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Okay, let's get into.
All right guys, welcome back.
Chasing excellence comp train specific episode with Ben and Cole.
Wow.
We started these a couple of months ago, talking to them, training specific principles on chasing excellence, doing a monthly episode.
So we are back for the next one.
Today we're going to talk about six specific principles or kind of mindsets of being athletic forever.
So yeah, how you guys doing good good, doing good today, tomorrow and forever.
Wow yeah, you are the ultimate forever athlete, ben.
So You have had longer to be a forever athlete than Cole and I have.
So you are more advanced at being forever than we are.
I'm more advanced at, yes.
The one thing I am more advanced at athletically is There's a kind way of saying you're older than us.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, you're further along in your forever journey and into eternity than we are.
The eternal athlete.
Young grasshoppers.
Young grasshoppers.
Okay, six things that we're going to talk about today.
Six specific mindsets or frameworks of being athletic forever.
As a starting point, why don't whichever one of you wants to take this talk a little bit about just like the forever athlete approach kind of our new era of serving the forever athlete, what we mean when we say that, who that kind of archetype or that person is.
So maybe just set the stage that way.
One of you guys take that.
What are we even talking about when we say the forever athlete or being athletic forever?
Yeah, ben ben, why don't you take that?
You i've recently heard a couple just you kind of spit that out and it came out pretty good.
So i mean, if you have cool, so it starts with feeling athletic.
I mean that's really what it starts with and you think about.
I think everyone can have intuitively know what that feels like.
Right, you have a spring in your step, you feel strong, you feel like you have an engine, you feel like you can move freely.
So we've kind of framed that up into three kind of big buckets, right.
That you're strong, meaning that you're explosive.
Also that you have an engine, so you don't get tired easy, and that you can move really well.
Balance, coordination, accuracy, agility, mobility.
So all of those things together.
Now, the forever aspect of that is It's not about short-term gains or this next competitive event.
It's about today, tomorrow, and forever.
It is.
I want to be able to do the things inside, outside the gym, recreationally with my family.
From a leadership perspective, regardless of the pursuit, whatever it might be, I am in a constant ready state.
I am an asset, not a burden to my family.
I am the person.
I am trying to be closing the gap between our ultimate potential and where we probably are right now.
We're just trying to keep on continually narrowing that gap.
So we want that, setting ourselves up for not just a great day today and next week, but years and decades from now as well.
Cole, you got anything to tack on to that?
No, as i told you, like he'd go.
He's good at talking really well yeah well no, it's just like he.
I mean, we've spent so much time framing this up and whatnot, and you know, i heard him give that spout recently and i was like hey, like that's.
I know what he's gonna say for the most part and it's like that's it, so you don't need to tack on anything more to that.
It's like let's, let's get people feeling athletic.
Like they can move and have freedom.
That's, that's cool.
Let's just be able to participate and do things.
And maybe the only thing to tack on as well is like, this is so dear to us, right?
This is our, the three of us, our athletic pursuits.
And you know, if I was to maybe say another thing, maybe just go back a domino or two, because I think that's always helpful is we haven't just chosen this pursuit kind of accidentally or because of me being a coach and Cole being a professional athlete.
We choose this pursuit because of what it provides.
And there is one in my estimation, and you guys I know agree there is sort of one shared goal for all of us inside of humanity.
And that is we all wish to live Good, meaningful, fulfilled lives.
You can fill in the blank.
It doesn't matter.
Everyone has their sort of like adjective before lives, right?
Good life, fulfilled life, meaningful life, happy life, whatever it might be.
And that requires – by the way, most of us, I kind of understand.
We had Jim –
Murphy who wrote inner excellence on the podcast last week.
And he says it's phenomenal.
And he says that this is made up of really three meaningful things.
I kind of give away one of them.
But deep relationships, having great experiences and doing meaningful work.
So if that's what a good life is and you can argue the semantics of that, The baseline, the really kind of thing that matters, to make any of those or any other things that you want, which is counter to what he calls affluenza?
Like there's an influenza that is a sickness, a virus, but in society, there's an affluenza.
This thing, that success and achievement, and the bank account and the cars are going to bring us to that end.
And it's not.
And there's only one thing that can really keep us from actually pursuing a deep meaningful, well-lived life.
And it is lack of freedom.
And that is not freedom from being able to behind prison walls or have the freedom to be able to go and explore how you want to.
The only thing I kind of keep you from that is Lack of health.
Lack of health.
If you're riddled with stage four cancer and you're on late exposure to chemotherapy and you are so weak that you can't get out of bed and you're in excruciating pain, you don't get to go and do those meaningful things.
If you have.
I think everyone by now probably has a firsthand experience, if not at least secondhand somebody that's dealing with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's or dementia the cognitive decline.
People that are in that state don't have the freedom to be able to go and do these deep, meaningful things.
The thing that we need to take care of first and foremost.
This is so counter to the way this thing was created, which is athletics and ego.
I want to look good on the beach or I want to win the race.
That's what fitness used to be.
And really only just the last two decades have we come to realize that actually, this might be not only the least selfish thing that we could do, because it sets us up to be a asset to those around us, instead of the person with Parkinson's that has to be taken care of.
But really, it positions us to be able to have the meaningful life.
So one shared human goal, human life.
What is the thing you need?
Freedom.
What is the one thing I can take it away?
Health.
How would we go about that?
Be athletic today, tomorrow, and forever.
Yeah, I think once we get into these six frameworks it's actually probably going to move pretty quickly and be kind of the actionable stuff for people today.
So I don't think it's wrong to spend a little bit more time setting the stage for this, as to like.
Well, why does this matter?
Because it is a very particular approach we are taking to fitness and to training, but it is one of many approaches.
And I think the more that we can say this is our approach, others are right, others are effective, ours we have found to be most effective for our desired end state.
And here is our desired end state that we are working toward.
And so our philosophy is meant to move you toward that thing.
And so I think, in setting it up even a little bit further, I think we could go a lot of different ways with this in terms of, like talking about fitness for what it awards you, fitness as kind of utility or necessity for the things that actually matter.
One of the things that we say inside of our gym that is, a comp trained gym is fitness.
That when somebody joins the gym, we want to be really frank and upfront with them that fitness is not of the utmost importance, but it is of the utmost necessity.
So I don't want you to think that fitness is what matters.
I want you to be fit so you can actually do what matters.
And that's unique to everybody in terms of the things that are important to them.
But fitness is kind of the baseline or foundational necessity so you can get out of your own way.
So that you can enjoy life more effectively, because it is selfless in that it makes you capable in service to other people and in service to the things around you.
But you're also just going to enjoy your life more if you feel better and if you are more capable.
So I know that that's kind of the direction that we would take.
That conversation is almost fitness as a baseline rather than fitness as the purpose.
And there are people who would see fitness as also kind of the purpose as well, because maybe once they establish that baseline, fitness is the thing that matters to them in expression.
They want to express it through particular pursuits or sports or things like that.
Whereas there is another category of people that once fit, it's just like box checked.
Now I can just do everything else that matters, because I don't have to worry about my health or my capability or my vitality.
So all of that to circle back into a question for you guys which is specifically for us and where we came from as a brand, where we kind of came from as the three of us, even independently what has shifted in terms of the definition or understanding of fitness itself fitness as human capability versus fitness for the purpose of expressing fitness inside of sport, challenge or competition?
Are there differences now and how you guys view those things, and How has that view and that change of view or that change of definition influenced our approach and philosophy to training and programming?
Before I found CrossFit, I was doing triathlons.
I competed in two Ironman triathlons.
And the reason I did that was because I believed it was the pinnacle of fitness, because of the hardest sort of like it was.
The only that I could come across multidimensional test of fitness.
And because it was so long, it was so daunting.
Because it was so daunting.
It seemed like such a great measure of.
Are you one of the fittest people there are?
Along comes CrossFit and blows.
This is where I fell in love with it, right?
Because it blew it out of the water.
It was like, oh my God, I realized I was actually doing well, three different versions of the same thing.
And to that end it kind of came really like a brick to the face when I'm with my athletes that I'm training strength and conditioning high school athletes.
And I can't jump on a 24 inch box as a Ironman triathlete.
I'm like, something's up.
Like, this is not the thing I thought I should be chasing.
So that is like so much credit is deserved to CrossFit and Glassman for reframing the way we all look at this thing.
If there's a little bit of kind of like our little spin on that, it's.
I think that we've kind of maybe simplified, if anything.
So I really think that if you do three things when you're thinking about training, the first one is is it balanced?
That's what we're looking for.
Is it balanced?
Not where I was, where I was trying to make it to world champions of Hawaii because I could do a 10-hour Ironman.
That's not balanced.
Like I can't jump on a 24 inch box.
There's something wrong there.
I have no explosive, no muscles.
So balanced.
We've kind of put that into like three easy buckets, strength, conditioning, and mobility.
That's the first thing is like, when we think about this thing, are you balanced?
The next is multidimensional.
So Not just can you run really well for 12 minutes and get a good VO2 max, but what happens when you take that same 12-minute aerobic demand?
But now it's with burpees.
You do 12 minutes of burpees.
How do you perform?
Well, the 5K world champion...
Might have the highest VO2 max in the world, but when you have them do burpees, they're not going to perform very well.
What happens if you take that same athlete and you have them do box jumps and deadlifts for 12 minutes?
All of a sudden you can see that's not – yeah, they might have balance across the three big buckets.
They might be phenomenal in one of the buckets, but even inside the bucket –
They're not multidimensional.
And then from there, the last piece is we want it to be transferable.
And this is where certainly, like I realized, a lot of the things that maybe we were chasing in the previous pursuit were much more sports specific.
So, just like we don't spend a lot of time with our athletes, actually zero time working on teaching them how to get track blocks.
It doesn't mean that track blocks don't make you faster for your 40-yard dash.
They do.
What we're saying is that's not transferable to the real world.
So instead of spending the effort and the time to work on track blocks to get good at the specifics of that sport, let's just work on the other multi-dimensional and balanced approach.
Instead of trying to get the little tiny half percent out of the track blocks, let's kind of see where your flexibility is.
See where your stability is.
Let's see where your cardiovascular endurance is.
We're trying to like create this more transferable approach, rather than drilling down in the super specifics of track blocks or walking on your hands or rings, or turning your wrist over on a rower, which you would need to do on the water.
But we're not going to spend the time here doing that, because we just want to give you a big engine on a C2 rower.
Yeah, cool.
One of our athletes, one of the members of our community inside of the app Recently said it, I think better than any of us have said it which is he used to follow Comp Train back in the kind of like the legacy days whenever what Comp Train specifically was chasing was aligned with what Cole was specifically chasing, which was elite levels of performance inside of the sport of CrossFit, and this guy specifically uh kind of walked away from that.
He made the transition away from that being his focus prior to our brand making that change, and so he was.
He came back following the brand adjustment to hey, that was awesome and that's our legacy and high fives to everybody who's still chasing that.
Here's what we're focused on now.
So that Caught his attention and he came back.
And inside of the app, he made the statement that, in terms of actual foundational well-rounded fitness, the training gives him everything he needs and nothing he doesn't.
And I was like that's it, man for just generalized strength and conditioning, for generalized wellness, for generalized fitness.
It's everything you need and nothing that you don't.
So there's just no focus on kind of the second or third layers of expression, but just the first layer of fitness.
So that if you want those second and third layers, This is still the first layer anyways.
So start here.
And then if that's what matters to you, there's still that option.
And if it doesn't, you don't have to do it.
And then you can pursue this, or you can pursue that, or you can pursue nothing related to fitness and maybe growth in other areas.
So I was really grateful for him.
I'll have to go back.
And express that because I've said it so many times since I read that comment.
Yeah, cool.
I think it was just important to frame that up as we're talking about, as we're talking about these six principles of our training approach.
Again, our training philosophy and our training approach is designed specifically to get the outcomes we are looking for.
And those are like the forever athlete outcomes.
And so what do we mean when we say forever athlete?
So yeah, I think just to say yes to anything that don't sit the sidelines kind of life is the objective.
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So let's get into the six things.
We're not going to call them the like absolute truths.
These were just six things we actually posted on Instagram that seemed to resonate quite a bit with the community.
And these would just be kind of like the six particular mindsets or frameworks of thinking or principles of thinking for somebody who trains like this.
Now,
Principle one, we'll just call them principles.
Principle one, consistency beats intensity.
Tagline to that is what the athlete would say to themselves.
I train often enough to adapt, not occasionally or too intensely to burn out.
So consistency beats intensity.
Cole, there's a lot around that.
That can be very inflammatory to some folks.
Your thoughts on consistency beats intensity related to what does that really mean?
How much intensity?
What does that actually mean in function?
Yeah, so I think the first introduction that I had to this thought to his credit.
He might have said it without fully knowing the wisdom he was actually giving me, but this actually came from Ben.
And it was probably like 2018, that CrossFit Games season.
It was essentially dude.
You'd need to do just enough to feel like you want to come back into the gym the next day.
Meaning and what he was really saying is Don't overload yourself so much on any given one singular day that you can't show up and do the thing the next day.
You do just enough.
It's the minimum effective dose.
Don't take too much medication.
Take the right amount.
You come in, you get your dose, you get out, recover and let's show up and do it again the next day.
Physiologically and scientifically.
That's how you're going to get the best adaptations.
Anyway, like truly,
And I think that's where in the CrossFit space it has been too perverted honestly, of like go hard, hit it as hard as you can.
Do a bunch of volume.
And it started to get into that nature, especially for competitors.
But Then people would watch competitors do that and it would start to bleed into the community.
When in reality, it's don't overload yourself.
Come in, do the right amount, load the body the appropriate amount, come in and do the same thing the next day and then the next day.
And then that consistency is what ultimately gives the best adaptations and the best changes that you want, that you're pursuing.
And you feel better afterwards.
You still feel like you have the capacity to hang out with the family and think.
And your nervous system isn't fried and your brain isn't just, oh, I'm so tired and worn down.
And I even, to this day, I still feel that a little bit.
Like when I do certain workouts, I'll feel a little bit overloaded.
I'm just like, ooh, okay, that was a good reminder of like, That's probably right at the limit.
Let's just take a couple of days, come down from it and then see maybe next week.
How can I come up against that line?
And do I feel a little bit a little bit better afterwards?
Yeah, I think there's a lot of qualitative measurements to that that require experience.
Well, how do you feel is a lot of the experience that would inform consistency versus intensity and when intensity was too much to maintain consistency, and what you just shared regarding how your intensity inside of the gym affects your qualitative life or the quality of your life outside of the gym, is one of the best metrics to use.
Because, when to go back to the beginning of this conversation, Sports-specific expression and sports-specific pursuits, utilizing your fitness for those sports-specific means, are very intentionally, by design, going to rob you of certain things in your life because they are, by definition, not a balanced approach.
But when you're talking about just general human capability, which is fitness, fitness is capability.
Fitness that takes from your life is no longer fitness.
It's sport specific performance to some degree.
And it's too much intensity.
And so there's a lot of qualitative things I think people can measure.
So what is a quantitative way for people to measure how much intensity is too much intensity?
Because they don't know yet.
So they're going.
I want to follow Cole's advice and I want to do today the minimum effective dose so I can come back tomorrow.
But I have absolutely no idea what that means totally, and how do they measure that so they don't go too easy too?
It's part of the reason why we have structured the weeks that we the way that we have.
It's, if you think about it, like the actual intensities undulate, kind of like shift throughout the week, and we do that tactfully and artfully.
And the reason why is because that way you're getting the, you're recovering from the, the work that you did the day before, while still being able to get a right, really good dose the day that you're on and also set you up to do another good dose the next day.
And so examples is on Mondays we do things that are more muscular endurance focused, hypertrophic in nature.
Those aren't super taxing to the cardiovascular and the nervous system.
But Man, you get a muscle pump and you're definitely going to feel the burn in the muscles.
But then the next day, we hop over on a Tuesday, and we're doing some VO2 max intervals.
They're a little more, from a movements perspective, they're more accessible.
You can always keep moving, and you should be able to ramp up intensity and go really hard.
Well, that's a completely different strain on your body's overall system and cardiovascular system than what you did the day before.
So you're able to recover from the day before and still get in really quality work.
And then the next day we change that up again.
And that allows you just to kind of keep working.
And so it's really looking and setting up your, your week in a good way that how can I feel like I'm getting in really quality work but not doing the same thing that I did the day before and going too hard and feeling like you're starting to get burnt out because you're just always doing the same thing day after day after day?
Yeah, definitely a law of diminishing returns to that degree.
And I love the language around like, just come back tomorrow, train to come back tomorrow.
To summarize your answer, you basically just said to follow a comp train because we designed it for you.
And yes, there's that.
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, that's why we do that work.
Yeah.
But I mean, and to even to go even further, like the reason why we assign specific RPEs to the work that we do.
It's because now you have specific intensities.
It's not show up in the gym and do everything all out every single time.
It's kind of hard about the four-time language that just essentially just riddled the CrossFit space is yes, you're doing things for time or for a score.
But there's also you should be doing it at a certain level of intensity.
And Ben does a really good job of this explaining this from a pacing perspective and hitting your threshold.
Every workout, for the most part, has a threshold that you should be living at.
You shouldn't go above that threshold.
You should be living right at it or near it.
And you're going to get really good adaptations that way.
But if you're just absolutely blasting past that threshold to the point where, without getting out too nerdy, you're creating metabolites in your body that don't need to be there and only make it harder to recover from, you're going to get better results if you just go live at that threshold.
And again, a five minute workout and a 30 minute workout, both have their own thresholds.
They're just different thresholds.
And to your point, it takes some training, experience to get to know those and understand those, or maybe some insights from a coach.
And it's why we provide those and try to help guide people in that way.
But yeah, I mean, that really is kind of what it boils down to on the, that allows you to be the most consistent.
Yeah, I love that you brought up the relationship between stimulus and score.
And I'm interested to hear from Ben on this because I think this does matter related to this first principle of consistency versus intensity.
Because, for the most part, everything that we still program inside of our training structure and inside of our half is scored.
It has a scored component to some degree.
I just wrote a personal article that we should all talk about at some point in time, but in that referenced the concept, this exact concept, of stimulus versus scoring.
And it's a little bit of a tough relationship because Glassman himself made the statement that men will die for points.
But what if I don't want you dying today?
I'm still actually asking you to record your points on the board.
So how am I jockeying this relationship between stimulus and measurement, stimulus and score training versus competing?
So Ben, how is it, I mean...
With CompTrain, up at CompTrain Natick, in real life with your coaches, how do you navigate the consistency versus intensity component as it relates to stimulus versus score?
Cole, I said, I think, which is the key point there is, the consistent one, is the one that gets you better results.
That's all that we want.
We all want to be consistent.
Fitter, faster, stronger, leaner, better looking, harder to kill, more advantageous to our family.
Like that's what we all want.
So this isn't a thing about like one way right, one way wrong.
It's like we're just looking for what's going to create the greatest results over the – and this is really important because you talked about sport.
This is not the case for sport.
Like for sport, when Cole was competing, we had to be as fit as you possibly could on July 20th or whatever the date was that year.
So it's a very different thing than this approach of we're trying to do this today, tomorrow and forever.
And Morgan Housel has such a great example of this in the psychology of money, which sounds like very abstract compared to what we're talking about, but it actually is the exact same thing.
There is an investor who has had the top returns over the last two decades.
He averages 62% annual returns.
That means he's literally doubling his money Every year the law of 72s, it's like every year he's doubling his money for two decades.
You know what's crazy?
You've never heard of him.
You know who you have heard of is Warren Buffett.
Warren Buffett has had an average of 22% returns, but he's done that for 60 years.
The two are flipped.
One- was a 60% return for 20 years.
The other one was a 20% return for 60 years.
And Warren Buffett smashes him in terms of lifetime returns.
It is the consistency, it is the lifetime that creates the results, not the intensity.
So this is the reason why your fitness is just like your investments.
They compound.
So it's not a linear thing.
So if we want to get the best results we can, it's the long game.
How many professional athletes have you seen that like think of like Ronnie Coleman, right?
Like the arguably the best bodybuilder that's ever lived. can't really walk right now.
Like he didn't take the long-term approach.
That's what we're trying to take now is a longer term approach, while still like 22 returns for Warren Buffett is not too shabby.
That's three X the market, right?
So we do want to work hard, but we want to work hard without too much risk, something that is sustainable.
So how do we create that?
And to your point Cole, like highlighted this as well the really shortcut into that is we want the multidimensional right.
We want to be able to go for four minutes hard and we want to go eight and 12 and 40 minutes and so on.
The real.
How do you know you're doing this to get to from your qualitative, which is like how do I feel?
Which is right.
That affected me today in a big, big way.
So quantitative, like how to actually know you're doing this.
And it's so dang simple that almost gets thrown out as a, not even a variable discuss.
It's so simple that all you have to do you don't have to know your Lactic threshold, your VO2 max, your aneroid capacity.
You don't need to know any of those things.
Did you perform every round at the same pace?
That's it.
That's it.
If you do that for 12 minutes and you run around a track and every lap is the exact same.
I know you went out the entire time at your VO2 max pace.
If you go out and your first round, your first lap around the track is 35 seconds faster than your last one.
I know that you came out too hot.
You had too much intensity and not enough consistency.
That is the thing.
We don't need to prick your ear.
We don't need a heart rate monitor.
We can just go, did you get the same pace every single time?
And then to know that you're not sandbagging it.
Were you able to go a how much when you went in the last round?
Were you able to go a notch faster, or were you able to go two three four, five notches faster?
If you went two, three, four, five notches faster, you sandbagged the first ones.
If you could kick up one little notch, because now you're tapping into that last little bit of anaerobic capacity.
You did it right.
Like this is so much simpler to bring into the real world.
You don't need a lab to understand threshold.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, I think summarization is train to come back tomorrow.
The more times you do that, the more data you're going to gain in order to determine what training to come back tomorrow actually means for you.
I do want to highlight something on the scoring side before we jump off that, because you did ask about the score on the scoring front.
I'm actually, I'll be quite honest, I'm not a big fan of leaderboards.
That's a personal opinion of mine.
I get that.
But I think it perverts people's minds in terms of what they should be pursuing when in reality, you should log your scores.
You should write down your work so that you can view it and see where you're at the next day, the next week, the next month and a year from now.
Two years from now.
But not compared to other people, but to compare to where you were.
I log everything. but I don't log it to get a score.
Hey, I'm not looking at every single run of like what can I do the fastest time in, or the workout in it's more so like just where am I at?
I do.
Okay.
I just want to know.
Okay.
Check logged.
I now know I have a journal of it.
And then when I look back, I'm like, Oh, sweet.
Awesome.
Like I'm three seconds faster, i'm five seconds slower, but i'm all within the same range.
I haven't fallen off in the last five years.
That's pretty darn cool.
It's those sorts of things.
And so log your workouts, log your scores, write your stuff down and compare it to yourself.
Get rid of your ego that's.
That's Part of the problem with leaderboards is they create these egos that people like oh, I got to compare this.
No, no, no, no, no.
If you're in the 50th percentile, be fine there.
Maybe in two years from now, you're in the 60th percentile.
Naturally, not because you're pushing harder, but just because you've naturally gotten fit.
There's a dichotomy of the leaderboards and certainly for where you guys are in your athletic journey.
Listening to your body and kind of like seeing where you are relative to yourself makes a lot of sense.
Early on the gamification process of a leaderboard is the thing that pops people out of sitting on a recumbent bike, reading People magazine and watching Family Feud into actually training.
It is actually like working hard.
That's not as easy for people as you guys.
You guys just have that built into you.
So without that, without being in the group effect, without the post times to leaderboard Cisco, there's a reason that this thing has become what it is.
And it is that is so gamified.
And it makes it so fun in the early stages, dot, dot, dot.
Then at some point, like a lot of things, this is the same thing with like a discipline, right?
In beginning, discipline is about like, no excuses, do it.
Like you gotta, like, it's like, but there's a sort of continuum to discipline.
At some point it's like Well no, it's like am I doing this?
That's going to actually hurt me somewhere else in the long run.
Meaning like I'm going to go to the gym every single day no matter what.
In the beginning, that's the right thing.
Like it's the right thing.
Then it gets to the point where, at some point, it's like well okay, I have this built-in muscle built into me.
Is this actually serving me today, though, even though I feel a little bit under the weather?
Am I still going to the gym because I have to prove this thing to myself or am I like zooming out?
It's the same thing with the leaderboard in the beginning and maybe in the middle.
Even it can help a ton.
It can be really, really powerful for people.
And then it's like kind of like, OK, where does this fit?
Yeah, and I think they're all systems and frameworks and tools and tactics.
And by nature, human beings are using all of these.
And so they are therefore going to be imperfect systems and imperfect tools, and also the need to be personalized to each and every single individual.
And so I think like there isn't, I don't think there is a binary right and wrong either.
But I do agree with Cole and what you're saying Ben, which is it is the experience and it is the individual stories of having played the leaderboard game for too long.
At least for me and I know to some degree for Cole in his pursuits where there were certain consequences for that that shifting that focus has yielded results where I am fitter faster leaner stronger, happier than I was at that time.
But the consistency beats intensity thing Kind of works both ways, in that you are only going to continue to show up with consistency if, like you said, you get results.
And there is a certain kind of daily intensity that undulates that is required to get those results.
And so the leaderboard is another tool and tactic at that point to make sure that you're also not.
And instead of only overworking I think we're just biased because of background to always trending the other direction where it's like don't go too hard.
Well, a large majority of the population aren't going, not just not too hard.
I mean, I see this every day in real life, right?
Yeah right, there's not even a bell-shaped curve in terms of people that are willing to work really hard versus people that don't work hard enough.
It is, by and large, people do not work hard enough.
So it's just not that in our community.
It's just not that.
Certainly, people that are coming out of a competitive environment fitness landscape like that's very, very different, but 80 of the population needs to be pushed, not pulled, back.
Yeah no, that's good.
Other parts uh, you said i know we're spinning on this one a little bit, but you mentioned training versus competing and the purpose of the leaderboard.
Just to say this this is where it does, and i experienced this firsthand today.
There is a guy in our class named James who's super fit.
We go kind of back and forth.
And I'm like, as we get more than halfway through the workout, I'm like oh, we're literally like tied in this workout that has box jumps.
We step down off of our box like I think everybody should.
I know it's better for me in the long run to step down 50 with my left leg and 50 with my right leg.
I also know I go 20% faster if I step down with my right leg first.
So if James isn't there and I'm not worried about the leaderboard, I alternate.
And I do what's right for me in the long run for my long-term athletic development.
If I'm worried about the leaderboard, which I did today, I go, screw it.
I'm just stepping down my right leg which in the long run, is going to have a 20 less gain for me in that movement.
So it's one of those things of like understanding truly are you trying to take shortcuts for scores or are you meaning just like this is the way i move like think of this in terms of like people doing a rounded deadlift rounded back deadlift this is the way i move great okay but that's not proper hinging mechanics like but i can go so much faster if i don't bend my knees as much like got it like but are you worried about trying to go faster for the leaderboard or trying to build strength through your posterior chain so you hinge better it's like it becomes really obvious when you start to lay out these things in like singular things of if you do this versus this what happens Yeah.
Yeah.
And again we're circling on kind of one point, but we're also talking about all of them at the same time here with this one.
And I think it is worth it because, again, we're not we haven't gotten rid of our scores.
We score every component really in the app to some degree.
And that is in large part to Cole's point, primarily so that people can measure progress over time.
And then to your point.
To some degree, it is because there is a gamification process that allows you to up your intensity.
That's going to get you the right results.
It's mostly just like hey, here's the target score, but here's the target score tied to this RPE for the day.
So if to hit that target score you can't do a six, seven RPE, and it's going to be a nine RPE, then we're missing the stimulus for the day.
And I think what's interesting and maybe to button up this part of the conversation, to hear from you on the relationship between stimulus and score is a little bit tough to jockey here.
And yeah, I don't know.
I'm just curious to hear like kind of the final, final word from you on how you manage that, that relationship, specifically whenever people are going oh well this, this is what you said the target score is, and I can hit that target score.
But we are also saying that target score is meant to be executed at this intended intensity so that you can come back tomorrow.
And it's balanced across a whole week and it's balanced across a whole month.
And so, even though I am asking you to score this specifically, and I'm saying, the target score for this workout is this specific thing.
How are you kind of psychologically coaching that athlete to adhere or comply to that level of intensity so that it is appropriate and they're not burning out and not able to come back tomorrow?
Yeah, I'm actually not a huge fan of RPE because I think it's so misunderstood.
And this is what is the problem it creates.
So if you say we're going to do a Norwegian 4x4 and that is an RPE of 7, which is VO2 max, is there anybody that gets done with a Norwegian 4x4?
That doesn't feel like it's a 9.
Sure.
Right.
Right?
It starts at a 7, maybe.
That's what we have to understand.
What we're saying is you start at that level, and then as I said –
You don't need to know any of these things.
You don't need to know any.
Like Jameson, you don't need to talk about any of these RPEs or anything else.
You go.
Were you able to hold not the same calorie output, not the same, the same pace across the whole workout?
So meaning when you, if let's say we're doing our Norwegian four by four on a bike, let's say we're using calories per hour.
I don't even want to know, did you get 75 calories every four minutes?
That's not as important to me.
What is important to me is were you able to hold 1,100 calories the entire time?
Because if one of them you come out and you start off at 1650 but you end the interval at 900, And the next one you go 12 but end at nine.
And it's like, no, no, we're missing.
The idea behind fitness is how much time can you spend at the threshold?
Each one of these different training zones to get the exercise science team do different things.
Like they just frankly just do different things in your body.
You think almost as like difference of like weightlifting versus cardio versus mobility.
They do different things.
So if you take a bike and you're going to do a four by four, that's doing very very, very different things than if you're gonna be on a bike and you're going to do 40 minutes nonstop.
Like they're just different things.
There are different adaptations in the body.
So if you come out, and every time you come out you just kind of like throw everything or you go like I'm going to do this at a seven.
It's too arbitrary, especially for beginner athletes.
They don't know what the hell a seven feels like.
So just go like, hey, were you able to hold that number the whole time?
It's that simple.
It's like literally –
That simple.
Were you able to hold that number the whole time?
So we did the workout today, which was 28 minutes of six total bar.
I'm sorry.
Seven total bar, 14 box jump.
And it was a seven 14, 21 total bar box jump calorie bike that Every single time I'm on the bike I'm like I want to be at 1150 and I'm going to try to deviate by no more, literally by no more than like 20 calories per hour, like very, very small.
I'm going to get the unbroken on the total bar every time.
I know my transitions are – every round should look the same.
This is the secret that every single – cardiovascular athlete in the world knows.
You have to train different zones to be able to build up your fitness.
You don't just go and run three miles every day at a leisurely pace.
You're never going to get there.
So what you do is you mix these things in to make sure you're getting all of the different modalities.
And it's as simple as sustainable pace.
Yeah, that's great.
We can talk about that for, I think, longer than we need to.
I'll move on to the next one.
I do think we have basically touched on all six of these by talking about the first one.
So I'm interested maybe as we move through these, let's be more just like actionable.
So very, very particularly if these are training principles we really want to lean into regarding our philosophy and our approach, how are we very specifically kind of baking this into that approach?
And how can somebody take this concept and apply it to their next training session?
So first one was consistency beats intensity.
Big takeaway from that is train it as sustainable effort and come back tomorrow.
Second one, capability over appearance.
What the athlete would say to themselves.
With this ethos is that I build fitness that shows up outside of the gym, not just gym fitness.
So capability over appearance.
Thoughts on how somebody can implement that in a training structure and in their next training session.
Well, I think the whole capability over appearance concept is one to call out the fact that if you show up consistently, you're going to become more capable.
And by showing up consistently, as long as you are being disciplined in other areas of your life.
You're sleeping well enough, you're mitigating stress and you're recovering well.
You're eating well.
Don't overlook that.
Your appearance is going to follow.
You're going to love the way that you look.
You're going to love the way that you feel.
So those are going to show up and those are going to come if you are disciplined in the other areas as well.
Yeah, I think about it in terms of like a return on investment.
If we're saying that capability trumps the value of appearance.
To your point, you're going to get the appearance benefit if you comply with the training program.
But maybe like an order of importance of if you had 20 minutes versus 30 minutes versus 60 minutes versus 90 minutes or whatever to train.
In the app, that would be your 30 minute track, one hour track, two hour track.
In order of importance, when we're saying capability over appearance, that would probably mean if you have 30 minutes today, let's not focus on hypertrophic sets of dumbbell curls or sets to failure of some sort like banded tricep extensions things like that so maybe like roi like return on investment appearance does matter to people because it is an improvement of quality of life and confidence and all of those things it's what people want out of results So how does that show up in our training structure of like return on investment and highest leverage, valuable things to deliver capability?
And at what point is it okay to pepper in, I just want to look better stuff?
Sure, totally.
I think that I mean.
It simply comes down to like what is going to give you the most return on the time that you're spending in the gym.
And first and foremost, like just to call it out.
Strength isn't going to give you the most return across the full spectrum of fitness, but it is one thing that you need to be consistently doing in order for it to continue to improve.
So you got to prioritize it.
It is also going to give you the muscle adaptations that you want would have a plethora of benefits of having
But then, in terms of the way that you do the next thing you down, the way that you do conditioning next is that's also going to be the next area that gives you the most bang for your buck.
And so make that something that is multimodal.
It hits multiple buckets at once and you can squeeze it in a short period of time.
Then, once you've gotten those two things knocked out and prioritized throughout your week, then you start to layer on the additional work.
Then you add in some of the additional accessory work.
That is good for tendon health and muscle health and for a durability and longevity purpose, as well as aesthetically.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's always nice to have a little bit more muscle mass and just to look good in the mirror.
But then also the additional aerobic work like build that in to add an appropriate level and the appropriate time to prioritize on.
Yeah, sure.
Your goals.
You can prioritize it that way, but then also just from the general cardiovascular health and longevity perspective.
But that's how we naturally prioritize things for people based off of how much time you have.
You know, if you have 30 extra minutes, hey, great, awesome.
Then go snag this piece.
This is the next piece that we would have you do and kind of so on and so forth.
I think of it as the way I think about this.
If I've done class, I've earned the right to do curls.
Yes, that's good, that's it, that's simple.
Every day, that's that's what it is it's like.
So class involves.
So, if you'll know, class is three days a week.
We do strength plus a short conditioning piece.
Other three days a week we do a long conditioning piece.
So if you're doing that, then yeah, then there's totally space, because form follows function, Function doesn't follow form.
So for your bang for your buck, if you want all things, we want to make sure you're doing the class and then you can do the other stuff as extra.
The other way I think that as well is if I've done five days a week.
So if I've done five days a week and I want a sixth day to just be bicep curls and donkey calf raises, like all that I get, I've earned it.
Like you get, you're already done.
You are five days.
So it's cool.
That's so good.
No, it's such a good principle.
It's like check the box.
I mean, it is why we program in the way we program.
It's this like highest return on investment.
So principle one was consistency beats intensity.
Two is capability over appearance.
A good training program that is focused on well-rounded fitness should basically program an order of importance for human capability.
The next two are we'll just combine them, because the next two are strength for longevity and then engine before ego.
So you don't lift beyond technical failure.
You lift for the long game regarding strength.
And for engine, you train at intentional efforts or intentional goals. levers of intensity.
So we've already talked at length kind of about both of those things, but maybe speak to those things in terms of kind of the both quantitative and qualitative outcomes of valuing strength first, making sure we're checking the box on that on a very consistent, progressive way.
And then the intentional levels of intensity and maybe kind of just bring in Even kind of the research and science that has backed our approach and our philosophy at why we prioritize those things first and foremost.
Certainly.
I mean, it's so easy, on the strength one, specifically to consider where some of the best adaptations live, and that is in the 80 to 90 range.
And honestly, if you're just living right around 85%, that's a great place to live on the regular.
And the reason why is because you're likely at that percentile you're not going to be going so hard that you're going to start to lose form.
That's what we mean by technical failure.
You're lifting with good form and sound technique all the time, no matter what.
When you start to get near 90, 90 to 93.
That's when, depending on how tired you are, what your training was like before, what your nervous system is like, you start to run into some issues where you might start to have some technical breakdown.
You don't need to work there because you're still getting really good adaptations if not arguably the same adaptations by working at 85 and moving that really well with speed.
So live there, because that's going to set you up for the long game really, really well.
And we do undulate intensities for people.
We progressively overload in training, and there's definitely some really important value to that.
I mean, we spent a whole episode talking about that.
But what we're talking about here is, lift to technical failure.
Don't go beyond that.
That's the right adaptation that you're looking for.
And from a muscle perspective, from a nervous system perspective, and you're likely not going to get you massively reduce your injury risk by living by that principle.
Practically somebody who wants to adhere to this training style and wants to adhere to this like these outcomes.
I want to be athletic forever, train for the long game.
I want fitness to add to my life, not take from my life, that whole thing.
Somebody who sees fitness as synonymous with just human capability, an advanced level of human capability, to say the least.
If that's the person we're talking to right now, how often should that person be failing lifts?
Failing lifts?
Yep zero never never right, great.
How often should that be that person be testing their one rep max zero to once a year?
I was gonna say one time a year at the most.
If you happen to be feeling really good that day, it should be off of.
Feel like, in my opinion, like you're feeling really really good.
And the bar is moving really, really well.
And you just kind of feeling it that day, take it for a spin and see what you got.
And if it happens to be a PR, great.
You can progressively overload it for people.
And we do, we peak people to test one RMs throughout the year.
But it's because we also recognize that psychologically people want to do that.
And so we try to set them up for success in order to give an attempt.
But even in the way that we word it and program it is you're not going above technical failure.
If your form breaks down, you're done.
You didn't set a PR deal with it like that's okay well, you'll have other attempts in the future.
The same principle applies just because you're going for a new pr doesn't mean that you get to have technical breakdown and to call it out.
All of the issues i ever had athletically typically came from trying to do lifts too heavy with bad form, because my ego was getting in the way and I was just trying to do something that I should like.
I was trying to lift heavier than I should have been lifting that day and that usually created problems recovery wise.
That made it hard for me to train the next day or even the next week.
It just doesn't need, you don't need to, you just don't need to.
Yeah, I know it sounds like a stupid question, so I want to just circle back to it and let Ben speak to that, because I know it sounds silly, but people fail lifts all the time.
Yeah.
That doesn't make you stronger.
That doesn't make you and that's what we're.
We just want, to like, get people the best possible results we can.
So the way that we structure that is very very, very heavily influenced by by the Chinese weightlifting methodology, which is they just do triples at 85 all the time.
And then to Cole's point, they don't have times when they do singles.
The time they do singles is when they feel awesome.
So triples at 85, triples at 85, triples at 85, triples at 85.
Oh, today is a good day.
Not awesome.
Maybe I'll go for a heavier double.
Done.
Well, and then all of a sudden, a couple of weeks down the road, like today feels awesome.
Great.
Cool.
Let's see what we got and build up to the heavy one that day.
But that's really they it's such a simple program where it's let's work them at their threshold.
And then athlete autonomy.
You give the athlete the power to say, and then we're going to go for it here.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, I think it's such an important component for both strength and conditioning at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
I think it's the same thing for beginners and it's the same thing for advanced athletes that get caught up too much in the.
The only way to get better is to see this number increase.
And so you have advanced athletes playing at the 95 to 98 range all the time hoping that they'll get lucky that day in PR, while making no progress.
And then you have the beginner.
That's also valuing that too much and is they're going to very naturally make more progress more quickly than the advanced athlete.
But that is also within a certain and appropriate range that is based off of their like mechanics and technical failure.
So I know that it's like, it's like.
I really do think that it would wake a lot of people up to say, To very simply answer the question, how often should I be failing lifts?
Never.
And if you could apply that training principle, holy cow, I really do think so many people on both ends of the spectrum would be making more progress, mitigating more injury and being able to come back tomorrow.
So it's the equivalent of asking somebody when you're teaching them to drive a car how often should you crash your car?
Yeah, that's good.
I'm going to teach you to go scuba diving.
How often should my equipment malfunction?
Yeah, right.
Like the answer is zero.
You're not supposed to crash.
Your equipment's not supposed to malfunction.
Yeah, and it goes back to the conditioning component of like, oh, I'm doing a threshold test.
How often should I be forced to rest?
Well –
If you are forced to go hands on knees and rest while doing a threshold test, you've not probably performed it at your threshold.
Like you quit.
So, yeah.
Cool.
So tying it.
Yeah.
Tying it to that.
Are there same principles apply to the engine before ego concept?
But is there anything unique you would apply to the conditioning component to that principle of.
Strength for longevity, but also engine before ego training and intentional intensities.
Anything that you guys would add to that one?
It's the same.
There's a reason you lump these two together and we've already talked about it which is we want people training.
You're going to make the greatest gains by training at your threshold.
If you're below it, you can make movements and skill progressions, but not as much as if you increase the load or increase the pace right.
Like you, going for a three mile walk is not getting the same fitness as you going for a three mile jog, versus you going for a three mile run at your sustainable pace, which is also the place where you can get the most gains, not by going out the first mile too fast to where you have to stop and put your hands on your knees.
That's your point.
So the idea behind the whole thing of the aerobic side is again, same thing.
Think of it in terms of being at your threshold, which we're saying is not to, in lifting technical failure right.
In aerobic side, to the point where you've tipped over.
Hinshaw has a great metaphor for this, which he calls the Everest death zone.
You can only spend so much time climbing Mount Everest above the death zone, right?
Once you cross the point where you have no more oxygen, you have like a set amount of time up there before you need to come back down.
Well, what we're trying to do is that, if you can go above that, But it better be for a workout.
That's really short.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
If you go above that and we're going to do a 40-minute threshold piece, what are we doing?
Like there's no – just get right up to the death zone.
Again, maximal sustainable pace.
What do those words mean?
Maximal.
It's as hard as you can go before you go above to where you have to go back down.
So can you sit right at that zone?
Yeah.
Sweet.
All right.
Four down, two to go.
I think the last three were quick.
And we'll finish them intentionally here in order.
I'm going to skip five and we're going to make five, six and six, five.
So the next one is progress is cumulative.
What the athlete would say to themselves at that point is I stack weeks and I stack months, not moments.
We have beaten this one already and the whole conversation has really been about this, but are there any particular ways that you guys, in your own journeys and own processes, have learned how to effectively stack weeks and months rather than just like individual training moments, Or do you have certain ways that you look toward particular moments that help you stack the weeks and the months in ways that people could apply?
I'm going to intentionally not answer this one for myself.
And the reason why is because I spent the last 12 years of my life analyzing this from an athletic professional perspective.
And so I see things from an angle and perspective and approaching still to this day in my life that probably is not very realistic and applicable to the general population.
So I'd be more curious to hear what Ben has to say.
The way I talk about this with my athletes in my classes is is again going back to the analogy of your finances and investments.
If you were to take the last 50 years of the stock market and you were to look at any two consecutive days, the chances of one day being up versus down is 50-50.
So any given day, You could be making gains or losses.
If you were to look at any two years back to back, that changes to about 60-40.
60% of the time, year over year, it goes up.
40% of the time, year over year, it goes down.
If you were to look at the stock market decade over decade, 100% of the time, It goes up.
So are you looking at your fitness in terms of days, weeks, months, years, or decades?
The other way to think about this is the way I talk with my high-level athletes like Cole, and it's a law of thirds.
30% of the time, it's going to feel great.
30% of the time, it's going to feel okay.
And 30% of the time, it's going to feel like crap.
Accept it.
That's the way it is.
It's not linear.
We want it to go up and to the right in one straight line.
That's not the way the stock market, that's not the way fitness happens.
It goes up and down, up and down, and any two given days are not going to tell the story.
So stop trying to think about today as the day.
Think about this year as and where this year fits in to this 10-year journey.
Cool.
Yeah, I think it's great.
Also, I do just want to call out, Ben does know that 30% times three is 90%.
He just didn't say 33% instead of 30%.
I think we need to create a... He said law of thirds, at least.
He did.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
The keyboard warriors would come out on that one, man.
I do think we should create a series.
There's that example, right?
Which is the teacher puts up what is nine times one?
Nine.
What is nine times two?
18.
What is nine times three?
27.
They go all the way down.
And the last one says, what is nine times one?
Nine times nine.
And it says 82.
All of the kids started laughing and started pulling again.
It's like, do you realize I got 90% right?
90% I got right.
And how quick everyone wants to jump on the 10% I got wrong.
This is the thing about, this isn't about you.
This is about keyboard warriors.
We are so eager to to point out the shortcomings and the faults of others.
And so hesitant and not aware of the amazing successes that they are creating.
It is interesting man, because it is the filter at which I view a lot of our communication is like how do we, what's the level that we mitigate, or even have to mitigate that, versus we just accept the fact that everybody is looking for something to attack?
And how do we like maintain sensitivity to that versus just accept it?
So Morgan Housel talks about it.
I'm reading Psychology of Money right now, so this is why there's a lot of these financial things.
He speaks to this.
Optimism sounds dumb.
Guys, next year is going to be great.
It's going to be awesome.
As opposed to, here's all the reasons that these catastrophic events could happen.
That sounds really smart.
And he gives these examples of the covers of the New York Times and these really smart professors from Ivy League schools creating these articles about the predictions of the future and how catastrophic they are, about what's coming down the pipeline.
They sound really smart.
Where if you were to say, this is the good things that are going to happen next year, those will never get published.
So we have a not only do we have a propensity towards negativity in terms of survival mechanisms, it actually is the societal games that we play.
The pessimist gets rewarded.
Yeah, for sure.
That's not even one of our training principles, but that may be the most important part of this conversation.
Cool.
OK, last bit.
So.
Quickly to summarize, consistency beats intensity.
Value capability over appearance.
Strength for longevity.
Engine before ego, training in intentional intensities.
Progress is cumulative.
Stack weeks and months, not moments.
Last one, personal anecdotes from you guys on this one.
Discipline with perspective.
And what this one means is That you train hard, you value training, but you leave room for actual life.
And you're training to your point at the very beginning, Ben, training that transfers to real life.
What are ways you encourage people to integrate this perspective into their training?
How can they integrate this into their training?
How do you guys integrate this into your training?
How has it influenced you?
Final words on that in terms of just like personal experiences.
Yeah, I think I'm going to speak pretty passionately about this one, but I had kids and i was still competing, you know, to be one of the fittest individuals on earth, the crossfit game, so on and so forth.
I didn't feel like i could play with my kids at the end of the day because i was training so hard and the intensity was so high that i was worthless outside of the gym.
And it takes discipline To show up, train the right amount in the right ways, at the right doses so you can show up and have energy for the thing, so you can have good cognitive function.
So you can physically feel like you can get up and kids want to go for a scooter ride and you're walking behind them and they've gotten 50 meters out in front of you and they're about to cross the street and you need to go run after them.
And you can do that.
That is what matters.
Not your gym time, not your scores in the gym.
It's what you can do outside of the gym.
You know it's feeling like.
I had a neighbor knock on the door last night and Genesee opened up the door and said oh, do you need Cole's muscles?
Because I needed something lifted.
And are you overloading your day?
Are you balancing your day enough?
That when your neighbor knocks on your door, you don't feel like they're interrupting your life.
You feel like you're ready there and able to help and you're happy to do it.
It's those sorts of things.
And so discipline your life so that you have room to be interrupted, to go do the things that need to be done outside of it, to help be that asset that we've talked about and to be of service to the world, a value add, not a drain.
Cole said it.
Yeah, I think that to your point Cole, I don't think you're ever going to train so hard that somebody knocks on your door, asks you to help move a couch and you can't do it.
I don't think that's the problem we're really talking about here, that we're trying to solve.
I think that you could certainly be training in a way that, like you don't want to go move the couch and it's uncomfortable, but you are going to possess the human capability to help move a couch Really, no matter what it's.
I think the unlock is more what you're talking about, which is, do you have the presence to not feel like they are interrupting your life whenever they knock on the door?
And honestly, like overtraining.
And valuing training beyond.
It's like kind of appropriate place in your life can just be an interruption in that way it can consume so much of you.
It can become such a priority rather than enabling you to actually be better equipped for your priorities.
And so I think it's that man like, how do you feel when the person interrupts you.
Because you haven't used all of your capacity energy, neural and otherwise and you have zero margin for what's left outside the gym.
And so I think, yeah, it's so good.
That's such a great example.
That's coming at it from the and it's so valuable and so real.
Coming at it from Cole and your perspective, Jameson.
There's the 100% flip side of that as well.
Sure, you can't move the couch.
Right.
We're talking about the 80-20 again.
80% of the people can't sprint to go rescue their kids across the street because they can't sprint.
80% can't lift up the couch.
So they need the discipline.
They need to protect.
They need to protect the training times So they are the asset.
They are the thing.
So there's the one aspect which you guys are talking about, which is let's protect against overtraining.
There's the other aspect, which is the vast majority of the public.
Maybe not the people listening to this podcast, but certainly the friends and family members of the people listening to this.
And in that aspect it is protecting and having the discipline to become disciplined, physically capable, because in that instance it's where I struggle with as well.
I'm working so dang hard this year because I've realized the way that this goes in summertime.
I protect mornings.
I'm good at it in the winter.
I'm terrible at it.
And I, Let all of the work stuff that I have creep in.
It happens to me every single day where I want to have this level of commitment to my morning routine to be able to do the fitness the way I want to.
And it gets eaten up because there's a lot of things that are conflicting and kind of pulling at me.
And it is not that I'm overtrained.
It's the opposite.
It's that I'm letting other things become a priority instead of myself.
So it works from – I just want to add in that Kohl's is awesome.
It's so right.
But it's theirs, the discipline from both sides.
It's what we said is that it's that dichotomy.
It's that thing where it kind of starts to eat itself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, thank you for keeping the perspective well-rounded, Ben.
I also want to point out I think we should create a series of stuff that Ben says.
That could be very interesting on its own, because at a point in this conversation specifically, I think, he referenced reading People magazine and watching Family Feud.
Are those not things anymore?
I don't know.
Maybe people can let us know.
I don't know.
Family Feud is definitely still a thing.
I don't know about People Magazine probably is not I don't even know there's magazines anymore.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe a new host.
So good.
It's just his forever athlete showing, man.
And he is the most forever of us.
And he still beats me at push and pull workouts, for sure.
Without a doubt.
As long as we're talking about upper body push and pull, maybe.
Maybe.
You guys should do a push-up, pull-up, straight pull-up workout with Ben.
It's a humbling experience.
Anytime you're around Boston, go do a push-up, pull-up workout with Ben and he will prove to you the forever athlete nature of his capability.
Maybe not well-rounded.
Maybe not balanced.
That's fine.
Cool, guys.
All right, great conversation.
I think the final word here would be I think the cumulative results of these six things means that you are training in a way that obviously improves your life.
Doesn't take from it or replace it.
You look good, you feel good, you play good, life's better.
I think, as a final bit of value, to tack it to what we were saying at the beginning is do you train in a way that inspires other people to join you on the journey?
And, I think, for a really long time.
For those of us who value training a lot, it became something we did in a way that was not very compelling to other people around us.
They're like, man, you seem kind of miserable.
You seem way too sore.
And nobody was really compelled to come and join me in the process.
And I think that works at both ends of the spectrum.
If you are under-trained or over-trained, either way.
And it really is this well-rounded balanced, super capable adaptation to your real life that people look at it and be like that guy seems, or that girl seems like she is thriving, that she has vitality.
And I would like more of that.
And I think these six things end in that result.
It puts training in its appropriate place and gives you the, the results that other people look at and go wow.
That seems to Ben's point, like it is really helping that person live the good life.
I think that's the whole thing is are we doing things in a way that inspire other people to unlock things in their own life as well?
And I think these principles lead to that.
So great conversation.
We'll be back next month to talk about more things.
Guys, if you're listening to this, we would love to hear...
You would have to be listening to this if you heard what I just said.
So, as you are listening to this, give us some thoughts on training, specific things that you want to hear us talk about.
Anything specific you'd want to hear from Ben and Cole on training, specific stuff here on Chasing Excellence.
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
See you next time.
Thank you so much for being here.
Two quick things before you go.
First, the 531 listener guide for this episode is in the show notes.
Five big ideas, three reflection questions, and one key takeaway.
Check it out at the link. in the show notes.
And second, if you're ready to do the daily work, not just listen to the show, the Chase Club is where the crew does that together.
Daily lessons, monthly challenges, a Friday Chase Club, chat club all of it at the link in the show notes and chasing excellence dot email.
