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The blog is updated Monday-Friday. Tune in for posts and discussion about health, fitness, nutrition, training experiments and reflection. We share articles, videos and more. We post the link to our Instagram story every day, make sure to follow along there to never miss a post.
Friday THoughts 69
Greetings! Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Thoughts, enjoy!
Hard Doesn’t Equal Good
Just because something is hard, it doesn’t make it an effective training method. This video reminded me of the famous Mike Boyle quote, if your athletes want to be sore from a workout, just thwack them in the legs with a baseball bat.
Reverse Plank
This looks incredibly hard. I believe the Chinese weightlifting team is known for doing some crazy core accessory work, and this very heavy, each one of those plates weights 55 pounds.
Truth.
World Record?
Doesn’t seem that heavy.
This was by far and away the post I sent to the most people and read the most. It’s a great decoding of all the fitness information coming at you, and on the last slide there is a great training poem.
That’s all for this week, see you next time!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Basic Squat Checklist
There’s a quote that goes something like, once you’ve mastered the basics, start over and pay closer attention this time. Review this list of basic squat cues and hopefully you’ll pick up a new perspective or two on an important but tricky movement to master.
Get Organized!
Screw your feet “into” the ground by turning you heels towards one another. You can also imagine spinning your knee caps away from each other. When you do this, we’re trying to rotate the hips into the best position for range of motion and for force production.
Foot Pressure
After you get your hips organized, you might feel the weight on the outside of your feet. That means you’ve gone too far. Try to maintain a balanced foot - weight right in the middle of your heel and ball of your foot. At the gym, we say find your “mid foot.” This is initially difficult to do, but after a few reps it usually evens out.
Back THEN down
When learning to squat, it’s helpful to imagine the lowering portion as two pieces. Start by pushing your butt to a wall behind you. Once you start moving, let your sternum fall towards the floor. Once that happens, start bending your knees. This way, you’ve got the right trajectory to squat using your hips and putting less pressure on your lower back and knees. It’ll feel clunky at first, but as you learn the pattern, the two step movement will become fluid, and happen simultaneously.
On the Bottom
Maintain that foot pressure! No knees caving in, instead push them away from each other, like they’re magnets. To get up, start pushing that middle of the foot into the floor like you’re trying to break through it. Careful not to let your heels lift from the floor, if they do, lean forward more. If the opposite thing happens and all your weight is in your heels, you may feel like you’re going to fall over backwards. Keep your toes on the ground too.
Back on the Top
Once you get to the top, stand up tall and be sure you squeeze your butt to finish the movement to set the next rep up for success.
Breathing
For squats we want to breath in going down, exhale as we’re coming up. We’ve talked before about a slight breath hold for added pressure and stability, but this is a basics primer. For the purpose of bodyweight squats, we want to inhale down, sharp exhale coming up. That’ll keep you in a good, smooth rhythm.
I hope one out of the many cues I just gave makes something click for you.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Trying Viral Recipes Part 2
Last week’s Instagram recipe was a flop.
It was cheeseburger mac and cheese, and it was just trying too hard. I gave it a 5/10, which was probably generous from my wife’s perspective.
This week’s recipe comes from the same account and was much more of a hit in our house, something more along the lines of a normal meal we would make, but the sauce on the recipe was excellent.
Honey Teriyaki Chicken and Rice
Overall Grade: 8/10
Simple recipe, we didn’t have cornstarch, but otherwise made it work. Personally, you can’t go wrong with boneless skinless chicken thighs in the crock pot, it shreds apart easily and is delicious. The sauce, 10/10, took some playing around to get the right amount of kick, but simple and easy to make.
We kept the rice separate, made using a rice cooker, the MVP of the kitchen, and added some peppers and onions and leafy greens to the meal as well.
Give this one a shot!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Gym Lingo: EMOM
EMOM stands for Every Minute On the Minute.
This style of workout requires focus on the clock. When doing an EMOM, you start your exercises on the top of the minute, and after completing the prescribed work, rest all the remaining time in the minute before starting the process over.
EMOM 10: 5 push ups
This means you’ll complete 5 push ups at the top of each minute, rest all the remaining time and start again at the top of the next minute. The way this is written, you would do this for 10 rounds, or 10 minutes. This is a nice way to practice, challenge technique, build volume and sprinkle in some conditioning while lifting.
Another variation of and EMOM can be with multiple exercises, with each movement getting their own minute.
EMOM 21:
Minute 1: 5 pull ups
Minute 2: 10 kb swings
Minute 3: 50ft sled march
In this scenario, you would complete 7 rounds of the 3 movements equalling 21 minutes total. This style of workout builds work capacity and gets more difficult as minutes on the clock tick by.
EMOMs are great way to be time efficient and cram a lot of work in while keeping yourself on a strict pace. They’re one of my personal favorite workouts (lately) because it forces me to get to work, and I can get a lot done in a short period of time.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Skiers Rejoice
I know your pass is blacked out today, but it isn’t at GAIN, come on in for your regular Monday workout and get the week started right!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Friday Thoughts 68
Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Thoughts! Let’s get into it.
Plate Flip Gate:
I was wildly impressed when I saw Nate from Oak Performance flipping this 45-pound plate. However, if you look closely, Nate’s 45-pound bumper plates look a little small. Nate is a strong man, but that plate flip challenge is wildly difficult. His effort seemed too easy so I did some digging.
Let’s take a look at Nate’s Rep Fitness bumper plate dimensions. His 45-pounder is 2.8 inches thick.
Contrast that with the Rogue bumper plate, 3.25 inches for nearly a half inch difference. Sorry Nate, I’m going to have to disqualify you from the plate flip challenge for breaking the rules and using a smaller sized plate.
I love this video, I’ve shared it before but was talking about this arm position with someone recently, and figured it was a good refresher for us all.
Goals. I’m a disaster when I cook, I always have been. Lately I’ve been trying to clean as I cook, and while it isn’t the perfect system yet I’m getting better.
Lance has nothing on a sled dog.
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
ICe Cubes and Progress
The following analogy is from Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Imagine an ice cube sitting out on a table. This room where the ice cube is located is temperature controlled. Starting at 20 degrees, we’re going to raise the temperature of the room 1 degree at a time.
After a while, we’re up to 25 degrees. No change on the ice cube, it’s still just sitting there, frozen. Fast forward a little longer, we’re at 29 degrees. Still no change to the ice cube. Once we hit 31 degrees, our ice cube is there, still unchanged and apparently unfazed by the increasing temperature.
Finally, we hit 32 degrees. The ice cube starts to change, it’s melting.
What made the ice cube melt? The 1 degree change from 31 degrees to 32 degrees? Or was the compounding of the temperature change to get there? We saw no progress from 20 degrees all the way to 31 degrees. Just because we couldn’t see the progress, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
You might be going through something similar now. It feels like you’re turning your wheels, not getting any traction. You could be making progress and adapting, it just isn’t visible yet. Remember the ice cube, you could be making change without even noticing it, small actions add up to big changes.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Trying Viral RECIPES So You Don’t Have to
I saw this recipe on Instagram and was intrigued. It’s bacon cheeseburger mac and cheese that’s high in protein, with an easy Crock Pot recipe and tons of leftovers. What’s not to like?
You start with the beef into the pot, with some crushed tomatoes, garlic, and a few spices, and salt and pepper. I used two pounds of beef, although I noticed today the recipe says 3 pounds.
To make the cheese, you blend up cottage cheese, shredded cheddar cheese and American cheese. This recipe calls for 150g of each type of cheese, but we only had shredded, so I used 300g of that. That didn’t look like nearly enough cheese for the tub of cottage cheese, so I added another handful. I used a stick blender and am wondering if the blender or food processor would have had more fire power for better consistency.
After the beef cooks, you add the pasta, caramelized onions, and the cheese sauce. We added two diced red peppers too to up the veggie content.
We’ll be eating this stuff for days to come, but it didn’t come out very good. Hannah said it was trying to be too many things, the bacon was unnecessary, everything barely made it into the Crock Pot, thankfully I didn’t add that third pound of beef. The texture was off, more soup like that mac and cheese like. It has potential, but trying to wing it with the cheese mixture was probably not the best idea. Also, the amounts of the ingredients were annoying. For example, my full tub of cottage cheese has 680g in it, the recipe calls for 900g, which I can’t fathom fitting into the pot with a whole extra pound of ground beef too. Also, with 300g of cheese and 8 slices of bacon, I’m just a touch skeptical on the macros listed in the video.
Not the easiest Crock Pot recipe, either, because the beef cooks first, before adding the half-cooked pasta, you have to have two separate sessions of cooking to get this all ready, no set it and forget it.
Grade: 5/10
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
THat One Thing
I recently listened to author Steve Magness on a podcast and he said something that really stuck with me.
Along with being a writer, he’s a high-level running coach, an exercise physiologist and no slouch of a runner himself.
He mentioned that elite athletes will consult with him. These are the highest level, access to all the best coaches and information, been training years and years, dedicated athletes.
He said that all he often does is find the outlier - the one thing that got overlooked.
Maybe the athlete is only sleeping for 6 hours a night and trying to train at a really high level, or they’re undereating and not taking in enough calories to perform. Sometimes they’re just stressed out and need a better way to manage the stress or get their life organized.
It got me thinking, if I had an high level performance coach drop in a follow me for a day, what would they say I’m missing, or need more of? Of course I’m not preparing for the next world championship or Olympics, and I think there’s a little more nuance to it, but it’s a fun thought experiment nonetheless.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Reasonable vs. Tough Matrix
I was recently reminded of Dan John’s Reasonable vs. Tough Matrix. It’s a simple idea taken from one of my favorite strength coaches. You can use it to audit your own efforts to make sure they’r appropriate. Specifically, we’re going to use this to look through the lens of diet and exercise.
Dan John’s point is that a tough diet paired with a tough program is a lot of stress on the body, and if you are going to do it, you shouldn’t be stuck in a permanent cycle of starving and trying to exercise a lot, but rather, locking down for a few weeks out of the year, because tough+tough = unsustainable and maybe even unreasonable or unrealistic.
You can use the matrix to come up with the 4 options below, each of which could make up a portion of the year. For example, Dan John says most athletes live in the tough training + reasonable nutrition category. They’re working hard trying to improve, and that means properly fueling for these efforts, which means they can’t be on too strict of a diet.
Reasonable Training + Reasonable Nutrition
Reasonable Training + Tough Nutrition
Tough Training + Reasonable Nutrition
Tough Training + Tough Nutrition
Right now, as I typically do in February and March, I’m locking in my own nutrition. I’m eating in a bit of a caloric deficit, and because of that, the intensity of my workouts has changed. Most of them are “check the box,” workouts where I get in and get finished what I’m doing. It was unsustainable to keep going with hard workouts with the limited fuel. I’m on a tough nutrition + reasonable workouts. Sometime in the Spring that will change.
Sometimes your goals compete with each other, i.e., working out hard and dieting hard. There’s a time and place for both, but it shouldn’t be your baseline or norm. Perhaps you’re trying to put too many eggs in too many baskets rather than doing it right with one thing.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Friday Thoughts 67
Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Thoughts. Each Friday I pull some of my favorite posts from the internet over the week and share them here. Enjoy!
This was a thought provoking read. The synopsis is the most effective training methods are boring, and repetitive. New fitness initiatives keep showing up and their concept isn’t to provide great fitness adaptations, but instead, to entertain.
Grip Strength
Speaking of entertaining, this was fun to watch and an impressive showcase of grip strength (I think these guys are arm wrestlers).
My attempts. Why I even thought to try lefty…
Team Diet Coke.
Don’t forget to make good decisions out there this weekend.
See you next time!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Major Workout Moments over the Past 20 Years
Location: Stratham, NH
Age: 14
Workout: First time ever training. My uncle, who was my hockey coach at the time, took me through a variety of movements in my parent’s driveway,
I jumped rope, threw a medicine ball against the chimney , benched pressed with those cement filled plastic weights everyone seems to have in their basement and ran down the street with a parachute tied to my waist.
Location: The Rinks at Exeter, Exeter, NH
Age: 17
Workout: Ladders and Stairs
After hockey practice, it was common for us to run the stadium stairs for 40 minutes. Run up, across the top, down, then right back up. We dreaded it. But looking back, probably some of the most effective training I did. We always started off doing ladder drills too and would occasionally squat and bench press in the rink as well.
Location: Exeter High School Weight Room, Exeter, NH
Age: 17
Workout: Back squats and Bench Press 10-8-6-4-2
My junior year of high school we got to take elective gym classes. I signed right up for Weight Room. The class was full of kids who wanted to lift heavy and get bigger. I can’t believe I get to do this at school I thought. Each workout was based around back squatting or bench pressing. We would start at 10 reps, and lower the reps as we increased the weight. No misses were allowed and we tried to go a little heavier each week. The assistant football coaching running the show didn’t do much coaching, but instead did crunches on a stability ball the whole time.
I learned about consistency and progressive overload here. We all got stronger and I really felt it outside of the gym.
Location: Ironman Fitness, Exeter, NH
Age: 18
Workout: I thought I was strong and fit until I met Matt. He was my first real strength and conditioning coach who taught me what performance training really was. My first week there we did what they called Strongman Friday. We went to the back parking lot and did all sorts of crazy stuff I had never seen before. We flipped tires, swung sledge hammers, carried really heavy yokes and did push ups with chains on our backs. I was hooked.
Location: UNE Campus Center, Biddeford, ME
Age 21
Workout: Learning how to kettlebell snatch. Kettlebells were coming in vogue at the time, and I really wanted to get my hands on some but they were impossible to find. One morning I stumbled into the gym, maybe a little hung over. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I brand new rack full of kettlebells of all sizes. In learning how to snatch one, I sent it flying across the room, luckily no one was there to see (or get hit by it).
Location: Hard Nock’s Gym, Amesbury, MA
Age: 24
Workout: After a long slump of not training, I needed a better place to workout. A friend took me to Hard Nock’s, a hardcore bodybuilding gym in downtown Amesbury. We did back squats, pull ups and I used a rowing machine for the first time. After about a year off I was so sore I remember I couldn’t sleep that night.
Location: Portsmouth, NH
Age: 25
Workout: Thanksgiving 2014. Although we had no rubber flooring and all of the equipment was still in boxes, we wanted to do our annual Thanksgiving lift at what would eventually become GAIN. We took out 3 barbells, a handful of weights and a rowing machine. Me, Hannah and our friend Cam did sumo deadlifts, power cleans and some rowing. I couldn’t believe I was working out in my own gym.
Location: Salisbury, MA
Age: 27
Workout: My first 10k run.
We lived near a paved rail trail that went straight to the Newburyport Commuter Rail. It was exactly 3.1 miles away. I ran there, took a 2 minute break and ran back. My furthest run ever. Little did I know what that run would eventually propel me into.
Location: Baxter State Park
Age: 29
Workout: Climbing the remote Northwest Basin trail up and over Hamlin Ridge with a heavy pack. I was coming off my first ultra marathon, which I did to see if I could do it. This first backpacking trip made me realize what I want to use all this fitness I’ve been building for, getting into cool places and covering lots of ground.
Location: Barrington, NH
Age: 30
My first garage gym workout with Hannah in our new house. She front squatted and I overhead squatted. My biggest concern when looking for a house was a two car garage so I could create my own garage gym to lift, tinker and play. Having this set up has been priceless.
Age: 32
Location: Portsmouth, NH
Workout: I had been dabbling with the CrossFit Open for some time, but this was the first year I actually signed up. The Open is a worldwide competition with 3 tough and challenging workouts. I had been following along for sometime, or occasionally cherry-picking a workout I would be good at. This was the first year I went for it, and this upcoming year will be my fifth in a row.
Age 35:
Location: Long Beach, CA
Workout: Deadlifts and Pull ups
I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in five years. We hit the gym immediately and fell into our old routine of heavy deadlifts on Friday. It was awesome to lift with an old training partner, who I realized I would be able to do that with for the rest of our lives. It reminded me of the importance of not just the gym, but of your gym friends who are training along side you.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
HOT-HIIT and the LINDEY EFFECT
I first heard of the Lindy Effect in the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.
The Lindy Effect is a theory that states: More Past Exposure = More Future Exposure
In other words, the longer something has been around, the more likely it'll stick around. A book that's been in publication for 50 years, stands a better shot at sticking around for another 50 compared to a book that's just been printed. The longer it has stuck around, the longer its life expectancy. It works for books, restaurants and other businesses and even scientific data.
It’s true for fitness equipment and routines too. Strength training with good old fashioned kettlebells, barbells and dumbbells has been around forever and has been proven to work. Same with yoga. They've stood the test of time, which according to this theory, means they're unlikely to go anywhere. Step aerobics, P90X, 6-minute abs, Peloton, or hot-HIIT, or any new entertainment-focused fitness modalities haven't even scratched the life expectancy surface of good old fashioned weight training.
We can keep trying to make fitness novel and fun, but it would be more effective to look back and see what's stood the test of time, and what has years and years of results to show for itself. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it; strength and conditioning is a key to a long and healthy life. It works, and it isn’t going anywhere. It not the newest or most flashy, but you cannot argue that it’s the most effective.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
January By The Numbers
Welcome to By the Numbers! Each month I look back at the passive data my watch collects and try to make adjustments going forward. I look at things like average sleep duration, average sleep score from Garmin, total steps/daily average and workouts completed. As always, I hope this inspires you to do the same - look back and make some adjustments for the upcoming month.
Steps: 286,004 total for a daily average of 9226.
About what I expected. I was trying to get 10k steps earlier in January, inspired by Hannah, whose streak is still climbing. I found it to be more challenging than expected. If I learned anything, the colder months are tricky to get enough activity in. Not only is it cold, but it’s cold and dark. In January of 2024 however, I only averaged 7011 steps for the month, and that’s the importance of checking your data!
Sleep: average 7 hours 2 minutes, average sleep score 78.
Annoyed at this. I’ve been working the sleep game hard and in January I was getting to bed early and even trying to sleep in more than normal, although, we did have a bit of an unusual month. Hannah had two work trips and Taylor went on vacation - so I was out of my routine for 3 out of 4 weeks. Still! I thought I logged more sleeping time than this. Not to complain, but my new watch is so sensitive that each night I wake up with 10-15 minutes of “awake” time, when I don’t feel as though I was really awake.
This is the importance of doing these reviews - it lets me check if the data correlates with how I actually feel. And this sleep score seems lower than I deserve!
Workouts: 31
I had a good month of training after the 10k swings in December. I did do kb swings once in the month, but other than that, I ran 9 times, and did a lot of conditioning for used workouts. I primarily rode the AirBike, but also did a few SkiErg and Rower workouts as well. I took 3 total rest days too. Looking through these workouts, many of them were 20-30 minutes in length, just check the box and get them done. Parts of the year training is a priority, while other times I just like to check the box and move on.
As always, thanks for reading and I hope it inspires you to look back and reflect as well. See if you can make small adjustments as we head into the next month.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
New Week, Fresh Start
It’s already the 33 day of the new year. Can you believe it? I can, January always seems to drag on forever.
Have you seen that meme about the next week being a normal week? It’s something like; being an adult is just saying things will settle down after this week…forever and ever and ever.
Us humans are busy, and we have a lot of things we cram into our schedules.
Time in the gym doesn’t happen by accident. You’ve got to prioritize it and be abatable with your goals and routines. Things will always be busy, the perfect time never arrives. Be flexible and do your best, forever and ever and ever.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Friday Thoughts 66
Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Thoughts, where I share some of my favorite posts I’ve come across on the internet recently, and any other things that have been on my mind. Enjoy!
My feed was full of “how much stuff weighs,” posts this week. These two about the landmine, because everyone asks me, and I didn’t really know, and the push up graphic, which more than anything shows why we love to elevate the hands to scale back a push up rather than go to the knees. Changing the hand position allows us to manipulate the load, or how much of your own bodyweight you’re lifting, whereas knee push ups are, and always will be, the same percentage, eventually halting progress.
I loved this post. And like Jordan, I am sick of, Internet personalities talking about toxins in grocery stores.
Team subtitle.
This would be quite the workout.
The paradox
This chart is great to understand the squat vs hinge pattern. These two similar movements can be tricky to nail down when first starting to strength train.
Clem’s in it for the squirrel blood.
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
How to start
Potential members start with our 3-session trial. This serves as an opportunity to meet the coaches and see how we do things at GAIN. Our individualized, feels sort-of-like a group, but isn’t really a group, vibe is different, and unlike any other gym you’ve been to.
On your first visit you work closely with a coach doing our Intro Workout. This gives us an opportunity to go over some finer details like getting organized and breathing and seeing how much range of motion and stability your body has. We talk about injuries, training history and what you want to get out of your gym time.
Regardless of your fitness level and experience, we want you leaving the gym after that first session feeling as though you could have done more. Our saying is, we can write hard workouts, but need to prove that one day 1. We want you to build a new habit you can stick with, easing in is key. With our consistency over intensity mindset, many self identifying “not a gym person” has turned into a dedicated member who have been with us for nearly a decade.
You’ll learn a whole bunch of new movements and lingo, if you’re a newbie to the gym it can be a bit overwhelming. Just know that we’re aware of this, and try to take it slow and not overload you with gym jargon. On the first day we primarily focus on learning and breaking down the squat pattern, the push up and ring row and some of our core training drills.
By the second workout, we’re ready to introduce some more movements and will do some conditioning (cardio) and get introduced to some of our favorite cool-down mobility drills. This workout focuses on pressing and pulling with the upper body, along with some single leg movements.
On the last workout of the trial, you’re learning and working on the hinge pattern. This can be a tricky one, but is important for everyone to learn. We revisit some movements from the previous two workouts here if needed. This will feel like a bigger workout for most, because we usually give you more to do on the third day as your body is starting to adapt to some new movements.
All in all, the 3-Session Trial is a crash course in all things GAIN. Learn our favorite exercises, get your movement broken down by an experienced coach and learn how to move better, feel more connected and get a plan that’s tailored to what you need and want to accomplish.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Winter Run cHat 2
Anything is better than nothing.
That’s what I keep reminding myself this winter. Last week I mentioned this is my first winter since 2020 even trying to run. I took my winter running gear out of the back of the closet and have been trying to get out at least twice a week.
Lowering the bar, or my expectations, has helped me get out there when I don’t feel like it on these cold days.
Even 20 minutes is more than I was doing a year ago, I think. And I get out the door.
I’m not training for anything in particular, rather just being ready to turn up the dial when better weather and more running opportunities arrive. Summer 2024 was my running revitalization and I want to carry the stoke into 2025 too, and that means taking my time building the base.
On a recent 30 minute neighborhood run, I could imagine the routine easily turning into a 60 minute run.
I’m keeping the urge to do more in check and getting out there when I can, knowing that anything now will help turn up the dial when the time is right.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
Interval BReakdown
If you regularly do intervals at GAIN, the following interval may be in your program soon. I use something like this while building my running base, and I’ve found it to be a sweet spot to get a nice training effort to improve your endurance. The intervals break up the session nicely and make it more tolerable and more effective than your standard 20-minute ride.
I want to break down this interval, go over its intent and provide context to you so you can get the most from your workout.
5 sets:
3 min @ moderate pace
1 min @ recovery pace
First, let’s add up the total working time; 20-minutes.
That tells us that it’s an endurance-focus workout.
The work interval is 3 minutes long. The rest, or specifically in this case, active recovery, is 1 minute. Active recovery means you’re going to keep moving, as slow as needed during the “off” interval.
Work duration is 3 times a long as the recovery period. Now we can contextualize our pace.
We want to see you use a sustainable pace. Something you can repeat round after round, after round.
The trick here is avoiding coming out too fast in the earlier intervals, then getting slower and slower. That’s something we see often with endurance training and specifically what we’re trying to avoid - getting slower. The active recovery plays into that, if you’re starting to slow down, maybe you’re not going slow enough during the recovery interval.
The goal with a sustainable pace workout is to improve your endurance by staying at the right intensity. This will elevate your heart rate, but not spike it really high. You should be able to talk, though it should be slightly labored. You’ll be able to answer a question I ask, but if you took a phone call your friend on the line would know you’re exercising.
So how fast do you go?
You should complete the same amount of work (meters or calories) in each set. Knowing a specific pace, like per 500m splits on the rower would require having other knowledge, like from a test or other recent workout. Some of you recently did a 5 minutes for max distance finisher. If we start there, we know that was a maximum effort, not a sustainable one. So to start, it’ll be slower than that.
We can also assume your pace will be faster than if you did 16-20 minutes straight. The recovery interval, while you’re still working, makes it easier to hold a slightly faster pace compared to a straight effort. Going a bit faster lets us increase the intensity to get a better training effect by staying in that sweet spot zone of ‘easy,’ but not too easy.
TL;DR
It’s takes some practice to get into the sweet spot of an endurance interval. Each time you’re on a machine however, is an opportunity to take a look at your paces/rpms/watts to build more context and gather information. Keep in mind the goal is sustainable paces, and matching the total work (meters or calories) done in each on interval. Spending time here will build endurance and stamina, will feel good on your muscles and joints and promotes longevity and heart health. Get to work!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain
How to Get Strong: Reps in reserve
If you want to get stronger you’ve got to pay attention to reps in reserve or RIR.
RIR is a way to identify how many more reps could you do AFTER completing your prescribed reps.
When chasing strength, your reps in reserve should be low.
Here’s a scenario:
You’re goblet squatting 4 sets of 10 reps.
You pick the blue kettlebell because that’s what you always use. You do your 10 reps concentrating on excellent form, breathing and everything else. Suddenly, I run up to you and offer you $300 for 10 more reps. You grind them out and eventually complete the 10 additional reps for a total of 20.
The last 3 reps took everything you had. You have no reps in reserve. However, if you finished that set at the prescribed 10 reps, you left a lot on the table. You had 10 reps in reserve!
The sweet spot of getting strong, and not trashing your body, is leaving 2-3 quality reps in the tank. In this scenario, the kettlebell weight was too light for the rep scheme of 10. You should never be able to double the reps with the selected weight. That’s a clear indication you won’t create the stress stimulus required to make strength adaptations.
If you do push ups with your hands elevated on a box or a bar, this is another way to check and see if you’re being properly challenged. If you normally use a certain height for a set of 10, but could easily crank out 15 or more reps, it’s time to lower the bar.
The general goal with strength training is to create stress that our bodies will adapt to. Make sure you’re hitting the right stimulus by checking in and seeing how many reps you have in reserve.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain