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What Building Wealth and Muscle Have in Common - Beast Over Burden - #555 May 28, 2024

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Learn the similarities between building wealth and muscle and how we can learn principles from both to improve both. Similarities Between Building Wealth and Muscle

Andrew and Niki have been reading The Psychology of Money, a book that, as its title suggests, delves into how we approach money based on the inner workings of our mind.

They really realized, reading this book, how similar building muscle and building wealth are.

So many principles of success (or paths to failure) overlap.

Some of the ideas that overlap include:

Less ego, more wealth
Humility when things are going well; compassion when going poorly
Importance of planning and knowing personal preferences
Avoid the extremes
Don't worry about "optimum"

There is a lot more there, including maybe the obvious but important idea that there is no get rich or get jacked quick scheme. You have to build behaviors consistently over time to achieve strength or a muscular physique or wealth.

Also, shout out to YNAB, which is a company we appreciate that can help you on your path to your financial goals.

Look more into the similarities between building wealth and muscle.

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How Can You Invest in Peace of Mind? A Home Gym - Beast Over Burden - #553 May 21, 2024

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Invest in a home gym for peace of mind. Having training equipment available & close underpins training success, providing reliability, convenience, & peace of mind you can't have with a commercial gym. Home Gym for Peace of Mind - Reliability

In 2020 we learned that access to gyms and restaurants (and toilet paper) was not guaranteed.

For those who had home gyms, however, it may have been one of the best stretches of training they had ever had.

Commercial gym goers, however, had to use what they had at home and try to buy equipment as prices and demand skyrocketed.

Beyond those black swan events, gyms can close, hours can change, new clients can come take equipment we want to use during our normal training hour.

With a home gym, your equipment is available for you when you want to use it.

Home Gym for Peace of Mind - Convenience & Control

The reliability that brings peace of mind may be the most important aspect of this, but beyond this, convenience and control matter.

Listen to the music you want to listen to. Arrange and complete obnoxious circuits with multiple pieces of equipment. Do curls in the squat rack. No one cares.

Lift at 2 o'clock in the morning or go lift during your work day in jeans.

Wear what you want. Chalk your hands.

Home Gym for Peace of Mind - Getting Started

The bare minimum to start is a barbell and plates. We recommend an Olympic barbell with 2" sleeves and 2" plates. The one thing to not skimp on is the barbell, though you can get a quality barbell from Rogue that does not cost too much.

Garage Gym Reviews has great reviews of equipment at different prices and a general guide on getting started on your home gym.

Don't do the strength equivalent of buying a treadmill and not using it. Get what you know you will use and continue to get more as needed.

Invest in a home gym for peace of mind, convenience, reliability, and control. Invest in a home gym for the gains so you can be a lifter for life.

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How to Lift Forever - Beast Over Burden - #551 May 14, 2024

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We discuss how to lift forever. This is a mindset and approach to become and remain a lifelong lifter. How to Lift Forever: Why It Matters

Lifting for quality of life is a habit that can last for years and decade. We hope you lift as long as you can.

We've discussed the benefits of strength and voluntary hardship, and how accumulating hard sets and building muscle contributes to health and longevity.

This is why it matters. You can't lift in your 20s and expect to benefit in your 50s and 60s. You need to build and maintain a habit that stays with you through your many phases of life, including the valleys.

How to Lift Forever: Attributes

Niki really see a tripartite time division with lifters who lift for the long haul and how they think about and approach the past, present, and future.

Lifters who maintain the habit over years and decades plan ahead. They think about how they will train this week, month, year, and even five years. They invest time and money into their training.

Looking whether there is a gym close by your travel location, for example, or incorporating hotel gym workouts or even bodyweight workouts helps maintain the habit.

Looking at the past means being able to appreciate the past and be proud of the work and progress you've put in. The past, however, really becomes most important in terms of how it manifests and informs how you think about the present.

You have to be okay with being where you are at. It doesn't mean you are happy with it or you don't have a goal to improve, but you do not beat yourself up.

How to Lift Forever: A Mental Model

Thinking about the past and the present may be the most critical element. You find yourself where you are. You have a goal for the future. You understand you have made past decisions that have brought you to your present situation.

A question Niki asks is "What got me to this moment I'm not liking?"

You may find you're okay with your decisions. For example, after a vacation, you might be a bit more bloated with clothes fitting more tightly.

Did you enjoy the vacation? How important was the vacation? You might find you don't regret your decisions.

If you do regret your decisions, think about how you can adjust travel arrangements in the future so history does not repeat itself.

Don't beat yourself up or find yourself falling into dividing your expectations and reality.

Then, visualize your future. Think about where you want to be at a certain point of time (e.g. at the end of the year). Decide what actions will move you to that point and then execute.

Learn how to lift forever.

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Why & How Lifters Should Do Cardio - Beast Over Burden - #549 May 07, 2024

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We discuss why and how lifters should do cardio: what is most effective and why include it in your program at all? We answer these questions and more. Why and How Lifters Should Do Cardio: What is Cardio?

Cardio is the term for those activities that raise your heart rate and stress your cardiovascular system. Another term - the term we prefer - is conditioning.

Conditioning tends to come more with the idea of a purpose, like training versus exercise. Cardio is more something you should do to get out of breath and sweaty.

There are three general reasons people do cardio.

Weight loss: Cardio is not a great way to lose weight or get leaner. Rather, focus on nutrition, lift to create a signal for muscle growth, and generally be active.
Performance: Conditioning helps you perform your sport or activity. For most clients, this means not feeling so out of breath when they play with their kids, go for a hike, or perform other physical activities then enjoy.
Health: You may perform cardio to be generally more healthy, especially your cardiovascular system.

Why and How Lifters Should Do Cardio: Energy Systems

Cardio encompasses three energy systems.

Aerobic: This is low-intensity, long duration. You are almost certainly primarily using your aerobic energy system now. This encompasses normal life along with low-intensity exercise, such as walking or an easy jog. You oxidize fat and carbohydrates.
Glycolytic: Medium-intensity, medium duration (~10s - 2 minutes). You use this for things such as running intervals. You break down carbohydrates.
Phosphagen: High-intensity, short duration (~10s or less time). You use this for short bursts, such as a 50m sprint, a jump, or a 1RM effort. This uses ATP readily available in your muscles.

Conditioning for lifters will typically stress the aerobic and glycolytic energy systems, as lifting stresses the phosphagen system (and the glycolytic as well).

Why and How Lifters Should Do Cardio: Conditioning for Strength Athletes

Most lifters will want to incorporate some easy aerobic activity and then high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

For the aerobic activity, things that simply get you active suffice. This can mean walks. If you enjoy other activities, such as swimming, running, or biking, by all means do those in Zone 2.

To include intervals, you should perform low-impact, low-skill activities for relatively short durations repeatedly a few times a week.

This can look like accessory circuits at the end of your workouts, hill sprints, prowler pushes, or some type of machine intervals (bike, rower, elliptical, etc.).

Why and how lifters should do cardio depends, but there are some general principles and best practices that make sense for your performance and health.

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Recovery as the Limiting Factor - Beast Over Burden - #547 Apr 30, 2024

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We discuss recovery as the limiting factor. How addressing what you do outside the gym affects what you do in the gym and your movement toward your goals. Recovery as the Limiting Factor (Toward Adaptation / Your Goals)

The stress-recovery-adaptation cycle underpins the process of training. You stress yourself (the workout), spend time not stressing yourself (recovery), and hopefully move toward your goal (adaptation).

The stress you apply needs to be specific, based on the specific adaptation to imposed demand (SAID) principle. If you want to improve your run time, you should run, not follow a powerlifting routine.

For many people, following the workout program is relatively easy. What often becomes harder is changing habits outside the gym, which can be developed over years and decades.

How much protein are you eating? Are you willing to eat consistently in a caloric surplus? What does your sleep look like each night?

These and other factors limit your adaptation, and so addressing them can help you move toward your goal. Failing to deal with them means you may fail to meet your goal.

Recovery as the Limiting Factor: Maximizing Recovery

As you age, stressful events occur in your life (even if they're positive, like having a baby), and your priorities change, your recovery (and thus your adaptation) capacity changes.

To move toward your goal and stay healthy, maximizing recovery may make sense.

This area, though, often comes with harder-to-crack psychological underpinnings. On some level, you like to and are used to your habits (even if you are unhappy with where they have led you).

Ensuring you get enough protein and consistently eat high quality foods matters. Prioritize sleep (which comes with a host of habits you can build around sleep). Limit alcohol. Don't pursue the unimportant and non-urgent in your life.

A new approach to training, especially in more stressful times of life, may need to occur. Building in some autoregulation and not beating yourself up if you don't do what is programmed (the planned stress) matters.

For example, Niki and her sister were on vacation. They went to the gym and Niki's sister did her last warm up and it was way heavier than expected. Niki decided to decrease the weight. The win was completing the workout, not beating themselves up about the weight on the bar, and not grinding out reps unnecessarily.

Recovery as the limiting factor is an important topic that needs more serious consideration.

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Eat With Us! Our Go-To Healthy Recipes - Beast Over Burden - #545 Apr 23, 2024

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We share our go to healthy recipes. These are tasty, healthy, and enjoyable and help you crush your goals (without suffering). Go To Healthy Recipes: Consistency, High Protein, Veggies

Before we go on to discuss some of Andrew and Niki's go-to recipes, let's discuss some principles for how the find, make, or purchase these.

Find ways to get as high protein as possible (from natural foods). 2:1 protein to fat is good. This tends to mean, looking for lean beef, chicken, eggs, or Greek yogurt (there are, of course, other options, but these are readily available high protein options).

Seek ways to strip unnecessary fats out of your diet. Think about things that minimize suffering. Some examples include reducing cooking oils, removing or reducing cheese in salads, replacing high fat dairy with lower fat dairy, and using some egg whites with whole eggs.

Eating the same foods consistently is helpful. These meals provide stability. You know how you will feel after them. Unless other big changes have occurred in life, you know how much to cook, it's easy to know your calories and macros, and you know how full you will feel and for how long.

Go To Healthy Recipes

Andrew and Niki both like the Made In Blue Carbon Steel frying pan. It cooks eggs well.

Niki loves a high protein and veggie breakfast. She cooks some onions, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, and bok choy. Add some salt (not until the end!) and then some Boar's Head pastrami turkey (about 50 grams). Cook some eggs and back, put all of it in a low carb tortilla and you have a healthy breakfast that is under 400 calories.

Andrew will often go to Starbucks. When eating out, look for options that have high protein to calories ratios.

Greek yogurt with fruit (fresh or frozen), sugar free jello, and maybe grape nuts is super tasty and high in protein. Whipped cottage cheese is similar.

Andrew also has a chicken breast meal with potatoes. Cut the chicken breast in half (to make it thinner). Salt ahead of time (could even salt and leave in the fridge over night). Cook some baby potatoes in the oven (don't salt until the end)! Enjoy.

Lastly, a rice hack. Forget about the rice button on your instapot. Rinse the rice, add your water or chicken stock, some salt, and (optional) pat of butter or oil. Cook it for 3 minutes, do NOT have the keep warm function come on afterwards, then immediately start dishing out.

These are some of your go to healthy recipes. What are yours?

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Swing for the Fences! - Coaching Success - #544 Apr 19, 2024

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Swing for the fences! Don't leave anything on the table, give it your best shot, and go full bore ahead.

Swing for the Fences! - Aggressively Pursue the Urgent & Important

A single decision or event can change the course of your life. Regardless of life, philosophy, or religion, this is true.

When presented with a big opportunity, you need to swing for the fences. Hyperfocus your life and efforts on this.

This is when urgent and important overlap. This is when you put your sleep, family life, and other things on the backburner to aggressively pursue the opportunity.

You don't get the outcome if you don't swing for the fences. You don't even get to swing for the fences if you don't swing at all - if you fail to show up.

Swing for the Fences Regardless of the Outcome

This does not mean you succeed. You may fail. You will fail often.

Another opportunity will come. Work hard, prepare yourself for those opportunities, and be ready to show up and wing for the fences when the opportunity falls in your lap.

Don't leave life with regrets about what you did not seek, what you failed to try.

Swing for the fences!

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Are More Sets Better? - Evidence Review - Beast Over Burden - #543 Apr 16, 2024

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Are more sets better? We dive into a new study and an associated article and headline. Are More Sets Better? Evidence-Based & Nuanced

We're talking about muscles and hypertrophy today.

Outside Magazine recently featured an article that discussed adding more sets for building muscle, which argued that you should add more sets to build muscle.

Andrew and Niki are here to be your funnel of truth.

Are More Sets Better? Let's Dig Deeper

When we look at scientific studies, it's important to avoid the seemingly easy route of reading a headline or even a news article. If you read the study itself, don't assume that the study title or abstract will match the data necessarily.

News media exist to sell their product, and weak headlines don't sell. These incentives exist for scientific magazines and scientists as well - no results or another study confirming what we would expect to find do not dazzle.

That being said, studies and scientific literature are not worthless.

What Andrew & Niki find is that the headline overstates the findings.

Remember, we all have models of how the world works. Ideally, your model has been built according to investigation and astute observation. Studies can and should inform that model, and if a piece of data disagrees with your model you should confront it.

That being said, upturning your model because of one study is not recommended.

Are more sets better? Maybe, it depends, as adding sets is certainly a tool to use.

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The Gospel of Hard - Beast Over Burden - #541 Apr 09, 2024

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Learn about the good news - the gospel of hard. Hard things done intelligently and consistently create good results. The Gospel of Hard: Voluntary Hardship

We at Barbell Logic have been spreading the good news of voluntary hardship for years.

Truly, if you expose yourself to hard things, intelligently, consistently, good things will happen.

Truth be told, even if you do this somewhat poorly, the persistent hard work often produces results.

Hard does not feel good, especially at first. But if you repeatedly expose yourself to hard things and overcome them, you will learn to associate hard with opportunity, and build a lifelong habit of pursuing challenges and the fruits of these obstacles.

The Gospel of Hard: Physical & Psychological Benefits

This is Barbell Logic, so clearly we love the physical benefits from strength training.

That being said, the psychological changes matter and may be bigger.

Completing hard tasks builds confidence. It builds a pathway that you can apply in other areas of your life.

A heavy set of squats can help you become a better father or employee or friend.

We obviously love barbell and strength training, but we highly encourage you to pursue something hard regularly, especially in the physical realm.

See the fruits of your efforts.

If you're looking to begin, but are stuck, look for a coach. Look for someone who can help you with technique and programming, but also connects well with you.

Experience the gospel of hard.

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How Can I Look Like Jake Gyllenhaal? - Beast Over Burden - #539 Apr 02, 2024

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How can I look like Jake Gyllenhaal? If you've asked yourself or your coach this, we discuss what this looks like (really). How Can I Look Like Jake Gyllenhaal? The Goal

A popular movie comes out with a young actor who takes his shirt off and shows his shredded mid-section. What comes next?

The onslaught of requests and goals to look like him. Articles explaining his training routine, diet, and more.

Shred your abs with this Roadhouse routine.

Andrew and Niki explore what this process might look like (really).

How Can I Look Like Jake Gyllenhaal? The Process

It's going to take a long time and, contrary to many people's expectations and desires, you will almost certainly have to gain weight before you cut.

For many, they are unwilling to add weight.

Second, the cut is going to be rough. It may begin easy enough, with sustainable nutrition practices, but you will end feeling (and being) weak and lethargic.

Realize that Jake approached this like a bodybuilder for a show. This is the peaked, temporary appearance of someone who underwent a long process and was not walking around like this for a long period of time. It is inherently unsustainable.

How Can I Look Like Jake Gyllenhaal? The Mindset

Third, it will take a lot of consistent, hard training over a long period of time (some of which you will feel and be weak).

Lastly, and not unimportantly, you will have to deal with the hunger and what comes next.

You will have extremely low energy near the end, not want to train, not want to work, and think about food most of your day.

You got shredded, took the picture, posted it to Instagram. Now what?

It will be hard to not compare yourself unforgivingly against this temporary success.

If you want to look like Jake Gyllenhaal, you need to envision the life around the body and be prepared to dedicate the sacrifice this will entail.

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