Radical Growth and Optimism
A Simple Model For Infinite Progression
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I strive for radical growth in overall fitness and an optimistic outlook on the future of our health for all members of the AG community. Today we apply a bit of practicality to my previous post to create a flywheel of progress to accomplish this goal by defining a simple model for infinite progression.
I see a potential for greatness in all of us in the coming years. The level of intelligence I receive in questions, the feedback, support, and sense of community is immense. As a result I know we are all capable. After hundreds of coaching calls I’ve also noticed the solution to an issue many of us have been plagued by is not adding things to our lives to hit physical/mental goals, but removing them. An example being providing simple programming or guidelines for nutrition. This is actually removing the necessity to even think about what you’ll do tomorrow — you already know and is just something you do, like waking up in the morning.
Additionally, if you’re reading this you probably already know why you should be fit. For our purposes we’ll define fit as having a strong aerobic system, a general baseline of strength, and a balanced emotional state. During this post I try to refrain from using the word “should.” There’s a TON of ways to accomplish the broad goals I detailed above. Here I only prescribe methods we can enter into a flywheel in a simple and time efficient manner.
All three of these components are necessary for true growth, including the mindset required to accomplish the task at hand. I won’t touch on emotional state in this post, but will leave you with one my of favorite quotes from Peter Attia’s book “Outlive”: "90% of male rage is helplessness masquerading as frustration.” When I say balanced emotional state, that includes the aforementioned mindset as well as the ability to regulate one’s emotions and experience the full spectrum of emotion at a deep level.
We’ll start with the aerobic system and then combine with a baseline of strength in this flywheel. I use the term flywheel because once you get it spinning habitually, it only grows faster and progress becomes more in your control. I start with the aerobic system because it can create the most confusion in training and has the greatest impact on our ability to do more work.
To keep it simple, building a strong aerobic system is the combination of steady state cardio and high intensity sessions in a given week. That’s it. Preferably, you would hit 1-3 sessions of high intensity per week and 3-4 total hours of steady state (zone 2) per week. I understand that can seem unreasonable to many, and a good starting point is 2 hours of steady state per week with 1 session of high intensity intervals. This could be as simple as 4x 30 minute jogs and 1x hill sprint session with 4x60 sec sprints and 2-3 minutes of rest.
But the kind of cardio work is largely unimportant as long as you are doing the work. The sessions could be a variety of workouts including stationary bike, hiking, treadmill, cycling, swimming, the elliptical, etc.
If you are looking to improve as a runner, the training will slightly vary. In the beginning, literally following this guideline will produce excellent results if all of your sessions are steady state runs and 1x high intensity sprint session. But over time to continue improving you’ll want to introduce long/short/hill repeats, tempo runs, and shorter recovery runs. For an overview on how to run check out this previous post and for my run progression program, check this out.
Next is developing a strength base via strength training. A common theme among runners is a lack of any strength training whatsoever. The irony is a bit of strength work per week would actually make you a more resilient, faster runner, and better overall athlete.
The Basics: train each muscle group 1-2 times per week to near failure and allow 24-48 hours of recovery before training that muscle group again. The rep scheme, similar to the kind of cardio, is largely unimportant. The primary focus should be on progressive overload. As I’ve mentioned previously, progressive overload is a simple method of gradually increasing the intensity of your workouts, either by increasing the RPE (from increased weight, slower and controlled movements, etc) or by increasing the number of reps at a given weight. It could be something as simple as the Andy Galpin 3-5 concept:
I love this concept because it removes almost all barriers to entry and is incredibly simple.
If looking more for hypertrophy/muscle development (you will absolutely still gain muscle by focusing on strength), you can focus on working in the set range of 6-20 for each movement. Regardless of rep scheme, to actually see progress each set should be to near failure, and each week pushing either the reps or weight for each set (progressive overload). If you are not improving in reps or weight you could be just going through the motions at too low a level of intensity and reap little benefit.
I also have other posts breaking down strength training, programs on my main site, the completely free phraks guide, and a whole catalog of previous workouts on instagram. The goal here isn’t to prescribe a specific way to train strength, but to exhibit an effective dose to make progress in the daily game.
The last piece is physical recovery and behaviors. I prefer to have 2 full recovery days on Wednesday and Sunday, with Wednesday occasionally an active recovery day with a shakeout run. Mobility work and/or yoga are also excellent to include at least 1x per week. The topic of behaviors includes sleep, water intake, substance use (alcohol, smoking), daily step count (are you walking brother??), nutrition, and stress management. To define a baseline to strive for to keep the flywheel spinning, here are a few recommendations:
7-9 hours of sleep per night
No smoking whatsoever (includes vaping)
Limit alcohol intake to 1x per week, preferably 1-2x per month (if your focus is REALLY on muscle and endurance development)
Limit alcohol choice to wine, tequila, vodka, perhaps whiskey, and no beer
10,000 steps per day minimum
Hit your bodyweight in grams of protein per day (example: 190 pounds = 190 grams of protein per day)
Primarily whole food diet: rice, potatoes, no breads/pastas, all colors of vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, some dairy if using to hit protein goals (I love fairlife), and greek yogurt. This is not an exhaustive list but the majority of your calories should come from foods like these
I’ve written about stress management in a previous post, and is definitely not something I’ve mastered personally. This falls into the balanced emotional state category, and arguably the most important of all of the categories. If seriously interested in improving here, I also recommend the last chapter in Peter Attia’s book Outlive.
That’s all for today.
Cheers ✌️