Hybrid Cohort 1
The training breakdown.
Welcome to the Acid Gambit Substack! I greatly appreciate all of you who are currently subscribed. You drive me to work harder and produce high quality posts to improve our health, fitness, and mentality towards training. If you haven’t subscribed, join 1,514 smart, curious athletes on our journey to 10k subscribers:
Hello everybody. We are back after a 1-week break from ‘regularly scheduled training’ after training for and surpassing the 5 min mile. If you have no idea what I’m talking about - on the 4th of July I tested my mile time and came in slightly above 5 minutes. I then set out to break below a 5 minute mile for the first time in my life over a 6-week training cohort. This cohort is available for free in discord - link here. I received a ton of great feedback from those of you that followed the cohort.
After the first cohort, I had a number of takeaways:
Training hard sucks. There’s no getting around it. Some days I found myself dreading the interval days but always felt incredible after those efforts. By balancing the hard days with the easy days I was recovered enough to go into the next week strong, knowing it would suck.
Zone 2 is king. I have built up a solid base from years of easy and long running. Pairing that with truly hard interval and tempo runs lead to success
Keep the easy days easy and the hard days hard. Blending everything into daily “medium” days kills the intensity when you need it and hurts recovery on the easy days. Going hard on easy days is an ego problem.
This is proof that anyone can make drastic changes in a short amount of time. I was also driven to succeed because you all are literally watching me. There is no room for failure.
As a result, I’m now launching a new cohort - Hybrid Cohort 1 (HC1) - also available for free in discord. As I’ve stated in the past, it’s incredibly difficult to improve greatly in multiple domains at the same time. For example, if your focus is BJJ, don’t worry about breaking records in the 1-mile. Your focus should be on improving skills, rolling, and competing. Similarly, in the previous cohort my focus was purely on improving my mile time and maintaining my strength.
This is what’s funny about the influx of “hybrid athlete” influencers. You’ll notice the best athletes who have impressive statistics across multiple domains had periods of their lives devoted to building a particular skill, then switching their focus while maintaining the previous skill. Mat Fraser is one of the best examples. He has a background in olympic weightlifting and went on to build his aerobic base and train METCONs heavily. That is a super reductive view of why he was so successful. The key point is to periodize training to focus on specific skills and domains of fitness, not try to peak everything all at once.
On that note, HC1 is just more periodization. I’m transitioning from focusing on speed to focusing on physique and strength while maintaining my aerobic base. My reasoning is simple - hypertrophy training is FUN. I’ve never had a devoted period of my life to physique so I’m excited to see where it takes me and those of you who follow along. My goals are relatively vague. Rather than specify a specific goal, I care about pushing 100% and seeing where my genetic potential for a natural physique truly is.
Now let’s break down the training. This 12 week block will be a push/pull/legs split balanced with Zone 2 aerobic work. I may add in some fun, shorter METCONs to keep things spicy. The lifts will follow a 2 set scheme with a heavier “loading” set and a lighter “backoff” set. The goal here is simple. Take both sets to mechanical failure for every movement and aim to increase either the reps or weight every session. If there is an extended period of time where I’m not making progress in a movement, I will drop the weight slightly and focus on going slower through the movement, and pausing deep in the stretch. I’m using this scheme for 2 main reasons: it keeps the intensity HIGH and is extremely time efficient. I don’t need to be in the gym for 2 hours to make ridiculous progress. But no matter what the intensity will be high to drive mechanical tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress to produce muscle development.
On Rest: The rest times between sets should be 2-4 minutes. I can rapidly transition between movements, but keep the rest consistent between sets. Total workout time will be between 45-90 minutes depending on how long I rest.
The Rules:
Sleep: Minimum of 7 hours per night with aim for 8-9.
Nutrition Overview: I will be eating at maintenance calories to hold between 195-205 pounds throughout this block. If you are above 15% body fat, I recommend eating in a caloric deficit. Otherwise, maintenance calories or slight surplus (250-500 cal / day) if you are between 8-15% body fat.
Alcohol: This is a slightly longer block than the speed cohort. As a result, it's acceptable to consume alcohol 1-2x per month.
Training: Do the work. The work has no opinions and only cares that it gets done. If you don't do the work with intensity you are just going through the motions and your results will show that
Daily Steps: 10,000 minimum no matter what. This is to a) slightly increase total daily caloric burn and b) take advantage of minor metabolic and aerobic performance increase from essentially a TON of Z1 work
Water: 4L per day no matter what (minimum) with an additional 16-32oz for every hour of training Protein: 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. Non-negotiable.
Diet: Focus on whole foods only. Every day must have the intent of fueling our next day of training. My diet will primarily consist of white rice, potatoes, lean meat (ground beef, ground turkey, chicken breast, tuna, salmon, lean steak), avocado oil/olive oil, eggs, sourdough, fruits, veggies, whey protein, kefir, and milk. Cheat meals on Fridays or Saturday are acceptable. I’m partial eating an entire trader joe’s mini sheet cake in one sitting.
That’s it. The rules are simple. The training is simple. Anyone that overcomplicates any aspect of fitness is usually trying to sell you something or is a professional athlete. Getting fit and staying fit is an incredibly simple process that I’ve laid out many times before. But simple does not equal easy. I encourage you to take progress pictures and weigh in weekly. The pictures should be week 1 and every 4 weeks following. Let’s work.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop them either here as a comment or in the discord for a faster response. I’m pumped!
Cheers ✌️
DISCLAIMER
This is not Legal, Medical, or Financial advice. Please consult a medical professional before starting any workout program, diet plan, or supplement protocol.