#73 - 7 Training Requirements for Tactical Athletes. 1 System

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Transcript

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So we got seven training requirements for tactical athletes and one system. That is what we are diving into today. I am super pumped about it. Uh, this is what I've been talking about, you know, lately, but I wanted to compile a couple different points that I've been talking to uh to make sure we have our full system here and understanding how we can start looking at programming with that long-term vision, but also the short-term execution. So, to me, these seven that we're gonna go over are non-negotiable. And if we work together, you will see these seven in what you are doing on a uh day-to-day basis, but also obviously training related and overall performance related. Um, so hopefully you take a lot of good from this episode. Uh, again, we are very transparent with what we do um with content, with podcasts, those different types of things. So um, hopefully you get a lot from this. So, a couple different things before we get into the uh the big seven here. So, first one, uh wanted to let you know that the one-on-one application is open, just opened it recently. So, if you are interested in seeing how this system will work specifically for you, make sure you apply. It'll be in the show notes below. And then from there, once the application is submitted, I will be going over that and then I'll send you a video of your roadmap going forward uh for the next six months or so. Again, we need that long-term vision. Uh, I am not about the the short-term sprints, the lose 30 pounds in 30 days, and you know, pee like drop your runtime in in two months, those different types of things. I mean, sure, that could happen, but um, I don't want to make those claims because at the end of the day, you need to put in the work. So, uh, and the and the shit's gonna be hard. Let's be let's be clear on that. It's not a uh resistance-free path. So that's one thing. Again, the application will be down below. Another thing, I am super, super, super freaking excited about my uh capstone research that I did. So I had to do a thesis. I've been talking a little bit about it on the podcast, um, but I am super excited to talk about that. If uh I'll give you a couple of little details here, but um I will definitely have some content coming out about it as well as make a full podcast episode if you really want to nerd out and some of the the findings. But uh it was it was pretty overwhelming. I've never done any kind of you know, uh formulating my own studies, different things like that. Um, so I'm super excited about it. It was a lot of hard work and we are coming up on the end. So I had to do uh I completed a poster that I need to present, as well as um I'm going to be finishing up the uh the paper, which I'm not super excited about, but um it'll be good. We'll we'll compile all the data there and all the uh all the findings. But um I did luckily, so let me go over the the research question. Again, I've talked about this before, but the research question was what specific mental techniques do elite tactical athletes employ when facing barriers that make others quit? So that is what we dove into. Super grateful for the people who participated. Again, uh, I have a love-hate with a love-hate relationship with social media, but it was super freaking cool to be able to uh, you know, some of the people I've met on here have them fill it out if they uh if they met the the criteria, different things like that. So uh super grateful for everyone that participated. And um, we have some very, very heavy hitters in there. So I'm excited to dive into that. Um, and and again, diving into the most uh impactful mental techniques. So obviously, there's a bunch. There was uh a certain way that the uh the survey was laid out. I know people hate surveys, so again, I appreciate people doing it. Um there was different ways the uh the survey was laid out. There was um, you know, some uh multiple option or multiple choice, as well as the uh the real the real money lines came in with um with the with the short answer, and people were were super helpful with that. So kind of just giving you like a 40,000 foot view, the top four, you know, were breaking things up into smaller segments. So if you are going through um selection or you were going through a there was a couple like hundred-mile um completions and and those types of things. Okay, breaking things up into smaller, smaller segments. I think that was uh 87% of the people have used or or used that technique when they're when their backs against the wall or they're facing that that extreme barrier. Um accepting discomfort was number two, reframing perspective, number three, and then connecting with uh connecting to the why or their why was number four here. So um I think this is gonna be super helpful data that we can use going forward to to make sure that that we are stress testing ourselves and training. I talk about that all the time, but I guess the the bottom line up front here with some of the data that that we found and some of the answers that we got, elite performance is not a gift, it's built by consistently doing hard shit, right? That is the bottom line, and and a lot of people you know spoke to that, and it's about you know getting out of your comfort zone, making sure that we're doing hard shit, making sure that we are are stress testing ourselves before these events. Like we're not going to just be able to snap our fingers and be like, okay, I am not gonna quit, right? It's so easy to get that advice. Uh, and and you see it sometimes where it's like, just just don't quit. And it's like, yeah, no, no shit. Like, great, thanks. I appreciate your help. But it's doing that, doing all the little things beforehand and making sure that you are mentally and physically preparing yourself for that moment. I think a lot of people go missing with uh thinking about the the pre-work beforehand. So I say all that to say number one, I'm super excited about it and I love talking about it. Um, but number two, when it comes to these seven training requirements, this is why these are so important. And the the cool thing, we're gonna show you how to put them into one system. So it is not training for multiple things at once, or you know, well, it is you you have different training targets, but you're not running like a strength training program, a powerlifting program, or a uh a conditioning program, couch to 5K, doing a little bit of this, doing a little bit of that. It is one system where you're hitting these seven targets, and then you will prepare yourself both physically and mentally. So um kind of painting the picture, like bigger vision, uh, talking about you know why and and different things like that. The vision here with everything that we're doing is we want to pray our worst day doesn't happen, but we need to train like it will. So I see this all the time, especially with tactical athletes. Like, we can't just train, uh, train like gen pop, where it's like, okay, we're going to do uh a little bit of this. Or um I talked to somebody the other day and they're like, okay, I'm on a bodybuilding um split and I want to be more athletic. And I'm like, okay, we we talked a little bit and they're law enforcement, and it's like, yeah, like athletic is mandatory. Like we we need to make some adjustments to make sure that you are good to go, especially in something like law enforcement. But it's the same for firefighters. If you are doing some random splits, you are piecing stuff together. How do you think, you know, putting on uh a hundred pounds of gear, a hundred plus pounds of gear, and then running up the stairs and trying to carry somebody down or running into a burning building, right? That is a nightmare. One, it's a nightmare in general, but you start adding in, like, oh yeah, I'm I'm not confident from my training, I'm not, you know, training athletically, I'm not moving in in multiple planes, I'm not, you know, strength training, I'm not conditioning, I'm just kind of piecing things together. That's just the the absolute worst case scenario. And it's the same thing for think about the military, where you have uh, I've had a few people recently where it's like, oh, this popped up, uh, a deployment, I have a deployment next week, or um, somebody recently that I talked about on uh on separate episodes where it's like, hey, just letting you know I have airborne next week, and it wasn't his delay, it was his team or his unit saying, Hey, you're going to airborne next week. Um, yeah, get get ready. And it's like, okay, well, we're we're already ready because we have these seven targets. Um, so just wanted to give you some some perspective here. And again, it it, you know, some people love saying these lines. I've heard it. Um, I know many people hear it, where it is like, uh, you know, I don't need to do this for my job, or I'm never gonna run two miles in combat, or whatever that may be. Um, I will tell you just for some more context for this episode, I don't care what your job title is, you know, what your rank is, what you do, what your experience level is. In my opinion, if you wear a uniform, these should be your focus points. So the goal here is to go away from the functional training. I've heard that a lot. Like training, if you're doing it right, is functional in general. So we can kind of drop that functional word. Functional training, tactical training. Um, I I've heard this one and and was arguing with a few people the other day. It's like uh PT test protocols, boot camp prep protocols, uh, 12 weeks to uh boot camp ready and all these things. It's like what like if if that's your thing, I'm not trying to, you know, um shit on what you're doing. It's great and I I love the the preparation standpoint. But at the end of the day, it's like, what are we even talking about? Why do we need to, we shouldn't have to prepare for a PT test? You know, like if uh I was talking to somebody the other day or arguing with them a little bit or trying to, I don't think they were were catching my drift. But it's like, oh, you know, you're you're making these claims about hand release push-ups, planks, and two mile, and you're just flat out wrong. And I'm like, I don't give a shit about those exercises, right? We shouldn't either. Like, you shouldn't be training the the PT test. That is the the bottom line. So a little bit of a tangent there, but it's getting me fired up here. The last one here is like overthinking program hopping. Like the the goal here with these is to say, hey, if we are hitting these, we are likely going to be good to go. Like that is the goal. So getting right into it, the seven targets here. Number one is, and it might surprise you a little bit, but it's exceeding personal standards. So this is more of a mental capacity standpoint where it is, you know, people love training and they think that's the the biggest part or the only part, which it's obviously a massive part. However, you could be the the fittest person in the world, but if you don't have, you know, you're not uh determined with what's in between the ears, or you're like, oh, uh you you're second guessing yourself. You have uh maybe issues with confidence, conviction. Uh, maybe you are not, you know, uh you're just mentally going through these gymnastics, beating yourself down. We all know somebody who broke mentally before physically, right? So I think it's very important that this is number one. And it's like, okay, we are going to control what we can control, we are going to build that confidence beforehand. And now we can start, we can kind of essentially take off that e-break to our performance and unlock that mental capacity so that we'll transfer transfer to the physical capacity. So, in my opinion, the and we're gonna get into some details, but in my opinion, exceeding personal standards is gonna be harder than training, and it it honestly should be because this is your true leverage point. So, again, I'd mentioned this earlier like this shit is gonna be hard, but these things can either build your confidence or kill it. So, what I like to do is have you start with three daily standards, and we are going to do what we said we were going to do, right? And we can we can kind of have habit stack kind of relate these to sleep, stress management, routines, nutrition, all these different things that are gonna require sacrifice. So the idea here is okay, are you actually putting in effort to a night routine that's gonna help with sleep? Or are you just scrolling and saying, I can't sleep, I'm a night owl, this doesn't work for my schedule. And and I get schedules can be uh complicated, but at the end of the day, we all I think I think we are all lying if we said there's no improvements that we could make. And I'll put my I'm putting myself in this camp as well. So stress management, like you say you are going to read 10 pages a day or read for 10 minutes or uh go for get some get some steps in without any kind of distractions. Um, maybe you're reflecting, maybe you're creating task lists, like right. If you say those things and you say you are going to do them and you are not doing them, that is is a hundred percent killing confidence. And it's the same thing with oh, I'm gonna, you know, track my nutrition or I'm going to get up at this time, or I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And we're just kind of talking instead of putting action, that is 100% killing your confidence. So we think about it, snoozing alarms, like I said, not reading when you said you would. Oh, we're going to lock in on Monday and really dial it in. Those lies, I promise you, equal self-doubt in the moment, right? And whether you consciously or subconsciously are thinking about these things, it is happening, right? So we need to make sure that we have these personal standards that we are holding, both inside and outside the uniform, and making sure that we are literally just holding to them and building our confidence that way. So, like I said, I like to start with three. Um, some that I'm working on for myself are uh one that I love is a thinking block. So for 15, I usually do from 20 to uh or I'll say 15 to about 45 to an hour of just I set an I set an alarm or a timer, put my phone away, I'm away from my computer, and I am just writing on a question or a prompt that I created the night before. So again, this is this has been super helpful for me, where it is like, okay, I I need to detach a little bit from technology, from all the information, from all the notifications, all those different types of things, and I'm going to write out an answer to a question. So, for example, one question might be um, what does excellence look like to me? I don't know. I'm just kind of spitballing here. But maybe that is a question I write down the night before, and now I just write on that. I write bullets on it. I don't stop until the timer goes off. Now I have a ton of information and I have all these answers that it's like, holy crap, I never really thought about it from that perspective. I had the I had the answer the whole time. Right. And you can go more questions like that. You could say uh I talked to somebody the other day, and it's like they felt like they are holding themselves back or or just kind of get into those mental uh mental gymnastics or avoid these conversations or different things like that. And I would ask the question, like, okay, why am I avoiding these these hard conversations or why am I avoiding taking this action? Right. And now you can think on it and you you have the answer. I say this all the time, but um, you know, there's there's nothing that, in my opinion, that we can do more than protect our mental capacity by giving ourselves some space and actually able to unpack these answers. Right. You you are uh you are smart, you have the answer, you got to give yourself space. So uh another thing that I do is uh, and again, these are these have to be individualized to you and kind of where you want to go, your specific targets, and seeing how we can have it stack. But my second one, I use my my journal every single day. I talk about this time in and time out, but it is uh a journal that I use. Um, I don't know if I'd call it a journal, but it's where I create my my task for the next day. So top priorities. What are my three top priorities for for the next day? Like I'm writing those down. I'm brain dumping everything that's on my mind, whether it is uh tasks I need to do. This is kind of my my to-do list. Make my make those from the the priorities, and then I schedule. I put them on, I time allocate these things, and it's like, okay, I have the blueprint to make tomorrow a tomorrow a success. So that is gonna help me, whether it's inside of training, outside of training, if I have work going on, if I have school, all these different types of things. It's like, okay, if I can check these boxes and I say that not to just go through the motions, but I literally put boxes on these things so I can feel productive and check those off. If I look at this at the end of the day, like a little end-of-day wrap-up, and I look at this and I'm like, oh shit, I got a lot done. Like I'm feeling really good. Like this is awesome, right? Another thing here, the last one um that I think everybody should try to focus on is tech down, right? So I try to put my tech down by 8 p.m. And it's like, okay, that is where my phone goes down. Um, I will be honest here. I've been kind of skirting that a little bit, especially with finals um coming up. I'm just in that that tough season, but at the end of the day, we got to do what we got to do. So uh when it when things calm down and it gets a little bit normal, um, quote unquote normal, that's when it's like, okay, my phone is on the charger at 8 p.m. Uh, my computer's down, I am hanging out with my wife, so on and so forth. So uh again, these things are the unsexy things that a lot of people don't talk about. But if you are doing these, that is going to number one, 100% increase your performance. And number two, uh, when it comes to a mental capacity, you are making those hard decisions to forge you before those tough events come, like we talked about in the beginning. So, number two here is fuel the machine. So I talk about this all the time where appearance is the first line of defense. And I think where a lot of us go wrong is okay, I need to, I am not happy with my body comp or whatever that may be. I'm going to go on a big cut, and then uh I'm just going to eat a minuscule amount of calories and we will move in the right direction. Again, that is strictly focusing on the scale, and it's like, yay, the scale went down, boo, the scale went up, right? And we're just kind of playing that game. But I love to flip that whole thing on its head and be like, no, no, no, no, no. We want to eat the most amount we can eat so that we move in the right direction. So I actually saw, and it was probably rage bait, it's a huge problem with social media now. Um, I saw someone post the other day and they're like, uh, slight deficits don't work. Like, make sure that you go uh 800 to 1000 uh calorie deficit to make sure that you can see fast progress and different things like that. And it was like, well, like I didn't comment or anything. I don't like kind of playing those games, but it's like, where do you think performance is gonna go? Right? Like, for who? How does that like who is this for? How does that how is that going to help people when they are extremely fatigued? Like any idiot can make you lose weight, just eat less. But when you're talking about making sure that you can also perform, especially as tactical athletes, you need to start eating, eating more, right? So that that uh that opinion that that person had, it it just in my opinion, um, that's what catches us in the binge and restrict cycle, or that yo-yo dieting, um, the roller coaster dieting, all those different types of things. So I would say, okay, you know, we need to number one, we need to know and understand our requirements when it comes to nutrition. So that comes with again putting in the work, tracking for um, I usually do tracking for two weeks, kind of seeing if we're gaining, seeing if we're losing, seeing if we are consistent uh with tracking. And it's like, okay, we found maintenance, let's go into a slight deficit, right? Eat the most that we can eat. And then the last thing here is focusing on weight on the bar over weight on the scale. So thinking about from a performance-oriented standpoint, it's like, okay, how can we improve some of our numbers here or our metrics? How can we focus on those things? How can we focus on something that's gonna be sustainable, especially when it comes to nutrition? How can we focus on our preparation? Maybe we make some of those standards of meal prep. We're gonna meal prep two to three times per week, right? So that's what we need to start focusing on, especially when it comes to fueling the machine. So another thing that I think is very important with this aspect is it's understanding like uh if it fits your macros, is you know, uh, I don't want to say a bad approach. It makes sense from a losing weight standpoint. However, it has very, very, very big gaps with micronutrients. So, what I like to tell people is hey, we want to focus on total calories, right? That is the primary. If that is off, nothing else really matters. Then we're gonna focus on protein, carbs, fats, micronutrients. And then the last point is talking about supplements. So uh as of lately, it's like peptide this, peptide that. What peptide should I take? What should I do with this? What should I do with that? And um, I don't really have a very, very strong opinion on peptides. I just, you know, haven't done the the research on them. But you know, I personally think they should be earned. Um, yes, to to some extreme extents, like people they they could help people get some momentum, those different types of things. But for the the tactical athlete, number one, I don't even think they're they're legal for tactical athletes. Number two, I think we should be focusing on the the main rocks first, as always. Again, a boring answer, but that's what we should be focusing on and all the other stuff, and not just talking about peptides, but you talk about uh supplements, different things like that, those need to be earned with compliance, right? And maybe even blood work to make sure we're actually supplementing accordingly. Um, so quality whole foods, micronutrients are crucial, um, obviously. And uh, I would say that the order that I just talked about does not lie. So, last thing that I will say as well to kind of pile onto this nutrition is what I like to tell clients here that we need to focus on. I love I love the analogy or the idea of using a sliding scale. So if you think about one to ten sliding scale, where one Is like you are off your rocker, you're doing whatever the hell you want, you whatever the hell you want, and you're just kind of all over the place. 10 would be like you are about to step on a bodybuilding stage, right? So it's understanding we need to manage expectations with your current season and then slide based on that season. So if you are, you know, at that place where in your, you know, at maintenance, you are comfortable with your body weight, different things like that. You're you're comfortable with your body weight, your body comp, yeah, maybe we can slide a little bit, um, seven, eight, maybe six and a half, so on and so forth. Maybe we're sliding there. Maybe if you are on deployments, food's kind of sporadic and it's all over the place, you can't really track. Maybe we go down to a five and we focus on just hitting protein numbers, right? But understanding like with your season, it's going to slide. But we need to also manage expectations with your output, right? If you are, you know, bleeding down into three, four, and you're like, this isn't working. Like, ah, I'm trying so hard. It's like, well, are we actually trying hard? Right. Maybe we need to bump that to a seven or eight to make the the progress that we need, right? So that's number two, fuel the machine. Again, making sure that you're eating the the most amount you can eat to move in the right direction. So it's funny because as I'm going through these, I'm like, okay, we have mental capacity, we have nutrition, right? Big aspects of training. And we are not going to squeeze everything that we can out of training unless those are in in uh unless those respect and reflect what you are doing with training. So everybody loves talking about training. I do as well. And it's like, hey, we I just found this program. I'm going to, I'm going to go get after it. And then I'm going to do this nutrition protocol and I'm going to do these 25 habits. But again, everything that we do needs to respect and reflect one another. So if you are training, if you have a ton of volume and intensity with your training, your nutrition better reflect that. Right. If you want to get the best out of your training and nutrition, your mental capacity and your standards better reflect that, right? And also your compliance with your standards. So just wanted to uh to say that. So now we're going to get into more um specific training, different uh mentalities, methodologies, different things like that. So number three, and I think this is a big missing piece in a lot of programming, but it is train violently and we are going to move like an athlete. So we should be doing this, you know, depending on the person, depending on training age. Obviously, there's nuance here, but I would probably recommend two times per week, maybe one time per week at minimum. Um, but this is gonna really build up that that tissue tolerance, resilience. So think um, I say this all the time, but think jumps, hops, throws, moving in different planes. So pogo hops, box jumps, rotational medball slams, uh, med ball slams into the floor, right? All these different types of things that we are doing. So we are prepared with any kind of explosive output. You think about uh police officers, or you think about firefighters or military in general, all like these jobs sometimes at this the snap of a finger demand explosive output with zero notice, right? So we need to train these things beforehand, build up that tissue tolerance, which is one gonna help with all the other things that we're gonna be talking about, um, strength training, conditioning, but making sure that we are actually becoming resilient with what we're doing. So, with these, I talk about all the time. Hey, I I wonder, and these are the questions that pop up in my head, um, I wonder how many injuries could be prevented in tactical athletes if we just found rhythm with what we were doing in training. So I'm not saying like you need to take dance lessons or anything like that. What I'm saying is if you are moving like an athlete on pogo hops, on rotational med ball slams, on um, you know, rotational throws, all these different types of things, and you are finding rhythm with those things. I truly believe that we will prevent injuries on the outside. Um, so you think about uh I was laughing with a client the other day uh who's a firefighter, and I was like, dude, how many people get injured just like jumping out of the truck wrong or like twisting weird out of the truck or different things like that? And he was like, a lot more than you think. So again, this is that okay, we're going to try to get ahead of it. We're gonna move in different planes and make sure that that we are actually resilient um and and train explosively so ultimately we don't get exposed in the real world. So be an athlete multiple times per week. And again, obviously I say that loosely, we're gonna be an athlete in general, but uh really kind of moving explosively should be uh should be uh a priority, especially in your training. And there's multiple ways that you can uh you can implement it. Um what I like to do usually is either extensions to a warm up, um, you can do like uh superset with um like something like a trap bar deadlift and a vertical jump. There's so many ways that you can integrate these things, but uh for the most part, I would say I usually like them as prep work. Um sometimes I do like a pogo circuit or something like that before um like moderate conditioning. Um sometimes I do a tri set of different things to to kind of prime the CNS before we before we start hitting it hard with strength training. Again, ton of different ways we can uh include it, but very important that it's there. So number four here is get strong and handle your body weight. So I think it's very important that we need to, for you individually, define what strong means for you and define what strong enough means for you. So, what I like to do and I like to talk through with people is three things. What does your potential worst day look like? What are your specific mission needs, and what is your target vision or your specific goals? Right. So we can start kind of blending those three things together, and now we can start reverse engineering like, okay, this is probably where we're pretty good with strength, right? So these are asking the questions or trying to figure out, um, and I see this all the time. It's like, is a 405 deadlift or a 500 pound deadlift, like, is that worth it? Right. Like, do you need to be like, do we need to sacrifice other things like conditioning, uh, mobility, all these different things? Do we need to sacrifice those things to hit a 450-pound deadlift or a 500-pound deadlift? Right. So asking those questions for some people, they're like, hell yeah, like let's do it. I can add on a couple different uh couple pounds and um I can sacrifice conditioning. For some people, okay, like that's that's your goal. Maybe that's that's worth it to you. But I would argue for for the majority of people, like we we don't necessarily need to chase these kind of arbitrary numbers that that we think look cool, especially if we are trying to perform at uh at our peak, right? So understanding that, yeah, there's gonna be some sacrifices that that need to be made, but we obviously want to make sure that the bare minimum that you are strong enough for those three three things. So strength training, there's uh a ton of different variable uh variability here with scheduling and and training availability, all those things. But uh I would say at minimum, two times per week, we are hitting it hard, you know, one to two reps in reserve, actually training hard, not kind of going through the motions, but you don't need a lot of strength work to hit that stimulus, depending on what your conditioning looks like, so on and so forth. But I'm talking max intent here. So uh I like to say like the the strongest person in the room or the the person that's strong enough, you know, has options with uh how they want to handle a situation, if they can do it themselves, those different types of things. So we need to start thinking about that. Because at the end of the day, like being strong enough or increasing your strength, it protects you. Number one, it uh increases your your command presence, it keeps you quote unquote functional. I know people love that word. Um, and lastly, it it increases overall resilience. So this is the idea here. If you know people talk about uh oh, I'm stiff, I need better mobility. Um, I keep getting these nagging injuries every time I you know start ramping up mileage, or um, yeah, I just feel like I'm not you know physically prepared for for what I need to do. Well, a lot of times I would say the answer is is usually increasing your strength. But again, we need to find that uh that good kind of middle ground between strong enough and making sure that you are safe. So, bottom line here, get strong, handle your body weight, and uh control the situation. Number five here, and I've been talking about this a lot, is move fast, slow, and practice pacing. So uh again, I'm gonna kind of talk about that that person who's like just run the two mile. It's a phenomenal, um, phenomenal thing for testing VO2 Max and and different things like that. And it's like okay, like, but if we just move fast, uh move slow and practice pacing, we don't need to just sit there and practice the two mile, right? You're gonna need to go uh a slower face or pace, you're gonna need to maintain a hard pace, and then you're gonna need to actually practice pacing and training your internal monitor. So that can be said for any kind of target, whether it's two mile, five mile, um, whatever that may be, just increasing your conditioning in general. I've always found that to be a good solution. So uh I depending on you know your your starting point, where you're at, probably, you know, one per week, depending on on goals, timelines, there's there's so many different variables, but I would say like a general recommendation that that would work for most is hitting one of one of each of those, right? And it's understanding that you, you know, if you want to improve your runtime, but we have say a lot of weight to lose, or um, you know, you have injuries, different things like that, we can still use air bike, rower for for intervals, and then maybe we ramp up easy work, right? So there's a ton of different things that we can do. But I like to to kind of break this down and think about a uh a pyramid. So the the pyramid, I I say for tactical athletes, it should be conditioning and strength, not strength and conditioning. Um, that is how important conditioning is for us, especially. But if you look at a if you think about the the bottom of a pyramid, that is your your aerobic base, that is your conditioning, right? And I think where most people go wrong is they're like, ah, I have all these goals. I want to improve my strength, I want to improve my power, I want to improve my calisthenics, I want to do all these things. And we have, if we have a narrow base, we're not doing conditioning properly. Now we try to pile on all these goals, everything's gonna come crashing down, right? Because it just limits your ceiling. But if we start moving, you know, moving fast, moving slow, and practicing pacing, that's gonna widen the base of your pyramid. So now we can put more strength goals, more um calisthenic goals, more power goals, all these different things on top. But again, widening your base. So, what I like to say with those three runs, think easy is far left, right? Maybe it's slower than than uh than uh your goal pace, or it should be slower than your goal pace. And honestly, pace doesn't really matter for easy work, but that'll be far left, right? So that's what we're improving over there. Far right is going to be your hard work, your repeats, your intervals, your uh speed work, all those different types of things are far right. Now we meet in the middle with pacing. So if you are, say if you are, for example, with your two mile, I'm just gonna keep attacking the two mile. Um uh attacking the two mile. So easy work. That's gonna be, you know, like I said, slow. Maybe we're building that up, progressing five minutes per session. Maybe we're we're starting at 30 and then going 35, 45, just very easy. Think conversational pace, think nasal breathing, intermittent nasal breathing. Don't nasal breathe the entire time. Um, but that's your far left. Maybe on the far right, we're doing 400s and then maybe progressing that to 800s. And again, this is not, you know, all out um pacing is just butchered. It's like, okay, we're going to try to maintain a hard pace with the the target being at minimum negative splits or just consistent splits, right? And now we can start meeting in the middle with actual feeling out our goal pace for a two-mile. Um, maybe it's, you know, we're doing something like uh running three minutes for uh for repeats, resting two minutes, or maybe we're depending on your your starting point, maybe we're rolling with a 10 minute, 10 minutes at moderate pace, right? But the moderate is where we are actually practicing what we can sustain for for 10 or 15 more minutes. But here is where we're we're gonna make our money with with runtime improvement. So again, those different types of three uh three different runs there are going to be very, very important for improving something like a two mile. We are not just saying, okay, green light, green means go. I'm just gonna full send it with a two mile until my time improves, right? So again, the the big thing here that I like to say with with these is the the person who only knows one speed just ultimately gets exposed. So we've all seen that person on a PT test or whatever, where it's like, all right, start time, go, and it's like just full sends it out of the gate, and now all of a sudden they're getting they're getting lapped by everybody. And that's probably that same person who has a bunch of different overuse injuries, is always milking something, and it's like, okay, well, um, you need to slow the hell down. And then on the other side, it's that person who just always goes easy, or I heard, you know, I need to hit this mileage before I can touch on speed, and I need to hit this time duration before I earn speed, different things like that. And yes, there's a component of that, but at the end of the day, say, for example, if you are law enforcement and you're like, all right, I want to improve my runtime, I'm gonna do uh 15 minutes at easy, progress that, and that's all I'm gonna do for my running. Now all of a sudden you're in a foot pursuit and you uh just blow up a hamstring because you've never ran fast before, right? Like we can't do that. We need to train a little bit of everything, and uh a good starting point, like I said, is those three different types. So the sixth one here, um, strong enough to lift it, conditioned enough to carry it, right? So think about time durations, think about work capacity, think about um unknown time durations, think about carrying, think about sled work, all these different types of things. We need to be able to carry heavy load. And and I've heard this, I've seen people post about it where it's like farmer carries are a waste of time, and um, this stuff, you know, why don't you just strain like uh lift heavy and and condition and all these different types of things? And it's like, well, who does that apply to? Who does that, who does that matter for, right? And in my personal opinion, we should be, you know, and I'm not saying you need to do all these things, but we should be either rucking, we should be farmer, farmer carrying something, whether it's a uh a sandbag, whether it's uh dumbbells, kettlebells, so on and so forth. Um, maybe incorporating a weighted vest every once in a while, um, maybe doing some overhead carry variations, maybe some sled work. We should be doing that maybe one to two times per week. All right. And obviously, excuse me, obviously there's a lot of nuance there, but um, you know, think about the person who is in, you know, kit for a shift. Think about the firefighter who's throwing on a ton of gear, right? We need to be able to do these things and be comfortable under load because yeah, the you know, time trials and the um rep maxes, three RMs, five RMs are very important. But if we can't, you know, sustain those things, like those are are not, I don't want to say useless, but those are are kind of null and void if we aren't able to sustain a high output or carry heavy load if we need to, right? I just had a a client um the other day was talking about deadlifting or zertr carrying and deadlifting a um a patient that needed help out of a bad situation, right? Like that is why we do these things. That is why we need to incorporate some of these things in training so we can and test these things in training so we can actually perform when we need to. So the last one here, this is the uh the one that's over always overlooked, but recover and do it again tomorrow. So again, I I think a lot of us we we like to or we're quote unquote taught to show all our cards every session, right? Valuing sweat, soreness, fatigue, and just being like, oh, that was a tough session. I'm not gonna be able to walk tomorrow, right? Or you're you're sitting on the toilet and it's like, damn, I can't even stand up. Like that was pretty cool, right? And I'm like, what? Like this is this is insane. Like, why are we targeting those things when we need to be able to do do it again tomorrow? Same thing that I always say is if you are a uh you know, police officer and you are just absolutely demolishing chest, and now you need to wrestle around with somebody, right? That is no no bueno. Same thing with with firefighters. It's like, okay, let me just smash legs, let me do 20 sets of legs and make sure that I can't walk tomorrow. Well, how does climbing uh a multi-story building sound?

unknown 39:18

Right?

SPEAKER_00 39:19

Like, think about these things, and and I would say with the recover and do it again tomorrow, I would say the most important aspect to this is pacing. I think that's the most underrated quality for for us, right? So that is not just pacing with running or conditioning, that is pacing with sessions, with training blocks, with long-term goals, right? Understanding that we can't be in that sprint mode all the time um if we need to be able to perform, right? So I look at this aspect of you know, if you were to give 110 for every single session, um, even on like your uh your uh or 110 effort, I should say, for every session, even on like easy work or easy, even on um, you know, uh incline walking, whatever that may be. Like if you give 110 every session, what happens when you need to actually give 100% and you need to hit go when you are in uniform? It's probably not gonna end well. So when it comes to pacing, it's also okay, managing expectations, keeping max intent with what we are doing and understanding that the mission here is a never-ending ultra marathon, right? If you like understand, like I don't know if you've done any kind of races or different things like that or been through um certain tough events or selections, whatever that may be, but we need to have that mentality of like, okay, this is gonna be a long, drawn out journey, and I need to be ready to endure, right? So, what that means is sometimes we need to back off. Sometimes we can we can pick it up, right? Depending on our season, but we need to understand that durability, longevity, performance, um, PRs, sleep, nutrition, uh, standards, all these things, they're not separate strategies. It is one system. And I think where where the burnout, where the program hopping, where um the injuries, all these things happen is when we start looking at these things as separate goals. I'm gonna do a little bit of this, I'm gonna do a little bit of that, I'm gonna compile all these things, and then I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna lock in, I'm gonna be disciplined, motivated, and I'm gonna be mentally tough. But we usually end up right back at the starting line with that approach because again, all these things aren't respecting and reflecting one another. So that is what I got for you. Seven targets that should be in your training week. And again, I talked about different uh different durations or different types per week. It's very, very important. That is what we uh what we signed up for, and ultimately that is how you you train for your your worst day and and prepare, right? Because at the end of the day, we we don't know when it's coming, but I can promise you it's gonna be on the calendar.