185: Answering Your Nutrition and Training Questions

I’m answering common questions on how to balance running, strength training, nutrition, habits, HYROX prep, and making fitness work in a busy season of life. This episode is about training hard without being reckless, building systems that support your goals, and staying consistent when life, fatigue, and responsibilities get real. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Intro 00:58 Running + Leg Day 09:29 Keeping Muscle While Running 17:59 Breaking Bad Habits 28:41 Portion Control With Scale 34:24 New Dad Workout Time 37:53 Why Use The Ergs? 41:23 Bodybuilding In Hyrox Prep 46:20 Carbs Before Training 49:21 Best For Fat Loss 53:06 Weekly Strength Volume 59:09 Tracking Macros Basics ORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠ https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutrition IG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠ YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitness This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) MB01LJSD0G4H9DD

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 is a question and answer that I opened up on Instagram all around nutrition, training, habits, consistency, and hundreds of questions came in through the Instagram option of submitting what you want to know. And I've, I've chosen a few that were asked multiple times by multiple different people.

• 0:46Nick Bare?

  So I'm going to make my way through some of these training and nutrition questions in this episode. Diving into the first one, this is one that I get all the time. The first two that I'm going to answer all the time, every single day. How to balance high volume running in a consistent lower body strength training routine? So a few things, a few notes to share. One, plan appropriately. Allow yourself time between training lower body strength, resistance training, and your quality run workouts and/or your long runs.

• 1:29Nick Bare?

  So for me right now, the way that I'm structuring this, and I have in the past, Wednesday is my lower body strength training heavy day. This is where I'm coming into the gym and I'm barbell squatting, I'm belt squatting, I'm walking barbell lunge, I'm doing stiff leg deadlifts, split squats, Bulgarian squats, all of the heavy compound movements. And this day doesn't just tax me muscularly, but also

• 2:07Nick Bare?

  nervous system wise, CNS, central nervous system gets taxed on this day as well. I do my high rocks training workouts Tuesdays and Fridays. And I have my long run on Saturday. So that's kind of the way I have some of my lower body stimulus training sessions scheduled right now. I'm running every morning, Monday through Saturday, Sunday is off from training completely. Monday to Friday, it's six miles every morning, easy runs. And when I say easy runs, this is a comfortable pace.

• 2:51Nick Bare?

  It's conversational, high zone two, zone three. It's something that I can sustain Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, even Saturday. I'm not doing much, much structured workout, training runs right now, outside of my high rock sessions. Again, my high rock sessions, more interval running Tuesdays and Fridays. Saturday is my long run. So this is anywhere from eight to 10 to 12 miles, eight plus miles right now. So all that being said, I know Wednesday I'm coming into the gym and taxing my lower body.

• 3:36Nick Bare?

  I'm throwing down resistance training, weights. And based off my experience and knowing my body at this point, I will wake up Thursday morning and I will feel that workout. I will feel my muscles, but I will also feel in my central nervous system, just a little drained and fatigued. Waking up Thursdays is a little harder than waking up really any of the other days throughout the week because of the stimulus of what that workout does to my body on Wednesdays. When I'm hitting legs, I'm hitting legs hard. Thursday, I know my central nervous system is going to be pretty taxed when I wake up.

• 4:17Nick Bare?

  But Friday, when I wake up, my central nervous system is recovering. My muscles feel it the most, my legs, my lower body. And then by the afternoon, Friday, I'm feeling a little bit better. That's DOMS, D-O-M-S, delayed onset muscle soreness. If you've been training for any extent of time, you probably have experienced DOMS before, where there's a delayed muscle soreness, maybe not 24 hours after workout. Maybe it's 48 hours after the workout. I know Friday is going to be pretty uncomfortable running in the morning.

• 4:56Nick Bare?

  So my first tip on how to balance high volume running and consistent lower body strength training is to plan appropriately. Space out your quality runs, whether this is a tempo workout, intervals, a track workout, far enough away from that lower body strength day. So you can still get the quality from that quality session. And then space your long run out as far as possible from your lower body strength day. And that's why I have my lower body strength resistance workout Wednesday, long run Saturday.

• 5:38Nick Bare?

  I find that that spacing works really well for me. Come Saturday, my central nervous system is recovered. My lower body muscles are recovered. And just having a plan in place that spaces these big workouts and then your easier workouts in between appropriately makes the biggest difference. But if you hit, you know, lower body strength Friday afternoon, and then Saturday morning, you're going for your long run, your long run might be a little trash. And for me, I only get a lot out of that long run. I want to enjoy the long run.

• 6:17Nick Bare?

  So I space my lower body strength day away from my long run appropriately. My second tip is to have realistic expectations. You know, if you still want to hit the gym hard and you still want to run significant amount of miles, some of those runs are just going to be uncomfortable. And if you have those realistic expectations, I think when you wake up and you realize your legs don't feel as fresh as they have days prior, that's okay. That's just part of it. Maybe those are the days where you take your easy runs a little easier,

• 7:00Nick Bare?

  pull back pace a little bit, pull back effort a little bit, maybe even pull back mileage and distance a little bit to allow yourself to recover. So I like to have realistic expectations, knowing that the two days after my lower body strength day, that run is probably going to be a little uncomfortable. And I just know that at this point. And the third tip is to train smart. And this is paired with having realistic expectations. There are days where you might wake up and you hit a really big workout

• 7:41Nick Bare?

  and your body is just not recovering as it normally does or should. Your central nervous system is fried. Maybe you have additional life stressors. Your kids aren't sleeping, there's stress at work. You're coming off of a sickness, you are ill, you're recovering. If you're not recovering like you normally would, and some of these workouts are taxing you more than they typically do, your central nervous system is fried, your muscles are aching and hurt. There is a time to push and drive through that discomfort.

• 8:21Nick Bare?

  But there's also a time to be smart and say, hey, let's not run today. Let's pull back effort, let's pull back mileage, let's pull back distance. Let's supplement our cardiovascular conditioning with a less impactful source of cardio like the ERGs, skier, rower, Concept 2 bike, and allow our body to recover, reset, readjust for the next couple of days, the next week. So how to balance high volume running in a consistent lower body strength training routine? Plan appropriately, have realistic expectations, and train smart. Don't try to be a hero.

• 9:06Nick Bare?

  Set yourself up to improve, recover well, and continue training. As I've said before, quoted from my good friend and running coach Jeff Cunningham, it's better to be consistently good than occasionally great. A second question that is asked quite frequently is how to maintain muscle mass while also running? A few points here.

• 9:40Nick Bare?

  Myself, as an example, I built my body, I built my physique, my frame, my muscles, my strength. Because the first decade of my life, training life, if you will, I started training seriously when I was about 17 years old.

• 10:05Nick Bare?

  And then when I transitioned out of the army in 2017, I was 27 years old. That is when I first started taking running serious. So from 17 years old to 27 years old, the foundation of my training was in the gym. It was strength training, resistance training, hypertrophy, bodybuilding. I didn't care about getting faster. I didn't care about building endurance. I wanted to get as big and strong as possible. I was in the gym, I was accumulating volume, I was consuming so much food,

• 10:48Nick Bare?

  just packing on as much size and strength as I could, and I loved every part of it. So then when I started running when I was 27 years old and I transitioned out of the military and started training for marathons and triathlons and ultras, as you've seen the last 10 years of my life,

• 11:11Nick Bare?

  I then started to lean out a little bit, lost some size, some strength. You know, at the peak of my strength training and bodybuilding era, I deadlifted 700 pounds. There's no way I'm getting back to 700 pounds on the deadlift anytime soon. So when I started running, I did lose some size. I did lose some strength, but I had that foundation from 10 years of bodybuilding and strength training prior to beginning to run. So I wanted to share that context before I go a little bit further.

• 11:53Nick Bare?

  But there's a few things that are going to determine how much muscle you can gain and then how much muscle you maintain while also incorporating different styles of training like running and a heavy emphasis of cardiovascular conditioning. Genetics are a big part of that. Genetics have a large role in how strong you can get, how much muscle you can develop, how quickly you can build muscle,

• 12:25Nick Bare?

  how easily you hold on to and maintain muscle. So genetics do play a large role in that.

• 12:32Nick Bare?

  But what also matters is your training.

• 12:37Nick Bare?

  Like how to maintain muscle mass while also running. Well, if you start running a lot and you stop training or you reduce your strength training significantly, you will lose muscle mass. If you're not consuming enough nutrition, calories, protein, carbohydrates to fuel the lean mass you have on your body and then the added amount of energy expenditure that running brings, you will lose size, you will lose muscle. If you're not fueling your training appropriately, your workouts, your training sessions,

• 13:21Nick Bare?

  that will affect lean muscle tissue, lean mass.

• 13:27Nick Bare?

  But also what I found is that the longer you run, the longer you perform the same type of repetitive movements and exercises like running,

• 13:42Nick Bare?

  your body becomes more efficient and over time your body burns fewer calories at the same effort. What do I mean by that?

• 13:52Nick Bare?

  I would argue, and I don't have data in front of me to support this, so I could be very far off. But when I first started running seriously in 2017, 2018, when I started training for my first marathon, my running form was very inefficient.

• 14:17Nick Bare?

  I was much heavier. My biomechanics weren't fluid or efficient to be a runner. So when I would run back then, I burned significantly more calories because I was not efficient at what I was doing or performing.

• 14:40Nick Bare?

  From that moment until today, if you look at even my run form, my body looks so much more comfortable running. My form is much more efficient than it was 10 years ago. And that efficiency means less effort and less effort means less calories, less energy expended and burned.

• 15:07Nick Bare?

  So as you gain more experience with training, your body adapts, it becomes more efficient, it utilizes less energy than it used to because of that efficiency. So how do you maintain muscle mass while also running?

• 15:26Nick Bare?

  Don't stop strength training.

• 15:30Nick Bare?

  It depends on genetics. It depends on your previous experience of training. Did you build a foundation of strength and muscle prior to starting a serious running journey?

• 15:48Nick Bare?

  And then what does your nutrition look like? What does your caloric intake look like? How efficient are you at the movements?

• 15:58Nick Bare?

  So I would, I would seriously say that when you first start running, if you are a historical strength athlete, bodybuilder, fitness to you was spent in a gym, and then you start running,

• 16:16Nick Bare?

  you will probably immediately feel like you are losing strength and size and muscle.

• 16:25Nick Bare?

  But I believe that over time,

• 16:28Nick Bare?

  weeks, months, years, as your body becomes more efficient at that movement pattern, it is easier to maintain and build muscle while also running.

• 16:45Nick Bare?

  But probably what happens with a lot of people is they first start running and they are inefficient and they're not keeping up with the nutrition demands

• 16:55Nick Bare?

  and they feel like they're losing size and strength and muscle right away. Your body will adapt over time. But that initial shock to the body mentally and physically is probably quite alarming for a lot of people. But the longer you stick with it, the more efficient your body becomes, you learn how to coordinate these multiple different styles of training. You can continue building and maintaining muscle the longer you do it. The third question is how to break bad habits. This is something I'm really intrigued by right now.

• 17:42Nick Bare?

  I've been serving

• 17:45Nick Bare?

  my audience, you guys, primarily on Instagram, a lot recently because I'm trying to learn and understand what you guys are struggling with and how I can best support and help.

• 17:58Nick Bare?

  One of the things I'm doing right now is rebuilding my training app. I've had a training app for

• 18:07Nick Bare?

  almost six years now and I have a lot of my old training programs within that training app. And I'm rebuilding that app right now where every Sunday I will release a new week of workouts.

• 18:25Nick Bare?

  And it's going to be a six-day training split, one workout per day. It's going to be a hybrid model, a balance of strength training and running and functional movements. And I'm relaunching that app here in the next couple of weeks. And the daily workout will be called G1M Daily.

• 18:48Nick Bare?

  And my goal with relaunching the app is one to provide you guys consistent workouts and programming that you can easily follow to reach your goals, get fitter, get stronger, build muscle, build endurance, get faster.

• 19:08Nick Bare?

  And then create a resource within the app, a community where I can answer questions on a regular basis, engage with you guys, but really help you reach your goals, get healthier, be more consistent. So I've been asking a lot of questions on social lately to learn what you struggle with. And it's interesting that this was one of the questions that popped up multiple times. How do I break bad habits? Because I asked this question last week, what

• 19:43Nick Bare?

  habits are you struggling with that are holding you back from your health, your fitness, your performance, improvement, betterment of your life? And majority of the responses, I mean, overwhelming majority of the responses were addiction to devices, your phone, doom scrolling, specifically, binge eating, overeating, snacking, and staying up too late, and sleeping in,

• 20:23Nick Bare?

  and pressing snooze on your alarm. Those are the three responses that were overwhelming from the thousands of responses. So how do you break a bad habit?

• 20:38Nick Bare?

  This could be a podcast episode on its own, but I have a few tips. One, eliminate the source that's causing the bad habit. If you have a problem in the evening of binging and snacking, and, you know, I know for a lot of people, they might have chips, or cookies, or crackers, or some sort of treat in their pantry or their fridge. What happens in the evening is you're winding down, you might be a little bored, you walk over to the fridge, or the pantry, you grab one or two pieces of something you enjoy, you go do something

• 21:22Nick Bare?

  else, you walk by the fridge again, you open up, you grab one or two more pieces, you walk around, you do something else, you walk back by the pantry, the fridge again, you grab another one or two pieces, or a handful of something, that stuff adds up, and will throw you off track so quickly. I even think of something that is healthy, nuts, for example, peanuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, you can pretty quickly and easily consume 1,000 plus calories from nuts or seeds, and not even think anything of it. Like, I would encourage you, if you

• 22:03Nick Bare?

  haven't done this before, if you have a food scale at home, which after this episode, you'll probably want to go buy a food scale, buy a bag of nuts, any kind of nuts, and then on a food scale, weigh out one serving, which is typically one ounce or 28 grams. After doing this for so long, you just know what serving sizes look like. Like, a half a cup of oats is 40 grams. Weigh out 28 grams of nuts, like 28 grams or an ounce of macadamia nuts, which is 200 calories, is depressing to look at, or granola. Weigh out one serving

• 22:47Nick Bare?

  of your favorite granola, and you will be mind blown. You'll probably quickly realize that you've been consuming five, six, seven servings of granola, or nuts, when you consume these type items. So if there's something that is a trigger for a habit, a bad habit, eliminate the source. If you are a sucker for chips, don't have chips in your house.

• 23:18Nick Bare?

  If you're a sucker for trail mix, don't have trail mix in your house. Eliminate the source of the bad habit. If you have problems with alcohol, beer, wine, liquor, don't have it in the house. Just don't. That's the best way to break a bad habit, or start breaking a bad habit. Just don't have it in your environment. Eliminate the source. My second tip is to set boundaries. So I've talked about this one before, but Steph and I have this app on our phone, it's called AppBlock, A-P-P-B-L-O-C-K. And you can create schedules

• 24:03Nick Bare?

  and boundaries in this app, and then you can put it on a lock mode, where even if you want to turn the app off, you can't because it's locked. You can set it to schedules where you can't get on social media within certain windows. You know, say at 7:00 PM, and that's when you struggle with doom scrolling from 7:00 and 9:00 PM, set a schedule within this app that says, all of your social media apps are blocked from 7:00 PM until 7:00 AM the next morning. You physically can't get into it. If doom scrolling is a problem for

• 24:45Nick Bare?

  you on the weekends or the evenings, set boundaries, set schedules so you can't access those devices or those applications during certain windows when you struggle the most.

• 24:59Nick Bare?

  Eliminate the source, set boundaries, create new habits, create healthy habits that keep you occupied and distracted from the bad habits. You gotta ask yourself, what is the habit? What's the purpose and why that habit? When will you perform that habit? And how will you execute that habit? Example, I run six days a week, Monday through Saturday.

• 25:32Nick Bare?

  I set my alarm for 5:00 AM. The first thing I do when that alarm goes off, I pop out of bed. I don't allow myself to snooze. At this point, because it's so routine, I typically wake up five to 10 minutes before the alarm even goes off. I rarely make it to my alarm. I pop out of bed, the first thing I do, because I've built this system, and now it's a habit that is ingrained in me, I could do it in my sleep. I go to the pantry, I mix up my run fuel, which is one scoop of G1M Sport, one scoop of G1M Sport Plus. I mix that up, I slug that, I chug it. Then I go into our closet, and I do red light therapy for 15

• 26:17Nick Bare?

  to 20 minutes. At that point, the fuel is in my bloodstream, it's consumed, it's ready to go, it's digested. I make my way into the garage, I put my running shoes on, and by 5:30 AM, I am out the door, running. That habit, the run every morning, there's all these things that are built to prime that habit. The alarm, the red light, the running

• 26:58Nick Bare?

  fuel, I lay out my run shoes, socks, shorts, the night before, I prime that habit to set myself up for success. There's a what, there's a why, there's a purpose, there's a when, there's a how. Priming the habit makes a big difference. You know, it's one of the things I talked about in my previous podcast, about how to be more consistent. And a lot of what I shared was from James Clear's book, called Atomic Habits. Highly recommend if you haven't read that book, or if you haven't listened to that podcast, How to Be More Consistent,

• 27:41Nick Bare?

  I recommend it. And he talks about priming your habits. There's many different methods to prime a habit. I just shared one, the habit being running, and how I prime it with the alarm, and my running fuel, and the red light therapy, and laying my clothes out the night before. It facilitates the ease and discipline of executing on that habit.

• 28:10Nick Bare?

  Here's an example for you when it comes to eating and nutrition. If you struggle overeating, let's say at dinner.

• 28:21Nick Bare?

  I am a big fan of food scales.

• 28:25Nick Bare?

  I don't track my nutrition very frequently anymore because my meals, my nutrition on a daily basis are pretty consistent.

• 28:36Nick Bare?

  My breakfast, my lunch, what I eat before going to bed is almost the same day to day. Dinner is where we have the most variation.

• 28:48Nick Bare?

  Just based off of what the families hungry for, what foods we have available in the house, what we picked up at the grocery store, the farmer's market that week prior.

• 28:58Nick Bare?

  I still use a food scale every day for everything.

• 29:03Nick Bare?

  I don't even think about it anymore. I just, I pull a food scale out for portion control.

• 29:10Nick Bare?

  So here's an example that you can implement that I find works really well.

• 29:18Nick Bare?

  This is a pretty typical dinner for us in the evening.

• 29:23Nick Bare?

  We'll grill up some chicken thighs on the Traeger. We'll make either rice in the rice cooker, or we'll dice up some potatoes, throw them in the oven. We dice them up, shake them in some olive oil, some seasonings, and throw them in the oven at 425 degrees for 45 minutes. And then we'll make a vegetable on the side. Broccolini, zucchini, asparagus. There's always a protein source, there's always a carb source, there's always a vegetable source. And we'll mix it up. We'll do steak, we'll do ground beef, we'll do salmon, we'll do fish, we'll do chicken, chicken thighs, chicken breasts. We just, we, protein, carbs, vegetable.

• 30:09Nick Bare?

  And we'll make all of this. And then as I'm putting food on my plate, Steph does the same thing, my wife. We get the food scale out, put my plate on the food scale. And if I'm adding a meat, chicken, or steak, I add eight to nine ounces of meat, which is getting me around 50 grams of protein. If I'm adding rice, I will add 250 to 300 grams of rice.

• 30:41Nick Bare?

  If I'm adding potatoes, it's eight to 10 ounces of potatoes. And I don't weigh my vegetables, I just throw a bunch of vegetables on the plate. If I'm really hungry that day, I'll add more vegetables to help fill me up.

• 30:56Nick Bare?

  Using a food scale can be extremely beneficial for portion control.

• 31:03Nick Bare?

  The opposite of what you might do is you get to dinner, you're starving. And I can relate to this, and this is why I use a food scale. My eyes are typically hungrier than my stomach is.

• 31:20Nick Bare?

  And I will fill that plate. I'll put 20 ounces of meat, I'll put 20 ounces of potatoes, I'll just fill it up. I'm starving, I need so much food.

• 31:31Nick Bare?

  And then by the time I'm done eating, because if I put it on my plate, I'm eating it. When I go to a restaurant, whatever you put on that plate, I'm eating all of it. I'm sending that plate back to the kitchen, cleared, clean. I've never been someone to leave food on a plate. And this is why, this is a boundary for me. This is one of the reasons I use a food scale, because I put it on my plate, I'm eating it.

• 32:01Nick Bare?

  I will overeat if I allow myself to build my plate without portion control. And maybe you struggle with the same thing. Or maybe you make a plate, you eat everything that's on the plate, and you go back for seconds, in thirds. And then 30 minutes later, after you're done eating all the food, you are stuffed, uncomfortably full.

• 32:26Nick Bare?

  It takes some time for your stomach and your body to tell you yourself, you are satisfied, you are no longer hungry, before your mind does.

• 32:40Nick Bare?

  So what I would encourage people to do, if you have a problem or you struggle overeating at a meal, use a food scale, weigh out appropriate portions, make your plate, eat your food slow. When you're done eating all your food, wait 20 to 30 minutes after you are done eating to decide if you are still hungry.

• 33:04Nick Bare?

  Because if you're anything like me, as soon as I finish eating that plate of food, I'm typically still hungry. But if I wait 20 to 30 minutes, I allow my body to catch up with the signals that my mind is telling me, eat more, eat more, eat more. If I wait 20 to 30 minutes, I realize I'm actually not hungry anymore. I am comfortably full.

• 33:31Nick Bare?

  And I don't want that second or third plate. So prime the habit that you are struggling with, or that you want to improve or master. As a new dad, how do I find time to work out?

• 33:51Nick Bare?

  There's something I said a few years ago that really resonated with people, really connected with people.

• 33:59Nick Bare?

  I said, if it matters to you, you will make time.

• 34:06Nick Bare?

  Make time. The question was, as a new dad, how do I find time to work out?

• 34:13Nick Bare?

  Now, this might seem insignificant, but if you try to find time, you might find this more challenging. But if you make time, you might find that this comes easier.

• 34:33Nick Bare?

  Before I had kids, I had all the time in the world, relatively, to do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it.

• 34:45Nick Bare?

  I could train at 5:00 AM if I wanted to, I could train at 8:00 AM if I wanted to. I could train at 4:00 PM if I wanted to, I could train at 7:00 PM if I wanted to. After having a kid, Charlie, four years ago, and then our second child, Nico, two years ago, I found out that if you wait to find the time, you're going to run out of time. You have to allocate and make the time.

• 35:17Nick Bare?

  That's why I wake up at 5:00 AM every day, I'm running by 5:30, I'm back by 6:15. And I'm done with my morning run and my morning routine, typically before the kids wake up. Unless we're in some sort of sleep regression, I'm always back for my morning run, done with my morning routine, before the family is up. I make that time. I sacrifice some sleep and some rest, so I can make the time to do the things that I want and need to do for myself, so that it doesn't take time away from my family, and I don't have to try to find that time later in the day.

• 36:03Nick Bare?

  But it's also important that, once you become a dad, and your mission in life is to serve your family, to serve your children, to serve your spouse, your partner.

• 36:17Nick Bare?

  It's really important to understand that responsibilities are prioritized over routines.

• 36:29Nick Bare?

  I love my morning routine, I love my morning run, but I love my family, I love my children, I love my wife more than that morning routine, and more than that morning run. So my responsibilities will always come first. My routines will always come second. But I can still do my best to make the time for myself, so that the things that I want to do don't affect the people I love. Question five, what is the purpose of incorporating the ERGs into your training routine right now?

• 37:09Nick Bare?

  The ERGs are the skier, the rower, the concept to bike. Why do I incorporate these into my training routine? Well, first off, I'm training for a High Rocks right now.

• 37:26Nick Bare?

  So I'm doing High Rocks Dallas in November, and then a High Rocks Nashville in December. And the skier, the rower, these ERGs are part of the movements in High Rocks. If you're not familiar with High Rocks is, it's eight stations. Each station is a 1K run followed by a functional movement. Some of those functional movements are the skier, rower, sandbag lunges, sled push, sled pull, burpy broad jumps, wall balls, farmer's carry.

• 38:05Nick Bare?

  So why am I incorporating the ERGs into my training routine right now? For one, they are movements in high rocks, so I want to improve on them. But they are also a great way to get additional cardiovascular and aerobic stimulus benefits without running. You might be asking yourself, well, why would I not want to run? Running itself is a very taxing movement. It's really hard on the body. It is high cortisol producing. It is just impactful. And even as much as I love running, you can overdo it.

• 38:50Nick Bare?

  And it's easy to get overuse injuries from running. And it just, it taxes the central nervous system significantly. So one of the ways to keep improving your cardiovascular conditioning, health, and get additional aerobic benefits is to adding in different movements like the ERGs, skier, rower, Concept 2 bike, where I'm still getting my heart rate into a certain zone. I'm still getting that aerobic conditioning benefit without the taxing impact from running.

• 39:30Nick Bare?

  I think they are extremely beneficial to incorporate into your training. Similar to triathlon training, three disciplines, swimming, cycling, running. When I was training for my Ironman, it was the best aerobic conditioning shape I've ever been in my life. And it's not just because I was running more, but I was cycling multiple hours a week. I was swimming multiple hours a week. Cycling and swimming are low impact compared to running. But all this added volume in aerobic conditioning benefit, it just builds that base, that foundation,

• 40:15Nick Bare?

  your engine, without overtaxing the body. Why are you incorporating bodybuilding style of training into your high rocks prep? It seems unnecessary. Specific goals require specific training practices. And I've said this many, many times before. If you are training for an Ironman, triathlon, your training practices have to reflect swimming, cycling, running.

• 40:59Nick Bare?

  Different techniques and intervals for swimming, different thresholds when it comes to cycling and distances and durations. When it comes to running, you're manipulating volume over time and speed sessions. That's how you improve. Specificity. But I also believe that you have to love the training itself. It's not just the goal that we're focused on, but it's also the process, the systems that we put in place that have to be sustainable, enjoy filled.

• 41:43Nick Bare?

  So if I wanted to be the best high rocks athlete in the world, I would change all of my training for the next couple of months to just be focused on getting better at high rocks. Sometimes I like putting these competitions and races on the schedule, on my calendar as a directional goal. This is what I'm working towards. It's gonna force me to change my training a little bit, my nutrition. It gives me a target to aim for, a new mission that I'm working towards. But I have to be very honest with myself.

• 42:27Nick Bare?

  If I was going to shift all of my training to just be the best at high rocks possible, I would start to hate my training. That's just the reality of it. When it comes to training, I love running. I love traditional bodybuilding and strength training. I do. Traditional bodybuilding, resistance training, being in a gym, getting a pump, that will forever be my favorite style of training. I love it. I do. I love it. And I also love these high rocks circuits I'm incorporating into my training twice a week right now.

• 43:09Nick Bare?

  Like I would easily say right now, this is some of the most fun I've had training for a goal on a mission for a target in a long time. It's a perfect blend. It's, it's fun, it's engaging, there's variation. And I can come in and hit bicep curls and pull-ups and lat pull downs and barbell rows and deadlifts on a Thursday, knowing that Friday, I'm gonna wake up early and log a six mile run in the afternoon, do a nasty high rock circuit and just get cooked.

• 43:52Nick Bare?

  And then Saturday morning, wake up and do a long run. And then after a day off Sunday, come back into the gym Monday and hit dumbbell chest press and body weight dips and tricep push downs and barbell overhead press. I love the training that I'm doing right now and I don't want to lose the love for it. So why am I incorporating bodybuilding style training into my high rocks prep? It's because I love it. Is it optimal? Maybe not. But I'm enjoying it. It's effective.

• 44:32Nick Bare?

  But what if that means it's gonna hurt my progress in my final time in the high rocks? That's okay. I'm all right with that. But if I fall in love with the training that I'm doing in preparation for the goal, that means more to me than being optimized for the target. I thought this was a really good question. If carbohydrates take 24 plus hours to be stored as glycogen, why do you fuel with them before and during a training session? So it's called assimilation.

• 45:12Nick Bare?

  From the time that you consume carbohydrates, your body digests them, breaks them down, and can then store them as glycogen, primarily in the muscles, but some in the liver. It takes 24 plus hours. That's why this, you know, classic scene from The Office with Michael Scott, where he's consuming chicken pasta Alfredo at the starting line of his 5K to carb up is so wrong and funny and unrealistic.

• 45:52Nick Bare?

  So we have glycogen, which are carbohydrates that our body stores, like I said, primarily in the muscle, but also the liver. And then we have carbohydrates in our bloodstream. So this is why you consume simple carbohydrates before a training session and during a training session. Simple carbohydrates that are digested very quickly and easily. They can enter the bloodstream as glucose within five to 15 minutes. So when I wake up at 5:00 AM and I drink my G1M Spore, two scoops, 40 grams carbs,

• 46:37Nick Bare?

  700 milligrams of sodium, and I wait about 30 minutes to go run, those carbs I consume because they are simple carbohydrate sources and they digest very quickly, they are in my bloodstream as glucose and my body can use that glucose as fuel. And it doesn't have to tap into and break down glycogen that is stored for longer term use. So that's why I consume carbohydrates or we consume carbohydrates before a workout or a race and then during. Simple carbohydrates, easily fast digesting carbohydrates, because our body can use them

• 47:20Nick Bare?

  as glucose that's circulating in the bloodstream as they are digested quickly and readily available. Eating simple carbohydrates replenishes blood sugar during training to maintain energy levels, mental ability capacity. It spares stored muscle glycogen and it fuels performance.

• 47:47Nick Bare?

  Here's a good one.

• 47:49Nick Bare?

  Is strength training or running best for weight and fat loss?

• 47:57Nick Bare?

  I'd be curious what most people think and believe. Because strength training, building muscle, is far superior for long-term fat loss and body composition improvement compared to running and cardiovascular conditioning. Why?

• 48:19Nick Bare?

  So cardiovascular conditioning or running relies on acute calorie burn.

• 48:28Nick Bare?

  So I'm running, or I'm on the bike, I'm swimming, I'm performing a high effort exercise. I am burning calories, I'm expending energy while I'm performing that exercise. And really, only then. It acutely burns a lot of calories.

• 48:52Nick Bare?

  Running, an hour of running versus an hour of strength training, you are burning more calories during one hour of running than you are from one hour of strength training. Typically, depends on what that strength training workout looks like, but generally, you are burning more calories during cardiovascular conditioning than typical traditional strength and resistance training.

• 49:20Nick Bare?

  But, and here's the but.

• 49:24Nick Bare?

  Strength training, resistance training, it builds muscle.

• 49:30Nick Bare?

  Muscle being lean tissue. Muscle and lean tissue is metabolically expensive.

• 49:38Nick Bare?

  This means that the more muscle and lean tissue you have,

• 49:42Nick Bare?

  the higher your BMR, basal metabolic rate. This is the number of calories your body burns each day to just stay alive at complete rest.

• 49:56Nick Bare?

  So when you strength train, you resistance train, you build muscle, you build lean tissue. Your body, having more lean tissue and more muscle, will burn more calories at rest than the person who has less lean tissue and muscle. Muscle is metabolically expensive. Your body has to work hard to maintain more mass, more muscle, more lean tissue. So if you want to lose weight and you want to lose fat for the long term, I'm not talking 30 days, you want to drop 15 pounds and then gain it all back.

• 50:38Nick Bare?

  No, if you want to consistently improve your body composition over years and years in a lifetime, you're going to do this by building more muscle, more lean tissue.

• 50:52Nick Bare?

  As opposed to having to rely on the acute calorie burn of just running and expending energy, exercising every single day. How much strength training or resistance training do you need to be doing weekly to build muscle and get stronger?

• 51:16Nick Bare?

  There's so many nuances to this question. And the easiest, unfortunately,

• 51:27Nick Bare?

  best answer is it depends. It depends on a lot of things. It depends on your genetic potential. It depends on your experience of training, how long you've been training,

• 51:44Nick Bare?

  what type of training you've been doing. It depends on the experience of the athlete that we're talking about. Are you training properly? You know, we lump strength training into this one bucket. There's training to get stronger. There's training to get and build more muscle hypertrophy. It's different approaches to training.

• 52:16Nick Bare?

  A lot of people think they are strength training.

• 52:20Nick Bare?

  And they're trying to build strength, but they're actually, the way they're walking into the gym and training, they're building muscular endurance. They're not actually training hard and intense and heavy enough.

• 52:37Nick Bare?

  So there's a difference between strength training, strength endurance, and muscular endurance. Strength training is like the one to five rep range. This is 80 to 100% of your one rep max. And the primary adaptation with strength training, it's neural. Nervous system. You get better motor unit recruitment, coordination, and rate of force production.

• 53:07Nick Bare?

  So when you get stronger, it's not necessarily that you're building more muscle. I mean, that is a byproduct of getting stronger. When you're building strength, you know, if we're talking about getting a bigger and stronger deadlift or barbell squat or bench press, this isn't just because you're building more muscle, but your nervous system, your motor unit recruitment and coordination and rate of force production improves and gets better. You're building muscle as a byproduct of those adaptations.

• 53:43Nick Bare?

  Strength endurance is typically, and there's no black or white to this, but it's typically like eight to 12 rep range. This is where you maintain a significant percentage of your max strength across many reps for longer efforts. So think of strength endurance where it's a few more reps than that one to five rep range. And it's a little bit lighter weight, but there's still a large stimulus on the muscular system as well as essential nervous system.

• 54:25Nick Bare?

  And then you have muscular endurance, this is 12 plus reps, much lighter weight, lots of reps, lighter loads, and submaximal force production.

• 54:38Nick Bare?

  There's less benefit to muscular endurance for building muscle, building lean tissue, improving body composition. It's kind of like this gray area.

• 54:52Nick Bare?

  So one, how much strength training do you need to do on a weekly basis to build muscle and get stronger? You got to ask yourself, are you training properly? Are you training in the appropriate rep ranges with the appropriate loads? Is the weight you're using heavy enough to provide and facilitate

• 55:17Nick Bare?

  the response to get stronger, to build muscle?

• 55:22Nick Bare?

  And it depends on the experience of the athlete being trained, but

• 55:27Nick Bare?

  I would say that anywhere from 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week is an appropriate amount of training volume.

• 55:41Nick Bare?

  10 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week. This doesn't include warm-up or back off sets. So say you have for barbell squats, programmed a five by five.

• 56:00Nick Bare?

  You might do eight total sets. Or say you have two warm-up sets and then you do your five by five and you have a back off set. You're counting those five by five hard sets as working sets.

• 56:20Nick Bare?

  The other three sets, the two warm-up and the one back off, those are just to set you up for success for those movements. So 10 to 15 hard working sets per muscle group per week, I think is an appropriate range

• 56:37Nick Bare?

  to aim for on a weekly basis to build muscle, lean tissue, improve body composition, and get stronger.

• 56:47Nick Bare?

  And the last question I'm going to answer.

• 56:51Nick Bare?

  How to start tracking nutrition, food, and macros?

• 56:57Nick Bare?

  And I think if you were to ask me this question years ago, I would have answered it differently.

• 57:03Nick Bare?

  And I'm excited to share this response. And I think this deserves probably a full YouTube video, which I'm going to start working on and planning.

• 57:14Nick Bare?

  Because I've just found that so many people struggle with

• 57:19Nick Bare?

  nutrition, consistency, tracking, nowhere to start. Because what generally happens is someone goes zero to 100 really quick, they go all in. Super aggressive.

• 57:36Nick Bare?

  And this is great.

• 57:38Nick Bare?

  But the question is, is it a sustainable approach and model?

• 57:45Nick Bare?

  Maybe, maybe not, but I've seen a lot of people fall off just as fast and hard as they've gotten started.

• 57:55Nick Bare?

  So how to start tracking nutrition, food, and macros?

• 57:59Nick Bare?

  This is what I would recommend. First, buy a food scale.

• 58:05Nick Bare?

  Before you even start thinking about tracking any of your food in an application, your phone, writing it down, buy a food scale.

• 58:18Nick Bare?

  And start being more food conscious.

• 58:22Nick Bare?

  What this means. For the first week or two, or even month, eat as you normally would. But use your food scale, get comfortable with it, start weighing how much you're consuming.

• 58:37Nick Bare?

  You know, put your, as you're, as I was previously describing, when you're making your plate for dinner, put your plate on the food scale.

• 58:49Nick Bare?

  And if you're weighing your meat, tear it, say it to ounces, put on that plate what you normally would consume. Don't look at the food scale until you put all the meat on that plate you normally would, and then look at it. I did this with someone recently where they thought they were consuming enough. This, this individual was under consuming.

• 59:13Nick Bare?

  And we had them put a plate on a food scale. And we said, add how much protein, how much meat you normally would eat at dinner on this food scale. It was two ounces.

• 59:28Nick Bare?

  Two ounces of, of protein.

• 59:33Nick Bare?

  Not nearly enough.

• 59:36Nick Bare?

  And we had them aim for four to five ounces. It was a female portion size. And they were mind blown by how little they were consuming. So you might learn in this, this process that you're under consuming or you're over consuming, but just become more aware of what you're eating. When you add your potatoes, or your rice, or your pasta to your plate, just weigh it out. Add it to the plate as you normally would, and then look how much you added, write it down somewhere and you can reference it later. But don't get caught up in, in all of, how much should I be consuming? What should my macros be? How many calories? How much protein? How many carbs? How much fat?

• 1:00:20Nick Bare?

  Just start making notes. This is how much I consumed at dinner this night of protein, of carbohydrates. Here's the extra sauces I added and condiments and all of those things.

• 1:00:33Nick Bare?

  Start reading nutrition labels.

• 1:00:36Nick Bare?

  As I mentioned previously, people think granola is healthy, which it can be. But maybe not when you're consuming 500 plus calories of granola in three to five to seven plus servings. Start looking at nutrition labels, looking at how much a serving size is. And then when you go to add that to your bowl, your plate, weigh it out. You'll learn a lot in that process. You're teaching yourself

• 1:01:10Nick Bare?

  a level of self-awareness and wisdom and knowledge around portions and food labels and learning how to use a food scale.

• 1:01:24Nick Bare?

  Like before you even start tracking anything, just become more food conscious.

• 1:01:31Nick Bare?

  By the food scale, start reading nutrition labels, weigh serving sizes, learn what portion sizes look like.

• 1:01:39Nick Bare?

  You know, you don't have to use a food scale every day for the rest of your life, but I know what 40 grams of oats, one serving looks like now. I know generally what eight ounces of protein looks like. I know what a cup and a half of white jasmine rice looks like. I know what

• 1:02:00Nick Bare?

  28 grams or one ounce of nuts looks like, or 150 grams of blueberries. After doing this for so long, I know what portion sizes look like. And then how many grams of protein or carbohydrates or fat is associated with that portion size?

• 1:02:20Nick Bare?

  I've built this awareness around food and portions and calories and macronutrients over time to the point now where I really don't have to track anything. I'm just aware.

• 1:02:35Nick Bare?

  And once you get comfortable with that, using a food scale, reading nutrition labels, understanding portion control and sizes, then you can start logging your food into an app on your phone, online. You then can set up your calorie targets and macronutrient goals. You then can start making adjustments to your calories, your proteins, your fats and carbs. And there's lots of different online calculators that can do this now. I'm sure AI can pretty accurately figure out your maintenance calories and your protein goals and carbohydrate goals and dietary fat goals.

• 1:03:18Nick Bare?

  But I think that the best thing you can do to start tracking nutrition, food and macros is to just become more aware of what you're consuming, how much. Certain things add up too. You know, we typically add sauces and oils and condiments to a lot of our food, not even thinking about how much those calories can and do add up very quickly.

• 1:03:48Nick Bare?

  So that's where I would start to get better at tracking your nutrition, your food, your macronutrients.

• 1:03:57Nick Bare?

  I hope that these questions

• 1:04:01Nick Bare?

  had strong answers that are helpful to you guys. I enjoy doing these because I know when there's a question that's asked multiple times by multiple different people, there's probably more people that will benefit from learning and understanding and hearing the way that I think about it.

• 1:04:19Nick Bare?

  What I've learned over my lifetime, especially focused much of my career on health and fitness and nutrition and training. So I hope it does help you guys.

• 1:04:31Nick Bare?

  Thanks for the questions. Thank you for tuning in. And as always, go one more.