Stop focusing on the stuff that doesn't matter
Good morning everybody I'm back, sorry I didn't do a voicemail yesterday Doctor. P was ill had to come in on the old 7AM workout and, it was quicker actually. I'm feeling these workouts now week 300%. I managed to get some heavier dumbbells and that's an important point actually if you're feeling these workouts are too easy and I have a few emails come in like you're, you know these workouts you know not feeling it. Well the problem there is the weights not heavy enough and your rep speed is probably too fast.
Speaker 1:So you're not doing the three second negatives. Like everybody should be feeling these workouts at this point. Like even the most advanced lifter in the world is all relative. The weight you're using should be near what you can do for 10 to 20 reps max. So you do those reps, by the end of it you're nearly maxed out, you've nearly gone.
Speaker 1:Intensity, that means you can't do any more. And for some people you can use heavier weights, some people lower weights, but no matter, we all should be at the same intensity. Does that make sense? So if you are feeling a bit easy, need to up the weight to slow the reps down. But before we go on to that and more of the protein stuff as well, just had an awesome weekend with my friends Nia and Emily, if you're listening girls hello.
Speaker 1:I've seen them in two years since COVID came in between so me, Nia, Emily, my cousin Dan used to do a lot of things together and enjoy the weekends. And I haven't had a week good weekend like on ages. Do you know one way you actually feel refreshed after that? Not one where you feel knackered and tired. And I think it's what what we realized on our weekend was we didn't have drinks, we did eat food and go out, have a laugh, spoke about deep stuff, stupid stuff, took a piss piss at my cousin, he nearly lost his head once.
Speaker 1:We we loved to see it. We loved to see it. He nearly went, but maybe next time he'll explored. But what we realised as a group we like, because on the Sunday we woke up restful and went for a walk and up to Sloane Square in a nice weather, it was cold but nice. So we realised like there is no benefit really to staying out like beyond like 12 or one keeping on drinking.
Speaker 1:There is really no benefit because you wake up the next day hangover, you don't spend Sunday doing some nice stuff, wholesome stuff and then you go to work on Monday feeling a bit shit and you're not 100%. And actually when you feel on top of things, feel much better. And the Monday is a big, big part. I know I talk about one day at a time, no day is different every day, let's make the most of it. But Monday is that day where we feel we've got a nudge in the week or we feel a better on the back foot straight away.
Speaker 1:So we came to that conclusion, I think it might come with age, because we did lose a go out a lot and go out late, but maybe it does come with age, don't know. But if you are younger or you still are going out and drinking bit too much and regretting Sundays, I think one of the top hacks you can do, especially if we don't go into another lockdown, if you think about the nights out you've got over a year, say now out of the fifty two weeks, half of them are times when you're going out and most of those ones are where you drink too much then your Mondays and Tuesdays are wrecked. That's half your years start of the week to make sense that's a big amount, that's a huge impact on your overall life, happiness and direction and what you're to get out of those weeks. I think it's a huge impact. I think one of the quickest ways to kind of upgrade your life essentially is to try and limit the damage you do with over drinking.
Speaker 1:And that's where we came to conclusion. But what I will say as well is like having time off on weekends to do stuff with your friends, the friends you like, the friends that you get a lot out of, each other at chats and good humour, all that stuff. You actually feel more refreshed then starting the week to new. Sometimes you see friends and they suck energy out of you or you're just going out to each other because you do the out things with them, you just drink together and that's it. There's nothing more to that friendship than just drinking.
Speaker 1:But I think if you find the right group of friends and you can have that break, you feel refreshed, you feel energized from it because it's like a wholesome thing. And, yeah, I've realized that this weekend because I don't usually have breaks because I work every day. So like, on Friday's the same as a Saturday, as a Sunday, same as Monday. But I've realized now that the Mondays are much better if I do have that weekend to just kind of you know, enjoy really. Yeah and not think about work and stuff so I don't know if anyone is feeling they are on the hamster wheel and stuff but having wholesome weekends off, very important.
Speaker 1:But anyway, enough about my weekend, more about protein timing because I think some people have questions in and I'm trying to answer the questions as they're coming in so people, I'm on topic here, questions about protein intake, when should you eat protein, how many protein, grams of protein per meal. There's a study done on post menopausal women on protein timing so they had a group that ate protein straight after the workout and then carbs later on. Then they had a group eat carbs straight after the workout and then protein a few hours later. And they checked their like muscle mass, fat mass and strength and there was absolutely no difference in both groups. So the timing of the protein post workout, the anabolic window as they call it versus later on in the day had no impact.
Speaker 1:So multiple studies now are showing that it's total daily protein intake that matters more for strength gain lean mass everything than protein timing. So it doesn't matter, you shouldn't be too worried about if you're eating protein at the right times Okay? Don't use your mental energy and that it doesn't make a difference. And these are the things we need to unleash from in the fitness industry. What doesn't actually make a difference?
Speaker 1:Well, protein timing doesn't make a difference. Forget about it. Meal timing doesn't make a difference, forget about it. What you actually eat as long as you eat your macros doesn't matter so really forget about in a sense but obviously we want to keep an eye on improving our micronutrient micronutrient dense foods, the unprocessed foods ideally but don't put too much thoughts and worry into it. Doing six work as a week, we don't need to do that, just focus on three, just get your steps in.
Speaker 1:There's things that you don't have to work on every day. You don't have to do cardio for the sake of your fat loss. If we strip back all the stuff that doesn't matter, the fitness journey becomes way less, the burden of it is way less. It's like, wow, wow actually. So if none of that really matters and it's just been all confused because people are trying to sell you stuff online and they're trying to come across like they're more intelligent by saying this and that time and this and next and brought you muscle proteins into this blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:If we just get rid of all the charlatans and say all that stuff and break it down. Total protein for the day eat it whenever you want, eat the meals whenever you want, whatever you prefer. Right so don't worry if you miss breakfast, you miss your lunch, just get the total macros in. Just get your steps in daily, could be morning, be evening just get them in. Mealtime it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Workouts three a week, as long as you're doing more doing the tracking the total volume. If you're just tracking your total volume and that's going up every week, like David says that's where progress and results come from. That is very very simple as long as your weight you're using is one to two reps in reserve. So you're doing the fit as you're finishing a set you could have potentially done two more reps if you had to push it. That's the perfect weight to use.
Speaker 1:Now for beginners some people they stop way before two reps in reserve. You'll stop at 10 reps before him because you're not used to how far you can push the muscle. But as you get more advanced you do get closer to the one rep in reserve the actual of it. So you want to push to near failure and then obviously three workouts a week with weights and track your volume and if that's going up every week, that's as simple as it gets to get in progress. You're hitting your protein, you're hitting your macros, you're doing the work three workouts a week and the total volume is going up.
Speaker 1:Like that's how simple is that guys. I mean we can't get more simple than that. But think of all the confusion in between all that, all the we've learned over the years that makes no difference to that, those principles. We have to detach from them. We have to because your mental energy needs to be used on the things that are more important in your life, your friends, your family, your career, whatever things bring you joy.
Speaker 1:Let's focus on that. I don't want you to just be sad that you didn't manage to get your protein shake in thirty minutes after the workout and all you're panicking because that's sad. That's not good. That's not the way to live. Let me tell you, it's not.
Speaker 1:But you these on Instagram, get my shake, my after workout, get my six mil of proteins a day in. You see these people, it's like they're trying to virtue signal they can do these things and it's just nonsense. So what I'm trying to do is week three, there's something called the valley of despair that usually kicks in around week three where you start off pumped, yeah, let's do a challenge and you go, wow, okay, maybe it's a bit harder than I thought it fits into my life. So what am I going to do? Then your motivation dips and goes, can't be arse and you go back to step one in a few weeks.
Speaker 1:It's got a yo yo effect. What you need to do in the valley of despair, if you're in the valley of despair where you think, it's not worth doing, you just got to keep going. You ride the wave and eventually week four or five, you're coming out of the valley and you feel on top of the world. And I promise you if you stick to this week three, week four, week five and you finish the programme strong, you will feel on top of the world at the end of week five. You just got to keep going, you can have shit days, you can have terrible days, no doubt.
Speaker 1:You're going to feel like, am I getting stronger? I did a workout this morning, people have gone from partial press ups to full press ups using different weights to higher weights. The total volume this week versus last week's gone up even though last week we went to three sets. And this week we've got three sets for each exercise the same. So it is gonna be bit harder to put volume up this week.
Speaker 1:You won't go up nowhere near as much as between week one and two. But even if you go up a bit, that's it. A bit. It's matters. So you are going to go through this valley of despair, but week three is crunch time, it's the week to get through.
Speaker 1:If you can get through this week, if you can hold on and get through it, you're going to succeed in this challenge and you will unlock the knowledge of how to train properly, what matters for macros and weight loss and fat loss and muscle gain and you're going to go into the new year in a far better position knowing exactly what to do about your health and fitness. I want to finish off with, so I had a chat with my friend on weekend, she's a teacher but she's head of department and obviously head of department's got to teach at the same time do all the extra work so it's a hell of a lot more workload than a teacher that's not head of department. And I'd ask a question like we've a lot of teachers on our membership and really a lot of people don't have time. Was like how do you get more time here? Like what are you doing to get more time to fit your workouts and stuff?
Speaker 1:Really the answer is you have to look at your own schedule and try and optimise says. Can't really be told by someone else. So you've got to look at the day really and look at where you can cut things out and what's going to benefit you, benefit the kids and benefit your entire life. So she's like, you know she doesn't really give homework because what is the benefit of homework? Are the kids actually doing the homework?
Speaker 1:Is it just like extra load for the kids to do as extra work for you to mark? Is it worth doing? Probably not. When it comes to classroom, are you doing group teaching? You putting them into groups?
Speaker 1:Peer to peer learning has been proven time after time to be the best form of learning. So you're learning from people on the same level as you. Our kids have been put into groups to learn ten, fifteen minutes, sometimes in a lesson, maybe twenty. Kind of time used when they're doing peer to peer learning, marking each other, helping each other. Obviously, at the end of the lesson, you go through the groups.
Speaker 1:But that twenty minutes, you've just got them to do work. Can you finish off some marking or some tasks? And she says at half five, she goes home, she goes to the half seven, gets her work, finishes half five and she's out. But she's realized she used to be one of the teachers that kept going and going and going and going. And you can keep going and going and going and going forever with teaching, with some other jobs.
Speaker 1:There's nobody that's going to tell you to reduce your hours or reduce your workload to benefit you. You're the only person that can do that. Right? So you have to take responsibility here and go right and look at the large pictures. It's easy to be like, I got to do all the marking every day because for the kids.
Speaker 1:But like what's the impact of that marking on the kids is like progression in reality, especially if it's homework, there's not really the core work of the curriculum. She works at the morning, folk on the gym. Just being able to get up a bit earlier to do a workout. I've done a morning workout today when I usually do evening and I feel much better with the day, much better. And I think it's only half an hour you need.
Speaker 1:I know it's easy for me to say, I don't have kids, I'm not a teacher, I do work a lot but I'm not like at the mercy of teaching and marking and deadlines nearly every day by marking. But the lesson is even if you're a teacher, you're head of department you have to put boundaries in and you have to put boundaries in and this goes for everybody with their jobs as well on their weekends and stuff. You have to put boundaries in for you. You've got to say no for you. And once you get that right, it's gonna take time for everybody.
Speaker 1:Once you're gonna get that right, it's all smooth sailing. Especially as well if you take away all this nonsense stuff we believe about health and fitness and how we have to do this and this and this and that. We don't have to worry about all that. If we remove all of that as well and we put boundaries in our work, we give that time back to ourselves, why can we be so much happier? So have a look at your day, try and optimise it.
Speaker 1:Remember all the stuff I've just said about don't be a perfectionist as well. Pull back from that. Perfectionism, you just hide in beyond perfectionism. Remove perfectionism. Just do the basics.
Speaker 1:Like I've said, if you're in the valley of despair, keep going, hold on, put your workouts in this week, try and up your reps, try and up the weight if you can up the reps, do something to increase your total volume. If not, it's fine, but try and do something. And at the end of this week, you're gonna start feeling it. This is the week. This is the turning point.
Speaker 1:Or at the end of this week, you can go, I'm definitely feeling stronger. And I want you all to get to that position. And if you haven't started the challenge yet, just start from week one and get involved in some of the q and a's. Simple. Don't worry too much about it.
Speaker 1:If we've missed the first two weeks, usually little or whatever, or life's gone in the way, so be it. Let it go. Start now with week one. What else are gonna wait for now? You know, you can debate, oh, I wish I wish I wasn't ill or I wish I could've started two weeks ago.
Speaker 1:It's gone, man. Get started now. Enjoy your day, guys. Remember your one big thing. Get that done, and everything falls into place.
