our basic stress recovery adaptation model. That's right. Which is those guys were drawing from the well of recovery on the strength work. Because we know five by five, if you do it even decently heavy, that is a pretty big stress. So it requires quite a bit of recovery to recover from. That's right.

But then they're also, because they're progressing the endurance work that they were doing and they were making it harder over time, then they're drawn from the well on both ends. And I think it's important distinction that that interference effect occurs because of the progressive nature, I think, of both of those elements. Exactly. You can't train both. Yeah. So when I think of conditioning, and I totally agree with you when you're talking about performance at a meet or on the bodybuilding stage or something, yeah, absolutely. It has to be, your conditioning has to be tailored

toward that performance, which means maybe you pull it out at some time, at some point in time, depending on what your performance is. As a powerlifter, you don't need to be blasting hits on the Aerodyne bike, you know, a week before your powerlifting meet. The demands of the sport do not require it. So no reason to ding your recovery resources that way. But I also think, you know, for a lot of folks out there, they're more interested in sort of being generally prepared for life. Kind of like the scenarios you laid out at the beginning, right? They want to be able to go hike on a hot day uphill and not get gassed. They want to be strong enough to pick up the couch and not fall on the ground and have

their back spasming, right? And be able to tie their shoes the next day. But they also want to be able to carry it across the room, out the door, down the stairs without having to stop to breathe. That's right. Exactly. So, you know, when I think about conditioning in that context, I'm thinking of it, like you said, more as exercise in the sense that it's not particularly stressful to go and let's say do 20 to 40 minutes of steady state cardio twice a week in addition to whatever lifting that you're doing, right? That's not a particularly stressful thing, right? We're not

talking about running, you know, running three miles and making that six miles over the course of a couple months, you know, progressing it, just talking about doing 20 to 40 minutes of steady state cardio, or doing a couple sessions of that, of HIIT, right? We're doing like Tabatas on a rower or an exercise bike or something, or doing some circuit style training. Like I talked about earlier, where you're doing rounds of like body weight stuff, right? Now that doesn't mean that you can't progress that stuff at all over time. I think it should get harder, you know, like if you're going to go get on the rower and do a 2k row, let's say as your cardio stimulus, the end of a workout, I think you should, if you can only do it in 11 know, even if you can kind of estimate the stressfulness of these events, right? Like obviously doing a two kilometer row on the rower after you're lifting for the day is less stressful than going out and running six miles.

Like I hope, hopefully that should be obvious. Yeah. So yeah, so that's kind of another way that I think about it is like for the, for a lot of folks out there who are just wanting to be generally fit and generally prepared, the cardio is almost sort of like a check the box situation. That's right. Get some in. Um, and then, you know, probably you need to pick something that's just fun to do or easy to do for you, right. That you have access to, you know, like the strong man stuff can be really fun, but like, if it's a huge pain in the ass to pull out the implements and then you're not going to do it, then maybe you should pick something else. That's right. Right. So I think that's the first thing I guess to wrap that, that point up is that you got to kind of

figure out like, what, what are you doing here? Right? Like, are you prepping for a particular sport or an event? In that case, you're going to have to be pretty, you're going to have to be a little bit more detailed with the conditioning that you do and when you do it, right? On the other hand, if you're just training to, you know, put some muscle mass on to get stronger, but also you still want to be fit in the process, then you don't have to put quite as much thought into it, right? Just do, I like your suggestion, two to four sessions a week and make it fun. You know, pick something that you like to do and then try to progress it over time, but it doesn't have to be a ball buster.

No, and it also doesn't have to be, you know, hamster wheel cardio at the globo gym, you know, running on the treadmill for 40 consecutive minutes mindlessly or riding a recumbent bike or even pushing a prowler. That's something I don't like to do. A lot of guys in my circles love it. I hike. I live in an area where I can do that. There's a mountain down the street here, about 10 minute drive. And the first mile and a quarter is straight up, you know, so I get my heart rate up plenty high, you know, gets, I think it averages around 140. So, you know, I'm not even doing hit, but it takes me about 25 to 30 minutes to get to the top and then another 15 to 20 minutes to get to the bottom, you know? And, you know, now I do

it with the dog, so I'm carrying things. So there's, you know, some added resistance, you know, I have my water, my bladder around my waist, I have lumbar pack and then i have to carry a 40 ounce hydro flask full of water but uh then i'm walking the dog so that adds a later difficulty but the whole point is i walk up that i walk down that i go to work i train you know the thing i've noticed with that this is what i like about grade so if you are a treadmill person, grade is more important than speed, I think, especially for a lifter. Yeah, right. Is I notice if I don't do that, I'm tighter when I squat. When I'm hiking three to five days a week, you know, five is a good week if I have time to do that.

But usually I get at least three. My hips feel so much better at the bottom of the squat, you know. Yes, yeah. Dude, that's so funny you mention that because, um, we typically do this similar thing. We've got a couple of trails around here and, you know, this is Chattanooga, there's mountains and hilly everywhere. So, uh, there's a lot of natural terrain and ups and downs and the trails we hike, but the last like six weeks or so for various reasons, we just haven't been doing as much of that. And, uh, I'll be damned if my right hip flexor doesn't bug me every time I squat now. And I know if I, if we, when we get

back to, to walking more and hiking more than that's going to go away. And, and I agree with you. It's, it's really, I think a lot of it's because when you're hiking on natural trails, you've got incline up and down. So you're, you're kind of changing the angles of your, your lower body quite a bit while you're walking. And then also, at least in the case of Eastern Tennessee, there's always every single trail has roots and rocks and all sorts of shit on it that you're, you know, so your foot is constantly pivoting. And I think that those sort of micro movements of your muscles while you're walking, it does a lot, you know, because it just puts them through a range of motion and pulls on

all of your muscles and your ligaments in unpredictable ways that is probably useful. You know, if your only other stimulus in life is squatting in a very consistent manner where, you know, the muscle angles are pretty much fixed and they're moving through a specific range of motion that doesn't really change from workout to workout because you do the, you know, hopefully you have good technique and you do the rep the same way every time, you know, you probably need to have something else in your life where those muscles are being taken through different ranges of motion and being pulled on at different angles. Yeah, no, that makes sense. So, yeah, with that, you know, you just got to find the mode that you know you're going

to commit to. I know that I'm going to hike. I know that I'll mountain bike too. You know, it's fun. Right. That's a little bit tougher because it requires, it's more involved, but I can, you know, I go around my neighborhood to keep the tires moving. But you have to find the mode that you like. It doesn't

have to be quote unquote cardio, you know, you don't have to be a hamster. Yeah, I think that that's probably the most important criteria for me is, you know, if I'm introducing conditioning to someone's program, the number one goal is to find the, you know, one or two, maybe three things if we're lucky, one or two things that they love to do, or at least that they can enjoy somewhat like cardio kind of sucks. Like, I don't, I don't think many people, there are some people out there who get a, you know, get a kick out of their heart rate going way up. But, uh, I, the people who get into lifting tend to not be those people. Um, I'm certainly not one of them. I don't really like my, my heart to be pounding constantly. Um, so there's an element of suck there, but if you can find stuff that you like better than others, that's, that's sort of priority number one for me. Like here in Phoenix, Camelback Mountain is a pretty good workout.

It's because you're climbing a lot. So there's a lot of deep hip flexion when you're going up that thing. And that gets my heart rate racing, you know. Some days I try to find ways to tiptoe around it to kind of minimize that. But that feels like a HIIT workout to me. And because it's hiking, I'm outdoors, you know, the environment's great. I'll deal with it. But I'm not going to go do sprints outside and run. I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to get on a treadmill or a bike. I'm not going to do a wind gate, for those of you who know what that is. And it's the same for you. At the very least, if you don't want to get that massive heart rate response right away, start with the walking. Remember, there is a hierarchy here. Walking is baseline. You need to make excuses to walk all day at the very least. Walking is baseline.

You need to make excuses to walk all day at the very least. And if you're motivated to do something a little bit harder, find that thing that you know you'll do, that there's something else there besides the heart rate response that'll entertain you. For me, it's the environment, the hiking, you know? Yeah. Being around people. Same here. You know, take my dog out. You know, like, that's another thing. You have animals.

They need to be walked out you know like that's another thing you have animals they need to be walked you know for those of you who are buying pit bulls and german shepherds and malinois and these high activity breeds because you like the way they look and then you're just keeping them at home that is cruel to the dog walk the damn dog those are working dogs you know yeah i don't think we have a lot of listeners like that but i know i've seen people that do that they get these breeds that are popular but that also are working dogs and they're not working them. So you got a working dog, put it to work. If that's you,

you know, otherwise, you know, all dogs should be walked anyway. It's good for them, you know, but if you're, yeah,

if your dog's having behavior issues, I'm, I'm willing to bet. I think this was, and then I think this was Caesar Milan's whole deal, right? Like if you just walk your dog regularly and on a schedule, right? Like the same just walk your dog regularly and on a schedule,

right? Like the same time every day, uh, then I bet most of those behavior issues go away. Absolutely. You know, it's, that's, it's true with our dogs. Like when they start acting up, it's a hundred percent because we've gotten off schedule in some way or another and we get back on schedule and they're fine. That's an easy way to get quote unquote conditioning. So, you know, baseline is walk. If you're motivated to do something harder, then do it, you know? Yeah. I think I, who was, maybe it was in the Arnold encyclopedia. I can't remember where I read this originally, but that's kind of like an old bodybuilder thing too, right? Like you get up in the morning, drink a cup of coffee and go on like a 30 to 40 minute like brisk walk. I think so. I think you mentioned that. 30 to 40 minute like brisk walk. I think so. I think you mentioned that. Yeah, it's, it's effective, right? And you can do it like, so there's a difference between walking, you know, parking at the end of the parking lot, you know, and walk and walk into Walmart and walking around the store

and going on an intentional walk where your only goal is to just walk around the block or the neighborhood or whatever you're doing. Um, you can do that a little, you know, with a little bit faster pace, like just keep it up to where you could, you could maybe sustain a conversation, but at the same time, it's like, you're going to be breathing a little bit. Well, that's, that's a different stimulus than just, you know, ambling along. I think one of the other things that I look for when I'm prescribing conditioning to people and trying to fit it into their program is if if they do have goals which involve adding some more muscle mass to their frame i really like doing the circuit

style stuff and putting it after one or two of the workouts and for a couple reasons like you know one i don't like people to have like separate conditioning workouts that, that require them to go somewhere else besides where they're at at the gym. You know, so if they're working out at home, that's one thing, but you know, if somebody works out at a, at a public gym, I don't like them to go and like, well, I've got a kettlebell at home, so I'll go do these. Like, I'll go to the circuit later. It's like, nope, I wanted to do it right there after they're lifting in the gym. So, so mainly because you'll get it done, right? You're not going to go out and work out twice in the day. It's just not going to happen. Something's going

to come up and disrupt you. But I also like doing those, um, circuit kind of things because I do think, and this, this is just from personal experience, you know, if you do a whole bunch, let's say, look, one to two times a week, you do some sort of conditioning circuit that involves chin-ups, dips, pull-ups, lunges, etc. I think you're going to get some hypertrophy effect from that over time because you are accumulating a lot of reps. You know, if you do 10 push-ups, if you do six rounds of something and you've got 10 pushups in there as one of your movements, what's 60 pushups? If you did 20 pushups per round, that's 120. That's a non-insignificant amount of work on the pecs and the shoulders and the triceps. over week, month over month, that does add up to a little bit of extra muscle growth. So if that's someone's one of somebody's goal and they enjoy doing that, uh, then I think it's, it's a, it's a fun way to add conditioning to the workout. I would agree. Yeah. Typically you want to do it

when you're most likely to be productive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the main thing is just don't overthink it, right? Like we got plenty of thinking to do if you're trying to get stronger and gain muscle and, you know, take care of your diet. So, we don't need any more complexity to our program, really. So, you know, unless you're an endurance athlete and this is, like, your whole thing, just don't overthink it. No, it's very low maintenance for the lifter. Check the box. Check the box. Check the box. Check the box off. Turn on your little app on your phone or watch or wearable

and keep trying to let that thing do all the work for you. If you have one. If you don't, just look at the time when you come in and try to stay there for a half hour. Yep. Or get a dog and then walk it every day. Please walk your dogs. You'll be thankful when you do.

Yeah, definitely. All right, man. Well, let's sign off. All right. Well, thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at Instagram on the underscore Robert underscore Santana or the gym at weights double underscore and double underscore plates. Or most importantly, go to my website, weightsandplates.com. All right. Yeah. Excellent.

You can find me, I'm going to give you my website first this time. You can find me at jonesbarbellclub.com. If you're interested in online coaching or just chatting about training, then you can reach me there. You can also find me on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream, where I do post about lifting and music and other things that I do from time to time. So, all right, well, we will be looking forward to another conversation with Dr. Pewter in the future.

Until next time, talk to you later. Thank you.