The Basics

Build from here in 2024.

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Hello all, welcome to 2024 and the first weekly post (1/52)!. The year of FAFO:

It’s 2024 and people I know already want to play games. Giving up on dry January and missed training days. We’re one year older and not getting that time back. Let’s begin:

Many have resolutions that may be given up on only days or weeks from now. The smart are continuing to build habits they fostered in 2023. Some are building those habits up now, which is great! Regardless, reaching peak physical fitness in 2024 is less about monumental resolutions and more about cultivating sustainable daily habits in strength, conditioning, nutrition, physique, and behavior. This post is cool because I’ve talked about many of these topics separately but never written a joint post that I can refer back to. I get tons of questions regularly that will be covered here.

In the past I’ve talked about goal-setting where one of the key takeaways is to focus less on the long term goal and more on the daily actions that take you there. I’ll remind of of the rest below:

If you are someone who has struggled with goals in the past, this is the best way to start. Really it should be renamed to ‘habit forming 101’, because at the end of the day the goal doesn’t matter. All that matters is having a guiding light that allows you to develop the day to day habits that get you there. But maybe ‘there’ isn’t what you actually wanted, so your end-state differs slightly from where you started out. And that is totally OK. Habits are all that matter, and they’ll allow you to go in any direction moving forward.

But today, let’s break down all that it takes to make 2024 your best year physically (as cliche as that sounds). Really it comes down to just a few fundamentals:

• Strength

• Conditioning

• Nutrition + Physique

• Behaviors

We’ll look at the minimum effective dose for each of these. Then break it down into what it looks like for a single day. As long as you can do it for a day, you can do it forever. But, especially for those just starting out, only worry about the single day. Don’t look past that. Focus on getting one day right.

Strength

In the past I wrote a simple program for the busy professional pushing a 2 day/week full body split. Today I’m changing that and recommending a return to phraks and STRENGTH. Obviously if you have a style of lifting weights that works for you, keep doing that. But for the rest, I HIGHLY recommend the AG Phraks Variant. To get started, download it for free here and read the breakdown I wrote here.

The bottom line is a return to focusing on actually building strength and muscle in the gym. Stop caring about ‘burning calories.’ In the grand scheme of things, your caloric burn in the gym is minimal. The only thing that matters is actually getting stronger, developing muscle mass, and therefore building up your resting metabolic rate. AKA burning more calories at rest as a direct result of having more muscle.

This applies to people who want to lose weight and to those that want to gain weight. If you are trying to lose weight, getting stronger will result in a bit of ‘recomp’, or recomposition. As you lose fat you will also gain a higher percent of lean body mass (LBM), which will allow you to lose weight at a higher rate and KEEP IT OFF into the future. This is the biggest factor. So many people lose weight only to put it back on down the road. The reason is clear: poor habits and a lack of true muscle development. Take this year to focus on TRUE STRENGTH. It is a long road and one year will not be sufficient. But the habits you develop this year will set you up for life.

Conditioning

This section is not for those seeking to run an ultramarathon. This is the minimum required to be in the best shape of your life overall.

Simplicity and intensity over high volume will be the focus here. This will consist of 1-2 sessions of high intensity intervals/sessions, and 1-2 long(er) steady state (LSS) sessions in addition to a daily goal of 10k steps per day. At the bare minimum, that is only 2 conditioning sessions per week that take 60-90 minutes of total effort and walking 10-15k steps per day. That’s it!

These sessions can vary widely depending on your preferred cardio methods. I prefer running, but these can easily be swapped with stationary / road biking, rowing, swimming, or hiking/rucking (for LSS).

High Intensity:

• 10 minute warm-up at an easy (zone 2) pace

• 3-10 rounds of 30 seconds to 4 minutes as hard as possible with 90 seconds to 4 minutes of recovery between rounds

• 5-10 minute cooldown

Other forms of high intensity could simply swap the running for biking, rowing, air-bike, swimming, or hill sprints. If you want to get CRAZY you could also throw in an additional METCON per week, of which I have a TON of examples if you scroll down my instagram. These can take anywhere from 5-30 minutes and are incredibly brutal and quick to add to your already short week of training. They also add a bit of fun and variety which I quite enjoy. If you have questions about specific METCONs let me know in the comments, email, or IG DM.

Long Steady State (LSS):

• 30-120 minute run at an easy pace.

  • If you are new to running, start at the lower end and build to longer sessions over time.

This is incredibly simple, and again can swap the running for any other form of cardio.

Daily Walking

• This part is probably the most crucial of the three pieces. Just walk bro. 10-15k+ steps per day. That’s it.

Nutrition + Physique

SIMPLICITY. I have multiple posts that dive deeper into nutrition but the goal here is to keep it EXTREMELY simple and allow you to focus on the other categories.

First, let’s refer to the chart:

Look at this. Incredibly simple. Pick a number with your weight goals. Now multiply it by your bodyweight. This is how many calories you should eat. If you are losing/gaining too much weight, adjust accordingly by increasing or decreasing by 1 level. Don’t like it? What about MUH cardio? I don’t care. Nutrition is simple. Track a certain level of calories, let’s use me as an example. I weigh about 200 pounds, and I want to maintain my weight. 200 * 15 = 3000 calories per day. If over the course of 1-2 weeks I am losing weight, I will increase by one level to 16 (now 3200 calories).

There’s a lot of opinions that get mixed in with nutrition and caloric intake. If you have a method that works for you, great! Continue doing that. Another method I really like is using the recommended calories from the Carbon Diet app. I occasionally track all of my nutrition for 1-4 weeks to keep myself in check and use the Carbon app. Regardless of if you use the Carbon app or the above chart, be consistent. Additionally, aim to get 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. For me again, this is simply 200 grams of protein per day. This is also approximately 2 pounds of lean meat per day. Simple. Focus on stacking your protein early, for example I usually don’t eat until 11am-12pm, so I’ll smash a whey protein shake with whole milk, a protein bar, and/or some eggs or a breakfast burrito. Then consume more lean meat (chicken/ground turkey/tuna) with some tortillas or pita bread. Dinner is more of the same. The bottom line, I don’t care what you eat so long as you focus on getting 1g/pound of bodyweight in protein and keep your total caloric intake in check. Fun fact, by focusing on protein intake I also tend to eat dessert almost daily. It’s delicious and I’m 9% body fat. Sue me.

To hit this, below is an incredibly simple meal plan + grocery list:

Easy list:

• 1-2 bags of carrots

• 2x bags of frozen carrots

• 1-2 pounds salmon

• Tiny potatoes + Rice

• 2-3 dozen eggs

• whey protein

• 1-2 pounds of chicken thighs

• 2 pounds of either 85/15 ground beef or 90%+ ground turkey

• 3-4 avocados

• Honey

• Sea Salt

• Blueberries, Bananas, other fruit you like

• Large jar(s) of Greek yogurt and optional granola (be careful here some have a TON of calories and added sugar)

• Avocado oil mayo

• Buffalo sauce and/or cholula

• Optional milk for shake

Breakfast: Greek yogurt, honey, blueberries/banana (+ optional granola)

Lunch: Dogfood (4-8oz ground beef, diced chicken, ground turkey, salmon, or tuna), avo oil mayo, hot sauce, 1/2 diced avocado, 1-2 fried eggs on top (very easy to meal prep out for 2-5 days)

Dinner: Roasted Salmon or chicken thighs/breasts w/ veg and roasted potatoes. Can use 1-2 sheets pans and just throw in the oven at 425F, set and forget. Cooks 3-6 meals either for multiple people or for meal prepping

Snack/Postworkout: 2x scoop whey protein, 2-4 eggs, water (or optional milk - more calories + 8g protein)

Of course you are welcome to do what works for you. This is merely a recommendation. But also an incredibly simple way to manage your nutrition. This grocery list may look like a lot but is relatively cheap depending on where you shop and incredibly protein dense with an emphasis on clean carbs. This is literally 90% of my diet. The focus is on speed of cooking, simplicity, whole foods (limited processing), ability to meal prep, protein intensity, and cost.

Based on the above chart, you can EASILY scale up or down depending on your macro + protein needs. This also makes it very easy to be consistent while varying the foods enough to keep it from getting boring.

You are also welcome to break this out into the number of meals you prefer. Can do anywhere from 2-5 meals in the day and this still works - can just increase or decrease portion sizes depending on your feeding window and number of meals you prefer.

Behaviors

I had a recent post discussing the behavioral effects on men’s testosterone levels which seemed to frustrate some people (lol). For now, we’ll look past the decades long study and well understood science that is behavioral endocrinology and instead focus on daily actions that will benefit us all in 2024. This is arguably the most important of all the topics today.

• Sleep

• Stress management

• Consistency

• Alcohol Use

• Hydration

• Recovery and Rest Days

Sleep

The easy goal here is 7-9 hours of sleep per night. We know that 7 hours in bed does not nearly equate to 7 hours of sleep. This requires a bit of extra discipline on our part. Based on my whoop feedback, I’m averaging 86% efficiency, or the ratio of time in bed to actual sleep. In other words, for every hour in bed I’m only actually sleeping 52 minutes. To accomplish 8 hours of sleep based on my feedback I need to spend about 9 hours and 20 minutes IN BED.

Use this to your benefit. I realize it is not realistic for some to spend almost 9.5 hours in bed, but do what you can to both optimize the amount of time in bed and the quality of sleep you get.

To do this, I recommend following the Huberman toolkit:

• Wake up at the same time each day and go to sleep when you first start to feel sleepy. I like to do this by syncing my bed time with my body’s circadian rhythm and the natural decrease in daylight exposure. This means going to bed between 9-11PM and rising between 5-7AM. Most optimal is 10PM to 6AM. Along with this, view morning sunlight by going outside within 30-60 minutes of waking. Do that again in the late afternoon, prior to sunset.

• “Avoid caffeine within 8-10 hours of bedtime.” Additionally, stimulants/depressants (Nicotine, Caffeine, Alcohol, THC) should be avoided prior to bedtime. It’s recommended not to consume any caffeine after 2-3pm, and avoid nicotine 2-3 hours prior to bedtime, as both can lead to restlessness. Alcohol and THC can be damaging to REM sleep when used prior to bedtime, with alcohol having the most severe effects on sleep quality and duration.

• “Avoid viewing bright lights—especially bright overhead lights between 10 pm and 4 am.” One of the most common inhibitors in quality sleep is blue light prior to bed. This includes your phone, video games, or your computer. Avoid any blue light 30-60 minutes prior to bed. By using sources of blue light late at night, you prevent your natural circadian rhythm from kicking in and allowing your body to decompress prior to bed.

• “Limit daytime naps to less than 90 min, or don’t nap at all.” I’ve noticed my body does best with naps under 30 minutes and before 2pm. Any more or later and I will struggle to fall sleep before 11pm.

• Supplements 30-60 minutes before bed:

  • 145mg Magnesium Threonate or 200mg Magnesium Bisglycinate

  • 50mg Apigenin

  • 100-400mg Theanine

  • (3-4 nights per week I also take 2g of Glycine and 100mg GABA.)

  • I’m a massive fan of doing 3-6g Glycine 30 min before bed, optimally in some sleepytime tea with some quality honey

Stress Management

Relaxation: Allow your body to decompress 1-2 hours prior to bedtime. This could mean many things, but primarily limiting any heavy exercise, mentally challenging work, and mentally stimulating tasks including video games. Breathing exercises, a warm shower followed by light stretching, warm tea, and limiting blue light are all excellent methods to allow your body to wind down and relax prior to bed. Additionally:

• Practice mindfulness/meditation. Can start with a simple 5-10 minute session during the day or at night, or a morning routine of a simple journal entry as soon as you wake up.

• Low effort endurance: go for walks, easy jogs or hikes outdoors, cycling (these activities also result in increased vitamin D uptake from natural sunlight) Vitamin D is highly correlated with mood and stress.

• Checklists and confrontation of stressors in your life (don’t avoid problems when they arise, immediately look for ways to mediate or set up a plan to handle it moving forward).

• Eliminate toxic relationships/people in your life. It’s 2024 people. Don’t waste your energy on ‘lost causes’ and drains on your energy. I could talk a lot more on this topic, but that’s for a later date.

Consistency

This comes down to doing the same thing, EVERY day. This applies to all of today’s topics: behaviors, strength, and conditioning. Although this may be a difficult habit to emplace, maintaining the same sleep and wake times every day, including weekends, is the most effective method to keep your body’s sleep cycle in check and ensure you get an excellent night of rest every night

Alcohol Use

The best starting point here is my recent (and extremely popular) article titled Humanizing Alcohol. Again, it’s 2024. No reason to drink at all at least for the first month. Dry January to start, and we’ll see how long I go with absolutely zero alcohol this year.

Hydration

Let’s keep this super simple: drink until you’re not thirsty. I usually recommend 3-4L of water per day (which may vary for you), plus an additional 16-32oz for every hour of high intensity training. On top of this, for days you have mid-high intensity training consume 1x LMNT packet or another form of electrolyte supplement. Limit fluid consumption in the evening to prevent waking up in the middle of the night to urinate.

Recovery and Rest Days

This may be my most important sub-topic for today, and my biggest focus for this year. I mean, I even set it as a whoop goal so it is SERIOUS.

In the past I’ve struggled with actually taking my rest days, and implementing recovery tactics on those days. Some things I’m focusing on to continue this are:

• Specific warm-up/cool-down protocols

• Sauna (15-30 minutes) + cold exposure 3-5x per week

• Mobility routine or yoga 1-3x per week

• Optimal sleep/time in bed and no alcohol

• Focus on nutrition

• 1-2x pure rest days per week. No physical training other than mobility work

All this is to provide you a starting point for each of the topics. It can certainly be difficult to build lifestyle changes around all of these at the same time. But, these combined provide the minimum effective dose to be a freak this year. But that’s all it is - a place to start. The reality is many of you are unique and want to accomplish a massive variety of things. And this allows you to build upon it. But never forget the basics. There will be off days and regardless you can always default to the basics.

I wish you all a blessed 2024. There’s a lot of work to do, something must be done.

Cheers.

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DISCLAIMER

This is not Legal, Medical, or Financial advice. Please consult a medical professional before starting any workout program, diet plan, or supplement protocol.