We discuss why and how lifters should do cardio: what is most effective and why include it in your program at all? We answer these questions and more. Why and How Lifters Should Do Cardio: What is Cardio?

Cardio is the term for those activities that raise your heart rate and stress your cardiovascular system. Another term - the term we prefer - is conditioning.

Conditioning tends to come more with the idea of a purpose, like training versus exercise. Cardio is more something you should do to get out of breath and sweaty.

There are three general reasons people do cardio.

1. Weight loss: Cardio is not a great way to lose weight or get leaner. Rather, focus on nutrition, lift to create a signal for muscle growth, and generally be active.
2. Performance: Conditioning helps you perform your sport or activity. For most clients, this means not feeling so out of breath when they play with their kids, go for a hike, or perform other physical activities then enjoy.
3. Health: You may perform cardio to be generally more healthy, especially your cardiovascular system.

Why and How Lifters Should Do Cardio: Energy Systems

Cardio encompasses three energy systems.

• Aerobic: This is low-intensity, long duration. You are almost certainly primarily using your aerobic energy system now. This encompasses normal life along with low-intensity exercise, such as walking or an easy jog. You oxidize fat and carbohydrates.
• Glycolytic: Medium-intensity, medium duration (~10s - 2 minutes). You use this for things such as running intervals. You break down carbohydrates.
• Phosphagen: High-intensity, short duration (~10s or less time). You use this for short bursts, such as a 50m sprint, a jump, or a 1RM effort. This uses ATP readily available in your muscles.

Conditioning for lifters will typically stress the aerobic and glycolytic energy systems, as lifting stresses the phosphagen system (and the glycolytic as well).

Why and How Lifters Should Do Cardio: Conditioning for Strength Athletes

Most lifters will want to incorporate some easy aerobic activity and then high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

For the aerobic activity, things that simply get you active suffice. This can mean walks. If you enjoy other activities, such as swimming, running, or biking, by all means do those in Zone 2.

To include intervals, you should perform low-impact, low-skill activities for relatively short durations repeatedly a few times a week.

This can look like accessory circuits at the end of your workouts, hill sprints, prowler pushes, or some type of machine intervals (bike, rower, elliptical, etc.).

Why and how lifters should do cardio depends, but there are some general principles and best practices that make sense for your performance and health.

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

Learn when to hire out to free up time from urgent, non-important tasks so you can focus on what truly matters.

When to Hire Out: The Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix groups tasks into 4 categories:

• Not urgent and not important
• Urgent, not important
• Not urgent, important
• Urgent and important

Urgency deals with a close due date. These tend to be someone else's priority (bills, taxes, work tasks, household chores).

Important tasks are important to you.

Tasks can overlap in terms of urgency and importance, but often important non-urgent tasks get ignored because you have to motivate yourself to do them.

You need to maximize efficiency on urgent and important tasks.

Stop doing non-urgent and non-important tasks.

Now we come to urgent but non-important tasks.

When to Hire Out: Urgent, Non-Important Tasks

These tasks have to get done, but tend to be relatively unskilled. When they are skilled, someone else can typically do them for you.

Initially, as a business owner and young person, you have to perform these tasks. At some point, though, you have to be able to spend time working on the business, not in it, and you gain that time by automating and delegating these tasks.

One option is to hire tasks out. Matt sometimes uses Upwork or Fiverr for tasks like artistic renderings. Not only can Matt as the CEO and founder not perform these tasks well, but even the marketing and design team within Barbell Logic needs to be focused on more important work. Their time is worth more than these relatively quick tasks.

When to Hire Out: TurnKey Coach for Personal Trainers

This is what TurnKey Coach offers to coaches and personal trainers. Instead of using a dozen apps, use one that delivers communication, programming, metrics-tracking, screen recording, scheduling, and payment processing.

The App is build for efficiency, to maximize not only quality of life but enable you to study your craft and acquire more clients. Work on your business, not in your business.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

We discuss recovery as the limiting factor. How addressing what you do outside the gym affects what you do in the gym and your movement toward your goals. Recovery as the Limiting Factor (Toward Adaptation / Your Goals)

The stress-recovery-adaptation cycle underpins the process of training. You stress yourself (the workout), spend time not stressing yourself (recovery), and hopefully move toward your goal (adaptation).

The stress you apply needs to be specific, based on the specific adaptation to imposed demand (SAID) principle. If you want to improve your run time, you should run, not follow a powerlifting routine.

For many people, following the workout program is relatively easy. What often becomes harder is changing habits outside the gym, which can be developed over years and decades.

How much protein are you eating? Are you willing to eat consistently in a caloric surplus? What does your sleep look like each night?

These and other factors limit your adaptation, and so addressing them can help you move toward your goal. Failing to deal with them means you may fail to meet your goal.

Recovery as the Limiting Factor: Maximizing Recovery

As you age, stressful events occur in your life (even if they're positive, like having a baby), and your priorities change, your recovery (and thus your adaptation) capacity changes.

To move toward your goal and stay healthy, maximizing recovery may make sense.

This area, though, often comes with harder-to-crack psychological underpinnings. On some level, you like to and are used to your habits (even if you are unhappy with where they have led you).

Ensuring you get enough protein and consistently eat high quality foods matters. Prioritize sleep (which comes with a host of habits you can build around sleep). Limit alcohol. Don't pursue the unimportant and non-urgent in your life.

A new approach to training, especially in more stressful times of life, may need to occur. Building in some autoregulation and not beating yourself up if you don't do what is programmed (the planned stress) matters.

For example, Niki and her sister were on vacation. They went to the gym and Niki's sister did her last warm up and it was way heavier than expected. Niki decided to decrease the weight. The win was completing the workout, not beating themselves up about the weight on the bar, and not grinding out reps unnecessarily.

Recovery as the limiting factor is an important topic that needs more serious consideration.

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

Take a sabbath. Take a day of rest, where you refresh. This doesn't necessarily mean you do nothing, but you rest and recharge.

Take a Sabbath! Rest, Recharge, Refresh

If you are like Matt, someone who works long days, enjoys work, and can tend to overdo work and grind yourself away, you need to take a day off.

This does not necessarily mean you do nothing. If your job involves mental work, you might do some manual labor and turn off your phone. If you read, you might read fiction.

If your job primarily involves manual labor, you might enjoy boardgames, intellectual reading, or other more intellectual pursuits.

Similar to how a change in training can help you enjoy training more, a major change to activity can help you recharge.

Get outside. Go for a hike. Spend time with family or friends. Slow down. Turn off your phone. Pursue the truly important, not urgent.

Take a sabbath.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

We share our go to healthy recipes. These are tasty, healthy, and enjoyable and help you crush your goals (without suffering). Go To Healthy Recipes: Consistency, High Protein, Veggies

Before we go on to discuss some of Andrew and Niki's go-to recipes, let's discuss some principles for how the find, make, or purchase these.

Find ways to get as high protein as possible (from natural foods). 2:1 protein to fat is good. This tends to mean, looking for lean beef, chicken, eggs, or Greek yogurt (there are, of course, other options, but these are readily available high protein options).

Seek ways to strip unnecessary fats out of your diet. Think about things that minimize suffering. Some examples include reducing cooking oils, removing or reducing cheese in salads, replacing high fat dairy with lower fat dairy, and using some egg whites with whole eggs.

Eating the same foods consistently is helpful. These meals provide stability. You know how you will feel after them. Unless other big changes have occurred in life, you know how much to cook, it's easy to know your calories and macros, and you know how full you will feel and for how long.

Go To Healthy Recipes

Andrew and Niki both like the Made In Blue Carbon Steel frying pan. It cooks eggs well.

Niki loves a high protein and veggie breakfast. She cooks some onions, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, and bok choy. Add some salt (not until the end!) and then some Boar's Head pastrami turkey (about 50 grams). Cook some eggs and back, put all of it in a low carb tortilla and you have a healthy breakfast that is under 400 calories.

Andrew will often go to Starbucks. When eating out, look for options that have high protein to calories ratios.

Greek yogurt with fruit (fresh or frozen), sugar free jello, and maybe grape nuts is super tasty and high in protein. Whipped cottage cheese is similar.

Andrew also has a chicken breast meal with potatoes. Cut the chicken breast in half (to make it thinner). Salt ahead of time (could even salt and leave in the fridge over night). Cook some baby potatoes in the oven (don't salt until the end)! Enjoy.

Lastly, a rice hack. Forget about the rice button on your instapot. Rinse the rice, add your water or chicken stock, some salt, and (optional) pat of butter or oil. Cook it for 3 minutes, do NOT have the keep warm function come on afterwards, then immediately start dishing out.

These are some of your go to healthy recipes. What are yours?

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

Swing for the fences! Don't leave anything on the table, give it your best shot, and go full bore ahead.

Swing for the Fences! - Aggressively Pursue the Urgent & Important

A single decision or event can change the course of your life. Regardless of life, philosophy, or religion, this is true.

When presented with a big opportunity, you need to swing for the fences. Hyperfocus your life and efforts on this.

This is when urgent and important overlap. This is when you put your sleep, family life, and other things on the backburner to aggressively pursue the opportunity.

You don't get the outcome if you don't swing for the fences. You don't even get to swing for the fences if you don't swing at all - if you fail to show up.

Swing for the Fences Regardless of the Outcome

This does not mean you succeed. You may fail. You will fail often.

Another opportunity will come. Work hard, prepare yourself for those opportunities, and be ready to show up and wing for the fences when the opportunity falls in your lap.

Don't leave life with regrets about what you did not seek, what you failed to try.

Swing for the fences!

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

Are more sets better? We dive into a new study and an associated article and headline. Are More Sets Better? Evidence-Based & Nuanced

We're talking about muscles and hypertrophy today.

Outside Magazine recently featured an article that discussed adding more sets for building muscle, which argued that you should add more sets to build muscle.

Andrew and Niki are here to be your funnel of truth.

Are More Sets Better? Let's Dig Deeper

When we look at scientific studies, it's important to avoid the seemingly easy route of reading a headline or even a news article. If you read the study itself, don't assume that the study title or abstract will match the data necessarily.

News media exist to sell their product, and weak headlines don't sell. These incentives exist for scientific magazines and scientists as well - no results or another study confirming what we would expect to find do not dazzle.

That being said, studies and scientific literature are not worthless.

What Andrew & Niki find is that the headline overstates the findings.

Remember, we all have models of how the world works. Ideally, your model has been built according to investigation and astute observation. Studies can and should inform that model, and if a piece of data disagrees with your model you should confront it.

That being said, upturning your model because of one study is not recommended.

Are more sets better? Maybe, it depends, as adding sets is certainly a tool to use.

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

Enjoy the pursuit not the outcome. We are refine by the pursuit, by the difficult process, not the outcome or achievement.

Enjoy the Pursuit Not the Outcome

We find joy in the pursuit of hard things. The process of doing hard things refines us, not the outcomes.

Jasen Huang shares how he would not do it again if he could do it again. He did not know how hard it would be but often asks, "How hard can it be?"

Andrew Schulz discusses with Joe Rogan how Joe enjoys hard things.

You have to come to love the hardship and pursuit it voluntarily. Hardship is coming for you, one way or the other. You can choose it, or it can choose you.

If you pursue comfort, hardship will find you. You almost certainly know someone who seeks comfort too much.

What does this lead to? Pain, things being taken from you, inability to physically or emotionally do things.

Enjoy the pursuit, not the outcome.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

Learn about the good news - the gospel of hard. Hard things done intelligently and consistently create good results. The Gospel of Hard: Voluntary Hardship

We at Barbell Logic have been spreading the good news of voluntary hardship for years.

Truly, if you expose yourself to hard things, intelligently, consistently, good things will happen.

Truth be told, even if you do this somewhat poorly, the persistent hard work often produces results.

Hard does not feel good, especially at first. But if you repeatedly expose yourself to hard things and overcome them, you will learn to associate hard with opportunity, and build a lifelong habit of pursuing challenges and the fruits of these obstacles.

The Gospel of Hard: Physical & Psychological Benefits

This is Barbell Logic, so clearly we love the physical benefits from strength training.

That being said, the psychological changes matter and may be bigger.

Completing hard tasks builds confidence. It builds a pathway that you can apply in other areas of your life.

A heavy set of squats can help you become a better father or employee or friend.

We obviously love barbell and strength training, but we highly encourage you to pursue something hard regularly, especially in the physical realm.

See the fruits of your efforts.

If you're looking to begin, but are stuck, look for a coach. Look for someone who can help you with technique and programming, but also connects well with you.

Experience the gospel of hard.

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

You have to undergo uniquely hard efforts for uniquely successful outcomes. Expect (and demand) nothing less from yourself.

Uniquely Hard, Uniquely Successful

If you set challenging goals, expect (and demand) hard efforts.

Alex Hormozi said on the Modern Wisdom podcast, the following:

When things get hard, this is where most people stop. And this is why they don't win. And hard feels shitty. This is what hard feels like. And this is why most people can't do it.

People who succeed work hard. And, guess what, in those rare circumstances and outliers you can think of, where everything falls into someone's lap, they don't value the wealth or whatever else they received. You don't respect them either.

We look up to the Michael Jordans, the Larry Birds, the Rudys. We look up to those who put in the work, day in and day out, for weeks, months, and years.

Uniquely Hard: Walking Through the Valley of S#%&

What are you going to do TODAY to move you toward your goal. Do it - TODAY.

Don't just listen to Alex Hormozi or Jocko or me. Do. Get in the arena. Take the first step.

Know that you'll have some initial motivation and the honeymoon phase. Before it becomes a habit, you'll want to quit. Don't. Persist.

Walk through the valley of suckiness.

Accomplish something uniquely hard. Accept your circumstances and the outcomes, but put in the work.

This podcast is brought to you by TurnKey Coach. Enhance your coaching effectiveness and efficiency with TurnKey Coach. You can learn more by going HERE.

Check out Coaching 101 - the new Academy course designed to cover the basics of coaching. It's leaner and tighter than our other offerings (and cheaper).

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page.

Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]

How can I look like Jake Gyllenhaal? If you've asked yourself or your coach this, we discuss what this looks like (really). How Can I Look Like Jake Gyllenhaal? The Goal

A popular movie comes out with a young actor who takes his shirt off and shows his shredded mid-section. What comes next?

The onslaught of requests and goals to look like him. Articles explaining his training routine, diet, and more.

Shred your abs with this Roadhouse routine.

Andrew and Niki explore what this process might look like (really).

How Can I Look Like Jake Gyllenhaal? The Process

It's going to take a long time and, contrary to many people's expectations and desires, you will almost certainly have to gain weight before you cut.

For many, they are unwilling to add weight.

Second, the cut is going to be rough. It may begin easy enough, with sustainable nutrition practices, but you will end feeling (and being) weak and lethargic.

Realize that Jake approached this like a bodybuilder for a show. This is the peaked, temporary appearance of someone who underwent a long process and was not walking around like this for a long period of time. It is inherently unsustainable.

How Can I Look Like Jake Gyllenhaal? The Mindset

Third, it will take a lot of consistent, hard training over a long period of time (some of which you will feel and be weak).

Lastly, and not unimportantly, you will have to deal with the hunger and what comes next.

You will have extremely low energy near the end, not want to train, not want to work, and think about food most of your day.

You got shredded, took the picture, posted it to Instagram. Now what?

It will be hard to not compare yourself unforgivingly against this temporary success.

If you want to look like Jake Gyllenhaal, you need to envision the life around the body and be prepared to dedicate the sacrifice this will entail.

Check out the Barbell Logic podcast landing page. Get Matched with a Professional Strength Coach today for FREE! No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/ Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram
• Andrew on Instagram

Connect with the show

• Barbell Logic on Instagram
• Podcast Webpage
• Barbell Logic on Facebook
• Or email [email protected]