Jocko Underground: Are You Doing Too Much? How Do You Even Know?

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 167, sitting here with Echo Charles, about to answer some questions that have been submitted and provide some courses of action, some possible guidance, some recommendations.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  And actionable steps, we'll say.

• 0:19Jocko Willink?

  We'll give some actionable steps as well.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Okay, first question, first inquiry. I attended an Echelon Front roll call event, and I have been on the path ever since. For the past few years, I've been waking up every morning to get to the gym and will lift for an hour to an hour and a half of a bodybuilding style routine with most sets to failure. Shout out to Echo for that advice. You're welcome. I have been seeing great results with this style program. During my time on the path, I've done 75 hard and I have maintained most of the disciplines from that program. The program consists of two workouts a day. One has to be outdoors, drink a gallon of water, maintain a diet and reading. My second workout usually consists of a fast-paced walk or ruck. I would like to increase the intensity of my second workout. I've started running

• 1:06Speaker 01

  three and a half miles three times a week. I was wanting to implement some Metcon-style workouts or using some of the workouts from Discipline = Freedom Field Manual. My concern is about overtraining, especially since I'm approaching 40. Would this be too much volume? What kinds of workouts would you recommend to help my cardio and with my mental toughness? Thank you in advance. And thank you for all the wisdom you have passed on.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Well, I think you're a pretty good example because you incorporated Metcons into your workout later in life.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  You're probably over 40, huh, when you did that?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, about this point. Yeah, it's not than right before.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  And I think they're definitely beneficial for a bunch of reasons, but one thing that you can do when you want to incorporate these things is if you're really using them for cardio and for that. Fueling system of cardio, which isn't an endurance three and a half mile run, which is a different fueling system. Uh, anything that you like, there's a bunch of things that you can do and body doing like lightweight, easy, quote unquote, easy movements. Like a burpee, right? A burpee, you can always do another burpee. Yeah. Like you can literally always do one more burpee, no matter what. You're never gonna not be able to do a burpee. Yeah. Realistically speaking. Right.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  Uh, jumping jacks, like you, you, you're not gonna get muscle failure on a jumping jacks. Some level of, of plyometrics, right? Like you can do plyometrics and look, can you burn yourself out on plyometrics? Yeah, you can. But even if you're just doing jumps, you know, jumps over the bar, just little jumps, things like that. Jumping rope. Right? You can kind of always do a little bit more jumping rope and then you get to things like the air bike, things like the rower where you're not extremely taxing your muscles in a way where you're gonna get muscle fatigue. In this particular case, in my opinion, tell me what you think, you're not looking for muscle fatigue, you're looking for

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  muscle usage that, that fails due to cardio. That's not failing due to muscular, muscular failure. So, and I think what you could do in a situation like this is you, you, you could start off by

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  doing really short bursts of super high intense, but low weight work, you know, even if it's just like 20 seconds or 30 seconds of all you got on an air bike or 30 seconds of as many burpees you can possibly do. And then rest until you're ready again. Yeah. Like take a legit rest and then just over time, make that rest a little shorter, make the work a little longer. And eventually you'll get to a point where you're getting some, you, even the first one, you'll get really good work. You go to two minutes of burpees as hard as you can. I don't care who you are. If you do them as hard as you can, you're gonna be freaking tired. Yeah. Cardio tired. Now, listen, if you're not muscularly strong, you can also, you can work your legs.

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  If, if your legs aren't strong, you, your legs get tired too. But eventually you can, you can maybe if you want, you can add a load, right? You can start throwing a kettlebell swing in there. You do something that again, we're looking for. For a sustainable weight that you can do many, many times. Uh, and then you can add that over time and you can start doing things like kettlebell swings. Maybe some light, you know, cleans or snatches with a kettlebell. These things are, they shouldn't be, you know, you're not going super heavy, especially in the beginning. But you're using them to get your cardio activities going. Uh, and then, you know, over time, you just decrease the, decrease the, the, the rest time and/or

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  increase the amount of time that you do something for and/or increase the reps that you do something. And/or increase the weight that you're doing. And those are a bunch of ways that you can start to add some metcom, some metcon activities into your workouts. And I think if you're aiming for like, eventually you're getting to between five and 15 minutes of really high intensity work, maybe with some breaks in there. You know, if you're doing rounds that are three or four minutes long and you're doing three or four of those rounds, or you're doing five minutes straight or something like that. And you can get to a point where you're going to get some really good cardio work and you'll feel that. Um, is this guy doing jujitsu? I don't think he's doing jujitsu, but you'll feel it in situ. Like you'll feel your cardio get better for these short burst things.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, that will help your three and a half mile runs. It will. You'll get stronger and faster all along. So that's kind of my assessment here. But then what we have to pay attention to, cause the actual question that you had was like, or the statement that you made, you don't want to overtrain. Right? So I think you're going to be able to get away with more of this than you might think. Because it truly is just looking to tax your uh, system in a very specific mode, not your endurance mode and not your explosive weightlifting mode. You shouldn't be getting, you shouldn't, your goal is to not be sore the next day, like musculally sore the next day.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  That's not the goal. The goal is that you work that metabolic region of work. And you stress it out so that it becomes stronger and stronger over time. Yeah, it's true. I, the.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Without going too deep into the it depends realm, um, cause it does, uh, depends on how much volume you're doing. Cause even when you say lift for an hour, whatever, it depends like what lifting, you know?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I like Metcon, but I started Metcon for a reason, just so I would, I wouldn't be dying in the later rounds in jujitsu. So there was like a reason tethered to it, you know, it wasn't Metcon, just so I can get in quote unquote, better shape arbitrarily. Um, I don't, it starts to become hard to answer any question when you don't have a, like a reason why you're getting in shape or whatever. Especially like Metcon, Metcon is like a performance scenario, you know? It's like, cause there's better ways to get cut up.

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, Metcons are good though.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  I'm not, well, yeah, I mean, depends on what you mean by good, depends on who you are, depends on what your ultimate goal, you know? But yeah, if you want to maintain or grow muscle and lose body fat, Metcon's not that good, really. You know, especially when you compare it to the good stuff.

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Um, so it just depends on what we're doing. Um, I like Metcon for the performance. So now, now, when you go do jujitsu and you do hiking, mountain climbing, you got to, you know, playing with the kids, all that stuff. All, it all becomes a lot easier and you can do more of it. So that's good. To me, the mile, the cardio stuff, even super low intensity, um, is good. So, yeah, don't get too crazy with it all of a sudden.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Don't get too crazy. But you know, one thing, if he's running three and a half miles, three times a week. One thing that you could put into this, and I don't know if I specifically mentioned it, but sprinting. Sprinting is awesome and you do, you know, me do do four forties, you know? It doesn't take much time at all, but you'll get faster.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  And you're, and then you start doing six forties and then you start doing eight forties. And then at some point you're doing 10 forties.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  And it takes you with, with a, with a rest in there. And now it takes you 10, 15 minutes and you're getting some really good work and that's going to benefit you all across the board. It's not the same and you're not going to feel the same way you'll feel when you do. A hundred burpees for time, which is a is different, but again, I guess when we talk Metcon, we're talking a hundred burpees for time, but the sprinting will prepare you for that as well. So.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I would say to answer the question of is this too much volume?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  If you do too much too quickly, it'll become too much volume. Yeah. But like, just like how you kind of laid out there as an example, where if like you just do, actually, I would even go less approaching 40 years old, I would do this. I'm going to add some sprints. I would do like four sprints once a week to start with for literally 40 yards rest, 40 yards rest, 40 yards.

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  And I'll say this, do it after your, after your run. Yeah. And the reason is because I want you warmed up, dude. I don't want you going out there freaking blowing a hammy because 40 year old dudes blow hammies like and Achilles like it's. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to Jocko Underground dot com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's Jocko Underground dot com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email assistance at Jocko Underground dot com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.