Hybrid Training for Lifters with Alex Viada | Ep 671

Welcome to the Mind Muscle Connection Podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Haine. This show helps busy professionals over 30 bridge the gap between performance, health, and body composition. We dive into topics such as smarter training, strategic nutrition, recovery, stress load management, metabolism, plus many other topics. And we go over how to apply it all in the real world. New episodes drop every one day on Friday, grab a coffee and enjoy the show. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Mind Muscle Connection Podcast. Today I have a very special guest on Alex Viyada. He is the founder and head coach of at complete human performance. He is the author of the book, the ultimate hybrid athlete, a definite guide to achieving peak athleticism across all disciplines. Alex, yeah man, it's an honor to have you on. Super excited to chat with you. Thanks for hopping on today. Yeah, absolutely, man. Really stoked about it. So obviously good to hear from somebody who's obviously familiar with our work and really gives you a chance to dig into some of this stuff. Yeah, it's super interesting. I've definitely been lately having, for me, and I'm sure you can resonate with this too, as we learn a little bit more about your story. But like I was Tony Offair, very hypertrophy focused, bodybuilding style. But man, recently definitely getting more into the cardiovascular side of things, especially as a lifter and as a male over 30, I feel like it's super important. So I feel like this is a very timely attitude at Happy Honda to discuss those things. Hey, it's funny how those things do it too. As you get a little bit older, you're like, all right, maybe I'll make some considerations about overall health, then just until I get this. Maybe we'll be super helpful for the honest is just maybe give a little bit of a brief background on how you got to where you are at today and what that looks like. And I'm sure I'll have some follow up questions to that. Sure, yeah. So I started out my career not in fitness. I've always been a trainer like pretty much since college, since I graduated from college, I've been in personal training but really big into fitness in general. But for I think the first 10 years or so of my career, I actually worked in pharmaceuticals and in clinical research, clinical trial management. And I did coaching and training, but it's a side thing. Something I was really interested in really passionate about, starting out with kind of a powerlifting background out of college because high school athlete then didn't play anything in college to start with easy to get back into it. And throughout the process of getting back into lifting, I realized I had some set of poles in my fitness and telling more stories on that. But so really just fell into the whole hybrid thing as much because of like my social network and the people around me and I love lifting through and through, but I love endurance athletes in my life, people who enjoyed that. So really got me exposed to that kind of thing. And did that for a couple years, finally left the whole pharmaceuticals and research space, consulting, great briefly, and then said, you know what, heck, I love this stuff. I love training. I love coaching. I'm going to get in just full time. And that was about 12 13 13. Oh my god, the number gets bigger every time. Half years ago or so, I started doing this full times coaching for 25 years, but here we are. That's awesome. Man, how did your maybe background in like the pharmaceutical industry help shape? I'm assuming you probably got into the nitty gritty of science and stuff like that kind of helped translate over into this field for you. Big time, big time. Actually, that's kind of a credit that a lot with a lot of my approach because being in clinical trials are very specific kind of research. A lot of scientific papers are scientific communication is what they refer to a researcher wants to ask a specific question and add something to the body and knowledge. Sometimes they're relatively small. You know, you can have big big trials and big pieces of research, but a lot of stuff, especially in sports sciences, is relatively small and focused. A lot of clinical trials, on the other hand, are these massive sprawling, extremely expensive, complex, multi-tier, multi-phase development processes. And I think what's so interesting about those is having experience of going through clinical trials and helping run them and look at what goes into data management and statistical analysis and honestly getting some of the, I don't want to say darker side, but dirtier side of what happens to bad data and things like that and realizing how much stuff is not really shared. It gave me a real appreciation, I think, for obviously the strengths of science, but also, I think some of the limitations of research and really learning how to read and interpret research, look at what it's telling you and also look at what it's not telling you. So, if it is huge help to my career in fitness and all things, exercise training related. I'm sure too, even from a physiology standpoint and just even like maybe even a supplement standpoint, stuff like that. And obviously, like understanding kind of the science behind all that, I'm assuming probably carried over from that as well too. Yeah, absolutely. I think because the background on the biological science side is some biomechanics, but also primarily biochemistry. So very heavy on the biochemistry side of things, nutritional biochemistry before I started, but get all this was before I left farm and started getting more to mechanics. But it's really interesting. You learn a lot about interactions with the body. And I think one of the most interesting things coming from all of that was this general idea, this general tourism that you can have something that on paper should work perfectly. And this is, this is in the context of drugs and clinical trials, but can also be like types of exercise or supplements or intervention, something that on paper works 100 times out of 100. This is the perfect mechanism, the perfect drug, the perfect best, the perfect that. And when you actually put it in humans, it never works out quite the way you think. And it really made me, I don't want to say skeptical, but really a little very more careful about a lot of supplements out there on the market, a lot of training interventions on the market, following the latest trend in high volume below volume and lengthened partials of this than the other, because you realize that a lot of research, especially in the clinical trial world, is based on really good ideas. The science matches up, the initial data matches up, and the errors and flaws of the fact that things often don't work the way you wish they would in human bodies. It comes out, I think it was a really good way to come into this space because you, it leads you to want to follow the science and believe in the science, but it also forces you to take a real critical eye to it. And say, hey, yeah, okay, this is interesting. This is an interesting study. This is an interesting supplement. There are less than 1% of every drug, conversely supplement or anything else, that works in animal models perfectly, actually makes it into humans. You have these things failing all the time. So you have these great supplements and this and that and the other that we have promising rat data on and promising initial data on and they just don't work. Again, it's, it was a really interesting way to come into things and I really credited a lot with really longevity in this field and being able to ride a lot of the peaks and troughs and ideas and look good and bad. Like you said, you brought up a couple of good ones too, right? Like the high versus low volume, like you said, like the partial stuff like that, like those are the big ones right now. And like you said, being able to write through that and again, not getting too caught up and I'm assuming what you're saying there's not getting too caught up in one study and then like right in the wave of that and everything like that. Exactly. Cool. Man, no, that's, that's awesome. Yeah, I could definitely see where again, having that kind of knowledge around that and just again, like you said, the research in general can be super helpful because we do see that a lot with people do tend to maybe catch it, like catch on to one study, really sit on that without really looking at the bigger picture there. So with your background too, I know that yeah, I did say this on air too about the cardio. What was your kind of? Was there anything that hit you that was like, oh, crap, okay, maybe I do need to add in some endurance type training and stuff like that. Well, there's anything specific there. It's really funny because when I was little, when I was like four years old, my parents had me doing every kind of support activity note event. Now I grew up overseas. We lived in the Philippines and my mom was having me do swim team and wide horses and we played soccer did everything. And I think I took for granted a certain level of versatility in my training because I didn't really train. I just went out and played. I went out and when I got back to the United States, it was like I played a little bit of lacrosse. I played a little bit of hockey. I played a little bit of football. I played a little bit of track and you just it led to me feeling well rounded and generally physically capable. And when I went to college, I went to a D1 school. So obviously wasn't good enough to play any sport at the college level. So dropped them all completely and fell back into lifting, really got interested in powerlifting and felt great. But I think I really realized some limitations of it. Just I thought I was in good shape until I realized I couldn't do a lot of the things that I even as a casual high school athlete, just not being able to go sprint up a hill or run for more than five minutes without being absolutely dead on my feet. And it was a sobering too because I do have a family history of heart disease like my grandfather had quintuple bypass surgery at 63. Like when he finally went in, they were like, yep, that's blocked and that's blocked and that's blocked. And that's and so I was like, all right, I should probably do something about this. So there was a lot of that a little bit of what you said about when you realize as you're getting a little bit older, you have to think, okay, am I really healthy right now? And so it was a combination of both. The combination of both realizing that I even like felt physically capable. I really wasn't in a lot of other ways. And also being a little bit concerned that I'm staying at the time. I'm like, Hey, I'm 26. I should be prime health of my life. And I'm getting winded going up the two flights of stairs to my apartment every day and this sucks. So what? Yeah, no, that's yeah, exactly like you said. And even as you age, I think it's even more important to focus on the conditioning side of things in like you said, to be more well-rounded versus just lifting again, lifting is great. Love lifting here. But again, definitely more well-rounded. What does your kind of current training look like now? What do you, what does that typically look like? I know it may be let the audience know too. They're not from what are maybe some, I know you've had a ton of accomplishments in terms of obviously powerlifting, but then even in terms of like endurance sports, well, too, so maybe talk about those real quick. And then we can talk about where you're training that now and what it kind of looks like. Yeah. So like I've done ultra marathon's have done a couple of Iron Man's. I've done a good variety of things and I think my biggest thing is I still consider myself very much the guy who likes lifting heavy, who has a running problem. Like I just I still consider myself a strength athlete first and foremost. No question. I'm 230 pounds right now. Probably the easiest thing for all my endurance aspirations would be to drop 40 pounds. And a part of me, a big part of me is always said, I don't want to give that up. I don't want to, I could get under 200 pounds. That would probably be the healthier thing for me long term. But a big part of me is still, you know what? I really just, I love lifting. I love lifting big weights. I like being this current size. It's a combination of identity, a little bit, and vanity, like I got to admit, but also just what I think is fun. So all the lifters out there listening, it's, hey, that's still my first love. The, on the endurance side of things, what I really like about it, because I started out doing real races. I was thinking five Ks in marathons. They may be able to support track work, and try to work on my mile, and 5,000 meter and all that, but what I really love is being outside. I think that's what got me into doing alter marathons. And this was back before those were really big. This was like 2010, 2011. And those were still a fringe niche sort of thing. And what I really liked about them is, it was just such a grungy, non-competitive lifestyle, because for me, the gym is always very much like, you get in there and you get it in a zone, and you light yourself up, and you get fired up, and you give good, hard efforts. And then there's this, the release comes after the gym. The relaxation comes after the gym. And for me, what the endurance side of things did, that I really enjoyed, and why I really got into the long distance stuff was, you would just go out in the woods and get lost for three hours. And I really liked that, because I think physically it was good for you, but also psychologically, it was really good to have the gym and lifting in my one activity that's super, it's aggressive in a way. Even if you're a pretty chill lifter, there's still an aggression that comes along with it. That's really good. But endurance supports have such a long distance endurance supports at least. Have such a sort of different mindset, and the different, you have to get so processed oriented. Honestly, a little more bodybuilding in the diet side of things, but it has to be processed oriented. There's no quick, there's no instant gratification, there's no quick reward, you have to think, okay, I'm putting in some boring work now, or work that I may not love, and five months from now, I'll see the result. And a big part of me, I think I needed that, and that's what I really loved about it. And so when it comes to the things that I ended up doing, I loved powerlifting, I loved doing that side of things, and then I really started trending towards the alternative endurance test though. - Is that so what you're doing now? What is your kind of training set up look like for that? - So what I'm doing right now, actually, I haven't really talked about this, but I'm gonna be announcing it, not that it's a big deal, 'cause it's just some silly thing I'm doing. But one of the things I always wanted to do was a self-supported track, self-supported Iron Man. And by self-supported, I mean, point to point where you carry all your gear with you. And I always thought that would be a fun challenge, because one of my things with a lot of endurance sports is that they are, they're very cultivated, or curated a lot of ways. You have your transition zone, and everything laid out, and your age stations and all that, and I really love being outside. I love the work inside of things. So I said, what if I do an Iron Man where on the swim, I had put everything on a raft and pulled it behind me, and then when I get out of the swim, I get on the bike, fold up the raft, and just take off. And when I'm done with the bike, I fold up the bike, put it in a backpack, and it's run through the end of it. So that's what I'm training for now. So it's ultra-indurance, there's a lot of rucking, because running with the bike, I'll like you, that's 30, 40 pounds. And I think it lends itself well to hybrid athleticism, really, because you have to be a little bit bigger and stronger to be able to move with that kind of weight on you. You have to be durable. There's a certain stubbornness aspect to it. You're not flying along in an arrow, but full-time trial position, just cruising through, cutting through the air. I'm sitting on a foldable bike here, up on handlebars, the big backpack on my back, just cruising along, just trying to put power down and stay on track. So that's what I'm training for. I'm doing that, and I'd also like to probably compete in power lifting again next year. So the lifting, the training schedule is pretty reasonable, actually. It's four days of lifting a week, and I do basic power lifts, one of the basic movements, plus some accessory or dynamic effort work. I do a little bit of hypertrophy work following it, just because for me, very much a user who loses it, if I don't incorporate a good amount of hypertrophy work, I lose mass so quickly. And on the endurance side of things, I try to keep it really focused. So I'm not a big high mileage person. I think a lot of times, when people think about doing altrues or long distances, they think about, oh, man, I'm gonna have to spend hours and hours, but I've always believed that good performance is good performance. Good runners are good runners at almost any distance. So a lot of my endurance work is focused on quality. Good quality bike sessions, not that it's getting cold, they're indoor bike sessions. Most of my conditioning sessions are 45 to 60 minutes. I only really do one to two long ones per week, and that's usually a longer rock. So it's pretty reasonable in terms of hours. It's not a huge time commitment. - So you said four days of lifting, and then how many days do you typically find that you're doing more than endurance side of things? - Yeah, so I'll usually lift like Monday to Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. I'll usually do a very short conditioning session, like even whether it's like a kind of a zone to bike, something 30, 40 minutes right after the lifting sessions. Wednesday, I tend to do a 55 to 60 minute long bike or run session, and then Saturday, Sunday, I do some of the longer cardio sessions. So there's a little bit of conditioning work every single day, a little bit cardio, every single day, but it's always calibrated so that it's not, like after a heavy leg day, after crushing leg day, I'm not gonna go out and do sprints or anything like that. It's a lot of the same basic hybrid principles is what to do on what days to do your fear. - So one thing you didn't mention too was you were talking about if you're not, it's user lose it, right? Like in terms of your hypertrophy work and stuff like that. Is that just like a, obviously you said you're 230 pounds in your lean, so no you have a ton of muscles. So is it just because you're high up on your potential there? Is it like genetic or do you think it's more your training or maybe a combination of all those things there? - That you mean that makes me concerned about losing it or that little bit. - Yeah, I think to a certain extent, obviously, if you quit all your hypertrophy worker, even just let it take a back seat, I really do think you will start to lose it relatively rapidly just because a lot of this stuff, high-chloric flux, high protein turnover, everything else your body is trying to adapt really quickly. I really do think it's important, and I tell us even to pure runners. Like it is so important to do everything you can to maintain muscle mass because your body will try to get rid of it to be as efficient as possible. And I'm gonna tell runners the same thing, even runners who are like, "I wanna be the best runner I can possibly be," I'm saying, "Okay, yeah, but you gotta think about life and health as well." You wanna maintain some of that muscle mass and some of that bone density, that lifting, only lifting can do. So it's really important, like I don't have runners, yes, they do some running specific lifting, but they also do some high-porture feature-aiding. Just to keep a certain level of musketeer, upper body, shoulder girdle, places like that, core musketeer, it's really important. And I think a lot of people who switch to endurance sports and get lazy on the lifting, is it because there's a little bit less energy? It's maybe not what they think they're trying to for it. They, a lot of them were really regretting when they suddenly realized, "Wow, I lost a lot more muscle mass than I thought, and it's really hard to get back." - Yeah, that, it's crazy, right? A lot of people think, like, one, they think it's super easy to gain it. It's not, and then like you said, if you're not using it, it can go away fairly quickly. And because it is so hard to gain, and then plus if you take somebody that isn't endurance runner like that, it's again, kind of like you said there, it's like, "Hi, calorie flux, it's like you need to make sure you're feeling enough, which could probably, I'm sure is a problem for a lot of those people." It's like, you said, you need to make sure you're really prioritizing that, even though it probably isn't necessarily like a main thing, like it would be for a bodybuilder or something like that. - Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why I like so much of my training too, and honestly, so much of the whole everything was just, based around like minimum affected dose plus reward. - Yeah. - It's because it's much easier, especially in a hybrid program, which ideally is people wanting to progress into and more sports. A lot of times at the very least, you say, "I don't want to regress in one of them." So you have to be really deliberate in what exercises you choose or what durations you choose. Like you have to do, honestly, like you have to follow all the absolute best practices because you're doing so little. You don't have a lot of room for extra stuff. So if somebody wants to do a hybrid program, they need to really know hypertrophy, forward and backwards if they want to hold on to mass. 'Cause it's much easier to gain mass if you're like, "Yeah, I'm just getting everything in the world and all I'm doing is lifting and everything else." It's really hard to gain mass. If you're like, "Yeah, and I'm running too." And I only have three days a week to lift and all that. You have to really think, "All right, I have to make the most of this." - It's funny, Brianna, because for me, that's been the biggest thing, right? So in the last, our sons of year now, so in the past, you could just train a bunch and you're good to go, but now it's like you have to figure out what are the big rocks that you need to focus on in the time that you have. Definitely knowing hypertrophy principles has been super helpful, right? 'Cause I think for two reasons. One, it helps you figure out what is the most important, but then two for the other thing. Hopefully you're doing the things that you need to do to at least keep it in potentially even grow as well too. Which to me, it's coming from someone who's super, like I care about muscle, like the thought of losing any muscle is that that was always why I never did it in the past. So it's like that's the most important. - Yeah, it's tough too, because I know, and again, this is totally fine, but there are a lot of folks in the high-speed space, especially like very popular ones, who start out super jacked. And they honestly have a little muscle that they could afford to lose. - Yes. - So it's like, all right, but this is, it's not really as easy as just throwing yourself all in to the running side of things. You're gonna lose if you're not careful. If you are careful, you can hold on to it. But again, you gotta be really deliberate and really smart about it. And yeah, it's not easy. - There probably comes a point where it's some point, you can't, in terms of being absolutely just like bodybuilder level style of muscle, which again, most people are not gonna get to anyway, so we don't really need to be worried about that. But at some point, there probably is gonna be that point of, you can't just continue to have as much muscle as possible and be in ultra marathon runner that is gonna run it in a crazy amount of time either. There's probably gonna be a point where you're gonna have to figure out which direction you wanna go or what is the best possible world. - Yeah, and that's the other thing as well is, you do have to realize that your eventual performance is really gonna follow what it is you willing to compromise. I'm always gonna be limited in, I probably, at this body, weight, running 100-mile in any decent time is probably just energetically, it just doesn't work out. So I'm going to recognize that I'm making the decision that, hey, this is, I'm never going to be able to, never going to run a 12-mile or 12-hour 100-mile. I need to run a 12-hour 50-mile, that kind of thing. There are some limitations to it, but I think that's part of the fun to me too is just also reminding people that in a lot of cases, the difference between getting to 95% of your potential and still having fun doing a bunch of other things and getting to 100% of your potential, that 5% is very small. You may never get to the, you can still be almost as elite as you ever possibly could, even while branching out, even while trying other things. That makes a lot of sense too right because even from a multiple links standpoint, people are worried about maxing out how much, it's so hard to get to that point anyways that it's like you're probably not, you're probably not going to be able to get there anyways. You probably aren't going to want to dedicate the time and the resources to get to that level exactly. You know what I think was really interesting is we're just one of the cases of for a bunch of years, they're always put out CrossFit as a great example of this and how many jacked people CrossFit was producing, drawn conversations and everything else notwithstanding. A lot of people would just start doing CrossFit and they would just get jacked. Logically it doesn't make sense to you. They're not going particularly, quite frankly, they are not doing particularly good lifting programs, they are not doing any solid high-perturbing work, they aren't even doing particularly good conditioning programs. I think that a lot of them actually seem to gain a good amount of muscle. Obviously now bodybuilder style, but quite frankly a lot of them look like they're ready to do people who do two years across but are suddenly looking like somebody who's been doing high-perturbing work in the gym for two to three years. You know, not as that, but it's because a lot of cases they just discovered intensive and they just discovered, oh, this is what actual like 9.8 out of 10 RPE feels like in training. And I think for a lot of people, it's yeah, you can get really far on a, even slightly sub-optimal program if you really know what it's like to work hard and work appropriately hard. And so I think a lot of cases it's maybe spend, it sounds so unscientificable, but maybe spend a little less time like worrying about the minutiae and a little more time like actually learning how to push yourself appropriately hard. Which you can do. A lot. It brought us up earlier the high versus low volume, right? You see this a lot with people and it comes to muscle growth. It's like how many sets do I need to do? And so that is a good question asked because you want to do, make sure you're definitely doing it off and you can definitely do too much, but people overly focused on how much they should do when they're overlooking like you said, good technique, really pushing themselves. And that ultimately is going to be the main driver of muscle. Yeah, absolutely. I know the whole idea of just listening maximum tension while under a certain level of muscular retribution, a certain level of muscular fatigue is going, you see how many people do routinely train to more in reserve than they think they are. And you're really thinking, okay, at the end of the day, you're leaving so much progress on the table there because you think, oh, man, I've still got like eight sets of chest to go on my workout. And rather than thinking like, hey, I'm just going to actually put in appropriate effort on each one of these. May suddenly realize that, wow, I can't actually do more than six hard sets of chest in a workout like work sets without feeling totally crushed. And it's interesting when you hit that point, you think, oh, okay, plus I got to work out in 35 minutes. Yeah, yeah, less time. Yeah, more and more time efficient, which most people need anyways. Yeah. What does your kind of nutrition look like with your amount of training that you're doing and stuff like that? Yeah. So I honestly, I try to keep it relatively simple. It might be, it's always been that nutrition is, make sure you get in the core of what you need and build everything around it just as you want. So I just generally make sure that my get my 100-day, it's 100 grams of protein a day, just because I find that's a good, reasonable target to hit. I make sure that I get at least 20 to 30 grams of quality fats per day. I just try to make sure that the rest comes from as much carbohydrate as I need. And a lot of it's relatively untargeted. I don't worry a lot about meal timing because I think for me a lot of horror is based on how I'll feel during each given session. Yeah. For example, I tend to eat a lot at dinner, like a large portion of my calories. In fact, for a number of years, you can almost describe my meal style as intermittent fast. And sometimes I would just have a small breakfast, had nothing throughout the day and then just a big lunch and eat some things after, or sorry, a big dinner and eat some things after dinner. But really, it was just, hey, this is what feels good. I train better on an empty stomach. Even though ideally I should have more in my system for training. I just feel better when I'm not full. And so that was my nutrition. It's right now. It's between about 3,400 and 4,000 calories a day. I don't go crazy on days. If I'm like, "Some days I'll do a long bike or a long run." And that becomes a 5,000 calorie day in terms of rubber. I don't try to hit 5,000 calories because that's just, I feel terrible. I would rather make that up over the next few days. So I tend to be a little bit more, let's think about the whole weeks worth of work in my nutrition rather than about day to day. It's true you're eating enough to you track your body weight and stuff like that to make sure you're eating enough. Yeah. What kind of guides that decision there on that? Yeah, it is. That's a big thing. So one of the things I look at is, and one of the things I do occasionally is I have a second watch with a step tracker on it. One of the things I'll do when I'm in high training cycles is I take off the step tracker watch when I'm training. So what that means is, and one of the things that is, is one of the ways that the body tends to economize when you're in any kind of relive of energy that is, is you reduce your need, you reduce your activity outside of training. I'll notice that in a really heavy training cycle, let's say normally I get 8,000 steps a day walking around and anywhere between another 2,000 to 15,000 depending on whatever run I do right now. If I'm going through a really big training cycle, sometimes the watch that tracks my non-training steps may go down to 2,000, 3,000 steps per day. And that's a really solid reminder. Hey, I'm in an energy deficit. Even though my weight is staying stable, I am drastically reducing my outputs. My body is trying to do everything possible to hang on to those calories. And so that's usually a sign that I need to pump things up a little bit. And it's been a really helpful. I just bought myself a, I usually have a little $60 watch, step tracker type of thing. And it's been a really eye-opening experience over the years to really see how that tracks. Because if I just follow body weight, sometimes I'll, my body weight will look the same. I'm actually holding on pretty well. But then I realize when I've lowered my body, when I got into another training phase, just how shelled I was all the time. And how tired I was and you don't realize it at the time. So that's been a really useful metric. Yeah, that took very long time. I'm not sure if I've ever heard of anyone doing that, but it makes sense, right? Because we know that typically when you're in a deficit, your body will compensate. And it seems like neat is the one that tends to compensate the most. So that's a super interesting way to look at it versus, I'm assuming you combine that with body weight and look at that too, you just put all those together. And then again, how you feel and stuff like that, hunger, I'm sure those are all things that you're focused on during that. So how would you make that adjustment? Would you just try and just, hey, I'm going to eat a little bit more carbohydrates now over the next couple of weeks type situation? That's what it usually comes to is that I like to try to ramp up my calories, especially like I actually sleep better with some carbs in my system. A lot of people say, if I eat too late, I feel terrible. This is all individual. I find if I'm in a heavy training cycle, if I get more carbs in my system overnight, I actually feel better. I sleep better on my neck. So that's one of the things I'll do is usually increase the size of kind of a pre-sleep snack. Sometimes what I'll do as well is just during activity, even if I'm just going through a lifting session, I'll try to have a hydration drink that has some extra glucose in it that has. I may even use some of my fueling strategies that I would normally use in a long run, but start using that same strategy during a lifting session, just saying, okay, I'm still going to be tangy and some glycogen here. Let me treat every good exercise, like an endurance exercise, and start fueling there. And usually that helps because I can get two, three, four hundred calories before bed. I get another two hundred, three hundred during exercise. Usually that's enough to compensate any sort of decrease in the blood. Are you someone that you need to make sure you're eating enough? Or do you find that you can be someone that you need to moderate your intake? Yeah, it really depends on the food. So I'm the kind of person where if I'm able to eat what I want at dinner and make what I want, I will almost always not have trouble hitting my caloric requirements. If I can take like a pound and a half of the buy and throw it on the grill and ham whatever else I want, I will hit that 3,500 minimum in a heartbeat. Sometimes though, if it's a little bit less availability of all the risks, like some chicken brass in the fridge and some boring stuff, I'll go to bed and I'll realize sometimes as I'm going to lie down, well, I'm about 15 under calories under and I'm just not hungry. Because the whole thing is about that semi-interpreting fasting style as well as you're not really hungry most of the day. I find that when I eat lunch, when I eat lunch, I'm like, "I'm sick of it." I stay hungry here. So again, one of the things is probably not the best for, probably not the best for like waking and weight maintenance. So I have to be more delivered about it. Obviously you have years and years of experience here. And so like you're obviously, this kind of comes back to what we talked about earlier, right? Like you could look at the research and it says, "Hey, do this. Don't eat carbs before bed, whatever it may be." But it's you obviously know your body best and what we're up for you and you've obviously developed that over time and then again, you have a huge like energy output as well too, which I'm sure really helps you out a little bit there and gives you a little bit more of a flexibility. That is one of the things I like with being hybrid athlete, increasing your output is you really do get a bit more flexibility with nutrition and as long as you get in your base with everything, it's like you have that flexibility there with it. Yeah, and it's great. Like I just, I don't worry about the specifics. I don't worry about what I'm eating on holidays. I'm burning enough that if I need to lose weight, all I do is just not focus on eating more than I will. And again, because of the program, because I still do high-perturface work in a bit of the way I'm doing it. I'm not worried that if that I'm just going to start dropping muscle because you don't have to train actually that much to hold on to the muscle that you have. But it's a much more a case of, yes, if you stop. lifting entirely, you'll shed a real fast. But yeah, for the most part, if I want to go into any kind of deficit, I can achieve that easily, like mental mental strength, which is nice. So we've been talking a lot about a hybrid athlete, and we've hinted at what it is, but what would you say is like the definition with a hybrid athlete? So the definition is, basically, a hybrid athlete is somebody who wishes to pursue two or more sport activities that don't explicitly support each other. And what that means, as a sort of essence of it, is that you have to make a choice with every workout that you do that this workout may support one of my objectives, but it may not support or may even work in opposition to my other objective. So I always need to decide on what is the most effective workout for one objective that costs the other objective the least. And again, like I said, the reason that matters is because it's very much a judicious, almost minimalist style of training that really forces you as an athlete, as it comes, as whatever, to make some really hard decisions in terms of what you do. And so again, you can't have fun. It just means you need to be like a little more deliberate in your choice, because there's a lot of things now about hybrid athletics, hybrid athletics, and like hybrid sport, and sports like high rocks and all that, which since if you're training for high rocks, you're running and you're lifting and you're select pushing all that they support the same support. Technically, it's not hybrid. There's nothing hybrid about high rocks. It's just it's its own event. So what I enjoy about the hybrid idea is this thought that it makes you think a little bit, it makes you think about what you're doing. And also it's a methodology that's intended to get people to try new things. A lot of it, and I have to be entirely honest, like one of the things that really got started me started on the whole hybrid idea was shelling up to one of my first long distance bike races. This is I'm going to North Carolina at the time. They had all these like sensory rides, 100 mile bike rides three months. I felt so out of place as a bigger guy there. I've been sure that I was bursting out out of the jersey. She's been fit because even the XL jerseys at the time didn't fit properly. And there was a there was a sort of general sentiment that like, what are you doing here? And I know what I realized was a lot of that was self-imposed. I felt out of place. So I thought that I was out of place. The only one we thought I was out of place was me. Everyone else was just like, come do it. Yeah, there are people of all shapes and sizes here. And I really want to people to realize that the only one limiting what you can do is and it's very much your own self identity in some case that's holding you back. So take this hybrid approach as a way of saying it's a way almost of giving yourself permission to try something outside your comfort zone knowing that you don't have to give up the thing that you really love. If you love hypertrophy training, you love lifting, you love being in the gym, you love the long-term process of building muscle and seeing what's underneath that outer layer and died. If you love that whole process, you don't have to give that up if you want to try out long distance cycling. If you want to go for a weekend expedition, train to climb out with me. You don't have to give up your passion to do other things that you think are fun or interesting. That's the essence of it. Yeah, no, I love that. Again, to come back to my story with it, again, I was super focused on adding muscle. I just wanted to build as much as possible. And it was like, oh, I got everything I have to do has to be to putting on muscle, right? So there were periods of time when I was like trying to gain weight. I'm like, I'm not going to go play hockey. And I'm like, I'm not going to go play hockey, right? Because I'm going to lose muscle. I think that's the way to where I was like, hey, I'm not going to get too many steps per day because I want to make sure I'm in a surplus. And you know what I'm saying? So it's obviously getting steps in weight training is not necessarily hybrid. But I think you could consider hockey and like building muscle in that category in some form or fashion, right? But again, I'm glad you hear that. I think that's awesome because I've experienced that myself. Yeah, and it is, it's really funny because I think a lot of us get in that activity we're really passionate about. We start to build up habits. And I think we're all prone to this. You get into routines. You get into like certain certain, yeah, things that you do in certain orders like before every sort of session, you're like, oh, I have to do this on lifting days and I have to do this on a leg day. And I do so much better if I eat this and I do so much better if I like don't do any big activity 24 hours or like day. Over time, these things build up these little self-imposed myths and mythologies. And again, routines and rituals. And I think what starts to happen is all those build up in your head is, oh, I can't do this. I can't, I don't want to walk too many steps after leg day. I need to park near the gym because the last thing I want to do after blasting my legs is walk half a mile to that other parking lot over there and completely go catabolic and all that leg muscle I just go. And then it's like, you start to realize that maybe that didn't matter. And I built up this whole complicated set of guidelines in my brain that didn't actually matter that much. It was so self-limiting. And then you realize two years later, you're like, yeah, after a hard leg day, I would just go run an easy three miles around that trail. And my legs would bigger than I've ever been. It really does upset that whole mental apple carten rule. But it's a hell wait, wait, wait, maybe there's a lot more to this. Maybe it's not like I'm focusing on the wrong things, but maybe my body's a little better at this than I get a critical. Yeah. And when that process to then he end up burning other things of fitness because of that. Not doing any movement or not doing any conditioning. Like that's probably going to impact you later in making your overall health worse long-term is to. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it, too. I want everybody doing this stuff to be healthy. It was killing me for a while. This is one thing that I was thinking I've almost forgotten about because it's not as much a thing now. But back when I was in powerlifting, you would look at powerlifting message boards and there was an old joke that like you weren't a real powerlifter unless you had a fit. Yeah. And I was like, it's so so ridiculous. But you're like, actually, yeah, that was so much surprise there. Everyone's like, yeah, you're not a powerlifter. You don't have a CPAP. And you're not a powerlifter. If you haven't dealt with a fit at some point. And I'm like, okay, the time was like, that's cool. But then when all of us was like, wait a minute. No, wait, that can't be right. And even some of the best powerlifters like me at the time and all that, he would log a 10k three days a week. And this was one of the first guys like squatting pretty much a grand. And he always emphasized how important it was to him to do some basic cardio. And when I saw that and when I started really realizing that this whole conceit of you have to be in horrible cardiovascular shape to be a good powerlifter. I realized, all right. Okay. I've been following this, this ideal that was completely counterproductive. Well, that's funny too. Obviously, learning more about the cardiovascular system and improving your conditioning. It's there almost you're making yourself a worse powerlifter by doing that. Yeah, maybe you can put up some impressive numbers. But you're probably could be doing a little bit better from a recovery standpoint or thing like that. I feel you do add that stuff in. So I always tell the story about my one lifter who he's powerlifter like 100% strong guy too, like 400 kilo deadlift type strong guy big squad are two. And one of the things he pointed out after it was like five, five months of doing just regular conditioning, just easy biking is at one point he said, you know, which is my mind is I realized I put on my knee wraps and I wasn't out of breath. And I think what's such a big thing about that is it's, oh, okay. So wait a minute. He's better conditioning now is letting him do higher quality heavy work. He put on his knee wraps and he would get under the bar and not be so winded that he would probably be losing some of his top end. He was able to put in 20 to 25% more work under the bar by the time he got to the platform as the other guys. There is no sport. We're 20% more productive work in training doesn't make you better. And there was almost no concession like we're talking easy cycling three or four days a week like he wasn't losing it in muscle or strength doing that. And yeah, it was a blatant case where he cheers to your power out that your pure power athlete, your strength of power athlete was made definitively better by improving his conditioning. Yeah, no, it's crazy. It really can make a big difference. Even though it does sound counterintuitive for some people for what what would you say or maybe like the most popular combinations that you deal with in terms of hybrid athletes and people that you work with? I know he loves the basic like running in 5k and running his short distance. I think it doesn't it the most accessible. There's a everybody and one of the things people love is a lot of lifters love getting out there and just doing some like track work and track repeats and all that. And I'm a big fan of that. I've always said that if you're a strength athlete and you want to get into some sort of endurance sport, don't give out everything that makes you a good athlete because endurance sport isn't just about cardiovascular condition. endurance sport has like running has an explosive component to it. Running is just a series of jumps like good plyometric and explosive strength program makes it good runner into a great one. I always tell people like do you come from a strength background and you start going into endurance sports start out with something you're already a little bit good at try some like short distance fast track cycling or try starting out with 400 meter 800 meter runs really leverage the fact that you're good at explosive training and run some short distances and get good at it. Because of them, I think a lot of them gravitate towards again, just I just want to lift and I don't want to run super long distances. I just want to go run a hot kick. That's like the most common way to get into it. I see a lot more interest in altruism now though. It's really interesting. I would say about 30% of the people that I personally work with at this point initially got the idea of yeah, and most of them are from lifting backgrounds. There's something that come from running backgrounds as well, but I would say still about I would say about 60% of our people come from lifting backgrounds first. They like the idea of doing some thing completely polar opposite. Yeah, I just decided I want to do a 12 hour backyard ultra, which is one of those where you just run loops for 12 hours and see how far you get. So there was a lot of that a lot of that. So I think those are still the most popular. There are people who want to do cycling. There are people who want to do a triathlon. There's still very common. Oh god, we've got some people who like one individual who wants just to kind of get better at mountain biking, without some people who are across country skiing, things like that. But still the most common is like short to mid-distance running. What would you say is the most challenging one to manage? What would be the most challenging combination that you've had to deal with them maybe in general that you see? Probably, I would say weightlifting, like a little bit weightlifting and anything, is probably one of the most challenging just because one of the things with hybrid training is you have to make sure that when you have a critical session where an athlete being fully recovered and mentally alert and physically coordinated and all that, which every weightlifting session means, it's very difficult to go into one of those fatigue and really get the most out of it. So weightlifting, because the fact that athlete's benefit from consistent higher frequency quality work is very difficult to do with any sort of hybrid program. And I found that is actually the most challenging for someone who also wants to do something like a 5K runner, a really short distance run because there's a lot more speed work, there's a lot more tempo work. Somebody wants to run an ultra, yes, I still have my ultra runners doing speed work in tempo work, it's a threshold work and all that stuff. But weightlifting and either like short distance cycling, like crit racing or 5K running is the most challenging because, again, to be good at either one of those endurance sports, you need that higher intensity work, you need that higher frequency, higher intensity work, and that makes it really hard to progress in weightlifting. So that's the most challenging. In the weightlifting, like you said, you need, you want that frequency, but then also again, you need to have that high quality during it. And then obviously, when you run into that, you're also training hard from endurance standpoint, it's like you're getting your fatigue to be a bit higher and you may not have that there too. So do you typically like, if you have that situation, what would be like the main thing that you're trying to do with that person? So those are the type of programs. And most hybrid programming is it's fully concurrent, like you're aiming to progress everything at once. A lot of programs, especially those involving weightlifting tends to be step wise, you'll have a two week to three week weightlifting block and then a two to three week threshold block. And I'm fine that for those sports, you almost have to progress in step wise. So what you do is you ramp down the threshold work and go into aerobic base work at the same time as you ramp up the frequency and do a lot of additional skill work. And then when you then ramp back up, the threshold work and the running work, you take the weightlifting and you do a little bit less of the tech of the lifts, but you do a lot more fun than those. You'll do a lot more accessory lifts, back squats, front squats, things like that. So it's interesting that I typically go through those that's like a strength, like a limit strength and threshold running phase. And then the other phase is a weightlifting skill phase and then a running base phase. And again, each one is just a couple weeks back and forth, pretty quick rotations. So that's the one thing where the whole hybrid ideal of pure concurrent progression, you have to fund it a little bit. But even then, it's we're talking to through week cycles. And then that's where the concept of like periodization can come in where you are maybe focusing on one or the other a bit more. And I'm sure even in general, you probably do that anyways with a lot of your athletes anyways, right? Where probably some phases are a little bit more focused on one skill than the other. And do you lean on the periodization side of things a lot with most of them? I do. One reason the periodization gets tough though is every athletic parameter has a different rate of fatigue accumulation route to week. So for example, if you're running any sort of program that has an and this is why I don't like program in D low weeks, for example, into any kind of periodization scheme, if you're running a program and let's just say, for example, you're doing a powerlifting program and a half marathon program. If you are doing a program that has a built-in like overreach and then de-load in the powerlifting side of things, you have to then say, okay, during that overreach and de-load, what am I doing on the running side of things? Am I overreaching and de-loading on the running side at the same time in which case I might blow on myself up and completely suck ass on the overreaching side of things? Or am I de-loading the running while I'm overreaching the powerlifting and then vice versa? But if that's the case, if I want to de-load off the power lifting and maintain the running, I may not be getting the benefits of the de-load for the powerlifting. I'm still turning myself inside out on what discipline. So you really get to the point where juggling then these two different peaking and de-load phases gets to be really challenging because you think, okay, if I'm going to be in a de-load, I need to let myself systemically recover. Yeah. So you can say, okay, do I let everything recover at once? But then I can't peak everything at once unless I'm training for specific events. So it really gets to this point where something ends up having to suffer. So you end up really with this much more undulating program ups and downs, chasing each other at that point. That's why usually just default to a concurrent. When I do longer term periodization, it's usually support parameter based. So, for example, weightlifting, we may have a base strength phase where we can spend a little bit more time doing the threshold work on the running because on the weightlifting side, we're not trying to absolutely critically dive in the snatch form or anything else. We're saying, okay, let's work on your leg strength. Let's work on your shoulder stability during this phase is while we're doing the heavy running work. And then again, while we shift to this other component of weightlifting performance that is misfeeling involved, then we'll take the running into a less intense phase where we're going to be building. There we're still building another parameter in your running, but not necessarily one that's going to interfere. So that's where this concurrent, it's almost like a mix in that block periodization. And it tends to work pretty well. Again, it's we start getting the three, four, five sports against Little Messi, but the most part, it's really thinking, okay, I can always improve in one aspect. And there's more running than just the long run. You can go through running phases where you're like, I can work with a runner and say, hey, look, your endurance is great, but your running form is terrible. You're running efficiency in economy or garbage. Let's do a heavy plyometrics slash, you know, hill sprints slash, let's go through a phase like this. And that means I can back off on the overall running volume, give myself a little bit of, I'm depleting my calories less often. That may open up my lifting program to work on other things since the athletes, caloric needs are lower. So one of the other principles here is thinking, okay, how can I progress in this one thing? How can I progress in my hypertrophy training? How can I progress in my weight lifting? How can I progress in power lifting? How can I progress in running? In such a way where I'm working on one critical, sometimes under emphasized aspect of my performance, maybe I go through a lifting phase where I'm like, hey, I've been avoiding all my accessory work for my shoulders. My rotator costs are garbage. My knee and foot stability is terrible. My ankle mobility is terrible. Maybe I'm going to use this having running phase as an excuse to not go through my same higher volume lifting program. Maybe I'm actually going to do all the accessory work I've been avoiding. And so you say, okay, this lifting phase, well, I'm really crushing myself in my running phase. I'm going to spend this five weeks like eating my spinach metaphorically speaking to doing all this work that I should have been doing and periodizing like that a little bit and really being able to break down every sports you do or activity into these important components, realizing that you can work on some of them separately and pull together a cohesive program, but a little better doing that. I guess a couple questions. What are some things that you look at in terms of like recovery and making sure people are progressing and making sure that you are dosing it for everybody? Yeah. So a lot of the big things I look at. So I tend to be pretty data oriented just because we've got wearables. So I'm going to use them. I look at things like resting heart rates. I look at like heart rate recovery after conditioning sessions to really look at overall stress levels on the lifting side of things. So typically what I do is for every athlete even if they're hypertrophy focused and may not necessarily know quote unquote their one-rent max, I'll still have a couple of heavy lids. The first thing I do is I also I track something simple like a broad jump. I'll use something like that on a weekly basis. This is an indicator overall explosive power. So I'll have them do broad jumps like once or twice a week. So yeah, I do five broad jumps when all this is done. Measure your longest and your shortest remove that average the other three. Something like that to really test the recovery again and test like resting heart rate and heart rate recovery on the cardio side and also use some of their predicted lifts and RPE let's say I'm working with a lifter whose bench press one-rent max is 250 but they're hypertrophy focused. They don't care about anything else. Let's just say on average they can do 225 for five. Where whatever. What I'll have them do is using some basic trust say you do 225 for five probably you 205 for six 235 for four. I'll have them rotate through those and give me the RPE on their heavier sets. If they start saying that their sets are disproportionately challenging let's just say I have them do a top set at 205 and they say yeah I only got five reps this week. I'm not really testing in one-rent max but I know their capacity should be being able to do a little bit more. Usually track something like that. Something with a definitive poundage that I'm tracking. I don't know because like I'll have one-rent max like back squat leg press deadlift bench press overhead press for even my athletes who don't care about those things. Just so that I know if I give them a specific prescription one week and that number or some multiple of that number underperforms consistently I'll know that's usually an advanced time with their starting position. And that's a really easy way because if it's not it's a little bit like when pro sport teams will put their athletes out forcefully and say all right we're going to test your recovery so let's look at your counter movement jump and your max and mid-fly pull this week. It's taking that idea of putting it in gym terms but I think that's really important now I think it's really important athletes do that for themselves too. But even if you're just you think you're recovering fine and everything else like test some of those numbers. Look at your rest in heart rate, look at your heart rate recovery after a heart interval run. How long it takes for your heart rate to go from high down to zone two again or whatever else. And test your broad jump and test some of your performance metrics based on what you think you should be able to hit with a given weight. Let's give you a pretty clear overview of where you're at or come to the bus. Do you feel like when it comes to recovery standpoint and like hybrid athlete do you feel like it it ends up being the amount of training that someone's doing that is Is this you or do you feel like it ends up being a recovery thing outside of the gym and like a nutrition kind of piece it ends up being a log factor? I can't tell you how often people think that is their training and it really turns out to be something else. It's stress, it's like a sleep, it's poor diet, it's travel, all those things. I would say 80% of the time, at least when I have an athlete who feels like they're overreaching it in the gym, it's because everything else in life is blown up and they're just not able to, like, okay, yeah. So it has just like, oh, it's been okay. Yeah, it's probably, okay, what's okay? Probably got down about an hour and a half, probably about five and a half to six hours a sleep a night. Okay, answer food intake, oh, it's a little sporadic, my dinner's usually good, I'm practicing lunch. And you stress and dial it down, you really realize you're not even giving yourself a chance here. And because I really have firmly believed that outside of excessive endurance training, it's really hard to overtrain or even overreach. And most people are never going to experience that. And they say, oh, it's not over training, it's under recovery. And that's, it's true in that it's because you messed everything else, but it's also not true that if you're truly overtraining, you can just throw more recovery in since it's going, okay, if you're struggling, make sure you're not missing any of those low-hanging fruit. Because like, I fall into it too. Oh, man, like, my bed hasn't budged this week. I'm just feeling tired on all these runs. And I'm like, yeah, I've gotten four and a half hours to sleep the last three nights. What am I expect? Did I think I was somehow immune to that? No, nobody's immune to it. Like all that stuff matters and it's so easy to overwork. Especially like you said, sleep's a big one. And then just for, I'm sure you see us too with a lot of your athletes. It's just general, like you said, life stress and like mental load of things and stuff like that really impacts you, right? Again, since we had our kid go over your go-man, I can't tell you how just even the mental capacity of things and then also with work and stuff like, helping and roll that space in terms of my ability to handle as much volume that is I used to be able to do. That's true, man, especially having a kid near some things that you're just, you're not that doesn't care about your schedule at all, like at all and you've got to flex on that. That's really tough because especially if there's this often a concept and I will say it's often perpetuated by, I don't want to sound like one of those guys, but it's perpetuated by trainers who don't have kids who don't understand what a, you can't control some things. This is also true for anyone who's got a family, honestly, even if it's not kids, even if it's just loved ones, relatives who live nearby, parents who you're caretook for anything else. When you're not 100% in control of your schedule, even the best of late plans can fall apart in days. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just, and that's why it's so important that you have some objective metrics because otherwise you can convince yourself you feel fine and things just start falling apart and you get discouraged or you think about quitting or you think about doing something else and it's tough. So you wrote the original hybrid athlete of a quit when was the first one that came out? The articles that made up that book were first published between 2000 and 2010 and 2011. Okay. I think finally got published in 2014 or 2015. It's been a decade since I think the ebook was released. And now you're coming out with the new one, the reference that earlier, I think it, I think for your order is now, and then you can, it comes, I think December, right? Is that kind of when the new one's well? First couple days of December, yeah. We're talking, like you said, a little over a decade. One or some maybe in terms of research and maybe some things that you really focused on this time. Maybe you're some, you don't have to give away everything, right? Because we want people to read the book book or so. Maybe some of the big changes you found like redoing the book and stuff like that. Yeah. Because I think the biggest difference is for the most part, the first book was just trying to get in this people that this could be done. It was saying, hey, this is the thing you can do it because hybrid training didn't exist then. I think a lot of people forget that in 2010, you read your a lifter or a runner like, you have nobody to end people now going, oh, we've always trained like this. And I'm like, no, you haven't. But it's the other thing is all, and this book is much more about who's how you do it. And I think one of the big things that the book really emphasizes now and what I really emphasize is how you don't just jump into a hybrid program. You evolve your program into a hybrid program. You look at what you're currently doing and where you currently are as an athlete and you see what dials you have to turn to move you more in the direction of where you want to go. So it's being able to look at your program and say, okay, how much high intensity work am I doing? How much low intensity work am I doing? How many actual effective reps or sets am I doing? And let me now see, here's my ideal program. How do I convert what I'm doing into this hybrid program? So it's really, right now everything is much more focused on how do I work with the internet these capabilities, maximize the things they're good at and slowly work on the things they're not so good at. And so that's one of the big empathy. So the book really goes into a lot of best practices. Yeah, best practices, strength training, best practices, endurance training. What I really wanted to do is make sure that anybody who wants to do any kind of hybrid program understands, like literally the best practices behind every discipline. Because I think that's absolutely crucial. You can't make an efficient program if you don't already have some good mastery of the basics. You have to be twice as good to make an efficient program as you do to just make an effective program. So it's all about, okay, here's what you need for what I would consider a base level mastery. And then here's how you look at what you're doing and evolve it into this hybrid method. So that's a little bit of the directions taken. So the idea is now somebody who's interested in it can pick it up and see it as a roadmap, not just this like aspirational idea of what a cool concept would be tricing things out, but literally an instruction manual and okay, here's how to do it. Here's how to look at my program and make this into a hybrid program for whatever sport. So again, it sounds like you know, original one was more of your introducing it. Hey, here's this cool concept. This is what you can potentially do in words. Now this one's going to take that concept. And again, like you said, it's a lot more popular now. And so now it's the actual how to of, hey, here's where you're at. And here's how you can actually build it out to whatever, whatever hybrid is for you specifically. Exactly. And it's actually got more programs. And now I think the original only have more to programs and you can download a couple more. But this one's got like 20 programs that are all mixed in match. So a lot more of that, a lot more of hey, if you have this book, you should be set on hybrid programming for you. And there's what some hypertrophy hypertrophy parent with something else and there's what you put. Yeah. And then there's a lot more hypertrophy programs and like the difference between hypertrophy and 5K and powerlifting and 5K. And here are the critical considerations. Here's how to track your effective repetitions like all of that kind of stuff. So a lot more focus on that. Final question on just maybe some of the research you had to do. Was there any sort of finding or anything of them making this new book that you found super interesting that maybe you didn't that came out within the last decade or so or anything in terms of whether it be the programming, the nutrition, the recovery, anything like that. Honestly, I think the biggest area development has really been a lot of neuroscience of movement. And why I think that's been the most important is it's really been this consideration that contextual learning, especially things like sports skills are highly important. And one of the biggest reasons why people actually degrade in terms of like strength training performance and things like that, a hybrid program, if not done right, is because of this lack of high output practice, this lack of focus and this learning contextually, like continuously being fatigued, you do a certain type of training and lead to reduced performance over time. Reception of fatigue gets higher. RPE gets higher and performance gets lower. A lot of research on that is really guided the way that I structured things and the emphasis. It's not always necessarily a don't give people too much work on one day and too little work the next day. A lot of it is what type of work you do, the athlete's headspace and how they can push themselves on a given day. It's fatigue, but fatigue is also specific. You can be mentally fatigued, but physically pretty fresh. You can be absolutely spent and not want to pick up another weight and just feel like I can't live to heavy today, but actually the idea of sitting on a bike for an hour going easy, like watching a movie sounds pretty good. So a lot of the research is a lot of what I've actually done that's really guided a lot of practice has been really understanding, like I said, contextual learning and understanding like the neuro anatomy, how the motor cortex moves things and how afferent the back and pain and discomfort can affect things. Because that's really helped turn a lot of the dials and the nuance on how you stack workouts together, which I think is one of the critical things in average. Yeah, that's super interesting. So is that something that just obviously learning that can help you guide it or is there any best practices around that or is it very like individual to the person in terms of all that? A lot of it is very individual, but I think a big thing is also realizing that. Again, taking this idea of what is the most important thing to get out of this training session and just saying, Hey, if I do this training session today, will I be able to achieve the training objectives of tomorrow's session? Not just can I get it done, not just do I think I'm going to be able to do it, but also do I think the quality is going to be high enough that I'm getting what I need to out of it. If not, then maybe say I'm doing a run today and I'm doing a lower body lift tomorrow. If I'm not going to be able to do any sort of high output, high percentage work, is there other kind of lower body work that I would still benefit from as an athlete, as a lifter, as somebody's interested in hypertrophy, whatever else? Is there still something else I can get done tomorrow that I feel like I'm going to have the mental and physical capacity to do? So that's what it comes down to is looking to program critically and realize that there's no sticker cows as long as you get in the work during the course of the week you're fine. Don't worry so much about specific order of things or what you do on the rest day of what you don't work day. Don't worry so much about, oh, I need 72 hours of recovery between this muscle group and all that. That matters, but it matters a little bit less than being able to put in quality work. So really feel free to mix and match things around. You don't have to have all in your leg down one day or two days or if you're doing full body workouts, you can have a full body workout that's really light on the upper body one day or like this is huge back volume the next day. All of that's okay because you're really thinking, okay, what's important is that I get in all the work during my micro cycle slash week, not necessarily. to certainly what day I get it in on. And that's so mind such shift. Usually results in tremendous improvements in overall progress. - I love that. And I think to sum it up too, it's again, definitely need to be more intentional with your training when you do multiple disciplines than just going in and randomly doing shit 'cause that's gonna get you in trouble. And we need to be more intentional with everything. - Exactly. And the doubt general concept actually just makes some people better single sport athletes on top of it too. I've had people who just go through either phases, they go back to their main sport exclusively and they go, "Hey, I realize a lot of stuff I was doing like I didn't really need to do." And this is what's important. And like my workouts are so much more targeted now. And I have a lot more room for that accessory work that I was always putting off because I was doing too much garbage. Cool, excellent. - Yeah, just to come back to like my, it made me realize too, probably with my again, condensing it and making it more, if you almost get more out of it now, essentially 'cause you are just more targeted and more intentional with what you're doing. That makes a ton of sense and super interesting way to think about it, so I love that. - Oh man, cool. Really appreciate your time. Obviously, we have the book coming out. If you want to maybe let the audience know about where they can get that, anything more on the book you want to let them know and the where else they can find you. - Yeah, man, the book is going to be out on Amazon. It's, I think it's like Barnes and Noble and a couple of other places too, ultimate hybrid athlete. Finally, like I said, coming out, the actual prince coming out December or second or something like that. We've got a pre-launch group that's got some free materials on it. I'll look me up on Instagram, Alex.viata or my company, complete human performance. And that's where to get all the latest and greatest. - Man, ton of great information here, really appreciate your time and we'll talk to you soon. - Thanks so much, appreciate it. (upbeat music) - Thank you for listening. If you want more free content like this, follow me on Instagram @jfh91_ or visit jhhealth.net. See you next time. (upbeat music)