Barbell Logic Barbell Logic

Do the work. A bad to do list executed aggressively is better than the "perfect" to do list you never finish. Be a doer.
Do the Work: Don't Procrastinate
Don't identify as a coach, spend time creating the "perfect" to do list or checking off easy, non-important to dos.
Do that thing that makes you nervous. Do the work you know is the most important thing to bring you closer to your goal.
For many, it is getting your first paying client.
Go and do, stop planning, preparing, or creating and completing tasks that do not actually bring you closer to your goal.
You likely know the thing you need to do. Do it: today, right now.
Do the Work: Be a Doer - Be a Person of Action
If you are not sure what you need to do, spend some time thinking about it. Set the time aside, and execute.
For Matt, he realized as a gym owner that he needed to write the standard operating procedures for simple tasks such as cleaning the bathroom so that the high standards he had for his gym would continue but, importantly, someone else could execute these tasks. The freed up time would allow Matt to work on his business, not in his business.
You cannot scale if you are drowning in urgent tasks.
Do the important work, eliminate the non-important, non-urgent work, and actually reach your goal.
Do the work. Be a doer. Be a person of action.


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.

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No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/

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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 podcast@barbell-logic.com

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.
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. 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. 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.




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No contract with us, just commitment to yourself: Start experiencing strength now: https://store.barbell-logic.com/match/

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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 podcast@barbell-logic.com

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 podcast@barbell-logic.com

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 podcast@barbell-logic.com

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 podcast@barbell-logic.com

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 podcast@barbell-logic.com