147: Top 5 Most Valuable Fitness Tips to Thrive

In this episode, I'm covering five crucial lessons I've learned from over 20 years of my fitness journey. I outline the importance of combining strength and cardiovascular training, the differences between fueling for aesthetics versus performance, the necessity of balancing hard and sustainable training seasons, and the perils of overtraining. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 00:41 My Fitness Journey: From High School to Now 02:55 Current Focus: Ironman Arizona Prep 04:29 Five Key Lessons from My Fitness Journey 06:25 Strength and Cardiovascular Training: A Balanced Approach 08:31 High Rocks Training: The Perfect Balance 12:34 Bodybuilding Prep: The Challenges and Learnings 14:36 Marathon and Ironman Training Insights 23:57 Post-Ironman Training Plans 29:41 Fueling for Performance vs. Aesthetics 37:09 Introduction to Bodybuilding Nutrition and CrossFit Performance 39:40 The Role of Food as Fuel 42:58 Balancing Hard and Sustainable Seasons 55:29 The Importance of Doing Less 01:06:12 Redefining Progress Beyond PRs ORDER MY BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE https://bpn.team/member IG: instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

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

• 0:06Nick Bare?

  Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode is loosely titled, working title. I always say working title because as I make my notes, this is just the, the working title I have at the top of those notes. But as we go in and, and edit the episode and prepare to publish, sometimes that title becomes refined. So my working title is five things I learned in the last five years of my fitness journey. Now I've been on my fitness journey, if you will, for much more than five years.

• 0:48Nick Bare?

  I really found the gym when I was, let's say 16,

• 0:56Nick Bare?

  15, 16 years old. And this started with just working out at our high school gym, Palmyra, Pennsylvania. And then graduating to a, a commercial gym, this gym in, uh, in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, where I'm from, was called New York Fitness. And then I eventually started working at New York Fitness. I sold memberships and I made smoothies, loved making the smoothies. And then from there, I got really serious once I got to college. Fell in love with the gym and strength training and bodybuilding.

• 1:39Nick Bare?

  And that's where, you know, my love for, for health and fitness and performance and the gym really started and has obviously evolved and, and transformed to many different domains and in types of fitness since then.

• 2:00Nick Bare?

  I started when I was 15, 16 years old and now I'm 35 years old. So I've been on this journey, if you will, for a little over 20 years, give or take now. And I've learned a lot.

• 2:15Nick Bare?

  And the goal of this episode is to share my experience with different training and nutrition focuses, specifically over the last five years. Cause over these last five years, my focus on training and nutrition has become more refined and I've pushed the limits and boundaries of, of my body through ultra marathons and a bodybuilding competition and marathons, triathlons, high rocks, and honestly just training for fun, not training for any specific event or race.

• 2:55Nick Bare?

  Now, the time of this recording, it is November 3rd, 2025. I am 13 days out from Ironman Arizona. It's a full Ironman that I'm doing. This will be my third triathlon that I'm training for. My first full Ironman was in 2019. Then I did a 70.3 in 2021 and now Ironman Arizona, November 16th, 2025, 13 days out. And all in, this will be a 18 week prep.

• 3:36Nick Bare?

  I'm really proud of this prep. I've learned a lot in this prep, especially with, with this one because

• 3:44Nick Bare?

  I don't have a coach for this prep. Over these last 18 weeks, I have programmed my own workouts,

• 3:54Nick Bare?

  the swim, the bike and the run. And I've really enjoyed that. And I've applied all the things that I've learned in my experience to building the structure of this programming. And I'm really proud of, of the fitness that I built, the, the programming that I've kind of put together, building fitness, building performance, getting stronger, getting faster. But I'd say more importantly, staying healthy and recovering well throughout this entire build of these last, what will be 18 weeks. So the goal of this episode is to share my experience.

• 4:33Nick Bare?

  A few things, five things specifically that I've learned over these last five years. Now, this is not necessarily specifically targeted to training for a type of, of race or competition.

• 4:48Nick Bare?

  You don't have to be training for an Ironman, you don't have to be training for high rocks, you don't have to be training for a marathon to, to learn from these five things I'm going to share. But I will use my experience from previous races, competitions, preps and builds to reinforce in the lessons that I have learned.

• 5:12Nick Bare?

  And I want to also kind of share that this information, these five tips, it's primarily coming from anecdotal evidence, meaning that it's from my personal experience. However, it's also supported by research that I've done over the years. For five to 10 years now, I've been diving into published studies, listening to podcasts, reading books. I went to school for nutrition, I earned a bachelor's of science degree in nutrition from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2013.

• 5:53Nick Bare?

  So for many years, this has not only been my work, but it's been a, a deep passion of mine. Health, fitness, performance, body composition, improving the way that you show up for your workouts, but also in the way that you show up for your life and the way you feel, you know, health and performance, which I used to think were the same thing and they can be, but as I'm going to discuss throughout this episode, there can be a very clear difference

• 6:31Nick Bare?

  between health and performance outcomes based off of training goals and the application of. So the first thing I've learned in the last five years of my fitness journey.

• 6:49Nick Bare?

  Is that strength and cardiovascular training are complementary? Meaning, I think the best way to train, the best way, the most optimal, the healthiest for longevity of life and also quality of life is incorporating strength and cardiovascular conditioning or endurance. Lifting and running.

• 7:22Nick Bare?

  I used to really categorize this as hybrid training, but it's lifting and running. It's the athlete model. And this may come across or seem obvious and, and maybe it is for some people, but I want to explain why it might not be as obvious. Now, Lee, I've mentioned in the beginning of this episode, I've trained for a lot of different things over the last couple of years. The best that I've felt in terms of just health, vitality, energy, recovery, sleep,

• 8:05Nick Bare?

  the best I've looked, in, in my opinion, and when I've performed my best in a much balanced way and approach, it's when I've been balancing strength and endurance pretty equally. I'd say 50% strength, 50% endurance.

• 8:28Nick Bare?

  So if I look at, and I have some notes I'm referencing right now, if I look at some of the things I've, I've trained for over the last couple of years, one of the more recent events, high rocks. Now, if you're not familiar with high rocks,

• 8:44Nick Bare?

  It started in 2019 in Germany and then made its way over to the United States. And it's become very popular, very fast. It's different from CrossFit in a sense that it is very predictable. You know exactly what the competition is. Every time there is a competition, CrossFit, there's a lot of different variables. You might not know what's being tested or what events are included in the competition. And another difference between High Rocks and CrossFit is that CrossFit requires a lot of skill. Being Olympic lifting, High Rocks does not. There's no Olympic lifting in High Rocks. A High Rocks event, it's eight stations or eight rounds.

• 9:30Nick Bare?

  And each round includes a one kilometer run and then a functional movement. Some of those functional movements are the rower, the ski, wall balls, burpee broad jumps, sled pulls, sled pushes, sandbag lunges, farmer's carry with kettlebells.

• 9:56Nick Bare?

  It's very predictable. You know exactly what the event is. I trained for High Rocks Dallas last year. And in my opinion, this was of all the things I've ever trained for,

• 10:13Nick Bare?

  arguably the perfect combination, in my opinion, of balancing strength, aerobic conditioning and HIIT training, high intensity interval training.

• 10:27Nick Bare?

  Because what a week looked like in terms of High Rocks prep, I was spending time strength training in the gym, upper body and lower body. Typical and traditional strength workouts, multi-joint compound movements, bench press, barbell squat, deadlift. I was focused on some hypertrophy or bodybuilding work, which I love. I'm, I'm at my core, a meathead.

• 10:55Nick Bare?

  I do a lot of endurance preps and races and competitions. But I believe like at my core, what I love, it's throwing weight around in the gym. I am and always will be a meathead. I love the gym. But I mentioned, that's where I fell in love with fitness. And that's what I got out of this high rocks prep. I got, I got to scratch that itch of strength training and bodybuilding. But also in my high rocks prep, I was running every morning.

• 11:34Nick Bare?

  Zone two aerobic running with one speed workout a week. And then there were these high rocks circuits built in. I would do about two to three of those a week. And this is where I was incorporating some more aerobic work, aerobic conditioning, and more HIIT, high intensity interval training. Heart rate was getting jacked up. I was spending time on the ergs, the bike erg, the skier, the rower. I was incorporating some of the functional movements like sled pushes, sled pulls, probably broad jumps, wall balls, stuff like that.

• 12:11Nick Bare?

  That, in my opinion, was, it was a great balance of strength, aerobic conditioning, and HIIT.

• 12:19Nick Bare?

  So if we're thinking about what's an optimal way to train, I would argue that training for a high rocks is an optimal way to train. Because strength and cardiovascular training are complementary. Now, if I look at the bodybuilding prep that I did in 2023, this was great for body composition. I looked

• 12:44Nick Bare?

  great. I was lean. I got down to 6% body fat. I felt great in the beginning. Because you start leaning down, you start feeling, you know, just more agile and functional. I was spending all the time in the gym. I'm still running. Or I was still running during this, this bodybuilding prep

• 13:05Nick Bare?

  with reduced running mileage. But the deeper I got into the bodybuilding prep, the weaker I became. And I felt horrible towards the end. So. I share that to say that I don't think bodybuilding preps, especially competitive bodybuilding preps where you're trying to get down to single digit body fat percentages are sustainable, are healthy, are performance focused. And with all that being said, it's an suboptimal way to live, train and perform, in my opinion. Because towards the end of it, you are arguably at your weakest.

• 13:49Nick Bare?

  You feel horrible. I felt horrible. I was consuming sixteen to eighteen hundred calories those last couple of weeks to just shred as much body fat as possible off to step on that stage.

• 14:05Nick Bare?

  I looked good, felt insanely bad. So that I would put the bodybuilding prep in the

• 14:16Nick Bare?

  not optimal way to train.

• 14:21Nick Bare?

  Because strength declined, aerobic conditioning declined. I got weaker. My endurance became softer. I was losing fitness the deeper I got into that prep. A marathon prep, which if you followed my journey over the years, my first marathon I ever ran in 2018 was three hours, fifty seven minutes. The following year I ran slower, I ran four hours, fifteen minutes. And then from there, I committed to getting faster. And I eventually got my marathon time down to

• 15:02Nick Bare?

  two hours, thirty nine minutes, which I ran at the California International Marathon, C I M, in two thousand twenty-three. The marathon prep.

• 15:13Nick Bare?

  Again, this is all anecdotal and from personal experience. The marathon prep is majority endurance training. It's high volume. Running mileage for me got up to a little over 70 miles a week. Most of those miles are easy aerobic, zone two, zone three, cardiovascular conditioning miles, getting the volume in. And then, once a week, there was a speed workout that rotated between tempo and critical velocity on the track. And then, on the weekends, you have your long runs.

• 15:53Nick Bare?

  For me to get faster, I knew that I had to get a little bit leaner. And for me, that meant pulling back on strength training during these marathon preps.

• 16:07Nick Bare?

  What I like to do during a marathon prep is still lift weights one to two times a week. And really, that's to maintain strength and size and durability, stay healthy. But the reason I'm not including it every single day is because I hold on to size pretty well. And a way for me to get smaller, leaner, and faster is by reducing strength training. That's how I have approached my marathon preps in the past. So there's still some, some strength training incorporated, which allowed me to stay healthy and durable. But the primary focus is and was running. So I would, I would say like,

• 16:50Nick Bare?

  you know, that had a decent balance. Not as much strength training as I would prefer. The Ironman prep that I'm in right now, it is all in on endurance or cardiovascular conditioning. This is the least amount of strength training I've ever done.

• 17:13Nick Bare?

  In my life since I started training.

• 17:18Nick Bare?

  I am spending 20 to 22 hours per week between the swim, the bike and the run. My running mileage throughout this prep has been about 60 miles per week. I topped out at 65 miles last week. That was my peak. Right now, I'm in my last week of real workouts and then the end of this week, I start my taper, doing a 10 day taper, going to Ironman Arizona.

• 17:51Nick Bare?

  One of the reasons I pulled back on a lot of my strength training, really all of my strength training, other than some core strength in this prep.

• 18:00Nick Bare?

  One again, just like applying to the marathon. I wanted to lose some size to get leaner and faster. But it also comes down to just time. You know, I'm, I'm married, my husband, I have two young kids. I have a three-year-old daughter, one-year-old son. I'm the CEO of a business responsible for 45 full-time employees. It's a demanding schedule and finding a few extra hours per week

• 18:33Nick Bare?

  to incorporate more strength training on top of the demanding schedule of the swim, bike and the run was just hard to fit in. Now, what I could have done is pulled back on some of the endurance training and incorporated more strength training. But I just didn't apply that to this prep. I had a really strong base and build of strength coming into this prep. I was sitting heavier than I normally would.

• 19:04Nick Bare?

  But one of the main reasons to incorporate strength training throughout an endurance build is that it helps you say, strong, healthy, endurable. It can reduce and limit the risk of injury. Now, when I started this Ironman prep, I was actually coming off of an injury. So I was nervous going into this prep, actually, that I was going to re-flare that previous injury. And thank God, you know, we're 13 days out, I stayed healthy throughout the entire build and prep. But I built and laid a really strong strength foundation

• 19:49Nick Bare?

  of durability coming into this prep. I laid that foundation for a few months, putting on size, getting stronger, spending a lot of time in the gym, knowing that going into this prep would be really demanding on my body. What I have found, actually, throughout this prep, and one of the changes I made about midway through, is that as training volume increased, I started the prep at about 16 hours of training per week, and I topped out at 22 hours per week. When I started reaching 19, 20 hours, even 21 hours a week

• 20:31Nick Bare?

  of training, I started pulling back on intensity, some of these speed workouts, because I was finding that I was leaving some of these speed workouts, especially when I was really going hard, that I would feel these just little tweaks here and there in my lower body, which for me, kind of is like this reinforcement of, if you keep pushing this, a injury may occur. So I pulled back on a lot of my intensity, running wise, midway through this prep, and I applied the intensity to the bike. So I did more VO2 max bike workouts

• 21:12Nick Bare?

  to get that heart rate up, but not as taxing on the lower body. And I found that I could get that on the bike, as opposed to forcing it on the run, with a risk of injury. So it was one of the changes that I made throughout the prep. So I share that to say that

• 21:33Nick Bare?

  Throughout all these different preps and builds I've done, high rocks, bodybuilding, triathlon, marathon, I have felt the best, I think I've looked my best and performed the best during the high rocks prep.

• 21:50Nick Bare?

  And if we break it down, it was the best balance of strength, aerobic conditioning and intensity. High intensity interval training. I felt really good during high rocks prep. And when I'm not in a preparation for a race or competition, that is my preferred way to train. I am logging a bunch of easy, slow aerobic miles. I'm in the gym doing strength and bodybuilding workouts. And occasionally I'm throwing in some HIIT training, some high intensity interval training.

• 22:29Nick Bare?

  Now I want a caveat to all that. To say that if you have a very specific goal, and I've always shared this and said this, if you have a very specific goal, that goal requires specificity around training and nutrition. We're seeing that right now in the Ironman prep that I'm in.

• 22:52Nick Bare?

  This prep required a lot of specificity around the run, the bike and the swim. And over what will be 18 weeks, I have built a lot of fitness. This is some of the best endurance shape and conditioning that I've been in my life. It may be the peak of endurance conditioning that I've ever experienced. It's been a ton of just zone two, even zone three work, a lot of aerobic work. My base is insane right now.

• 23:27Nick Bare?

  I've seen my easy runs while effort stays relatively the same. My heart rate has decreased significantly over these last, what will be 18 weeks. So I've gotten very fit. But it's come at a cost of reduced size, strength, muscle.

• 23:49Nick Bare?

  But a specific goal requires specificity around training and nutrition.

• 23:57Nick Bare?

  Now I've already built out my post-Ironman training routine that I want to share with you guys. After I finish this Ironman in 13 days, I don't have another race on the calendar. There's no competition on the schedule. I don't know what I'll do next. What or when, but I'm going to go back to a balanced off-season, if you will, training approach. Training in a way that I love, training in a way that promotes

• 24:30Nick Bare?

  hormonal health, metabolic health, quality of life, sleep, recovery, a social life, like a really strong social life. I'll be honest, when I'm in a big prep, like an Ironman prep, my social life is nonexistent because when I go into a prep, I go all in. That's just the type of person I am. I go all in when I commit to a very specific goal. For better or for worse.

• 25:03Nick Bare?

  But coming off of this Ironman, I'll be training for just quality of life again. And this will be a very complementary strength and endurance training approach. So here's what I have listed off right now of the way that I plan to set up my routine post-Ironman, which I'm so excited for.

• 25:24Nick Bare?

  I'll break it down by day. Now, this is obviously going to be loosely held. There's room for flexibility. I'll move days around, but I just like having this structure laid out so that when I wake up in the morning, I know generally what I'm going to do. But it's not necessarily a rule. It is a rhythm, a weekly rhythm.

• 25:48Nick Bare?

  So Monday, this is my only day of the week where I'm training twice a day. So I'll run seven miles in the morning and in the afternoon I'll have a push workout. Chest and triceps.

• 26:07Nick Bare?

  Tuesday, lower body strength. This is where I'm doing a lot of volume, high intensity, barbell squats, barbell lunges,

• 26:19Nick Bare?

  leg extensions, leg curls, leg press. I just want to get some big legs again. My legs are lean right now. My legs are functional, they're fast, but I want to build them back up. I've lost a lot of weight in this prep. I've lost, I'd say, 20-ish pounds. And I can't even feel it when I'm sitting in a chair. My butt hurts because I've gotten so lean. So I'm going to incorporate a bunch of barbell squats in again to build my butt cheeks back up. So I can sit in a chair with no pain. Wednesday, it's just a run. It'll be roughly eight to 10 miles.

• 27:03Nick Bare?

  Thursday, we have a pull strength workout. It's back and biceps. This is where I'm really going to be focused on barbell deadlifts. I love deadlifts. They've always been my favorite lift. My PR on the deadlift is 700 pounds. I can promise you I'm not touching that again. But I'm curious what we can get the deadlift back to. I love deadlifting. Thursday, that was Thursday, Friday,

• 27:31Nick Bare?

  five mile run and shoulders. This won't be two workouts. It'll be back to back. So I'll go run five miles and right into a shoulders workout. And then Saturday will be a long run. It's going to be 10 miles at the minimum. But it depends how crazy I'm feeling or who I'm running with and it could be much longer than 10 miles. But Saturday, I just like, I love having the Saturday, early morning, long run. I've just always enjoyed that. And then Sunday is my off day. This is where I'm not waking up extra early to go train.

• 28:11Nick Bare?

  What I have been doing in this Ironman prep that I've really been enjoying, Sundays are my light days. I just have a one hour recovery spin on the bike. So I'll wake up at 5:00 AM on Sundays before the family's up. And I will do 15 minutes of red light therapy. I'll do 15 to 20 minutes in the sauna. Then I'll do three minutes in the cold plunge.

• 28:37Nick Bare?

  For my sauna, I set it at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, cold plunge, 45 degrees Fahrenheit. So that routine takes me, say, 35, 40 minutes. Then I'll eat breakfast. The family's waking up then and we get ready to go to church. That's in my Sunday recovery routine. And that's been a great way to start the day. Red light therapy, sauna, cold plunge, breakfast. Man, that's a beautiful one. So that kind of equates to 30 to 35 miles a week of running and lifting four days per week.

• 29:15Nick Bare?

  And that gets me back to roughly a 50 50 split between strength and endurance. My favorite way to train. And I believe the best way to train for performance, for health, for quality of life, for a, for a healthy, balanced social life. Strength and cardiovascular training are complementary. The second thing I learned in the last five years of my fitness journey is that fueling for performance and fueling for aesthetics are not the same. They are not one in each other.

• 29:59Nick Bare?

  Now, when I started my fitness journey, like I said, I was 15, 16 years old. And then when I started working at that gym, New York Fitness, this is when I was exposed to the bodybuilding world and pre-workout and the Arnold Fitness Expo. And then when I went to college, that's when I went just all in. And I just, I became obsessed.

• 30:29Nick Bare?

  It's funny because um

• 30:32Nick Bare?

  the first pre-workout I ever used

• 30:36Nick Bare?

  which if you're roughly around my age mid 30s and you started lifting weights and going to the gym around the same time as me you probably have experienced No Explode or NO Explode this was a pre-workout back in the day, I'm not sure if it's still a pre-workout by BSN Supplements

• 30:59Nick Bare?

  it was in this red

• 31:02Nick Bare?

  like loosely transparent bottle

• 31:07Nick Bare?

  it might have been like one of the first pre-workouts on the market, but it had a very specific taste and smell

• 31:16Nick Bare?

  and I was somewhere this past weekend, I can't remember exactly where and I I got a whiff of No Explode and NO Explode and it took me back to my bedroom in my parents' house growing up, mixing up my pre-workout in my room, getting ready to go to the gym

• 31:36Nick Bare?

  they just say it transformed or transported me back there so quickly

• 31:44Nick Bare?

  and and that was the timeframe of when I fell in love with that part of the sport and the lifestyle and and bodybuilding and I share that to say that I learned about nutrition around performance around body composition from a bodybuilding perspective yeah, this was eating clean and it was eating every three hours because the the thought process then was if you don't eat every three hours, you go catabolic and you start burning your muscle up and it was chicken, rice and broccoli

• 32:28Nick Bare?

  prepped and stored in Tupperware containers in the fridge, I mean I had like dozens of Tupperware containers of chicken, rice and broccoli weighed out And like sodium was viewed as this, this horrible thing. So we were all using low to no sodium seasonings. There was a seasoning called Mrs. Dash and you know, there was just a bodybuilding mindset around nutrition. It was high protein. It was lower fat, moderate carb, but protein was

• 33:06Nick Bare?

  the king. And then when I started exploring more of the endurance space, training for marathons and then triathlons, that was actually a really hard pivot to make. Taking this, this bodybuilding, body composition, aesthetic focused nutrition model, and then trying to apply it to a performance focused model. And to be honest, I, I, I found that it didn't work. Certain aspects did, but it didn't fuel the training that I was doing.

• 33:54Nick Bare?

  As I was kind of preparing these notes, I was thinking back to

• 34:01Nick Bare?

  a race I was at a few years ago. It was the last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine.

• 34:09Nick Bare?

  And at this point, this was 2023, I had a grasp and understanding of how to fuel, how to properly fuel endurance training and endurance events. How to maximize carbohydrate intake and utilize electrolytes to fuel performance. But that took a lot of time and experience and learning and failing and making mistakes. And I ran into this guy at the last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine, and he brought all of his food that he was prepared to consume during the race.

• 34:47Nick Bare?

  And it was Tupperware containers of chicken, rice and broccoli. He was going to eat chicken, rice and broccoli throughout this entire race.

• 35:01Nick Bare?

  And I don't share that to say he was wrong. But I'm assuming he came from a bodybuilding, body composition, aesthetic focused background. And that's all he knew because I was once there too.

• 35:19Nick Bare?

  If, if when I was into bodybuilding and lifting weights and

• 35:25Nick Bare?

  that lifestyle and then I just got thrown into an endurance race. Well, if all I know is nutrition for that's specific type of sport or activity. I would apply it to this new sport or activity. Chicken, rice and broccoli. And I had the conversation with him like, hey, that's going to absolutely wreck you throughout this next couple hours and days. If you go that far, there's no way you're going to be able to eat chicken, rice and broccoli. Or are you going to want to eat chicken and rice and broccoli? The deeper you get into this race, you gotta get creative. So here's these gels, here's these bars, here's these powders, peanut butter and jellies.

• 36:12Nick Bare?

  When it comes to the ultra space, the diet approach and strategies is so different from what you would assume is health in sport and performance.

• 36:27Nick Bare?

  But I think a lot of us come from,

• 36:31Nick Bare?

  I'm just assuming a lot, a lot of people start their fitness journey, not all, but many in the gym.

• 36:40Nick Bare?

  And it's to look better, it's to feel better, to build confidence, get stronger.

• 36:47Nick Bare?

  So for many of us, we learn about nutrition

• 36:51Nick Bare?

  through the lens of bodybuilding and body composition and aesthetics. And fueling for that type of sport and lifestyle is very different than fueling for performance.

• 37:09Nick Bare?

  I was recently listening to a podcast.

• 37:13Nick Bare?

  It was the Mayhem Athlete podcast and it was titled, "Why Bodybuilding Nutrition Kills CrossFit Performance." And honestly, after listening to that episode, that's what sparked the the want to make this one of the lessons I learned in the last five years around fitness. And one of the great points they brought up in this podcast was that nutritional bodybuilding diet or bodybuilding nutrition, it consists of over consuming protein and under consuming carbohydrates and fat.

• 37:54Nick Bare?

  Because that's just what is needed for the results and dire desires that you want to get out of bodybuilding. It's it's more protein. Protein is going to help recover and build lean tissue. There is a thermic effect from protein. So your body, it utilizes more energy to break protein down.

• 38:18Nick Bare?

  And you want to be leaner. And there's less energy demands with bodybuilding than say endurance training. So you don't need as many calories. You don't need as many carbohydrates. You don't need as much fat. You don't need as much energy and fuel based off the energy demands of that training. But you can apply that to performance, whether that's CrossFit, high rocks, or endurance training. Because as athletes who require more energy, who are expending more energy or more calories, we need more carbohydrates, which are the most easily utilized source of energy that we can consume. We need more fat

• 39:04Nick Bare?

  just to get more calories in and for hormonal and metabolic health.

• 39:12Nick Bare?

  And if you apply a bodybuilding nutrition dieting approach to

• 39:19Nick Bare?

  A lifestyle, a sport, a type of training that requires more energy, you're gonna fail. You're going to experience

• 39:31Nick Bare?

  being under fueled and under nourished, which equates to under performing.

• 39:41Nick Bare?

  You know, the way that I look at food, I think when, when you've been training for so many years and you're signing up for races and competitions and you're trying to find ways to, to get faster, to get stronger, to get better, you start looking at food as fuel. You start looking at food as feeling. Like I know if I eat this, I'm going to feel this way versus if I eat that, I might feel another way. If I eat something that is for lunch, for example, my lunch every day is 300 grams of jasmine rice,

• 40:24Nick Bare?

  eight ounces of either a lean ground beef, venison, bison, chicken sometimes, throw in some buffalo sauce in there. When I eat that, it digests very well. I feel really good. It provides me energy. I know I can train one to two hours after versus if I go to

• 40:49Nick Bare?

  you know, some random restaurant on the side of the road and I pick up a cheeseburger and french fries, I know I'm going to feel like trash after that. I'm gonna be tired, lethargic. My stomach's probably gonna hurt. I'm not gonna have a good workout or even be able to train in one to two hours. So I look at food. I, I look at it now through the lens of this is fuel. This is how I'm going to feel. I know I'm going to feel after eating this type of food.

• 41:23Nick Bare?

  I look at food and naturally just think of macronutrients. Well, there's roughly this much fat, probably this many carbs, this much protein. And this is how it fits into my diet and my nutrition protocol for the day. I look at food and I think of how is this going to digest? Going back to how am I going to feel? And how will this contribute to my performance? Whether that's for a workout coming up or the energy I need for a meeting or work? Or even how is this going to affect my sleep and recovery?

• 42:02Nick Bare?

  So I look at food now through the lens of all of those things.

• 42:08Nick Bare?

  And that's why when I think of my training, if I'm focused on performance, if I'm training for an Ironman. And if I think of bodybuilding nutrition, moderate carb, lower fat, high protein. I'm looking at that thinking, well, this isn't the fuel. This isn't going to equate to the feeling that I want.

• 42:34Nick Bare?

  This isn't going to equate to performance that I need, the energy, the calories that I need. So there's a big difference between fueling for aesthetics versus fueling and eating for performance. They can be similar, but they are oftentimes and most likely very different. The third thing that I learned in my last five years of fitness. Is that we need to balance hard seasons and sustainable or building seasons. What does that mean?

• 43:15Nick Bare?

  So when I say sustainable or durable seasons, this is not mean easy seasons. So there, there aren't seasons of, and when I say seasons, I'm talking about training. You know, how, how are we approaching our health? Our nutrition, our workouts, our training?

• 43:46Nick Bare?

  There are hard seasons where we might be in this very specific focused prep or build chasing down a race or a competition. And then there's the building sustainable seasons like I'm about to go into a building and sustainable season after this Ironman prep.

• 44:08Nick Bare?

  I also would like us to look through this lens.

• 44:12Nick Bare?

  This is not necessarily just talking to competitive athletes. Like you don't have to be someone who does race after race after race.

• 44:24Nick Bare?

  Or even a professional or amateur athlete for this to be applicable. I think this, this lesson right here is applicable to the everyday individual. And here's why. Training, health, fitness, performance and nutrition.

• 44:40Nick Bare?

  It is not exclusively reserved for the professional athlete. This is a personal responsibility we all have. We all have the personal responsibility of stewarding our health in our bodies.

• 44:59Nick Bare?

  This is focusing on training. This is working out, this is moving our bodies.

• 45:04Nick Bare?

  This is prioritizing our health.

• 45:07Nick Bare?

  This is prioritizing what we consume, our nutrition, our diet, not eating like a slob. Taking accountability and responsibility of that.

• 45:18Nick Bare?

  To be able to perform. Maybe not to toe the line and, and run a fast race. But it's to perform for ourselves every single day, our jobs, our work, our family, our relationships. Everything. It is a personal responsibility. To be able to show up and perform. This is not reserved, what I'm talking about for competitive athletes. There are going to be hard seasons in life where you're challenged. And then there's more sustainable seasons of life, not necessarily easy seasons of life. Because I don't like that, that word or term. And I don't know if there's ever easy seasons

• 46:04Nick Bare?

  of life.

• 46:08Nick Bare?

  Now for the last two years, 2024, 2025,

• 46:15Nick Bare?

  I've only put one race or competition on the calendar, each one of those years. 2024, it was High Rocks Dallas. 2025 is Ironman Arizona. I know a lot of people who will send me their race schedule for the year and they're not pro athletes. They're everyday individuals who work full-time jobs, who are married, who have kids, and their race schedule is like six to 10 races per year. To each their own, but I don't know how you're doing that in showing up for your other responsibilities.

• 46:56Nick Bare?

  I, I, I just don't, but if you can find a way to make it work, that's, that's good on you. Truly, for me, it is one race or competition a year.

• 47:09Nick Bare?

  And I like to go all in on that thing. Because when I'm prepping, it's anywhere for, for four to six months for a specific race or competition.

• 47:23Nick Bare?

  I go all in, I focus, and then once that race or competition is done, I then go into a sustainable durability building season. This is where I pull back on my volume, I pull back on intensity. I have less of a tight grip on my life in trying to control every little variable for a performance-focused outcome. And I go back to like I, I mentioned in the first lesson I learned, what works the best? When do I feel my best? When I perform my best? And when do I look my best, in my opinion? And this is a balanced approach of strength and conditioning, strength and endurance training.

• 48:09Nick Bare?

  So this is the way that I have approached,

• 48:13Nick Bare?

  you know, going into hard seasons, performance-focused seasons, the last two years. And this is probably an approach that I'll take for the foreseeable future. Like, me and some of the guys were already talking about 2026, a race that we would like to put on the calendar and go throw down on. And that'd be the one race that I prepare for, for 2026. And I go all in on it, and I put a big prep in, and I'm focused and disciplined. And then, when that race is done, I go back into a sustainable, base-building, durability, get-healthy

• 48:56Nick Bare?

  season or approach.

• 49:00Nick Bare?

  Why sustainable seasons? Well, during a sustainable season, a base-building, durability season, this is, in my opinion, where you promote more of a health-focused lifestyle as opposed to a performance-focused lifestyle, which we'll get into.

• 49:22Nick Bare?

  But in these sustainable seasons, you can prioritize, or I, at least in this case, can prioritize all the other aspects of my life.

• 49:33Nick Bare?

  Marriage, family, kids, vacations, work. Like I've previously mentioned, when I'm in a prep or I'm in a build, I try not to become all-consumed. But I'd be lying if I said that that just doesn't happen.

• 49:54Nick Bare?

  I'm an all-in type guy. And when I commit to something, I go all in, and at some point, it does start to all-consume me. Where I want to control every variable, from nutrition to sleep and recovery and training. And it starts taking over parts of my life.

• 50:13Nick Bare?

  Added a detriment sometimes.

• 50:17Nick Bare?

  So I'm in these hard seasons, I can be all in, I can be focused. And then when I go back to the sustainable season, it's more of a balanced approach to life. And it allows me to really reset, recover. So when I go back in another hard season of training or chasing down a fitness goal, a race, a competition, I'm then ready for it. I'm mentally, physically, emotionally prepared.

• 50:44Nick Bare?

  But if you just go from race to race to race to race, and you're always in the hard season, and you never take these sustainable durability, base building seasons, which, trust me, I've taken this approach in the past, you end up just burning yourself into the ground. And you show up for the next race season, or the next prep, or the next build, not excited, not recovered, not energized, to put in the amount of work that's required to lead into that race or competition.

• 51:18Nick Bare?

  Now, there is a difference between health optimization and performance optimization. Are they mutually exclusive? I think they can and cannot be.

• 51:33Nick Bare?

  You know, like, for example, in this Ironman prep right now, I am eating, sleeping, training, living, to optimize performance.

• 51:49Nick Bare?

  And I know that if I got blood work done right now, a lot of my biomarkers would be off or out of range. Because my health is not the focus right now. My performance is the focus right now. Same thing, going back to a bodybuilding prep. And I've said, specific goals require training and nutrition specificity. In my bodybuilding prep, at the end, I looked my best. But if you got my blood work taken, probably all of my biomarkers would be out of range. Because you're pushing it to the extremes.

• 52:27Nick Bare?

  Health and performance can be synchronized, but a lot of times I think you end up choosing one over the other, especially for those of us who are not professional athletes. For those of us who don't get paid to train and eat and sleep and recover as it's our job.

• 52:53Nick Bare?

  Because like in my case, I'm sure many other people's cases, we are trying to fit this training for a performance-focused goal around our already busy, crazy lifestyle. So we are sacrificing things like sleep to go train. You know, right now I'm waking up at 4:00 a.m. every morning to make sure that my run is done before my family wakes up.

• 53:24Nick Bare?

  And then I train my second or third time later in the afternoon. And by the time the day is over, I'm pretty tanked, I'm pretty exhausted. So sleep is not being prioritized right now, which means recovery is ultimately not being prioritized right now, which means I don't feel my best right now, but it's what has to be done

• 53:48Nick Bare?

  because this goal does matter to me. And I have committed to it, so I'm going to do what I have to do to make sure it gets done. But I can promise you, once this Ironman prep is over, I'm going to be prioritizing my health again over performance, which means I'm going to be sleeping more to feel better, to ultimately perform better, because my routine and my schedule allows for it and has more flexibility and open space.

• 54:19Nick Bare?

  So does health and performance optimization have to be mutually exclusive? Absolutely not. But for many of us who also live busy, full lives with other responsibilities and things and people we have to show up for, something has to be sacrificed. And in many cases, our health ends up being sacrificed. I would say primarily because sleep ends up being sacrificed.

• 54:50Nick Bare?

  So that, in my opinion, is

• 54:54Nick Bare?

  the reason, the necessity of balancing hard seasons. And when I say hard seasons, again, this is a season where you might have a training, specific goal, a race, a competition, something you're trying to achieve. Balancing those seasons with sustainable seasons, base building seasons, strength seasons, off seasons, not easy seasons, but seasons that promote health, longevity, quality of life.

• 55:29Nick Bare?

  The fourth lesson to share.

• 55:32Nick Bare?

  More is not always better. And more being volume and intensity of training.

• 55:40Nick Bare?

  You know, my tagline, my life mission, BPN's motto, it's go one more.

• 55:50Nick Bare?

  And when a lot of people hear this, and this is one of the reasons I wrote my book called Go One More. When people hear this, they think that we are, and I am just promoting, do more, do more, do more. And that's not the case.

• 56:05Nick Bare?

  Go one more is all about doing more of the right things at the right time,

• 56:13Nick Bare?

  in the right place, for the right reasons. It's being intentional with what we do more of. It's not just do more, do more, do more. Go one more

• 56:26Nick Bare?

  is an outcome.

• 56:29Nick Bare?

  Part of go one more is in action. Sometimes, to achieve the outcome of go one more,

• 56:37Nick Bare?

  you're actually going to have to do less. You're going to have to be aware, have honest conversations with yourself, and maybe do more recovery and do less of the work so that you can experience the growth and the outcomes of go one more.

• 56:58Nick Bare?

  But some people just look at going more and think we and I are just saying, "Do more, do more, do more." That's not the case. There is a critical component of intentionality behind those three words, "Go on more." Because there is a point of diminishing return when you try to do more and more and more. This can be applied to all aspects and areas of life, not just training. I would argue that the restraint and discipline required to do less, especially for type A-driven individuals,

• 57:39Nick Bare?

  is actually harder than doing more. In the way that I used to train, more was always better. And I would, I would even know it. You know, like it'd be, I remember 2017, 2018, just getting out of the Army. You know, I didn't meet Steph at this point yet. Wasn't in a relationship, no kids. Fresh out of the Army, building BPN. And I would do a big workout in the morning or a run and a second workout in the afternoon.

• 58:23Nick Bare?

  And sometimes it'd be late at night and me, Joe and Preston wouldn't have anything else that we had to do. My body would hurt and I knew that I shouldn't train and that if I trained it'd actually probably hurt me more than help me. But there was something in my head that was saying, "Just go train again, just go train again, just go train again." So I'd go train for a third time and be a horrible training experience and workout. I'd feel horrible the next day. But as driven individuals, and if you're listening to this podcast, and if you follow my content, chances are you're a very driven, disciplined, type A individual.

• 59:07Nick Bare?

  You want to achieve, you want to perform.

• 59:13Nick Bare?

  Sometimes we are the people who have a harder time restraining and being disciplined to do less, and it's actually easy for us, or easier for us, to do more.

• 59:29Nick Bare?

  It's been a problem for much of my life when it comes to fitness, is learning how to restrain myself and do less, because there is a point of diminishing returns. You can't just keep adding on more volume and intensity to your training and expecting greater returns over and over and over again. You get to a point where you actually start experiencing declines in performance. There have been many fitness preps that I've done in the past, especially ones where I haven't used coaches. This Ironman prep is different.

• 1:00:10Nick Bare?

  I think I'm at a different time and experience in my fitness journey and understanding proper programming, but in the past, when I haven't been working with a coach, which is one of the reasons that you can and should work with a coach, is that when I haven't worked with a coach in the past, I haven't been disciplined or restrained with the amount of training that I should be doing, so I'd add more on top of.

• 1:00:39Nick Bare?

  And I've been in preps before where I've seen the deeper I get into a prep or a build, performance decline.

• 1:00:48Nick Bare?

  I'd get slower, I'd get weaker, I would watch my endurance just become softer over time.

• 1:01:00Nick Bare?

  So I would do more and more and more, because I'm seeing my performance decline, and I'm thinking, well, the only way to get past this and dig out of this plateau and this decline is to add more volume, add more intensity on top. As you add more on top and more on top and more on top, you see more decline. Point of diminishing return, because the truth is, more is not always better.

• 1:01:25Nick Bare?

  There's a really thin red line that you have to teeter when it comes to pushing the limits of performance and then going too far, doing too much and seeing a decline as opposed to a growth.

• 1:01:44Nick Bare?

  I think back to a marathon prep that I did, or I started before this Ironman prep. And we slowly increased running mileage. So I had my daily run at nine miles a day. And I felt very strong, felt very strong.

• 1:02:06Nick Bare?

  And then we went from nine miles a day to 11 miles a day. So we're trying to get running mileage up to a certain point to build a certain level of fitness.

• 1:02:15Nick Bare?

  And from going from nine miles a day to 11 miles a day, everything fell apart.

• 1:02:23Nick Bare?

  Overuse, injuries flared up. I wasn't recovering properly. Just two additional miles a day. That's how thin that red line is that you're teetering to maximize performance. And ultimately go over the red line and experience a crash, a burnout.

• 1:02:46Nick Bare?

  Overtraining, under recovering, injuries.

• 1:02:54Nick Bare?

  More is sometimes required

• 1:02:58Nick Bare?

  to progressively overload a stimulus to facilitate an adaptation of growth and fitness.

• 1:03:06Nick Bare?

  However, when it's done too quickly

• 1:03:12Nick Bare?

  at not the right time, it can result in catastrophic

• 1:03:22Nick Bare?

  destruction of your performance, the outcomes and your ability to recover.

• 1:03:31Nick Bare?

  This is why, like I said, it's important, or can be important, to hire a coach.

• 1:03:39Nick Bare?

  Because having a coach, having a a third-party, unbiased opinion,

• 1:03:48Nick Bare?

  to come in and structure your training that has the experience, an experienced coach, and then follow your progress and make sure that you're progressing at the appropriate rates and times, not doing too much, and that third-party individual being able to say, "Hey, let's pull back. Let's stay disciplined. Let's restrain."

• 1:04:18Nick Bare?

  Because as athletes, and as I've said, type A-driven individuals, we want to do more, even when we know we're not supposed to. "Give me a few extra miles. Give me a few extra reps of 800s on the speed workout. Give me a few extra hours of training this week. Now you're not ready. It's not the time. Let's build into this." That's the importance of having a coach.

• 1:04:45Nick Bare?

  Because many of us, myself included, fall into the comparison pandemic. I have fallen for this many times.

• 1:04:54Nick Bare?

  When, for example, I'm training for a racer competition, and I see someone online who's training for the same race or competition, and they're running more than me weekly. They're running faster than me. They're running their long runs earlier in the prep than I'm running mine. And it's really easy to see this and compare where you're at, what you're doing, to what they're doing, and adjust your training program or protocols to catch up to them. That's often when everything falls apart.

• 1:05:31Nick Bare?

  Because more is not always better. Again, this is the importance of having a coach, but if you don't have a coach, staying disciplined and restraining yourself

• 1:05:44Nick Bare?

  from thinking that more is better in terms of volume and intensity,

• 1:05:49Nick Bare?

  which can eventually end up to burnout, injury, overtraining, under recovering.

• 1:05:59Nick Bare?

  Sometimes less is actually the more optimized way to train, not just for performance, but for health and quality of life outcomes as well.

• 1:06:12Nick Bare?

  All right, so the fifth and final lesson learned in the last five years of my fitness journey,

• 1:06:21Nick Bare?

  that is that progress is not determined, not only determined by PRs.

• 1:06:31Nick Bare?

  Progress is not only determined by PRs.

• 1:06:37Nick Bare?

  I used to argue against this, that you were only progressing based off of the number of races or competitions you had on the calendar for that year. And you're only progressing as if those times got faster, if the place in which you placed got better,

• 1:07:02Nick Bare?

  if you're becoming more impressive.

• 1:07:06Nick Bare?

  And I'm speaking to the performance-focused individual who is and was me, but my mindset has shifted around progress over these last five years.

• 1:07:18Nick Bare?

  I think PRs or personal records is part of the story of progress. It's a critical data point in measuring progress, but it doesn't tell the whole story. It's just part of the story. I used to always need a race, event, or competition on the calendar to be training for.

• 1:07:43Nick Bare?

  And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to have a race, event, or competition on the calendar to always be training for. This is not a bad thing by any means. I'm a huge proponent of it.

• 1:07:57Nick Bare?

  But right now, I don't have a race every month on the calendar. It's one race or one competition a year that I can focus on before going into a sustainable base-building durability season.

• 1:08:15Nick Bare?

  Part of that mindset shift for me has been how do I keep making progress in my health, fitness and performance goals in a way so that it doesn't take away from my other life responsibilities and priorities?

• 1:08:32Nick Bare?

  How do I keep making progress in my fitness, in my health, in my performance goals? So that it doesn't affect my job, my work, my marriage, my family, how I show up for my kids?

• 1:08:55Nick Bare?

  And I'll be very honest, and I'm extremely aware of this, I've learned this in this Ironman prep. As I'm deep into the prep right now, I'm 16 weeks into this prep at the time of this recording.

• 1:09:12Nick Bare?

  When I get home at night after training and working a full day.

• 1:09:17Nick Bare?

  And as I mentioned, one of the things I've had to sacrifice to make sure that I'm getting everything done is sleep, I'm exhausted when I get home. And at this point in the prep, I'm not happy with the way that I'm showing up in terms of physical, mental and emotional energy for my wife and my kids. I'm very aware of that, which is one of the reasons I'm excited for this prep to be done and the race to be done in two weeks because I've learned this prep in the season of life that I'm in right now, running and leading a business, married, kids, leading a family.

• 1:10:00Nick Bare?

  An Ironman prep is and was probably the most time and energy demanding preparation I could have done. And I learned a lot in this prep, truly a transformational prep.

• 1:10:16Nick Bare?

  Not necessarily in terms of fitness and performance, but mindset.

• 1:10:23Nick Bare?

  May not have been the smartest or best time to do this prep. But I, I, I learned that very strongly.

• 1:10:35Nick Bare?

  You know, the mindset shift is how do I keep making progress in my health, fitness and performance so that it doesn't take away from my other life priorities and responsibilities?

• 1:10:46Nick Bare?

  Learning that the hard way in this prep, that's progress.

• 1:10:51Nick Bare?

  I'm sure I'm going to hit a big PR, this, this Ironman and I'm planning on it.

• 1:10:57Nick Bare?

  But that's not the win for me that I experienced in this prep.

• 1:11:01Nick Bare?

  The win for me is, is realizing

• 1:11:07Nick Bare?

  how hard it is to balance all these different goals. And that's the progress that I've made.

• 1:11:16Nick Bare?

  I think one of the reasons that we

• 1:11:20Nick Bare?

  typically prioritize

• 1:11:25Nick Bare?

  that PR as the main data point for progress is because it's easy to measure progress through PRs.

• 1:11:33Nick Bare?

  And if we really want to see progress, we do have to track it. We have to measure it. Ways that we can

• 1:11:40Nick Bare?

  easily track and measure progress. So there's objective and there's subjective data points. We can track and measure nutrition. We can track and measure training. We can track and measure quality of life. We can track and measure biomarkers. Like a biomarker is an objectively measured data point. Quality of life is more subjective.

• 1:12:06Nick Bare?

  Training has objective and subjective data points and nutrition is primarily objective data points. Very clear, like this is how we ate. This is what we ate and this is what happened. This is how we trained. This is when we trained and this is what happened.

• 1:12:25Nick Bare?

  But I do think it's important to track our progress. If we want to see progress.

• 1:12:32Nick Bare?

  Should be tracking our nutrition, should be tracking our training, should be maybe journaling or just making notes of what we're experiencing in life, the quality of life, how training and nutrition and these goals and fitness and health. It's impacting and influencing other parts of our life, our family, our relationships, our work.

• 1:12:57Nick Bare?

  But something that I'm, I'm really confident in saying, and I stand firm in is that everything doesn't have to be optimized.

• 1:13:08Nick Bare?

  You know, when we're

• 1:13:11Nick Bare?

  chasing down PRs.

• 1:13:14Nick Bare?

  And that is the only way to measure progress, personal records.

• 1:13:20Nick Bare?

  I'm at fault of it myself, but

• 1:13:23Nick Bare?

  when I go all in on a goal. I'm chasing down a personal record. I will white knuckle and try to control every variable in my life to make that PR happen. I will optimize everything possible.

• 1:13:40Nick Bare?

  We live in a world right now, especially in the health and fitness space. Where we're being told how to optimize training, how to optimize sleep, how to optimize diet. What we should eat, what we shouldn't eat, how we should train, how we shouldn't train. What's the best way? What's good? What's not good?

• 1:14:05Nick Bare?

  And to be honest, it's a lot of information to take in.

• 1:14:10Nick Bare?

  Sometimes when I'm enjoying training and nutrition in this lifestyle, this fitness, health lifestyle the most. It's not following what's most optimized, it's just following what I love the most, what I love doing the most.

• 1:14:27Nick Bare?

  And if you're doing what you love.

• 1:14:31Nick Bare?

  It's gonna be enjoyable. It's gonna be sustainable. You're going to make progress objectively and subjectively. Regardless if you hit a PR or not. The PR just tells part of the story. But it's not the entire story. And honestly, it ties back to the first lesson I learned. And this is very specific to me individually. What I've learned these last five years of my fitness journey. Is I love, I love the balance of strength and endurance training.

• 1:15:16Nick Bare?

  A pretty even 50 50 split. Occasionally, I go in after a performance focused goal of race or a competition. And that's fun. And I experienced breakthrough and I, and I learn a lot through those preps. I really do. But where I'm really enjoying training and I'm enjoying life. I'm having fun and I'm making progress that I can measure. But then some that I can't measure. It's just, it's a way that I feel. When it comes to fitness. And the way that I'm training is a split between throwing weights around in the gym

• 1:16:00Nick Bare?

  and logging miles. That for me, that's the perfect balance. And it's taken me a lot of years, many years to, to figure that out. And I've only been able to figure that out by dipping my toes in all these different things. And I think that's what we're called to do is try different things. See what you enjoy being, you know, applicable to diet and nutrition and training and health. Figure out what works for you, what you love and do more of it.

• 1:16:41Nick Bare?

  And if you can find that thing, find that way, find that structure, that's progress. It might not be a PR. Maybe it is.

• 1:16:50Nick Bare?

  But that's progress.

• 1:16:52Nick Bare?

  So, those are five lessons

• 1:16:56Nick Bare?

  that I've learned in the last five years of my fitness journey that I wanted to share with you guys. Hope you enjoyed it. And as always, go one more.