What's up guys? Sean Cobra here of the live transform podcast. Over the next two weeks while I launched this podcast, I'm going to be dropping one episode per day. Then I'm going to drop back to one episode per week. The first episode is an introductory episode explaining who I am, my background, my knowledge, my experience. The second episode is all about goal setting. That's going to be followed up by progress tracking, then building habits, doing the things that you enjoy doing consistency, restricting, temptation, meal preparation, accountability, crap foods, getting started and building momentum along with hierarchy of value, motivation, direction and your environment. Now, if you go back and listen to each one of those topics again, they are all relevant Or optimizing your performance and your everyday life. It's not just to do with health and fitness. Yes, I am a strengthening edition coach that is my background, that is my specialization. However, I'm a coach first and foremost and I need to optimize the other 23 hours of the day so that I can get the most out of my clients for that one hour that I'm with them.

I'll also be answering some of my followers questions that have posted questions on my Q and a memes and I'm going to incorporate those answers into the pertinent episodes. Mm Yeah. Hey guys, welcome to the final episode of the two week launch series. During this episode, we are going to be going through a Q and a session. I'll be answering questions from some of my listeners and followers that have posted comments and questions on my cue and mm so keep an eye out for those on the coming weeks you guys ask the questions and I'll answer them on a podcast. Some of the topics that we're gonna be covering today go into relationships, some of the lessons that I learned from my time in the military mindset and resilience, the smartest way to restart your training program. Once the lockdown restrictions are lifted, how to bring awareness to your training and also the relationship between your environment and your ability to perform.

Let's get started. So the first question I'll answer comes from someone who will remain anonymous because I don't want to throw anyone in hot water. It's a long question. So I'll paraphrase it. But basically the question is, what would you do if you knew what you wanted to become in life and where you wanted to go, but your partner is stopping you from doing that because they want you to spend all of your time with them rather than training and studying and practicing etcetera. I feel like I need to sacrifice either my dream or my relationship Because I know if I'm not 100% committed to my dream, then I won't make it good question and I feel for you. I guarantee you're not the only person in this boat. However, before I answer this question, I just want to point out that I am by no means a relationship expert. So there's your disclaimer take and implement this advice at your own discretion. So the first thing that I want to say is that it is not your partner that's stopping you from doing those things.

It's you you have a decision you have a choice to make. Uh and I recommend going back and listening to the hierarchy of value episode. Here's the thing. Time is our most precious commodity. It is the only thing that we do not get back, right? So make sure that whatever you're investing your time in, you get a quality return on investment that aligns with what your values are. So if your values are making it big and turning your dreams into reality, then you need to sacrifice everything is sacrifice. Okay? You've got to weigh up all of the options that come up throughout life and then make an educated decision on the direction that you want to go, okay. And this is where again your actions and your behaviors should align with your values. If you don't know what your values are and you have no clarity around them, then you'll find yourself in these positions where you're kind of torn and you're making these compromises.

And if you're making compromises that shift the balance of the scales too far in one direction. This is where resentment comes into play. All right? So you need to have a conversation with you know, the man in the mirror, so to speak. And ask yourself what's most important to is your relationship more important to you or is chasing your goals and you're turning your dreams into reality more important too. Because at the end of the day, you'll need to make a decision and make a sacrifice on, you know, the things that you're willing to compromise on and the things that you're not willing to compromise on, and then you've got to follow through with that okay, become clear on what you want, align your actions and behaviors with your values and then make a sacrifice on the investment of time to ensure you get equality, return on investment for what you're trying to achieve. It's a fairly vague answer.

Um, but this principle applies to everything in life. So if you can follow this principle, it will help you make much better decisions over time. Now, another thing to think about here is the difference between what the head is saying, what the heart is saying and what the gut is saying. Okay, in my opinion, I don't have any scientific evidence for this, but in my opinion, our head is a thinker. Okay, it overthinks things. It uses its logical sensors to come up with, you know, a scenario or an end state. Our heart on the other side is super emotional. So it's going to use emotions to determine and drive the direction that you're moving the gut on the other hand, man for me, that that shit knows more than we know, right? So every time I've had a major decision to make in my life and you know, I've had numerous um massive pivotal moments in my life and whenever I get to that point where I need to sit down way up my options and decide the direction that I want to go.

You know, I I asked what my head saying, I asked what my heart saying, but it ultimately has come down to what's my gut saying? What's my gut telling me? Okay for me that gut instinct is just I don't know what it is about it, but there's something that just goes on behind the scenes that your gut understands now. I don't want to go too deep here, but your gut has microbiome, it's made up of almost two kg of bacteria and microbes which have a massive influence on our brain and the other systems of our body. Now, recent research and studies have shown that the brain and the gut are directly connected. This is called the gut brain axis, 80% of our immune system also lies within the guts. So it makes sense for me that your gut health has a massive impact on your brain health as well as your physical health because your digestive tract essentially breaks down the foods that you're eating into raw materials to then be digested, absorbed and assimilated to then push those compounds and nutrients to the areas of the body that there needed the most.

I will discuss in an upcoming episode about the impact and the importance of the gut brain axis. However, I just want to point out that the gut and the brain are also connected through not only the immune system but through chemicals called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters produced in the brain, control feelings and emotions. So for example the neurotransmitter serotonin contributes to feelings of happiness and also helps control your body clock. Interestingly. Many of these neurotransmitters are also produced by your gut cells and the trillions of microbes living there. A large proportion of serotonin is also produced in the gut. Your gut microbes also produce a neurotransmitter called gamma amino butyric acid which is gaba which helps control feelings of fear and anxiety. So our microbes in our gut play a massive part and radically influence our bodies internal health.

So in one of the last episodes I spoke about the impact of both the internal and the external environment. So this is where our gut brain axis and our internal health, our gut microbiome and the state of health of the immune system has a massive impact on how you think about things and how you feel and what your emotions are doing and your energy levels and all this type of stuff. So again I'll cover this in a lot more detail in a future episode but just think about like this, there's so many um small microbiota within the body that are essentially fucking pulling the levers on how you feel and how you perform. So we need to make sure that we're feeding them correctly. We think the brains in control, but in my opinion, I think the guts in control and research on the gut is an emerging science. So I'm excited to see what unfolds in the coming years and and how we can figure out how much of an impact that this has on our body. So to summarize my answer, you need to have a conversation with the man in the mirror and sit down and write out what your values are, what's important to you, what you're willing to compromise on and what you're not willing to compromise on.

And then the next step is all about effective communication. You need to sit down, have a conversation with your partner and lay out what you want to achieve um and go through those, those compromises that you're willing to and not willing to go through only, then can you have a good conversation about whether or not it's going to work. You know, it's not an all or nothing thing. There's, there's a spectrum in between. So once you have that conversation and explain exactly how you're feeling, then hopefully your partner will understand that they will get that and then they will be able to make some compromises as well because if you're not willing to make those compromises or if you're making compromises and your partner's not making compromises, then again, resentments going to lead in and that's not going to last very long. So effective communication is super important in relationships, all types of relationships. The next question comes in from Dawn Yusuf, would you say that serving in the military has helped you in your current position? Both mentally and physically short answer?

Fuck yes, it has. The long answer is that everything in my life has shaped the person that I've become today through life, experiences life lessons through facing adversity that has created the person that I have become today. And I'm grateful for those lessons. I'm grateful for those experiences because I am the man I am today because of those experiences, those lessons and the direction that it took me in For those that don't know, I left home when I was 14, my step dad was abusive, I went into the workforce quite young ah and you know left my family, left my state, left school because I was getting caught up with the wrong crowd, you know, I was stealing and doing drugs and shit like that and I knew that that's not the path that I wanted to go down. So I decided to get out and forge my own path and ended up working in the building supplies industry as a 14 15 year old, you know, very laborious job and I was the youngest there by a decade or so. So I got all the shitty tasks and it was up to me to prove myself to the men, the adults that were there, that were relying on me to get these jobs done so that they could do their jobs.

Prior to that I lived in a block of land with my family and built a shack, built a house, we didn't have any running water or electricity or anything like that for six years of my life and for probably about 6-8 months, I essentially lived in a tent. I won't go into too much detail here because not the point of this podcast, but if you're interested in hearing the back story then I did a good interview with my mate Jamie O'Donnell from the Life Livers Academy, you can find that episode on Spotify, that is episode three with Jamie O'Donnell. Um but I just want to point that out because that had laid the foundation prior to getting into the military. Once I got into the military then it was about facing adversity through a controlled environment. One of my favorite quotes is the best gift that you can give someone is the ability to deal with adversity. And this is what the army does very well. You're essentially stripped back to the bear human, It doesn't matter what you did prior to getting in the army, it doesn't matter you know what your achievements were etcetera.

You basically get off the bus at the recruit training center and your hair is cut off and everyone's addressed the same and everyone is given the same uniforms and everyone is treated the same regardless of who they are, what their background was. Uh and that's the whole point of the recruit training is to turn you from a civilian into a soldier. So everyone's thinking with a collective mind, everyone's working towards achieving the same task, achieving the same mission, as long as everyone within that team plays their role, plays their part. Then everyone's working towards achieving a task. And throughout this process we were taught how to be professional, how to work as a team, uh the importance of security dress and bearing, time management punctuality, uh, how to conduct ourselves. So just generally being an all around good person and particularly how to conduct yourself as a soldier 24/7. Now an example of some of the training that we did that taught us this stuff was we would go and do pt first thing in the morning physical training and and we'd come back into the lines and beds had been upturned and should have been taken out of the cupboards and thrown around the room and things like that.

And that was because people hadn't made their beds properly or they left their lockers unlocked and that was to teach us about attention to detail. So we basically had to make our bed with 45 degree hospital corners and the fold of the sheet had to be 30 centimeters from the top of the bed and the fold itself had to be 30 centimeters. So people like myself actually measured out 30 centimeters and then fucking iron decrease into the bed sheets so we could save a little bit time first thing in the morning, but some people didn't pay attention to detail and you know, just kind of haphazardly put their bed together and I mean it's a simple fucking thing, make your bed okay, but make it correctly. Now, I make my bed every single morning, as soon as I get out of bed these days I make my bed and that's To kind of set the scene and that sets me up for the first win of the day. Once I've set myself with that first win, that's an achievement, right then it's much easier to build momentum and right, I'm going to do this next thing, that's going to be another achievement, then I'm going to do this next thing, then that's another achievement.

So the 1st 30 minutes of my day is all about fucking setting myself up for success and achieving. Now the philosophy that the recruit instructors were using there was you know, if you can't make your bed properly, how you're going to clean your weapon properly, how are you going to go through your drills properly? How are you going to conduct yourself in an environment that you can't control, You have no control over the external environment. If you can't even do the basics, right? Uh in a controlled environment, how the fuck are you going to operate when the shit hits the fan? So that attention to detail has carried over into basically everything else in my life. I've just simply repurposed that and I make sure that when I'm doing something, I'm giving it my full attention, I'm giving it my best. Now going back to the security side of things when we would go out and do our physical training in the morning, we get back and all this shit would be all over the room. Anything that was insecure was thrown around. And this taught us some invaluable lessons that again has carried over to the rest of my life.

So when we go out, Bush, for example, if our pouches weren't done up correctly are zips weren't done up. Our pouches weren't clipped up correctly. Then the section commander would grab whatever was in that pouch and they would fucking throw it as far as they could and then you'd have to get down on your hands and knees and leopard crawl over rocks and logs and shit like that to go and retrieve whatever it was that was in that pouch. And this taught us the importance of security. And you know, I saw some of this actually happened in Afghanistan. Where wasn't our team? It was a different team in in the same valley, but about 10 K's away, a different base. The boys went out on patrol, found an id, they cordoned it off and called in the O. D. Now the E. O. D. Team were on another task and they essentially weren't going to get out to that position to take care of that I. D. For many, many hours. So the boys sat in location and one of the lads talkies bag off that contained, you know, first aid kit and night fighting equipment and things like that.

And once they got up and moved a couple of hours later, it wasn't until a couple of minutes after they started moving that he realized he didn't have his bag on and he went back to that location and his bag was gone. The locals had grabbed the bag and they'd actually attained some night vision goggles, which was fucking massive because that was one of the advantages that we had over the Taliban was we could fight at night. So that was a massive thing. And for the next three days, those guys went house to house through that valley looking for that equipment because that was potentially putting Australian lives and Afghani National Army lives in danger. Luckily enough, they found that equipment at the Bazaar in Tarin Kowt, which was the main city in the area that we're working in and the bizarre was the marketplace. But um, the Australian government had to pay $5,000 to get that equipment back. That's just a couple of examples of the lessons that I've learned over my military career.

I could literally do a whole podcast on those lessons. However, I do drop those lessons through a lot of the previous episodes and as as well as upcoming episodes. So make sure you listen in to find out some of those. One of the biggest lessons though was that we operated on standard operating procedures, which meant that if this happens, we do that and if that happens we do this. That meant that every single person on every single team that we worked with knew what the drills were. We knew what we had to do and we practiced those drills again and again and again and again, so that when things did go wrong or when certain scenarios did occur, we had habituated those patterns, we knew what to do and the training took over. So those standard operating procedures have simply been restructured and repurposed to suit my current lifestyle and what I do for work. And it basically just gives me an overview of what I will do under certain scenarios. An example of this is many, many years ago, I went on a three day hike with my ex girlfriend through Tasmania uh and we encountered no less than five or six tiger snakes in that time and I remember her asking me if she is worried about a snake bite and what would happen if one of us was bitten and straight away, I rattled off what the procedure was, what I've gone through in my head, you know, and that gave me peace of mind that gave her peace of mind as well, you know, it wasn't that I was dwelling on things, but I'd run these scenarios in my head and I'd come up with a plan of action, if something like that did happen, once you give yourself that plan of action, then it gives you peace of mind so that you don't start dwelling on things and you know, creating any unnecessary stress.

So anyone that knows me personally knows that I'm I'm pretty structured throughout the day now that structure is simply my S. O PS. I'm not super rigid with it, it's just a guideline to basically provide an overview and a plan of action for what I'm trying to achieve and any potential scenarios that come up. Once I have that baseline, then it's pretty easy to adapt and be flexible to any scenarios that come up throughout the day. The next question comes in from the Jakub Gunrunner, how do you build a resilient mindset during tough times and when you fail? Excellent question. Uh and I'm going to tie this into my last answer and that answer is you need to expose yourself to it, you need to expose yourself to adversity and you need to condition yourself to it. So for every person that's going to be different. But essentially you your body is going to adapt to whatever whatever stress you throw at it.

Now, here's the important thing, stress is dose dependent. So you don't want to try and condition yourself to, you know, run a fucking marathon if you've been sitting on the couch for the last year, you know, that's probably not going to be ideal, you're probably going to overdo it. So what you need to do is expose yourself to these adversities and use progressive overload. Use progressive overload to condition yourself to these environments. This means that, you know, do something that's challenging to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable again for every single person that's going to be different. But um an example of this is in the gym when I'm in the gym when I'm training, I'm using that to yes, work on the physical aspects of training, but I'm also working on the mindset and the mental aspects of training as an example, one of my favorite, an aerobic conditioning sessions is 250 m sprints on the rowing machine and I'm looking at 5 to 6 reps.

The goal is to pull 250 m in under 45 seconds. So I know that I'm going into that session. I know I'm doing five reps, The goal is under 45 seconds and I say to myself, if I don't come in under 45 seconds for one rep, then I'm going to add another one, right? So that's setting those little challenges, those goals, That setting myself those targets and then it's about building that mindset of going, right, I need to fucking work hard now so that I can finish up the session, I can get the most out of it without having to do any unnecessary work. Now. For me, looking at people in the gym as a coach, I can really tell you know how people typically conduct themselves in other areas of their lives. Let's say we're doing some sprint work okay Or we're working to a time or something like that. I'll be able to tell how people conduct themselves by how their training. Do they pull up two m short or do they continue sprinting through the line?

You know, if you pull up two m short every single time or two seconds short, that adds up over a training session that adds up over a week, that adds up over a month, that adds up over a year. So on so forth. Right? So you're only cheating yourself there and that's a good way to build the mental resilience to push through. I'll give you an example of everyday life as well. And this is something that I quite often do with myself. If I go grocery shopping and I'm carrying all of my groceries back to my car, my shoulders are burning. I want to put those bags down. I'm simply looking at a car or a pole or a reference point that I'm going to walk to. I'm going to make sure I walked to that pole before I put them down. So I'm just teaching myself to build that mental resilience as my body is exhausted as I'm fatigued, I'm teaching myself to push through. I'm teaching myself to build that mental strength as well. Now, here's the thing. We live in one of the easiest times in human history. We don't have to worry about war, We don't have to worry about famine.

We don't have to worry about disease. For the most part, okay, we've set our lives up to live a pretty fucking good life. We've pretty much got everything we want at our fingertips. And as much as the media tries to show us that we live in a fucking dangerous time, that is incorrect. This is the safest time in human history. So those daily adversities that we used to face of having to seek food, water and shelter from an evolutionary perspective have been replaced by far less intense adversities. And now, you know, some people, the fucking biggest issue they have is deciding what to watch on netflix or deciding what they're going to eat for dinner. So here's the thing. We shouldn't be looking at building mental toughness during tough times. We should be conditioning ourselves and exposing ourselves to these adversities throughout our lives. Okay, this is what conditions you to be able to deal with those tough times, much much better and again, progressive overload is the key here Alright, find something that makes you a little bit uncomfortable but that you can achieve and you can do consistently what those tools are, are going to be completely different for every person, but as an example, if you want to add a little bit of adversity into your life, it might be as simple as at the end of your shower, do 10 seconds cold, right, do that every day for a week, then the next week go 15 seconds, then the next week go 20 seconds so on, so forth, and this just starts conditioning your brain, this starts conditioning your mind to be able to deal with that adversity and you know it's fucking uncomfortable, but you also know that it's going to end and once you build that resilience then you can add some more on top of that.

I'm recording this podcast and to be honest, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing when I started out, but I put myself in a position to just crack on and get started on it and you know, I knew that I was going to suck, but I also knew that I was going to get better, I just had to face my fears, put myself in a little bit of an uncomfortable position and learn from it and grow and that's exactly what progressive overload is, where there is no adversity, there is no growth, where there is no stress, there is no adaptation. These principles apply to training, they also apply to every other aspect of your life. The next question comes in from Juhasz Daniel. His question is, what is the smartest way to restart? Heavy hard training after our holiday? I feel like quite a few people will injure themselves on the first day mate, I couldn't agree more. Um the biggest thing here is again, that progressive overload, so you're not gonna be able to walk into the gym, even if you've been training for example, I like heavy hard weightlifting stole training and I also like doing speed and power based work, I'm not gonna be able to walk into the gym and lift the same weight that I was lifting before, I'm also not going to be able to focus on the same power and speed based work that I was doing before.

So even though I've been training at home using bands and kettlebells and my gymnastics rings and things like that when I get back into the gym and I get under the bar bell, I'm going to have to go through that progressive overload again, So let's take a five by five training program which is an excellent training program for building strength now, I'm not going to walk back into the gym and you know, if I'm doing five sets of five sumo dead lifts at 210 kg, I'm not gonna be able to walk back in the gym and roll straight into that training session. Okay, so what I might have to do if you want to start that training program again, I'm going to walk into the gym, I'm going to go through a good quality warm ups and mobility based works and activation work. Then I'm simply going to find my five rep max That might be as simple as starting with 120 kg on the bar. Then I'm going to build up and hit 140 maybe 100 and 60. I might get up to 180 kg and I'm like, all right, cool. There's my five rep max. I'm not going to push it any more than that.

I'm just going to simply find do one or two sets at five reps with the heaviest weight that I can handle with good technique that gives me a gauge of what my current five rep max dead lift is from there. The next training session that I'm going to be dead lifting. Then I simply build up and I might do maybe, you know, 1 21 41 61 80 and I might just do two or three sets at 1 80. Okay. And I'm going to repeat that process until I get to say week three or week four when I'm back up at five by five. So think about total training volume, which is sets times reps times. Wait now a very simple example of this is if I'm dead lifting, let's use 100 kg. Okay. That first week, that first session, I'm going to walk into the gym. Find my five rep max. That's 100 kg. Cool. Now my volume is one set of five reps At 100 kg.

There's 500 kg. Okay. I've done some lead upsets and build upsets to get to that point to practice my movement and dial in the recruitment patterns and the skill of the movement. Then I've hit one set for a total of 500 kg. The next time I'm training, dead lifts, I might do two sets that's bumped me from 500 kg total volume up to 1000 kg. Total volume. Okay. The following week, now I'm at three sets of 1500 kg. Total volume. Next week, four sets, 2000 kg, total volume. Next week. Five sets. Okay, 2.5 1000 kg. Total volume. What you don't want to do is walk into the gym thinking that you can lift the same weight and hit the same total volume because you're going to fuck yourself up. You're going to debilitate yourself for at least a few days and that's going to affect your ability to recover again. Going back to what I said earlier about stress being dose dependent. Okay, we don't adapt in the gym. We provide the stimulus, we put our body under stress and it's only when we rest recover that we get back to homeostasis and then the body goes, oh I didn't deal with that very well.

That was difficult. Now I need to use these nutrients and push them to where they're needed to consolidate and reinforce these different systems, my muscular system, my neural system, my nervous system, um so that I can deal with this stress a little bit better next time. Now, a point that I want to make here is that being sore for days after a training session is not a good indication of making progress. Okay, you don't need to be sore after a training session. I work with Peter Yang who is a UFC fighter, he's got a title shot coming up against Jose Aldo. Now, if I do too much work in my training session and he saw and he can't hold his hands up when he goes into aspiring sessions, then I haven't done my job. I've done too much. All right, so we want to do just enough to elicit the response that we want, but not so much that we impede our ability to recover and that's going to be different for every single person. This is where the individual variation comes into play is if you haven't been doing any training during this quarantine period, then simply getting into the gym and you know, just going through the motions and practicing movement is going to be far more beneficial for you than going in and hitting like a really structured regime with sets and reps and rest periods and weights and things like that because that's not going to suit you at the time.

However, if you have been consistently training through the lockdown period then you're going to be much better off going back into the gym and following a program. Now, the final point that I want to make here is that there's something called specific adaptations to impose demands. So I gave the example before of if I went back into the gym and got under a barbell and practice five by five dead lifts. Okay, that is a strength based adaptation. I haven't been doing that much strength based work. Okay, yes, I've done a little bit of strength and hypertrophy tension based work, but it's been mostly focused on mind muscle connection, creating tension, intra muscular tension and our structural adaptation where I'm looking at muscle growth if I go into the gym and I'm looking at strength, that's a different adaptation, That's going to be more of a functional adaptation, which is more of the neural drive. Okay, so we're thinking about connecting the mind to the muscles and producing as much force as we can. Now, those are two completely different adaptations.

Right? So the first one hypertrophy tension based work, mind muscle connection, I'm moving slow. I'm focusing on time under tension and I'm connecting my brain to the specific muscles that I'm trying to work. Okay when I'm looking at a functional adaptation, it's about up regulating neural drive and that's about into muscular coordination and tension. So I'm firing as many muscles as I can as hard as I can to produce the highest amount of force and a good point to finish this portion of the session. Is that again, that principle applies to every single time you change your training program when you change your training program and you change the adaptation type, then you need to again go back through that progressive overload. Okay, when you change your training program, if you go from say a hypertrophy training program focused on mind, muscle connection, muscle growth and then you go into a strength training protocol. Then again build up, use progressive overload and then get to a point where you're peeking once you stop adapting to that or once your results start slowing down, you start seeing plateaus, then it's time to change your training program again and you simply repeat this process over and over and over again.

So this episode is currently at roughly 34 minutes. I want to call it there. So I'll get to the other questions in another podcast episode which is awareness whilst training and the relationship between your environment and your ability to perform. But the final point that I want to make is train often test seldom. This is a mistake that I made many, many years ago and I see people do this all the time at the gym where they're literally fucking hammering themselves every single time they go to the gym and like I said, I fell into this trap as well, I was a soldier and I was a rugby player and you know, I was good at what I did. So every time we had physical training in the morning it was almost a test to see who could fuck themselves up and put themselves the deepest in the pain cave. And some of those training sessions debilitated me for the rest of the day. I couldn't do my job, I couldn't patrol, my arms were shaking all day, I couldn't eat for hours afterwards. The thought and the smell of food made me feel sick.

So that was a sure sign that I pushed way too hard into a sympathetic state. There's a difference between exercising and training, okay, exercising is just putting some exercises together and moving to make yourself feel better and get those benefits of getting that quality movement in training, on the other hand, has an intent, there's a purpose, you are doing those movements, you are doing those exercises for a reason, I'll cover this in another episode, but giving yourself that intent, that purpose, that direction, that goal that you're pushing for in the training session is going to make a hell of a difference. And again, train often test seldom. Now don't get me wrong, there's going to be times when you're going to exercise and that's pretty much what I've been doing through the quarantine period. I don't have a goal, I don't have an end state in mind other than movement, makes me feel good and I want to focus on my health and immune system. I want to keep that strong and healthy. Okay? But once I get back into the gym, then I'm going to start training again, I've got a purpose.

I've got an end state. I'm working towards something. All right, So, understanding the difference between just working out and training two completely different things. All right, there's a time and a place for both of those, but it's about the application of the right tool at the appropriate time. That's going to get you the results. Now, that's the difference. Okay. Training has a result in mind, exercising, it's just kind of going through the motions and doing something for right there. And then training, on the other hand, is about looking ahead, it's about building the foundation and using progressive overload to build on that foundation and take you to the next phase of training, it might be going from hypertrophy to strength and then strength to power and then power to speed, and then speed to energy system conditioning, etcetera. So it's looking at building that foundation and then progressively moving from one phase to the next so that you can target specific adaptations. And the final point that I want to make for this episode is that movement is a skill, it needs to be practiced.

Okay, get good at the fundamentals, Master the basics and then you can start adding the different variables on top. I quite often see people who have very poor mechanics for a dead lift, yet they're using a dead lift for conditioning. Okay, that does not make sense to me. You first need to be proficient at the movement. You need to master the fundamentals, master the basics, make sure that your fucking recruitment patterns are good to go And it doesn't matter if you've got 100 kg on the bar, 200 kg on the bar, you've done one rep or 100 and one reps, your movements should look the same. Okay, it's only when you have those fundamentals down pat, then you can start using these exercises for conditioning. And even then your technique needs to be super dialed in. Use resistance exercises for what they're good at building strength, stability, muscle tension coordination control. Okay, don't take a good strength building exercise like a dead lift and turn it into a shitty conditioning exercise, choose a different variation, choose a different tool, Okay, If you want to focus on conditioning, do some fucking sprints, jump on a bike row ride, swim.

Okay. Unless your movements are super solid, you should not be taking good strength building exercises or power building exercises and using them for conditioning. Crossfit. I'm looking at you. This episode rounds out the two week launch series. I hope you guys have enjoyed this and you've taken some good quality actionable content away from here. What we're moving on to next is the nutritional pyramid of importance miniseries, which is a seven part mini series covering the fundamentals of nutrition. So in the seven part miniseries, I'm going to teach you guys everything you need to know about. Energy balance, macronutrients, Micronutrients, the different types of diets and supplements. I'm gonna be dropping three episodes per week for the next couple of weeks to round that out. And then I'm going to move into the principles of Swiss eight. Let's go. If you enjoy the content that I'm bringing to you guys, please help me spread the message and life save, share and subscribe and pass this off to your friends, your family, anyone that's relevant in your life that it could potentially help And please make sure you leave a five star rating and review much.

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