(#304): 5 Tips to Maximize Your Workouts

No one hits the gym hoping for so-so results.  We go in thinking that we want to get 100% out of every single step. Every single rep. Every single bead of sweat is going to be hard earned. It's the grind that we look forward to and love so much.

Fortunately for all of us, scientists and researchers want the same thing.  We're constantly expanding on and updating our body of knowledge in this area - and it's all so fascinating!

In this podcast, you'll find my tried-and-true (and science-backed) tips to maximize your workouts every time you enter the gym or start up a WOD at home.

Brought to you by Live Unbreakable, LLC. Learn more at liveunbreakable.com

Transcript

01:33 Coach Shaun: I think the hardest part of doing podcasts is figuring out what to say for the first sentence.  You’ve got the intro, we're doing good, and now we're going to talk about X, Y, Z, and I just feel like it’s so abrupt that I always start that way. But here we are.  So this podcast was requested, so if you don't follow me on Instagram yet, it's @livingunbreakable on Instagram, definitely follow me there for all sorts of tips, tricks, stuff about mind, stuff about my dog, and all sorts of really awesome new scientific nutrition/fitness stuff, like: how tomaximize your work-outs so.  That’s why you all are here today listening to this podcast. I put up a poll on my story on my Instagram, asking what you guys wanted to hear about, I am like a jack of all trades and a master of quite a few.  So for me to put down what I want to in the podcast might be different than what you guys want to, so I gave a bunch of different options, and this is what y’all chose, and I'm so excited to dive in because this is actually a question I get a lot.

Now, I absolutely freaking love personal training and coaching.  It is just in me, it's a part of me, it's my lifestyle, and even when I'm an athlete in a class, it's really hard for me to pull back and not correct something or not offer assistance if I see something that shouldn't be happening or I know that I can help improve them, it's really hard for me to take a back seat.  So sorry if I've ever annoyed you in a work-out class; you thought I was an athlete, it turns out I’m a coach.  So there's a fun line between getting a really good workout in all the time and getting a really good workout in some of the time, and when you should do that, how to be the most efficient with it, how to get the results that you want. And so I kind of narrowed down into five ways that you can really, really maximize your workouts because no one hits the gym hoping for so-so results, no-one's like, “I guess whatever happens happens" and throws together a plan.  Right, that never happens, and if it does, and you're one of the lucky few that has really great genetics and it just worked out for you, like dope, that's awesome.

Few super excited. But that's not how it goes for the majority of humans, so that's why I created this podcast. So if you're ready to go all in, you're wanting to 100% out of your reps, your cardio, your workouts, and every bead of sweat is going to be hard earned for you, then this is the right thing for you.  I even went into some of the research that I have on my side from when I was doing research on my own, but also some research from more recent scientific studies, because there's a really big body of knowledge already that exists about how to exercise.  How to exercise well, how to maximize workouts, blah, blah, blah, right? But there's so many different moving pieces to the puzzle, and it really just depends on what you're defining as a workout, what you define as maximizing, what your actual goals are, right. So if you're trying to be a better runner, there's ways for you to do that, if you're trying to be a better lifter, there's ways for you to do that; and for you to be a good lifter and a good runner, the two ways to maximize your workouts for each of those aren't going to be the same, but there are a couple underlying pieces that can help you really get a good workout regardless of if you're a cardio bunny or you're a lifter, or you're a cross fitter or anything in between, triathlete, whatever.  And so that's what we're going to go into today.

05:05 Coach Shaun: I want you guys to hear the title of each of these numbers and then also dive in with me; because you can fast forward through this, I totally get that, but some of these you are going to say, “Oh well, yeah, of course.”  But when you really dive into the why and the reasoning behind why and how it's going to help you get a better workout, that's when it is really going to start to click for you and you can start to incorporate this in your workouts.  So the first one I'm going to say is probably one of those “duh” moments, but it's getting into the right mindset. So for me, a big part of this is music and the environment that I'm in right before I get to the gym, and whether that's I'm going to go for a run or I have clients in a class or whatever it is, right. It's getting into the right mindset by listening to some music that is motivational, that is upbeat, that is awesome for me, that gets my mind off of my work and into my workout.

So with a very small subsection of people who are doing tempo workouts, so like tempo running, tempo rowing, something like that, it can be very detrimental to listen to music while you're doing those types of workouts.  Because your body is going to naturally want to go to the rhythm, rock to the beat, which is why there's like 150s and 170 running mixes and all that kind of stuff. So you can get into a pattern, but outside of that, there's a research study down relatively recently that tracked body builders who are doing shoulder workouts while they're listening to music, and they were actually able to complete on average one or two extra reps per set for all sets of their exercises.  So this could go up to six or seven sets because it was a source of motivation, but it was also a way that you can jack up your adrenaline during your visit to the gym. So we all know that music boost your body's levels of serotonin and dopamine, it also helps boost some of your hormones that are known to foster recovery as well.  So that's what that study was kind of saying is that you can jack up your adrenaline, and feel really good because serotonin and dopamine are created at a higher rate, or dumped at a higher rate for you when you're feeling good.

So getting into the right mindset with music is huge, but also while you're recovering, if you're listening to it at the end of a yoga class, we really calm down that music, it's really slow, it's really thoughtful and intentional, because that will help to drop your blood pressure and heart rate to a normal rate, a normal area for you so that you can recover even faster and also feel really good about it, right.  You want to have something that you can get pumped up, you get ready for the gym, if you had a great day at work or a really bad day at work, it doesn't matter, 5 o'clock, you're heading to the gym, if you're trying to ditch that anxiety that you had before, get your head in the game: listen to some music, a podcast, an audio tape, your favorite YouTube video. I used to listen to this motivational series by Mateusz M on YouTube, and I think he's on Spotify, now too, but it was a mash-up of a bunch of different motivational and inspirational pieces of audio, and I loved it.  I listen to it literally on repeat every single day for years when I was on my way to the gym, and it was the one thing I was like, Okay, this is my time to get ready, to get in the right mindset, to get in the right mood, and to be in a place where I can really start to focus on my work out.  Like I said, there is science behind it, the serotonin, the dopamine, but also it's an actual cue for you to recognize or for your body to recognize, your mind to recognize, that it's time to start doing something else right now is the time we leave work at home or going to the gym.  This is awesome.

08:44 Coach Shaun: And the second one is, in this piece of the puzzle for mindset: is breathing and breath work.  For breath work, we're talking on your way to the gym before we're even starting with our sets, we want to have proper breathing that helps us support the mindset that we're getting into.  The environment that we're about to get into, etc, etc, right? So when you inhale, air travels through your nose and mouth and on through your larynx, your trachea, your bronchi, into smaller tubes, it goes down to a much smaller level into your lungs, and that's where red blood cells are dropping off carbon dioxide and picking up oxygen.  That’s where the gas exchange is actually happening in your system, but when you exercise the levels of carbon dioxide and hydrogen ions in your bloodstream actually increases, which leads to a drop in blood pH, which then triggers an increase in breathing rate, so that's a science behind why our breath increases when we are exercising. In fact, I think the primary driving force behind almost all respiration is really the need to remove carbon dioxide, not to intake oxygen, so just think about your breathing that way you're trying to get rid of something.

So at altitude, that changes a little bit because respiration increases because your blood is less saturated with oxygen, so depending on if you're training at altitude or not, that's going to play into it a little bit more.  When you're increasing your respiratory rate, your respiration system during exercise, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your lung capacity or increasing your lung capacity in that moment.  Over time, absolutely. But not in that moment. So when you're on your way to the gym and listening to your music, you're getting pumped up, you're already starting to increase, maybe you're getting in your head a little bit, you're increasing your breathing rate a little bit. That's all awesome. This is really great, but then once you're at the gym, you're going to want to know how to breathe during your exercises.  The gold standard here is to inhale on relaxation, exhale during exertion, so when you start to do the work, you want to exhale.  You have a nice tight core, you have a good base and that you can really utilize your breath to help you in that moment for strength and stability, and for cardio, you generally want to breathe in and out through your nose until you can't anymore, and then you want to start breathing out through your mouth, that's really important because it's going to help you more to breathe through your nose.  One it filters it, your mouth does not, and two, it's just better for your respiratory system in general, for you to take in air through your nose, and it is through your mouth, so when you're doing mouth breathing, that does change the kind of respiratory rate that you're going for, it changes the kind of respiratory system that you're using, and so it takes a little bit more of a toll.  So during cardio, it's a little bit more of a toll to breath through your mouth, but that's what you feel like you have to do so that you don't get cramps until you get comfortable.

11:48 Coach Shaun: There's a couple different ways that you can focus on breathing when you're doing cardio, like breathing out when you're on your left food, breathing in on your right; all these kinds of things.  But I think what's most important is to have a thought about your breath, so many people go into the gym, they're not even thinking about their breathing rate, they're not even thinking about their intake of oxygen or their exhalation of carbon dioxide.  So it's really hard for them to feel that present, if you're not focused on your breath at all, I know in yoga that's very different, you’re very focused on your breath and focus on what it feels like to fill up your lungs with air, when it feels like when you breathe that out, breathing in good taking out the bad; all that kind of stuff, which is awesome.  It should be that way all the time, not just in yoga, but when you're getting ready for the gym, you're leaving the gym, when you’re at the gym doing these exercises, that kind of stuff.  The other things I hear a lot about clients for breath work is, one that I already told you, “Why do you breathe heavier when you're exercising?”

We already covered that, but the second is how to catch your breath.  Usually what I tell people is to stand up really tall with your hands on your head, and that kind of allows you to open up your chest, open up your lungs, and it allows for deeper inhalation so that you’re not crunching. Most people will lean over and have their hands on their knees or whatever, that's really not that good for you because you're closing off your chest or making it smaller.  It feels better because you're relying on not just your legs to hold you up.  You have even on your hands and your knees, whatever, but it's actually worse for you to do that, so to catch your breath, even though it kind of feels a little weird the first couple of times you do it.  Stand up nice and tall, put your hands on your head and try to take nice deep breaths.  Also after exercise, when your heart rate is a little bit higher, respiratory rate, a little bit higher, don't go from everything to nothing, so if you're sprinting, don't just get off your treadmill, if you're working out, you want to have a little bit of a cool down period after so that you can get back to that regular respiratory rate and regular heart rate.

Okay, and the last one for mindset is just having either motivational people in your life that you can text if you're not having a great day, motivational videos, photos, or sayings.  Whatever it is to get you in that mood, because some days you're just not going to want to go, and that's fine. I always say that motivation is like deodorant, it has to be applied daily, sometimes more than once a day, and sometimes in larger doses, very liberally.  Sometimes I don't need any motivation, I'm super hit to do a workout, I'm really excited about it. And that's my motivation. Other days, I really don't want to do anything, so I feel like I've been running around all day doing all sorts of stuff or been with clients or whatever it is, and I'm drained.  Those are the days that I want to have more in my arsenal, so I'll have photos that I save about my phone or these videos that I have, or something like that. So if you ever need those, guys all include some in the show notes, but never hesitate to send me a text message or to reach out via Instagram, I'm on there all the time responding to questions, so it's super easy for me to just send over some for you too.

15:00 Coach Shaun: So the second way to maximize your workout and to have better efficiency is to study the gym movements beforehand, and then also attacking your sets with this practice of patience and presence. Practice, patience and presence. So that first part there where you're studying the gym movements beforehand.  One of my biggest peeves as a trainer, but also as an athlete in the gym is watching people sit on a piece of equipment or buy a piece of equipment, and then they're on their phone trying to figure out how to use it. Well, that kind of defeats the purpose because you already warmed up and you have your muscle groups all ready to go; then you have to stand there and figure out what you're doing, movement by a movement.  That’s really frustrating for everyone in the gym, and I'm sure it's frustrating for you, too. So do yourself a favor and just study the movements beforehand, that way you're not using your phone for every lift that you're doing, you realize what muscle groups you're supposed to be working and what that should feel like. When you're in the concentric versus eccentric part of the movement, what muscles you should be squeezing or relaxing at the time, and then what the movement should actually look like.  When you're looking at yourself in the mirror or you're looking at yourself on video tape later, that's one of the things that you can pick out right away,  “Oh, well, my back isn’t straight, oh well, this is not supposed to look like this.”  Instead of asking for assistance from someone in the gym who is not your trainer, or something like that, so just make sure, you know what you're doing when you get in the gym, and that's going to help you relax to you and feel a little bit more confident in the gym.

That second piece of practicing patience and presence is pay attention to what you're doing. I feel like my mom talking to my nieces right now, she says, “Yeah, pay attention to what you're doing.”  But if it's so important to not just go through the motions when you're in the gym, and a lot of people just do that.  Think about squats for instance: I watch people do squats all the time and their glutes never grow mostly because you're not engaging the right muscle group when you're doing squats, it's really easy to just squat down and then press back up using your quads, using your hamstrings.  But if you're not squeezing your glutes on the way back up, you're really not utilizing that movement to its full efficacy because you're completely eliminating half of the muscle groups that you're supposed to be using in that movement. So if you don't study the gym movement before hand and be present and patient with yourself while you're doing the movement, then you're not going to get your full workout in even if you're doing the movement.  You have to be concentrating on what you're supposed to be doing on the other side of that.

I told you guys, I'm a big study person, so looking at the research here, British researchers discovered that subjects who focused on their biceps while doing bicep curls actually had significantly more muscle activity than those who thought about other things, how many times you have the gym doing a bicep curl, thinking about who you have to email back, or what else you have to do that night, or what's on your to-do list, whatever, but if you actually focus on your muscle recruitment, that results in more muscle growth in the long run. So for every single rep of every single set that you're doing, you should be thinking about the muscle being trained instead of wondering what's going on around you or anything like that, because literally speaking directly to everyone here listening, you're going to get a better workout, if you focus on what you're doing instead of anything else.  So I would focus on your biceps and bicep curls, focus on your legs and your glutes when you're in your squat, but also focus on the other parts that should be recruited to help. So if you're thinking about squats, you're also thinking about a nice tight core, your shoulder should be over your hips as long as they can be on the way down, you want all of these other things in line.  Almost like a checklist: do I have my weight in my heels, where my hips starting, do I have a tight or loose core, where am I looking, is my head down or up.  Does that change all of these little things, that's what you should be thinking about during your workout, and it's going to help you grow. So that was number two.

19:04 Coach Shaun: Number three is actually, I think this is important, even if you're not trying to necessarily maximize your workouts is just in general, but you should be recording your workouts by both writing them down in a journal or something like that, so you have your weights, your rep counts, so you can always look back at those, see if you're progressing or regressing.  See if there's a day that you're super, really sore and you really liked that work out, or you're super, really sore, and you hated that work out, those kinds of things, or if you had better recovery one day versus another.  Being able to track back and say, Alright, well, this time last year, I was lifting this amount, that's really powerful. In your own health journey, to know where you came from and where you are right now.  I don't often say to look back because it's not super helpful on a month-to-month basis, but it can be really powerful, 3, 6, 9, 12 months down the road.

Even past that, when you're looking back, even if you don't have specific goals.  Just to see that you're progressing, and if you're not progressing, maybe that's something that you can take up either with your trainer or a coach or one of your buddies that goes to the gym with you.  Because if you want to get better and you notice that you've kind of plateaued, there are a bunch of things that you can start to look at, some of them are going to go into in the next bullet point here, but it's definitely a tool that you can use in your arsenal, is just being able to record your workouts.  Then the second part is actually recording them, like video recording what you're doing so that you can watch your form and you can watch the intensity that you're doing this at.  So I always say it's better to ask forgiveness than permission in this.  Right now, I've noticed in a lot of the gyms that I've been in clients, there are a lot of signs that say, Don't have your phone out, or don't record anyone else, and blah, blah, blah, and I totally understand that from a safety perspective for a lot of reasons.  But I think if you're using it for you and you're trying to do something with it, even if you're never going to post it anywhere, you just want to see how your form looks, I would say just go ahead and set up your phone somewhere that's very obvious that it's going to be on you during that set so that you can see it right.

Don't have somebody else that take for you unless you know them, but just set it up so that you can see it and then you can start to look at your form and see if it's improving, see if maybe as you're adding weight is your form going away, do you have the right intensity for that movement, all of those kinds of things.  So going back to if you're studying the movement before you go to the gym, that's awesome, how that movie playing in your head thinking about those movements as you're doing them, but then be able to compare what you're doing actually, versus what you think you're doing or it feels like you're doing.  That can be really powerful too.

The next two bullets are very long, and I want to preface that only because I think they're probably the two most important that I impress upon my own clients all the time.  Also, when I get questions about, when someone has plateaued or someone has a question about how they can really start to increase their workouts or they can start building muscle mass, these two last bullet points are probably, like if you listen to nothing else in this podcast, these are probably the two most important.

22:23 Coach Shaun: So this is going to be number four is advanced set techniques.  So rep is the movement, and then you're set is how many reps you're doing.  So typically, most people fall into this habit of doing 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps maybe, sometimes they go 20 reps, and then they call it good, now that's called cluster setting, which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but if that's the only kind that you're doing, you're not really giving your body any alternative training methods.  That can be pretty frustrating, and that can also lead to what you would call a “plateau”, so some of the alternate ways that you can do this, and I'm going to go through a list of a bunch of them that I kind of fall on for my own training and for my clients, is percentage-based training, which is going to be dictating your load based off of one's estimated one rep max. If you don't have a one rep max, that's totally fine, but you can start to edge towards that in your training and start to see, or maybe just take one day or one week and just try your one rep max for squats and then work backwards from there.

So every percentage used in percentage-based training is a representative of an amount of your one rep max, and then your reps are going to vary based on the percentage prescribed in your workouts.  You'll never want to do like 10 one rep maxs, because then that’s not your 1 rep max, that's your 10 rep max.  So as you're working up to that, you can do like 10 of your 70%, but you would never want to do 10 of your 95% unless you're specifically training for something to increase that load. So percentage-based training is super, super helpful, but it is very calculated and you have to know how to use that in your training for it to be effective. Another one is back down sets, which is basically performed at a lighter weight after the initial set at a heavier weight are completed.  So we're talking going in, you're going to perform a quick 3 x 3 at your 90%, and then you're going to do a 3 x 8 at 70%, you're going in really hot and heavy, and then you're pulling back a little bit, so the previous heavy set or sets are going to cause a lot of fatigue, but they also kinda kick your neuromuscular system into higher drive, so it moderates the load use for your back down sets.  It also feels lighter, obviously, than they would if heavier loads were not lifted prior, so that's saying you're lifting really heavy and then you lift light.

Well, it wouldn't have felt so light if you hadn't had something heavy before it, so that's the idea of a back down set, it's a great way to add volume to your workouts and to work a full range of motion or even to practice your technique as well.  If you’re trying to look at form, I would definitely suggest doing a back down set first in your workouts and then building from there.  That’s only to say if you've done those workouts or those movements before, you wouldn't want to go into a movement you've never done and try to lift very heavy. That's not going to go well for you. That's not great. So yeah, those are called back down sets, the next one is tempo, so unlike the tempo runs I was talking about before, with one type of timing, this is still timing, but it's a little bit different.  It refers to the speed of the lift and any pauses that are included, so typically when I write tempo workouts: for example in terms of a squat, so I'm going to write 1, 2, 2, 2.  So 1 second on the way down, 2 seconds at the bottom, 2 seconds on the way up, and then a 2 second rest and reset at the top; so 1 second down, nice and quick pause at the bottom for 2 seconds, take 2 seconds, then come back up, and then wait 2 seconds before you go back down into the bottom of your squat.

26:11 Coach Shaun: You can vary your tempo however you want to realistically, some people add in 10-second eccentric phases, 10-second concentric phases. Sometimes you're doing both. Those are really brutal. 10 seconds is very long for a tempo, so I usually keep it between two and five, just because it is easy to calculate, but also that it helps me in my counting as both a trainer and as an athlete.  Tempo is just slowing down your lift, having times count on the way down, when you're at the bottom, on the way up, and then resetting, so there's four parts of that just so you know, going into it. Another type of advanced set is called a super set, this is probably when you're very familiar with, or at least you've heard before.  When you involve two exercises that are back-to-back, sometimes it's three exercises, very rarely is it more than three, but there are also different types of super sets.  You have your standard Super Set, which is going to be two back-to-back exercises using the same muscle group, so you do bench press and dumbbell flys; opposing super sets are going to be two exercises back to back, but they're opposing muscle groups, so you would do a push-pull, so you want to do bench press and then a row.  A little bit different, they're completely opposite from the standard.  

Then you have your lower-upper: one lower body then one upper body in your super set, so I would have you do one pull up to one squat, or a five and five, whatever it is, but you would do one back and back to the other before you take a rest. Okay, and then the last one is an inset Super Set, which is basically performing a different exercise during the eccentric phase as a concentric phase, so for this one, think about a dumbbell press during the concentric phase and then follow it up with a dumbbell fly during the eccentric phase, so you're doing two basically the same movement, but different exercises, because when you start the exercise, you're doing one specific and by the time you finish, you're doing a second exercise, so you obviously can't do this with everything, but especially if you're working upper body, that can be really beneficial as a super set.

The next one is drop sets, so drop set is basically performing an exercise at a specific weight to failure or near failure before dropping down in weight and performing reps again to failure or near failure.  So a mechanical drop set here would be performing reps that gets you to failure before you regress to an easier version of the exercise.  So there's two different kinds, one is going to be weight and one is just going to be a different type of exercise.  So a drop set would be like 10 weighted squats at 200 pounds and then you fail out at the 11th, rep, awesome, you're going to re-rep that and then you're going to go and do 15 reps at 190 or whatever it is, and just keep going and going and going, and there is no set number of reps for that, it's just going until a failure, almost failure, and then lightening the load a little bit and then continuing to go down.  But mechanical drop set would be doing pull-ups, as many as you can, and then you fail, so the next one is going to be banded pull-ups, and then you fail, so then you're going to do to jump up and then lowering yourself down out of it, and that's going to be your third one, and then the last one is going to be just holding on doing some scapular pulls or something like that.  You’re going to continue to work down in effort if you're doing a mechanical drop set and work down in weight if you're doing a normal drop set.  

30:05 Coach Shaun: Contrast loading is really helpful too, so that's involving alternating between a heavier and a lighter weight on the same exercise.  So I think about it almost like a wave, and it is called wave loading sometimes, but rather than using a different variety of weights, you're using just one heavy load and one light load.  You can do it in a number of different ways, you can do different weight, but the same reps, so like 90% of your one rep max for two reps and then 75% of your one-rep max for two reps, so different weights with the same number of reps, there's more emphasis placed on your rate of force development.  So think about that, it's a little bit higher and in different weight and different reps is going to be like 90% of your one rep max for two reps, followed by 75% for six reps or something like that.  So you can do it either way. It really depends on what your goals are for muscle building and what type of muscle group you're using, because doing different reps might be really beneficial for smaller muscle groups, whereas same reps would be great for big muscle groups, and I was kind of getting your body used to that.

Pyramids are really fun because there's a couple of different kinds, so this is basically the easiest way to say this is like you're doing 12 reps at 60%, 10 reps at 70%, 8 reps at 75%, 6 at 80%, etc. There's a clear pyramid of effort and weight there, the descending pyramid is going to be the same, but in reverse, where you start really heavy with low reps and then descend a lighter weight with higher reps, but you can perform either in ascending or descending, depending on how quickly, you want your muscles to burn out.  There are different types of pyramids too, depending on the type of training that you're doing, so we'll say ladders are basically similar to ascending or descending pyramids, but they involve the weight or reps of an exercise to progressively go up or down.

There is along the rack, which is basically like an ascending or descending pyramid, but specific to the dumbbells.  You’re going up, it starts at 2, then 5, 8, 10, 12, or whatever it is, right, so you're just using the rack, but stripping is exactly like a descending or ascending pyramid, but it's specific to a barbell, and you would typically have spotters for that one, because it can get pretty dangerous doing it this way, So stripping is for barbells, along the racket is for dumbbells, and then ladders are just another form of saying pyramid. It's just a different way to go progressively up or down with weights or with reps.  Then we have pauses and isometrics: pauses can be specifically programmed to occur during your concentric or your eccentric phase of the lift, depending on how much your trainer likes you, and what your goals are.  Isometrics are a contraction with no change in muscle length, which is basically holding a position or pausing a specific point in the lift before finishing it, so typically down to the bottom of the lift or a common sticking point, and you would hold it anywhere from 2-10 seconds.

So really easy one is, if you're doing a bicep curl, you're going to stop halfway down every time for eight seconds and then lower completely down, then come all the way completely back up. Lower down a halfway. Right, that's a really good example. Pauses, usually, these are like pulses more, I would say then a pause, but scientifically speaking, they're called pauses. Pulses are when you perform a full range of motion with pulses or small bounces basically at the bottom, at the top of the movement, also known as a oscillatory training, and I don't love using it mostly because I don't think that it has as much benefit to training as pausing or as doing some of these other movements that we've talked about for your advanced sets.  So Pauses can be added at any point during your lift, pulses can be added at any point during your lift, but where your muscle is, whether it's in the shortening phase or in the lengthening phase, whether it's being stretched or not, all really tie in for stability, for control, and for strength.  That’s why I can't sit here and say like, Oh, during your bicep curls, you should always stop for this.

34:46 Coach Shaun: It really just depends on the movement and your goal, and then how much control you have and how much stability you have in the joint that you're working as well, so all of those matter. And then the last one, and I kinda gave you this one a little bit earlier, I just didn't use the term for it, but it's called a negative.  This is when you perform a slower eccentric phase, so when you're doing a pull-up, if you jump up to the top and then slowly lower yourself down, that's a negative. The eccentric phase is so much stronger than the concentric phase, so you can drastically slow it down to increase the intensity.  But you have to make sure that when you're doing it, you have the right a) phase of motion, and b) the right point in your workout so the intensity can still be really high and effective when you're doing them.  Typically doing negative at the end of the workout, they could be really frustrating for you because you won't have the strength to actually slow it down, you won't have that control.  Doing them at the beginning, the workout can be really beneficial while you're starting to learn them, and then as you're getting stronger and as you're getting more comfortable with them, you can actually do them at the end of your workout, and still get a really good benefit from it.  Because your muscles are tired, you're recruiting more muscles, more joints, more everything, which can also have its positives.

And then realistically, there is no right amount of any of these to incorporate in your training, and I definitely wouldn't say do all of them in one day or all of them in one week, because that's going to be really challenging for you to see gains or muscle mass changes or any sort of body composition changes, doing that.  I would try one and see how it feels for you, and if you get really bored easy or you feel like it's going to be too frustrating to keep up for 3-6 months, then toss that one, and say, you're not going to do that one right now, but you can do it later.  No one's going to force you into it. So just if you have questions about the type of training that your trainer is having you do or your coach is having you do, just ask questions about it and say, if this is going to be heavy on pauses or this is going to be heavier on negatives, maybe this is going to be heavier on the pyramid style training, whatever it is that you like, or whatever it is that seems to be the trend for you and that coach and your culture, that class, whatever it is, just make sure that you understand it so that you know where you need to be focusing your efforts.  Practicing being in that moment and being very present and intentional with your movements.

37:32 Coach Shaun: The last one for maximizing your workout is your food and your hydration.  I know that you knew this was coming and do not shut off the podcast, just because I said it.  There’s so many pieces of the puzzle because we're still learning so much about the human body, and as I find nutrition absolutely fascinating.  That's why this piece is going to be, like I said, a little bit longer.  Ultimately, don't force yourself to eat or not eat or do anything timing-wise, if it doesn't feel natural or comfortable for you.  I will always defer to how you're feeling and your intention for yourself and how you're intuitively deciding to train.  If you're never hungry after a workout, don't force yourself to eat; if you're always hungry after work out, awesome, maybe we can mix up the kinds of foods that you're in taking to make sure we're getting the composition changes that you're looking for.  I know I said that before in this podcast too, but if you guys don't know what I mean, when I say body composition, that's literally just like what your body is comprised of in terms of fat, muscle tissue, etc.

38:40 Coach Shaun: When I say a body composition change, usually people equate that to “toning up” or “losing weight” or whatever it is.  This is the body comp change, and that change could be an equal set, so you always weigh 180, but now you have more muscle mass or it could be, you're also losing weight, that's still a body composition change because you're going to be building muscle if you're working out.  Even if it's a little bit at a time and you're losing weight at the same time, it's still a body comp change. According to a recent sport study, I think it's 2020, carb loading or any sort of big intense carbing fuel for you before your workout can help you do better in interval training specifically, so that's awesome. Because carbs are your body's primary fuel for any higher intensity workout at all ever, so when your body is fueled properly with plenty of carbs readily available, your body is going to put forth better effort and get better value.  Not just in terms of caloric expenditure and muscle growth, but in terms of the way that you feel, the way that you can keep your heart rate or your respiratory rate under control.  Even if you like morning workouts and you're like, Oh, I can't possibly wake up 10 minutes earlier and get it in, but even if you have oatmeal or toast or something before you head out the door, that's probably going to be beneficial for you if you're not eating anything at all before.  Fasted, is that not nearly as beneficial as people used to think it was, and it can be for certain medical conditions and for certain people, and if you train yourself to do certain things, but as a general rule, doing fasting workouts is not necessarily going to get you to your goal any faster.

Researchers in the UK, recently discovered that when athletes ate slow digesting carbs like whole grains are similar for breakfast or lunch, they have lower insulin levels and burn more fat throughout the day.  Those athletes had more endurance and burn more fat during exercise compared to someone who was eating fast digesting carbs, like white bread, plain bagels, those kinds of things. Before you work out, you're going to want to include some slow digesting carbs, so those be like your oatmeal, your sweet potatoes,  your fruit, your whole wheat bread, that kind of stuff.  That's going to help you with a good workout that's going to fuel you properly. Unless you have taught your body to look for fuel in other ways, if you're a protein fueled athlete or a fat fueled athlete, that's fine, then you need to fuel your body that way beforehand too. It is not just something that you can do when it's convenient, it's something that you should do all the time. So your body is used to it. But according to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, they say high fat meals blunt the ability of nitric oxide to dilate blood vessels for up to four hours, so basically that translates to less blood flow to muscles and less of a muscle pump, which can be significantly more costly, especially if you're not investing in a supplement.  Leading up to those four hours before your workout, if you have higher fat meals, that's going to have an influence and an impact on your workouts in the intensity that you can compete at or that you can train at.

42:01 Coach Shaun: So just keep that in mind too. If you think you're a fat fueled athlete or you're Keto or you just have higher fats in your diet anyways, I always say this, why don't you just try something new.  If it's working, that's totally fine, and if you're super happy with where you're at, awesome, I love that for you. That's great that you have that system and that support already set, but if it's not working for you and you're trying everything you can, just try something new.  Try fueling with carbs and seeing how that goes in your body, and if it's worse, alright, we'll just don't do it again, but now you know you've tried it. So after your work out, this is when your body is trying to rebuild glycogen stores it is going to repair and regrow muscle protein.  Eating after, and I know most athletes are like, if everything I eat is after a workout, because it's also right before another workout.  Your body's ability to rebuild glycogen and protein is enhanced after exercise, so you're going to want to consume a combination of both carbs and protein after exercising, so it used to be super recommended that you would to eat within 45 minutes of your post workout.  Within 45 minutes of finishing your last rep or whatever it was, they said, “Alright, well, you need to have this, this, this, and this within 45 minutes.”

That's not-not the thought process now, but knowing that there's a delay of carb consumption even as little as two hours after a workout, that can lead to about 50% lower rates of glycogen synthesis.  As long as you're eating within two hours of a work out, which most people already are, even if you're not thinking about it, you probably are, two hours is pretty much like your golden window of opportunity.  There has been a lot of research lately that proves that the post-exercise window to maximize muscular response is actually way wider than we initially thought, so wider than those two hours; it’s a long time.  If you want timing, then I would say two hours, if you're really a stickler about it and you're really trying to get some gains, try 45 minutes and see how it goes for you. These are just generalized studies based on the study of a lot of different people, but it's still the mass response; it’s not your individual response, so if you're never hungry after a work-out and then you're also not getting any gains, you're not seeing any body composition changes, that could be why.

Whereas, if you're totally happy with how you look and how you're performing in your workouts, that's really great.  Having your carbs and your proteins within two hours, theoretically speaking, is going to help to decrease your muscle protein breakdown, is going to increase your muscle protein synthesis or your growth of your muscles, and it's going to restore your glycogen, and then it's going to enhance your recovery.  Because exercise triggers the breakdown of muscles and the proteins in your muscles, some people are going to experience that really high, so are going to be a little bit lower, so typically, I recommend clients, I have between 0.14 to 0.23 grams of protein per pound of body weight after their workout.  If that's really high, higher than 30 or 40 grams, your body cannot consume that amount and use it in any sort of benefit to you, so as long as it's under 30 grams, you're good to go.  If you want to get really granular, it's 0.14 to 0.23 grams of protein per pound of body weight after.  That can really help to maximize your body's ability to recover, but also to start to rebuild back those muscles for you and to really start to build more muscle, but carbs are also huge for recovery because that's where your glycogen is going to come from, and that's how your body stores it, so you want to replenish after.

45:54 Coach Shaun: I say usually between 0.4/0.5 and 0.7 grams of carbs per pound of body weight is pretty much where most people need to be, and the easiest way to do that is with a post-workout shake.  Juice and your protein, or having fruits and your protein in a shake or a protein bar and fruits, or whatever it is, that can really start to help because your insulin secretion, which promotes glycogen synthesis is better stimulated when carbs and proteins are consumed at the same time versus separately. So if you're just having protein or you're just having your carbs, you’re not going to get your maximal protein and glycogen synthesis, which you want if you're trying to change your body comp or if you're trying to maximize your workouts.  Typically, it's like a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of carbs to protein, for example: 40 grams of protein, 120 grams of carbs, that's pretty much a maximum for anyone after a workout.  Even if by doing the math in this part here, 0.5 to 0.7 grams or if you're doing 0.14 to 0.3 grams of protein, whatever that math works out to you do not have more than 40 grams of protein and 120 grams of carbs because it's not really going to do you any good, your body can't break that down and eat that for you.  You’ll just end up wasting it, you’ll go to the bathroom or whatever it is, but it's not going to be of benefit to you to eat more than that.  And I guess it's important to say fat, eating fats after your workout is going to slow down your digestion, and it also inhibits your absorption of nutrients, so it won't reduce the benefit of eating your protein and your carbs at the same time, if you have some fats in there, that's totally fine, but don't promote fats first.  Promote your protein and your carbs first and then have some fats in it. That's totally fine. I usually limit mine and my client's amount of fat after workouts because of that, I just really want you to prioritize protein and carbs and being able to recover and repair all of the damage that exercise does to your body.

So there's a lot of information in there, like packed in there, but those are the five. Typically, if someone says like, “Oh, what can I do to maximize my workout?”  Those are what I respond with, but also the reasoning why and the science behind it.  I don't like to do anything without proven results, because people don't like to experiment on themselves, they like to know that somebody else experimented and then we have a right and a wrong.  All of these are best practices, all of these are things that I know tried and true are going to work.  Just try to keep them all in mind if you're trying to maximize your workouts, which, if you're listening to this podcast, there's a pretty good chance that you are.  

49:00 Coach Shaun: The only other things I would say, honestly, and these are kind of add-ons, I guess.  If you need more motivation, have someone going to the gym with you; have an accountability buddy, either that you're texting or that you're going with or anything like that.  If you want supplements, and you're a big fan of pre-work out, get your pre-workout ready, take your pre-workout while you're getting in the right mindset for the gym, when you're on your way or whatever it is.  Have good supplements that you can keep with you, that you know that you're going to take that don't taste awful, because then you're never going to remember to take them.  So just make sure that you like them, and then the last one is have a plan, have an idea of what you want.  If you’re just going to the gym to go to the gym, that’s awesome, if you're like, I know that I need to do this for my health, hat's great, and that's an awesome starting place but that’s not a good ending place.  If that’s what you're doing, more power to you because that can be really hard on a day-to-day to convince yourself to do.

49:54 Coach Shaun: If you have goals that you're trying to achieve, write them down so that you know what they are, because so often people come into the gym and say, I want to lose weight. Okay, they don't necessarily want to lose weight, they want to change their body composition, which is fine, that's on the trainer to understand and to know and to design a program around.  If you know that you're trying to lose weight and you want to see a lower number on the scale for whatever reason, maybe it's health, maybe it's just to make yourself feel better, that's totally fine.  But have that in the back of your mind always, and have it written down so you can look back and in 6 months, when you change your mind 19 times about what your goals are, you can say, Oh well, it's because I already achieved that one goal, and so this is my new goal.  You always have something to kind of look back on.  It never hurts to have a nice outfit to go to, like I am a huge Lululemon fan, huge born primitive fan, huge noble fan. I love all their gear, it's expensive, but when push comes to shove, you don't want leggings that are going to rip easy, you don't want the $5 leggings that could work for a little while, you want the $80 leggings that are going to last for literal years, I think I've had a pair of Lulu’s for a decade.  They are awesome and I love them and I'm never getting rid of them, and they did not pay me to say that I just love them.

51:09 Coach Shaun: If you guys are literally looking to maximize your workouts, those are going to be the best hints for you.  Getting into the right mindset and keeping that, studying your gym movements beforehand, being able to attack your sets with patience and presence (being in the moment), recording your workouts both literally writing them down, but also a video that you can check out your form and your intensity, advanced set techniques and using those and involving that in your training program, and then of course, and eating and hydrating to fuel properly for your workouts.  I have so many freebies on my website, I don't want to overwhelm you with any of them, but if you're looking for information on hydration, just shout me out, I'll happily send that over to you guys if you have more questions on breathing and breath work for exercise, I also have a freebie for that.  You can go to my Instagram, it's always on there, it's just in my profile, so I just like to like at my profile and you can get them both there or just shoot me a message or send me an email Shaun@liveunbreakable.com, or like I said, on Instagram @livingunbreakable, and I'll be happy to get that off for you.

Coach Shaun: Thank you so much for tuning in today. It was such a pleasure having you on the Crash Course podcast, brought to you by the LiveUnbreakable brand. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please some love on iTunes as a review so that I can keep this good stuff coming at you. Or share this podcast with your friends to give them a crash course on something that you're passionate about.  If you're not following me on social media yet, I would be honored to have your follow so search for LiveUnbreakable on any major social media platform and enjoy the extra motivation and knowledge shared over there, and of course, reach out to me at LiveUnbreakable.com with any questions. Until next time, y’all.