Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
From Beards to Barbells: Journey of Fitness, Growth, and Community - Episode 162
This podcast episode encourages listeners to adopt flexible fitness goals as they head into the new year while also reflecting on personal fitness growth and community. With themes of goal setting, lifestyle adjustments, and engaging conversations about beards, the episode highlights how to cultivate a fulfilling fitness journey.
• Emphasizing flexibility in setting fitness goals
• The significance of community support in reaching personal milestones
• Exploring innovative workout techniques and exercise variations
• The impact of small lifestyle changes on overall wellness
• Understanding the role of hydration and nutrition in fitness
• Emphasizing the power of resetting habits to kickstart the new year
• Encouraging open dialogue about fitness journeys and personal development
• Focusing on engagement and enjoyment in fitness activities
• Insights into practical fitness equipment and its impact on workouts
• Developing insights into the mental aspects of training and discipline
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yo hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to hacking health podcast. I'm your host, ben cammy, with dave kennedy. I have to say, dude, your beard is looking well, thank you, thank you, it's. You're past the stage of like. You can just keep it like yeah, I'm trying, I'm trying.
Speaker 1:Like erin is not a fan. She's like you look like jesus. And I'm like, well, it's not a bad thing, jesus is a good guy, you know. I can look like worse people. Yeah, I was supposed to say there's a lot of worse people I could look like. But uh, it's funny because every time I go to give her a kiss, she's like get away from me with that beard. And so I'm like, and I and um, I almost, I almost cut it. And uh, uh, one of my uh friends from from binary jason vest. He's like hey, dude, don't cut the beard, don't cut the beard. I just sent you a christmas present of, uh, these titanium scissors and I'm gonna teach you how to trim your beard. I'm like, nice, well, now I can't shave this beard because I got a christmas present coming and I told aaron that. So it's bought me some time. So I'm I'm letting it go, I'm letting, I'm gonna go man, at least until the event at the end.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, but yeah no, you can, you can put that in the bank that it'll still be here, uh, during that period of time. But I will say there are times where I'm like I just want to go shave it real quick, but then I'm like, ah, it's fine.
Speaker 2:So I literally never have that thought. I literally there's no, I'm never go.
Speaker 1:I won't shave this off, never, ever I'm I'm liking it, though I mean I do like it. It's looking pretty good, it's coming in thick and, uh, you know, I think it's getting getting there. Good, we're just gonna talk about beards all day then that's just that's. This podcast is how to grow an epic beard.
Speaker 2:How you grow an epic beard is just don't cut it and then sort it out after that. I don't know how you have that I'm like. Well, it's infinitely less hassle than shaving all of the time, so just literally let it go yeah, exactly. Anyway, what's the?
Speaker 1:update, dude, what's going on? Well, I'm excited because I got a new piece of gym equipment. I got a preacher curl bench. So I have been wanting to get one and I used to do preacher curls on the bench and those are great because you can do single arm preacher curls, which are fantastic.
Speaker 1:I think Jeff Knipper considers that the S tier bicep curl, but you're just based on range of motion, for bicep curls is one of the best, because you're in a stressed position and if you look at traditional bicep curl but, um, you know, just based on range of motion for for bicep curls is one of the best, cause you're in a stress position and if you look at traditional bicep curls, you know when you're coming up, you know your least resistance is going to be up top and you're really not. You know you're giving your muscle a break during that period of time. So you're not, you know, maximizing the amount of stretch and, um, you know tension, you know tension on that muscle itself just by traditional bicycles. And I'm not saying bicep curls suck, they're great, but you can definitely get better out of it.
Speaker 1:And so I decided to invest in a preacher curl in that fitness empire place that I always go to. It's like a fitness empire. If you look it up fitness equipment empires or something like that you get a lot of used, amazing equipment for really cheap prices that's refurbished and they clean it all up and polish it and and, uh, you know, refurbish it and everything, and uh, you literally get. So this is a hammer strength, uh, preacher curl, which I'm a huge fan of. Hammer strength cybex um, you know, uh, what's the one of my other favorites? Uh, not less, and the techno gym stuff techno gym techno gym.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one um the pectic that I got, the one that I wanted to do, anyone that they had was in white and I asked them would they spread black because it wouldn't go with the gym, and they spread it black and it's absolutely like. It just looks like it's always been black. So, yeah, they're really, really good. Um, highly recommend. I think the guy that I dealt with her is called ryan.
Speaker 2:Um, actually yeah, right, yeah um, I don't know whether this is a good idea and if not, I apologize to Aaron. Future version of Aaron. I think you should go and actually see the place, because it's fucking class, just to be there. Because, yes, they have the stuff on the site, but they have like massive shells like four stories high, with just all the equipment, and the place, like the warehouse, is like 85,000 square foot. It's absolutely massive. It's not that far from me.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'll have to go check it out. I love it I probably walk out with like 17. You know I need an 85 000 square foot. I am. I am actually at capacity, like you've sat up for about a year no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm really at capacity at this point.
Speaker 1:So, like you can barely like, when you open the door now to go into the gym, there's like a little walkway to get through it to get into the gym. Because I thought the preacher curl would fit by my leg press machine and it does, but where the angle is, and because the, the curl bar is so long, it hits the, the the bars on the side of the leg press so I don't have enough room there. So I had to like rearrange a little bit so I got the preacher curl now as soon as you walk in and so, like you know, it's basically on that, that tile, part of it, that was supposed to be, you know, a place for a couch and have poker days, but uh, that has completely been taken over by the gym.
Speaker 2:I will say like that has been an idea for a long time and the poker table has never arrived, so like no time it was time to take it over it was time to take it over.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, yep, I seized the opportunity, but, uh, no, I I'm enjoying the Preacher Curl Machines. I just did Push today, which is my second favorite day, but it was a good lift and I didn't get to use the Preacher Curl Machine on that one, though.
Speaker 2:Hi. Well, the last week when we spoke, you hadn't been through the leg day yet, so how have you been? I guess you've been through all of the sessions now, so what's the update?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the 20 to 30 uh rep sets are not fun, by the way, those are, uh, those are something different, those are a different type of spicy, but uh, no, you know, I I think what's what's unique about this training block is I'm doing a lot less sets, but my muscles are just as fatigued, or as even more probably fatigued because of those. You know, because we're doing the heavy set and the back offsets. It's been working on really good and I'm able to still get through, you know, my lifts within 45 minutes to an hour, which is, which is fantastic. So, really liking the training block, and what I like is the flexibility of being able to to take a day off after legs or before legs, depending on where I'm at. I may switch it up, though. I mean, I wanted your opinion on this. What about doing? What about doing push legs, pull?
Speaker 2:what's your thought process?
Speaker 1:so. So dr mike talked about it and he said he likes push, pull legs. He's like it's the normal, normal split that everybody does. But he's like by the time you get to, you know, your legs day, your back's all fucking, you know jacked up today or not today.
Speaker 2:On monday, I think I was on legs. I was like no, I need a day, I need a day in between these and I usually need a day in between.
Speaker 1:But I was thinking, if I do legs first and then I do back next, I might not need that day in between if I'm able to switch it up a little bit. So just, an idea just an idea, that's dr mike push, push, legs pull.
Speaker 2:Are we doing legs, push, pull. Either way, pull push legs.
Speaker 1:So I I would think that if, if you did legs push pull, that would give you enough time in between for your back to recover for the pool day. But then, well then, you have a day off and then you're doing legs again, so it's like a difficult one to balance up. So, yeah, we can push, legs pull, because then you have a day off and then you do push.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, yeah, you do push, then legs, yeah, so that would give you two days in between yeah, true, I did find it was, after doing those rack pulls, like just the central nervous system fatigue. I was absolutely done. I just needed. I just needed a day in between. But yeah, we can play by with it for sure anyway, I have not done.
Speaker 1:By the way, I did not do orange theory today. I am um. You didn't even need to mention it like you could have, just not I didn't do it today because my ankle is not feeling great, so I switched to new um noble running shoes. Okay, and they are jacking up my my shin, so I'm switching back to new balance, unfortunately, um is the stop running completely.
Speaker 2:I actually have to give a shout out. Um, I had a call with a guy on uh monday. A guy called patrick and, um, I was talking about his training up until this point. He's like actually ran a marathon this year because I listened to the podcast and you and dave talked so much about uh hating to run. I was like, so me and dave complaining about running for the podcast for the entire time prompted you to do a marathon. He was like yes, and I was like, okay, I feel like you and I, you and I can get on, um, but yes, the solution to your ankle and your running shoes is just don't, just don't run. Let's follow for more.
Speaker 1:That's solid, that's solid.
Speaker 2:Right, we're going to this. This goes out next week. I think it'll be Christmas Eve, tuesday, definitely some sort of other days irrelevant at this point. So today we're going to talk about next year and goal setting and setting yourself up for success.
Speaker 2:I've actually just spent the entire day shooting content with Dill, which was I'll say this, and this is an honest admission we're about halfway through, when we've recorded about two or three videos and I was like, do you know what? I just don't want to fucking record videos. All I want to do is coach people. I don't want to create content and do all these fucking like play the fucking algorithm game and like get the hooks and get all that shit. I just don't want to do all that. But we managed to find a good flow and we got a lot of videos recorded and we recorded some stuff about what's coming up in the program and the launch of next year and just a couple of questions that were asked within the chat within the team and problems that they faced beforehand and solutions that I would give and stuff like that. So it's definitely been an interesting day. So it's top of mind for sure.
Speaker 2:So for me, I like to go into the year with like a I guess like an overarching theme, the theme next year, I think, after having the event here with Matt a couple of weeks back and having Michael from Integra here and just going through the coaching side, I signed up to that course, which starts in January as well which good luck to anybody who's coming to the event at the end of March because I'll have been through 12 weeks of basically how to make training infinitely worse.
Speaker 2:So I think my theme for next year, like from a me personal perspective, is going to like back to like coaching, education, because for the longest time and this is again another, I guess, admission and something that I see regularly within coaches they get to a certain point and they then just like all they absorb is like how to grow a business and not more stuff on how to coach. So for me, next year is going into back to the training side of things initially, um, and then we'll look out and seek out courses or seminars or days or webinars or something more around the, the education piece, and then I'll pull a lot of that into obviously coaching and then obviously the events. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to what that leads to and what that means in terms of what the event looks like at the end of March, because that'll tie in nicely, so that on a personal, the people, people that may not listen.
Speaker 1:What are these events that you put on? I obviously have been to a number of them, but what's the purpose of them?
Speaker 2:Initially they started as a opportunity for us to get together and get some hands-on training, obviously working remote and how many visits do you do a year, um between five or six.
Speaker 2:I tell people I do them like twice a year, but I definitely have done five, this year at least, and I did six, I think, next year. Um, so the plans for sorry six last year, um. So the plans for next year we'll do one in ohio at the end of january, um, and then we're doing one in texas at the end of march and then we'll host the belfast one again here in september and then have a couple other ideas for other ones, um, but essentially it's just a space for everybody to get together, generally the. The setup of them are public and rbnb or a couple, if needed, um for everyone to get together. So we stay together for four or five days. I will look after the nutrition, so food will be provided. We'll generally do two full days in the gym, which can be brutal by the time you get to the end of it, and we've seen some cool gyms over the time, like some really fucking cool gyms, yeah. And then we'll do one like, I'll say, fun in in protocol activity, depending on where we are. So we did an event in Colorado in March or May last year and we climbed the Manatee incline, which was absolutely fucking brutal. I think that you had a worse time in Colorado than anybody else, regardless of the incline. And then we'll do something like top Physically present, mentally not there. So, yeah, we'll do something like Top Cover, something like that, and then just hang out.
Speaker 2:And I think the reason behind them is to sort of strengthen the relationship of the community as a whole. I think that the biggest difference from the very first event that we did in Cleveland to the second event was everybody staying together. In the first one, everyone stayed in a hotel and we just got together in the gym and then we went out a couple of nights, um, whereas the, the in-between bits and the stuff that happens in between, the conversations they're had and the relationships that were formed, sort of really strengthened the, the community as a whole. Um. So it's just bring everybody together to get some hands-on, uh experience for them and push a little bit further. The one that we did in belfast a couple months back, we, a couple people, entered the, the rogue 1000 pound club challenge, um, so for people who potentially train by themselves and don't necessarily have someone to spot them and want to push a little bit more, or if they want to have a measure of what intensity should look like, or they just want to work on form. Um, we can do that all, all hands on.
Speaker 2:I think the favorite thing about that, specifically within the gym, is sort of seeing the evolution of people. So yeah, thomas is an example. In Colorado he was very not maybe timid, is the idea in the gym, like he was just absorbing everything. And then the next event he felt a little bit more confident and then in the next event he was almost like helping people who were in a similar position to him. You know potentially a couple of events before and then, when we did orlando this year, I actually just got him to host the powerlifting clinic. So it's cool to sort of see that evolution and it gives people the confidence in their knowledge of the things that they've learned in the time working with me to be able to share with the people who are potentially just coming up behind them, whether they started a couple months or or whatever.
Speaker 2:So, time to get together, have a good time, get some some training sessions in. I I'm actively moving into next year with events and I'm going to theme them a little bit more and have a little bit more of a reason, because I think we can agree that from phoenix this year it moved from lifting camp to a bit more margarita camp, so we're going to go back to the lifting camp style. Um, but just to get everyone together and have a I mean, have a good time train the gym, have fun, shoot some content, have a laugh, enjoy the surroundings. It's gonna be cold as shit now and I don't think anybody actually really realizes how cold it's gonna be. Um, we'll use that, yeah, we'll use that to our advantage in some way. Um, so, yeah, we have. I have at least four plans for next year and then I have two ideas that I'm working on.
Speaker 1:If I can pull off, then it'll be a day yeah, I've had a lot of uh fun at those events and it's just a great way to kind of come together with folks that are in your same kind of tribe and, you know, uh, shoot the shit, have fun, you know battle during the day during your lifts and workouts, and party at night and, uh, you know, have a good time just with you know, fellowship and friends and things like that. I think it's a great people and three people.
Speaker 2:I give you the permission to put people through hell on leg day. And you were like I remember, in Phoenix. You were like I'm excited and I'm like I can actually see it in your face, I don't know Like if it's a little bit. This is where I guess, when it comes to coaching, you can get called sadistic, which I mean I understand.
Speaker 1:Um but I guess just testing people definitely remember my leg.
Speaker 2:Day later I was like yep, almost a year later, um, but I think the good thing about that is it gives them the measure of intensity, because if you train, you know a lot of people train at home, so they don't really know like what it should look like.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't necessarily have the belief or the confidence in themselves of you know what they're capable of, and sometimes just having me in their ear or you in their ear or just somebody else that you know, I put them in the groups and they work together on to go through the workouts.
Speaker 2:Just having someone in there to take five more or shut the fuck up and get it done, like they achieve a lot more and it sort of sets the tone. Um, and one of the the most consistent pieces of feedback that I get after events is it's a good sort of refocus for people. Like they leave with a different energy, so their training has a different energy whenever they come back. Their nutrition, you know they're more aligned with their goals because they spend time around people and I think that I guess society as a whole, since you know everything has been separated and we're not around people as much and like I'm fucking working this place by myself all day, so just actually being around people and having that sort of energy from from people is beneficial. So I laugh with matt, like I think him as well. He he does many events throughout the years.
Speaker 1:Actually, just on his way back from an event that he hosted in australia, um, we are now an event company that does a little bit of coaching on the side well, I'll tell you, when I was going through, uh, the leg workouts with folks, what I noticed was, you know a lot of people that felt like like they couldn't do certain things or that, you know, a weight was too hard for them. And I'd watch them, you know, very carefully, and I see them and I see their set and they're like, oh yeah, this is my max. I'm like nope, we're putting on 245 more pound plates and then we're putting on two more 45 pound plates and you know they're. You know they push themselves to, to different limits and you know to kind of watch them get range of motion, like you, some folks, when they're doing like the hack squat, for example, would only essentially be doing half hack squats because they didn't want to go all the way down, because they weren't comfortable with that, and so, you know, we started them off with lower weights and worked on range of motion and feeling a comfort level and feeling the weight and everything else, and they were able to push themselves.
Speaker 1:You know, no-transcript have a good amount of people that are in different stages of their physical career and work from there. It was always a lot of fun. I always enjoy those. I can't wait for the Ohio one.
Speaker 2:It's going to be great, we're not going to the Airsoft because I feel like that's just, that's just an opportunity for you to shoot everybody, and I don't think that's for everybody. How about how?
Speaker 1:about I, just I. I. How about? How about? Okay, no, I was like I, I was like I can limit myself. I'll, I'll uh go go chill, nope, no, you will not everybody who's listening, though.
Speaker 2:That's a load of shit.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to go chill, but I'm just telling you, I'm going to go chill.
Speaker 2:No, that's an absolute lie.
Speaker 1:Airsoft meets out of fun.
Speaker 2:It'd be fun for you, it'd be brutal for everybody else. So no, we're not doing that.
Speaker 1:Right, can I still be in charge of legs day?
Speaker 2:Yes, you can do that. That's absolutely fine. But I, what it is and this is, I think, what I enjoy about coaching the most, and especially in that is like, like you said, like people think that that's our max and you put more weight on they're able to achieve it. It's not like they can do much more than they think, um, they, they push past boundaries that they potentially set themselves. So I think it's good in in that sense, to sort of have that, and that's essentially what I love about coaching is you're able to, you know, show people that they can do things that they don't believe that they can do themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's the. That's the best part about this. And, uh, it's interesting. Like you know, I've gotten to the point where, um, I still I have been tracking my um weight and the amount of weight that I pushed through, uh, which I did stop for a while and I went back to it again cause you told me I needed to. But you know it's interesting where you know I feel each set and I know when I'm failing, I know my muscles are close to failure, I know when I'm hitting a certain amount of volume, just based on the feel itself, you know, and how the muscles are feeling in a specific movement. I know roughly where the weight is I need to go to get, you know between five and 10 and 10 to 12, or 10 to 20, 20 to 30. And so you know it's.
Speaker 1:It's it's cool to be able to kind of evolve from that and to get to a certain point, to where you know when I'm going through my exercises. I know where I need to start off with. You know I, even though you don't program this in, I know this is what you want me to do. So like, for example, let's just say I'm starting off with my first set and it's a Smith machine incline, you know, I throw you know one, I start off with just the bar and just get range of motion, you know kind of feeling it and you know stretching out the muscles and getting them kind of into that range of motion. Then I throw, you know one 45 pound plate on each side, do that for five or 10, just to kind of warm up the muscles a little bit. And then I start going into. You know, then I'll throw two on. You know, just do five of those. I don't want to really fatigue at that point in time.
Speaker 1:And then from there, you know, I start getting into my working sets and, um, you know, that type of regimen and training has really helped me, you know, grow and it's the type of things that you know, these little things you learn you know as you go along and as you work. And it's not just hey, three sets of 12 or you know 10 sets of this or whatever. It's kind of. You know, know where your body's at and what you can, you can do. And that comes with experience but also comes with training with other people and I learned something new every time. I mean folks that are just starting at different ways of doing things like oh, that's a cool way of doing this. You know, I didn't think about that.
Speaker 2:And um. So it's always always great to get together. This is this kind of separate, but Jason Wilber said something on the call the other day. I was like fuck, I didn't actually know that.
Speaker 2:Um, so even for me, like it's, it's a continued education in terms of, like learning from, from the people around us and definitely the events. Um, even just again, for people who train by themselves, for seeing other people train, like something that you maybe do a movement or something, or you can't necessarily get a good indication of what it looks like whenever you do it, so you don't necessarily know if you're fully in the movement. Then you see someone else do it and you're like all right, okay, this is that. I get it a little bit more now. So, just in in the environment and being surrounded by that is, um, is key.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, the events with next year are going to be a little bit more structured in terms of why we're actually there. I'm not saying that they're all going to be themed, but I'm going to have a bit more intention around them and definitely less margaritas um, not no margaritas, but definitely less. A little bit more intention is the reasoning behind them and sort of use, the surroundings and where we're at um to sort of direct them a little bit more. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, absolutely, education I'm going to heavily focus on education, which will relay back to you guys, obviously, and obviously stuff that we can talk about in the podcast, and even dill we're talking about some some videos through downstairs off the back of the course that I do at the start of the year.
Speaker 2:I think it's 12 weeks um in terms of just like bettering myself as a coach. So the the goal with that is obviously to utilizing my own training, utilizing around putting training together for you guys and then obviously be able to pass it down on to other coaches and whatever else. So for me, the theme for what I want to achieve the most next year is is education back to the back to basics? Essentially, whatever I'm switching yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And um, so kicking off for the, the, the podcast theme, which is really, you know, starting off fresh into a new year, what does that look like? And I think humans very much reciprocate or align with deadlines, starting objectives, being able to do tasks, which is why you always hear the New Year's resolution. I actually got asked this question. I'm on the board for a K-12 non-for-profit that does cybersecurity teaching for school curriculum and I sponsor Bedford High School's cybersecurity one. So I was on their board meeting yesterday and they opened up with what's your New Year's resolution? And I said my response was I don't personally believe in New Year's resolutions. When it's time for me to start something, I just go and I do it. And maybe that sounds like an asshole response, but you know, I find that you know for me it's true, though, like for me it's like, hey, why start? You know the 1st of January when I can start now, right, and what does that look like? And I want to read something from Dr Rhonda Patrick that that was interesting. This has to do with with step counts. That I thought was interesting. This has to do with step counts and you know there's always I was actually talking to one of my. I'm part of this group called Vistage, which is a group of CEOs that gets together once a month and I was there yesterday and there's a guy that's really fit, his name's Tim and he's been doing an amazing transformation. He's actually got a coach out of the UK. I can't remember his name offhand, um, but uh, I'll have to get his name name for you, um, but very similar program, you know, just does a lot of the tracking and everything, but steps was a big part. And he's like, do you track your steps? I was like, yeah, I do no-transcript, I'm lifting, you know, quite often. So steps are less important for me. Yes, I still try to get them in, but they're less important. I still hit of 10,000 steps.
Speaker 1:For most people, vigorous means exercising at around 80% or more of your maximum heart rate. While both are certainly worthwhile, vigorous exercise likely gets you more bang for your buck, and the data backs it up. As one example, a new study found that performing 10 bodyweight squats every 45 minutes during an 8.5-hour period of sitting improves blood sugar regulation better than a single 30-minute walk. These brief and test bursts of activity, often called exercise snacks, offer a potent strategy to mitigate health risks associated with your sedentary lifestyles. Just 10 minutes of vigorous exercise a day it doesn't take much, and I think that's a great statistic.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to mean that you do 10,000 steps a day, but doing something active throughout your day has a huge impact on your longevity, has a huge impact on how you feel, has a huge impact on your energy levels, has a huge impact on how your body repairs, and you know so. Just starting off with small things can really make a huge difference. And you know we we had a podcast a couple of weeks ago, call you know, talking about the great reset, the reset button, and you know, sometimes which sounded very well.
Speaker 2:A lot of people like I had a lot of positive feedback that people needed to hear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the factory reset is a great way because it allows you to reshape your behaviors and start new hobbies, new habits that allow you to have better success. And you know like I often look at this like right now. I haven't told Ben this yet, but I'm on a low caffeine kick right now, so I have this one cup of coffee here. I didn't. I started drinking this as my pre. I stopped taking pre-workout just for a little while. I'm just baselining my caffeine intake and this is going to be the only caffeine I have throughout the whole day.
Speaker 2:Dave, you think we have a supplements company that sells pre-workout. Don't get me wrong, I'll be back on it.
Speaker 1:But I'm just resetting. I'm factory resetting my caffeine intake, and I do this once a year because I noticed that when you drink a lot of caffeine you build a tolerance of that. So you want more caffeine, and then you want more caffeine, and then what ends up happening is you're in a caffeine overload and you're not functioning the way that you need to. And caffeine is a wonderful, wonderful drug. It's one of the best out there. It has longevity benefits too on top of it. But at the end of the day, there are times where you need to reset and look at what you're doing, the protocols that you're using and the supplements that you're using and the workout routines that you're doing, and say is this the most effective use of my time or is it something that I need to do to reset? And same thing goes for, like when you're going like doing like a deload week, where you're taking time off because you've put your body under a lot of stress. You know your central nervous system, your CNS, needs a break. You know you do a little bit less intense workouts or you don't do any at all, just to kind of take a break and pause. We need these types of things to kind of restart from scratch and to kind of build back stronger. And so for me, you know, when I'm starting off the new year, it's going to be a lot less caffeine, you know, at first and I haven't run this by you yet but I want to start the first of the year with a three day fast. I want to do a three full, three day fast. Okay, I'm in, I'll do it with you, you do with me, yeah. So why do I want to do a three-day fast? First of all, I want a challenge to do it to break dependency on food. I'm obviously in a bulking phase. It's probably the worst time to do a three-day fast. However, three days isn't a big deal. But what the studies have shown with fasting. So this is mixed research, but what they've shown is that intermittent fasting became a really big fad diet thing over the past few years. Right, people are saying like intermittent fasting is better than you know eating throughout the day and that it has more effect thermogenic effect on burning calories. So you lose more weight with intermittent fasting. And this wasn't really proven yet. But then they started doing a lot of data studies in this and what they showed was that intermittent fasting has zero difference than caloric restriction ie eating less food throughout the day so there's no benefit of from a weight, from a pure weight loss perspective, of intermittent fasting versus caloric restriction.
Speaker 1:However, there are some benefits of intermittent fasting. Um one, it's giving your GI tract and your gut, you know, and your gut time to recoup, get the good bacterias going in there, allowing yourself a little bit of a break so you're not continuously processing and digesting food. Also, when you start doing more of a 24-hour to 48-hour fast, your body turns into, essentially, you start producing ketones, which is your body's natural way of burning fat as a way to produce energy, so it starts using your fat stores. One of the things that fasting does, though. So what they've looked at in the cancer research studies is that cancer is one of the most energy dependent cells in your body. It's an inefficient cell, so it's basically consuming a substantial amount of energy in your body. And what an inefficient cell. So it's basically consuming a substantial amount of energy in your body, and what they've shown through the data studies is that and again, this still needs to be proven out through randomized control studies and a lot of others but that if you do a three-day intermittent fast once a year. They're saying that it has a potential. Again, I'm going to throw this out as potential, but a lot of the studies are showing this to be true is that you reduce your cancer rates substantially just by doing a three day fast once a year, because what happens is your body starts to eat away at those high energy, less efficient cells, and so you, you, you basically start eating away at those cancer cells early on versus, and so essentially it annihilates the cancer cells and then from there you know or pre-stage, you know early cancer cells that haven't spread or things like that. So you have a reduction in cancer probability and chances just by doing three day fast.
Speaker 1:Excuse me, what it also does is it allows you to like what I've heard from and I haven't done a three day fast before, so this is my first time I've done a 48 hour fast and those suck, I've heard.
Speaker 1:After two days you have an insane amount of energy, you feel euphoric and you feel really good, and there's a reason for that and I've talked about this before in previous podcasts is that, if you know, you know, 10,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, if we didn't have food readily available and if we couldn't, let's just say, eat food for a week. If our body just shut down because it had low energy, we would die. So the body, what it does is it actually goes in overdrive, mental clarity, focus. You get a lot more energy because your body is ramping up to try to go and fight for that food, to get that food, so that you're your top, primary game to go and get that. So there are some benefits, health wise, to those types of things. So I'm going to start off with a three-day fast, which I think will be a lot of fun definitely not doing it during christmas though anybody he's listening that wants to join us.
Speaker 2:Just comment below wherever you find this or whatever um, do you want?
Speaker 1:to lock in a date. We'll get, we'll just start from the first, like you said, start on the first, all right. Well, let's, let's do the second, second, okay we'll start in a second second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, second.
Speaker 1:So so january 2nd I'm starting my three day fast, okay I mean, I've talked about fasting before.
Speaker 2:I actually had a pretty in-depth conversation with just him and him and I recorded our podcast. Um, he I would say 90 of the time does um, 36 are fast per week.
Speaker 2:Um, and it's something I have played about with before he doesn't, he doesn't wait long fast, no 36, a 36 hour fast, one okay, um, which I used to do, uh, quite regularly and I find like, maybe not to the same extent as something that's slightly longer, but on that sort of like in the. So I used to eat my dinner on a tuesday night and then not eat again until thursday morning, um, and like wednesday I was always my most productive because I just had a lot more, um, mental clarity. So I think the longest I've done is maybe 56 or 57 hours, um, but yeah, I'm, I'm in for that for sure, uh, because I think it'd be a good reset, especially after christmas, because I mean, if we're in the real reality, we're probably going to eat a lot more than we should, um, and probably not the most nutritionally dense food the entire time. So yeah, I'm in for that. But there are a lot of benefits to doing it on a regular basis. Have a couple of clients that use it, simply because, number one, the sort of mental clarity benefits. But number two, it allows you to if you look at things across a weekly basis, like it allows you to increase your calorie consumption on the other days. So you know, it's just another tool in the toolbox in terms of managing um, managing your like daily calorie or so your weekly calorie intake, and even you saying about the studies around intermittent fasting like yes, okay, well, it may not be as beneficial as being made out to be in terms of like your body or physiologically.
Speaker 2:I think mentally, if people have that as a rule, it allows them to restrict their calories. This is another, another way for people to restrict their calories, and if the rule is that they just eat in a certain time, that that gets them to stay within the calories to reach their goal, then I'm for it. But it doesn't need to be the fucking science, this, that and the other and all this like cult bullshit around and why do you enter it and fast and ready this, ready, that's like it's just another way to restrict your calories, so not totally shitting on it. Um, I think if you have an understanding of it and do it for the right reasons, then it's cool. But yeah, I'm in for a three-day fast. No problem, easy, we'll record the podcast on the third. We'll record the podcast like towards the end of the third day. See how we are that'd be amazing.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be the most aggro podcast ever like pissed off, like I'm gonna go for a snack a question on that.
Speaker 1:So you know, since we're going to be doing three-day fast, less calories, um, you know, does the training blocks say the same? Do we do do specialized training blocks?
Speaker 2:anytime I've done a fast before. I didn't train okay, the only thing. So whenever I fasted before on a regular basis I only consumed water, didn't even have. There was one time I did water, no coffee, nothing, just water yeah, I didn't have one day.
Speaker 2:I did have coffee and it absolutely sent me to the moon. I was like, oh fucking hell, all right, I'm not doing that again, um, but didn't do any cardio, obviously, did my steps as normal and work there's normal, but didn't do any additional training. So I will I mean, it depends how I feel, but I'll probably just not train for the three days, train biceps all three days, because you're gonna have no fuel in your body, it's gonna be shit. You're like, oh fuck this, you're gonna be feeling worse, um, but yeah, actually that's something I'll look into to see whether there's anything that we should do to approach if you do want to navigate it with training, because I think maybe people will want to jump on the training, uh, at the start of the year. But I'll probably not train for the three days because I think I would rather just focus on terms of managing nutrition and then get back to training whenever food start to reintroduce. And I actually think, again the conversation with justin, like he, he always found that his first training session after his first meal, after a fast, was always really good because, again, your body's just more efficient at digestion and processing the food.
Speaker 2:And it's funny because you go through those stages of, like physiological hunger versus psychological hunger. So, like on the mornings, whenever you usually have breakfast, you're like, oh my god, I'm hungry. And then, 20 minutes past, you're like, oh well, I'm actually really hungry. It's just the the mental aspect of that's the time that you usually feed your body and you're not. So you're always like what the fuck's going on? And then it's like, oh well, I'm fine. Um, so even that gives you an understanding of the difference between physically hungry or more just mentally in your head I'm hungry because this is the time that I usually eat.
Speaker 1:Yep, That'd be tough, but I mean it's definitely doable and I know I can accomplish it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do three days in one hour.
Speaker 1:Somebody do three days and four hours.
Speaker 2:I'm not getting into that pissing contest for you.
Speaker 1:It's like two weeks later.
Speaker 2:We haven't eaten. We not glad the floor for the podcast. There's a podcast today.
Speaker 1:But no, and again, what we're talking about here and the main main topic of the podcast is like what can you do, starting the new year off to kind of reset but also start, you know, new and new habits that you can go and build out and, um, one of the ones that I'm also going to be focusing on that I'd like to mention is drinking a lot more water. That's one thing I'm terrible at. I really am, and I always have been, and my son is the same way, unfortunately. You know like we like flavored water. You know it's not like I'm drinking like sodas all the time or whatever, and if I'm drinking sodas it's going to be, you know, like a diet or whatever, but you know you throw it in and I just drop, you know, some flavoring into that and that's usually my source of water throughout the day. It's flavored, you know.
Speaker 1:You know probably not good sucrose driven, massive amounts of sucrose, uh, and everything, um type of stuff, and the reason for that is, you know, um, one, water is amazing for you. But two, starting a new habit of getting more into giving my body what it needs versus what I, you know, want to have taste bud wise, I think is a good exercise in kind of breaking. You know, hey, I always need something sweet. You know that I'm drinking. You know, like I always I get the concentrated Fanta orange drops that you put into there, so it tastes like Fanta soda essentially, but carbon there, so it tastes like Fanta soda essentially carbonated. So that's like my go-to. Like I'll have like two of those at night Again, which is probably not the best.
Speaker 2:It should just be drinking water Better option than if you just were to have a Fanta, but it's again not the most optimal. And I think actually we had a conversation about this last week on the weekly call just around hydration, and I think part of the problem that I see is people don't necessarily know what it feels like to feel hydrated. Um, so, like that, that feeling of lethargic, or even feeling in the morning. Whenever you feel like you quote unquote need a cup of coffee, 99 times out of 100, you're just dehydrated. So to get your body to a point where you actually feel hydrated, once you start to not be hydrated, you can tell the difference. But if you're dehydrated all the time and you've never actively spent time to actually hydrate yourself properly, you just think that's what you feel like and I've one of the best things that you can do, and the cheapest and the biggest bang for buck that you can do, is hydrate yourself properly. Um, and whenever you get to the stage where you actually feel fully hydrated, it's like it's like all of the volume sliders are up and everything. You just just feel infinitely better Like. If you think about how many processes in your body you use water and the connection between water and your body. It's literally everything that you do.
Speaker 2:General rule of thumb we might need to do some mental math here. I would always say one liter per. I say 20 kilos, so 45 pounds of body weight is a pretty good way to navigate your hydration. So for me me that's probably about five liters a day, maybe just slightly over five liters a day, which is quite a lot, um, but how I approach it is first thing in the morning I'll drink a liter um with my electrolytes and other bits and pieces in it, uh, and then just throughout the day I'll have it, and sometimes I'm better than others, but I do, I do have. Uh, I do notice whenever I'm dehydrated and the impact that it has on my training and even the impact in terms of like. Sometimes, even if I feel dehydrated, like, I can feel it as a, it almost presents itself as a headache, um, and I just even hydrate myself from well even like lethargic.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of other things to come along with that right yeah, so maybe there's a podcast on that alone.
Speaker 2:We got a podcast three days last week, two podcasts for New.
Speaker 1:Year hydration. That's right. So that was the main goal of today's podcast. Just talking through, what can you do to reset yourself going into the new year? Not New Year's resolutions, but more so like what can you plan for next year? That will take you to the next level, to get what you do, whether it's training differently, whether it's doing something a little bit different. Getting up and just doing 10 air squats, you know, really quickly get the blood flowing, is a great thing, and you know I'll do. I'll do squats anytime. Right, I just did legs day yesterday. So, speaking of the, again that those hack squats were brutal. By the way, my god, that's what we want. Yeah, I'll tell you, though, hex squats. As much as I hate them, they are by far the most superior quad builder that has ever been designed in the history of quad building.
Speaker 2:Even even more so than I will say this the person dependent for you potentially, but not for everybody, and that will be the entire 12-week course that I'll be doing is like this exercise might be great for thieves, but it it's shit for Ben, so depends Yep.
Speaker 2:And also conventional deadlift is far, far superior than than uh, rdls or or sumo Depends, like that's all great on paper and yes, I understand what you're saying, but give me a person and then I'll tell you which is going to be the interesting part of doing that. But yes, that, but yes, I think the best advice I can give obviously if you're listening to this on christmas eve respect, because surely you have other shit to do but if you listen to it over christmas week and obviously you have the thoughts of the new year coming in and what that looks like for you just actually think what you want to achieve and, again, don't fucking fully send it like break it down. And that's one thing that I'm trying to reinforce with launching the program early January is like we're going to take it week by week as a okay right. The first week we're just going to focus on data collection and goal set, and the second week we're going to focus on nutrition. The third week we're going to focus on movement and build it up over time instead of being like here's 10 things that you need to start today, of things you've never done before, and I need it all done by the end of the week.
Speaker 2:So gradually building, and I think that's how you should approach the things that you want to achieve the next year and have an understanding of yourself, is that you need to do it for a week and then add to it? Or do you need to do it for a month and then add to it? Because if you do, if you pick 12 habits that you want to add next year and you do one per month, but in the year you'll have them all done, or habits that you want to get rid of? Whatever, these are the things that I want to do, or, I guess, the person that I want to come I've become across this this new year, um, and then just gradually add them in each cross time.
Speaker 1:I'd say, one thing that I am planning on doing next week is reading a book. I haven't read a book in a very, very long time, and guess what book that's going to be?
Speaker 2:I have no idea.
Speaker 1:You would. You would know it'd be one of the top book you'd recommend the topic. I would recommend top book you would recommend. It's actually very in line with what we're talking about right now atomic habits. Yes, absolutely, we're going back to atomic habits, nailed it? Yep, so I'm going to read. My plan is to read atomic habits, at least minimally. That one I also want to um read here's.
Speaker 2:this is where I will hold you accountable as your friend and your coach and your cohost and business partner. You and I, as a Ben and Dave book club, we'll read atomic habits and then we will have a podcast on atomic habits and the things that we have learned and we will share our knowledge. Sounds good to me. So there you go. Tune in for that one, yep.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, thanks for listening. Happy Christmas. I'll see you next Tuesday.
Speaker 1:See you all have a happy holiday and everything else. You know we'll obviously have a podcast. That'll be the following week, but this one will be coming out right before Christmas. So happy Christmas, merry Christmas everybody, and happy New Year and all that good stuff and thanks for being an amazing listener to us every time and giving us ideas and inspirations. For being an amazing listener to us every time and giving us ideas and inspirations, we really appreciate you and you know we had a little bit of a lag in the podcast as we were kind of restructuring this and glad to be back in full time and talking to you all every single week and tune back in next week for another amazing podcast.
Speaker 2:See you next week.
Speaker 1:Later Nailed it.