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James Cerbie

Helping you own your health, wealth, performance and happiness.

Ep 107: How to Build Muscle on a Time Budget

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Do you sometimes feel rushed trying to get in the gym and get your workout in?

Joining me on the show this week is Rebel Coach Keiran Halton. Something we’ve noticed over the last quarter with a handful of our current athletes and new onboards is that life inevitably happens, and training schedules might need to be condensed. Priorities shift, and maybe you don’t have the time to get in the gym for 60-75 minutes anymore. This DOES NOT mean you can’t still see amazing results, even if you’re spending a little less time training.

Keiran and I unpack building gradual habit changes in your training, the density protocol, getting rid of the fluff in your programming, and the problem with worrying about short, acute progress. Listen in to this week’s episode as Coach Keiran and I lay out the different tactics and strategies we use with our clients who want to build muscle, get stronger and become more athletic, while on a time budget.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

  • [04:27] Discovering the point in your life where your priorities start to shift
  • [06:10] Being honest with yourself in knowing how much time you realistically have to train versus how much time you want to train 
  • [09:05] Building gradual habit changes instead of going full speed ahead
  • [10:12] Why you should always put yourself in a position where you’re looking to add more instead of needing to cut out
  • [11:45] Issues that arise when always worrying about the short, acute progress
  • [12:47] Popular programming tactics and strategies we use for busy professionals here at Rebel
  • [15:01] The rock, pebble, sand analogy
  • [16:44] Why we like to use a density protocol in our programming
  • [19:05] What the set and rep scheme looks like in a density protocol
  • [22:10] The importance of always having a number to beat
  • [26:47] Getting rid of the fluff in your workouts
  • [28:15] Condensing your stress input signal
Want to get jacked, move well, lift heavy, and become a better athlete in 90 days? Then CLICK HERE

James Cerbie: That’s the company motto. Do it live.

Keiran Halton: Yeah.

James Cerbie: Anybody listening who doesn’t know that reference? I’m imagining if you just Googled it live. That’s got to be the first result, right?

Keiran Halton: Oh, yeah.

James Cerbie: If it’s not, then Google’s lying to us because there’s no chance I’m going to do it right now. We’re going to Google it right now to see what happens.

Keiran Halton: Yeah. If not Rebel Performance, we’ll search it enough times to bump it up to SEO.

James Cerbie: Oh, yeah, we’re good. Rebel performance is the number one if you type it in on Google. But, yeah, we got it here. Do it live. Top result. Bill O’Reilly will do it live on YouTube. You’re welcome. Well, if you haven’t seen that before, take a Gander and you can send us a thank you later. Nothing but what’s going on? Dude, it’s been a while since you and I had a chat on the podcast.

Keiran Halton: Yeah. It’s been crazy getting married and then having a honeymoon. Almost cutting my foot off.

James Cerbie: Yeah. Slicing your foot off on a rock.

Keiran Halton: Yeah. Holidays, the whole thing. So I’m healthy. Got all my toes still, so I’m happy to chop it up a little bit.

James Cerbie: You got one up on Michael Lexner there with all your toes still in place.

Keiran Halton: Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. He’s got everybody beat on that.

James Cerbie: I know. Yeah. The one toe down via trap bar. Not too many people in the world can claim that they lost a chunk of the toe due to a trap bar accident.

Keiran Halton: When I’m talking to the high school athletes when they first come in, day one is like an overview. We talk about safety, and I’m like, guys, not for nothing. Literally, there’s a guy missing part of his toe. And just to be like, it could be that serious here. But I liked his Instagram post. Like, a couple of weeks later, he was wiggling his toes in the water. But to be cute, and it’s just like, so good.

Discovering the Point in Your Life Where Your Priorities Start to Shift

James Cerbie: Oh, the joys. I love it. All right, today we want to talk about building muscle on a time budget. It’s something that over the last quarter of 2021, we started seeing more and more in terms of requests from our athletes, requests from our clients and then from new athletes and clients that we are onboarding. This seems to be a larger and larger common problem or frustration for people, which is that we are at this point in life where priorities and time and things are having to shift. Right. It’s kind of like you’re moving from that period where you’re in your early mid 20s, where it’s just you you have a job, you have no other real responsibilities. And so you can go to the gym for 60, 75, 90 minutes, and it’s great. And then at a certain point, I feel like everybody eventually works their way up in their job. So there’s more job stress, more need to perform there. You get in a relationship, maybe you get married, you have kids. More and more factors start getting added to the plate, if you will. And so the one place where some time needs to get trimmed a lot of times is in the gym.

And so we’ve been seeing that more and more of people coming in saying, hey, I still want to be strong, I still want to be athletic, I still want to move well. But I got to be honest that I only have 45 minutes from the moment my footsteps in the gym. I got to get in and out, which is fine. And so I want to talk about a handful of strategies that we like to use with our population. So hopefully people listening, if you find yourself in that bucket, you can give this a go to make the most out of a more condensed training session.

Keiran Halton: Yeah, definitely. Go ahead. We’ve been getting a lot of that because with the Rebel teams, right. Like, I’m running the burn and build tracks where those are definitely like some time sensitive programs. Not that we’re just a little more aware of the time aspect, because to your point, we have a lot of working professionals, a lot of people like taking on a lot more responsibilities, things like that. So definitely we’ve been seeing an uptick in people coming onto those tracks with the time stuff, for sure.

Being Honest with Yourself in Knowing How Much Time You Realistically Have to Train Versus How Much Time You Want to Train 

James Cerbie: And I think one of the things we talked about briefly off air that’s important here is people being really honest to themselves about how much time do you realistically have to train and how many days per week do you realistically have to train? And I think it’s okay to have an aspirational goal in that realm of wanting to do more. But I think it’s far more important for you to be very realistic about what you can consistently do day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, because that consistency is going to still help you make really good progress. And what we had mentioned off air is I feel like a lot of people have a hard time having that conversation and being real and honest with themselves about how much time they really have to train versus how much time they want to train. And so they get themselves into a plan, they get themselves into a program that isn’t the right fit, 60 to 75 minutes sessions, probably more times per week than they can afford to actually get to the gym. And I think really quickly, by the end of week one or week two, like your stress levels through the roof, you’re kind of like motherfucking yourself back and forth because you feel bad, you’re not getting all the lifts in, you feel lazy, you feel unproductive, and then you just drop off entirely.

And now we’re in this just program hop shiny object syndrome world, as opposed to just being honest and real upfront and getting yourself in a plan that’s going to maximize your consistency.

Keiran Halton: Yeah, 100%. And like one of the things when we take on new members as we talk about. So to your point, realistically, like, what can your schedule currently handle like the days per week you can get in, but then also the time of each session. And that’s to your point, walking in the door. But then also do you have to drive back to work? Do you have to drive to pick up your kids, shower, all the stuff that let’s really drill down and figure out where you have to allot your time. And with that, if somebody gives me an answer like, yeah, I can train for like four to five days. I’ll purposely try to hold them back to four at the beginning at least and be like, hey, listen, if you can end up, I’ll give you an optional day. This is totally optional. The main program is going to be for four days. If you find over the first four to six weeks you’re like, I can consistently get that fifth day in. Great. We’ll add that nine times out of ten, though, with the working professionals or athletes on a time crunch that are coming in to burn or build.

Usually the four days end up being pretty good in that example, anyway, it could be two to three, three or four, whatever it is. But to your point, less is usually more. And I’d rather have somebody chomping at the bit almost talk about like a dog trying to get off the leash where you’re just craving more as opposed to you motherfuck yourself. You’re like, I’m a loser. I keep missing because I’m very much like that 100%.

James Cerbie: Well, I’m the same. I get so stressed out, like if I’m missing sessions, I’m like having to rush out of the gym. If I start feeling super rushed, everything else in my life immediately becomes more cluttered, more stressed, and it’s just not a good situation.

Building Gradual Habit Changes Instead of Going Full Speed Ahead

Keiran Halton: Yeah. So it’s like any habit change. We talk about exercise, nutrition, work, whatever. Let’s make it easy to build momentum and then we could reassess and build on that as opposed to beating yourself up, which to your point, a lot of times happens.

James Cerbie: I think the psychological component here is really important and often overlooked in terms of that feeling of you’re chomping at the bit. You’re the dog. He’s like my dog when he goes on walks who is incapable of just if he’s off leash, he’s great and he loves life. If he’s on a leash, he just burrows. And he’s like, here we go. And he just pulls his ass off. And that’s kind of like what we want from our clients. Right? I would rather have a client who I’m actively having to hit the brakes on and pull back because they feel so good, they’re making so much progress, and they have so much energy and they’re having fun as opposed to client B who gets in over their head and they quickly get underwater and they just hit mass panic stress mode. They’re like the dog who is essentially at this point just laying on the concrete and you’re trying to drag it along with you because Richard is right. The dog that doesn’t want to leave the park. And so I think psychologically, just as humans, I would always rather put yourself in a position to where we’re looking to add more, because any time you start and this isn’t necessarily true.

Why You Should Always Put Yourself in a Position Where You’re Looking to Add More Instead of Needing to Cut Out

But I think this is just what happens in people’s minds when we start cutting things and we start doing less. A lot of times it’s going to make people feel less worthy and less accomplished. I feel like a little bit of a failure because I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t get all that in. And so cutting back feels like a major psychological loss. Whereas putting yourself in a position to slowly add more over time is a much bigger psychological win and keeps you more engaged and keeps you more just alive and excited to go train.

Keiran Halton: Yeah, definitely. And I think that even applies. Like, I know we’re talking about days per week and stuff. I think that definitely even applies to the density or how much you’re doing within the training session. Like, I just had a message from one of our athletes on Build. We’re coming up on week five or six, and he’s training five or six days a week, but his sessions are a little shorter. Got a newborn, work and stuff like that. And he just messaged me like, hey, I know we’re going to be switching the phase soon. I think I can handle a little bit more on my plate with this. And I love that message. That’s a great spot to be in. As opposed to trying to load up his training day, he’s crushed for work, crushed for trying to deal with a newborn and all that stuff. So much better message that way. As opposed to the other way.

Issues That Arise When Always Worrying About the Short, Acute Progress

James Cerbie: Yeah. I think it just gets down to the fact that a lot of times we just aren’t good at thinking long term. We’re really bad at saying, where can I be in six months if I’m consistent in doing this thing every day? We’re just so worried about the short, acute gains and progress that we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. Right. That’s an important way to start this off. Piece number one, if this muscle building, getting strong, staying athletic, moving well on a time budget really resonates with you, step number one is you just got to have a really honest conversation with yourself or that’s the value of having a coach or a good friend or some other person in your life that you can at least have that conversation with, tell them about your life, and then get their unbiased third party, objective opinion about okay. This is what we’re going to do, because this is what’s realistic, because you’re always going to overestimate for yourself. I know. I do that for myself. Yeah. I shot myself in the foot so many times from doing too much. Right. You’d think you’d eventually learn I’m getting there slowly, maybe by the time I’m 50.

But let’s talk more actual nuts and bolts. We got to get in and out the door and let’s call it 45 minutes. Right. What are some popular programming tactics, strategies or methods that you’ve been using with a lot of success thus far?

Keiran Halton: Yeah. I think even starting at the warm up. Right. And I think I first did this with one of the apex programs back in the day with you, and I really liked it. It’s actually kind of fun, but creating like a three to five exercise circuit, whereas normally we might kind of linearly move through like positions or general warm up position stuff, more dynamics. You’re just kind of layering all those together. And again, I think that part of that is having an honest conversation. Where do I really need a little bit of extra time in the warm up to get going? Right. But then now I can prioritize those three to five movements within kind of like a circuited warm up. Hey, going through the circuit two to three times shouldn’t take more than like five to ten minutes Max. But you can get through this stuff pretty quickly, and you just got a bunch of different positions and movements to prep you for the day. So that circuit warm up, I really like it early on.

James Cerbie: Yeah, that’s a big one. Because if you only have 45 minutes, we’ll say 30 to 45 minutes, then you can’t afford to go warm up for 20 of those minutes, right?

Keiran Halton: Yeah.

James Cerbie: You can’t go foam roll and take your time and mobilize and do all this stuff because it’s like, well, there goes half of your training session. Sorry about that.

Keiran Halton: I think even within that, sometimes depending on the person, we might break out and have a separate kind of speed and power section. But we’re also going to probably superset that with something like a jump and a throw or some sort of speed oriented thing. But you could just kind of like blend that right into the warm up where you’re not really sure where your warm up and your speed power sessions start. But definitely, I think trying to create a bunch of density early on to crank up your body temperature real quick, get stuff mobilized and get going, I think is a priority number one for the day, for sure.

Popular Programming Tactics and Strategies We Use for Busy Professionals at Rebel

James Cerbie: And then once we get out of that period, this is where you always got to think about this, right. I guess as time gets cut down, we have to focus more and more on the big rocks. I always really like the rock pebble sand analogy. The big rocks have to go in first, and then I can put in pebbles and then I can put in sand last. Like if you’re trying to fill a jar. Right. Because if you put in the sand first, no pebbles or rocks fit. If you put in the pebbles first, no rocks fit, and you kind of see where that goes. So it goes big rocks, pebbles, sand. And so as the time gets shortened, we’re having to get rid of sand, we’re having to get rid of pebbles, and we’re having to really condense down to big rocks. And this is another place where I think people mess up is they’re choosing exercises that don’t give them a very large bang for their buck. Right. Because the big rocks at the end of the day are big bilateral hinge, squat, press, pool exercises. And that’s got to be a core part of the program because nothing is going to do a better job on a per rep basis of helping you to put on muscle and build strength.

Rock, Pebble, Sand Analogy

Because if you’re over there just like doing very what we’ll call more sensory motor, lower level, low load of things that’s more sand. In my books, those things are great because they keep you moving good and feeling good, especially if there’s a much larger program or training more often, 60 to 75 minutes. Right. But we just don’t have time to really probably fit that in there a lot. And if we do, it’s going to be really shortened. So I think with the big rocks, how do you like to address, I guess, programming those if we want to go there? Because I love the density protocols there. Personally, I think you’ve been using those a lot, too. So maybe let’s walk people through like, what is the density protocol, and why do we like the density protocol?

Keiran Halton: Yeah, totally. So to your point. Right. We really got to focus on those big rocks. And if we have time for the pebbles and the sand, great. But more often than that, we don’t. So when we’re looking at those big rocks, we’ll start the day with pretty much all my programs run with a main density block. To your point, it’s going to be like a big bilateral squat or hinge, and we’re going to pair one of the lower body with one of the upper body big bang for buck exercises, bench press, inclined press. I’ll even throw chin ups in there, depending on the person and things like that. But I think alternating with a relatively short rest between our lower and upper and maybe you get a little extra time before you restart the circuit. Even if you had to run right after that, you got your big stimulus for the day where you’re actually getting an output, you’re actually moving load, you’re actually moving it with speed. So a lot of times I’ll put a squat with a vertical emphasis incline press or lat pulldown or chin ups. And then we’ll go, usually our bilateral hand shows trapbar, RDLs, whatever.

You’re going to be able to load up pretty heavy. And we’re going to pair that with some type of press bench, floor, heavy dumbbell, just because I find that the grip usually agrees with that a little bit more for most people, as opposed to going heavy, a heavy pull with like a heavy upper body row or chin up. And some people are fine with that, but some people aren’t. So we pair a lower upper and it’s usually a push pull or pull push.

James Cerbie: Nice. I like that. And then there’s so many different ways that you can really approach how you want to attack the set and rep scheme. For those, there’s so many different tools in the toolbox, but I think it’s a really simple one. If you want to walk through just how a density protocol works in terms of maybe give it one example of this is what the set and the web scheme would look like and then this is how we look to progress it going into the following week.

Why We Like to Use a Density Protocol in Our Programming

Keiran Halton: Yeah. So I think looking at one of the base protocols, we’ll start the first three weeks at a three by ten super basic, super simple, and we’ll just see what weight you can use and you have to hit all the reps. If you’re missing reps, it’s too heavy. So just say our squat and lat pulldown for a day one. So we’ll go set a ten on the squat we should have,  week one, say you’ll have three to four reps in the tank and then we’ll take you to the lat pulldown after a 32nd rest. So it’s a really quick rest. But now you have a little rest for your legs and we get the challenge upper body hit your set of ten on the heavy lat pulldowns. And then again, same thing, three to four reps in the tank and then you’ll get 60 seconds before we get back to the squat and you’ll hit all three sets of ten. As you progress through the first few weeks, you’ll have a little less reps in the tank. So it’s encouraging you to kind of push the weight a little bit there. We’re tracking the training volume there.

So it’s kind of like a fun little game where all right, last week you got 5000. Let’s see what you get this week. Yeah.

James Cerbie: I love that.

Keiran Halton: Honestly, it’s so fun. I love that it’s a scoreboard.

James Cerbie: It’s such an easy number to know. Just as an athlete walking in, you can just look back and say, this is what I did for three by ten on my press or my squat last week. This is what I did for three by ten in my pool. Awesome. I have to find some place to add some loads so I can beat my total volume from the previous week. Even if it’s just putting two and a half pounds on the bar or adding it doesn’t take much. But what you don’t realize is how much that adds up over the course of a month if you keep making those jumps week to week and just continually beat that total volume number.

Keiran Halton: Yeah. We just had somebody run it through this kind of protocol where it’s like week one of the three by ten they were at like just get used to stuff. They’re at like 6000. And today further down the line, it’s probably like week ten. And it’s like, hey, by the way, this is your 1st 10,000 pound day regardless of your concept of weight and training, volume and load, whatever. Wow, that’s a couple of thousand pounds I put on. That sounds like a lot. Yeah. So that’s kind of how we progress. And then in the next phase that will typically go is we’ll add two reps. So we’ll go three by twelve. This is more like a work capacity hypertrophy block. So we’re trying to increase the volume and we’ll say, hey, let’s see if we can hold on to the three by ten weights and do it for an extra two reps per set. If you can at least hold the weight, the reps take care of themselves. So your training volume has gone up already. Usually people can add weight there and we’ll progress kind of that way through the first big block that we have with people.

What the Set and Rep Scheme Looks Like in a Density Protocol

James Cerbie: I like it. Yeah. Once you’re into it, there’s so many different ways you can progress and the games you can play. Right. The example you gave is maybe we add two reps and see if we can match the load we’re using for ten because automatically we have, I think just having a number to beat every time you walk into the gym is so important and so big. There are other things you can do here as well. If you don’t want to do a strict set and rep protocol, you could always do time sets as well. It’s another way to approach this, but I like this scheme a lot personally. So in terms of the big rocks, those are the big rocks. Right. And so I’m curious, how much Pebbler sand are you finding that our people are able to get in after they hit that big rock density set?

Keiran Halton: Yeah. So I think when we move on from there to our accessory series, we’re going to pretty much density that as well. Where I’ll give them like, hey, you have twelve to 15 minutes if they have that much time or they’ll have just a regular old superset and really strict on the rest where it’s like 30 to 45 seconds and we’re going to have them move through like the pebbles in my mind is like a single arm or single leg variation just to keep some of the movement quality in there. But because of the short rest or they’re trying to beat their rounds in the time frame week to week. They’re going to get a little cardiovascular effect as well. But I think outside of turning something from a bilateral to a unilateral movement, that’s probably as crazy as we’ll get with some of the accessory movements. So still, in my mind, could be considered big rocks. Yeah. But compared to what we are doing in the main series, it’s just a tiny bit different.

The Importance of Always Having a Number to Beat

James Cerbie: Yeah. I really like the time cap on accessory movements like that. I think that’s something people don’t use enough because we always drift into sets and reps, which are great. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with sets and reps. They’re amazing. But this could be another way for you to approach this. I’m going to do a dumbbell reverse lunge and half kneeling, one arm landmine press for my two accessory movements. I’ve only got ten minutes, so I’m going to set a timer for ten minutes and I’m going to do ten reps on each. And then if you can just keep that consistent week to week, your goal is to either just add load or get in more rounds within the same time. So there are a lot of ways that you can play with that. But I like that. I like that a lot. And so I think something that’s important for people to take away here is we are doing four exercises. Right. You got two big rocks, two pebbles, and you better condense it and you better time cap yourself and you better work hard within those time caps because then it’s time to go.

There’s not really much room there for more play. Right. You have to get cooking from the moment you go up to the gym to get that inappropriately and then get on to the rest of your day.

Keiran Halton: Yeah. And I think if you’re point if you can really lock in and focus, I think to be honest with you, people not even on a time budget could take some lessons for that in terms of, like, instead of doing like 89, 10, 11, 12 exercise, whatever it is, why can’t I cut that in half? And, like, really put a lot of focus and emphasis into these. However, many movements in our case for and people are like, messaging me like I was cooked, like having trouble up the stairs and stuff. And that’s to their credit because it’s just words on a piece of paper until you actually bust your ass and really try to increase your score week to week or increase the rounds week to week. So four to five exercises is all we’re getting out of here. That’s plenty. I have no complaints.

James Cerbie: That’s plenty for the vast majority of people. I think at the end of the day this may offend some people.

Keiran Halton: I will go for it.

James Cerbie: I just don’t think many people actually worked that hard in the gym. I just don’t think they actually know what hard work in the gym feels like. I think they spend so much time on fluff and sand and on their phone and just like chatting to people, they don’t know what a really dialed in training session feels like with really dedicated hard work and effort. I don’t think a lot of people actually know what that is. And so they’re super inefficient. Right. They take forever. This is where I kind of threw this out the other day, and I thought it was interesting if you think about the amount of work you’re doing and the gains you’re going to get as an outcome of that work. I think a lot of people are really big, bold. Italicized work. Right. It’s not real work. It’s just really time consuming. And you do all that work that’s time consuming for like very small letter gains. Whereas I think one of the things that we are really good at is we get rid of the fluff and we really get people to know where to direct their efforts and what hard work feels like.

Getting Rid of the Fluff in Your Workouts

 So they’re actually doing way more high quality work. But the work, in the sense of how much time you’re spending is much smaller, and then your gains end up being actually significantly larger than the work set up you were doing previously, just because we’re condensing and we’re giving you the right amount of work at the right time. And we’re not just wasting time on just fluff and nonsense.

Keiran Halton: Yeah. And I think you said it before, too. Right. Like when time is a huge factor in your own training or whatever in life, but you need to trim the fat and it’s got to be the big rocks and maybe you get a couple of pebbles in there because you don’t have time for the fluff. Right. For some people, a time issue is almost like a blessing. You have to focus. You can’t mess around. Right.

James Cerbie: I think it is in a lot of instances, because that’s the same power as deadlines and work. Right?

Keiran Halton: Yeah.

James Cerbie: If you don’t have deadlines set for yourself, especially short deadlines, projects tend to get really big and bloated and take way longer than they need to, whereas this is Tim Ferris 101 from way back in the day, four hour work week, and then everyone else has been talked about for a very long time. Right. You set yourself an unrealistically short deadline. And the fact of the matter is the quality of the product that’s going to come out on the short deadline will equal or surpass the product that you would make if you gave yourself four times as long to make it. Right?

Keiran Halton: Yes.

James Cerbie: And so I think that people have to swallow that with their training, too, is to audit and say, where am I really being inefficient and wasting time? Where am I not doing a good job of applying stress, you have to condense that stress input signal. I think a lot of times people don’t condense that stress signal. Well, which is why when we trim the fat for them, they’re like, oh, my God, I’m making so much more progress. It feels like I’m doing so much less. Right.

Keiran Halton: Yeah.

James Cerbie: You’re still working your ass off. You’re still working really hard. But conceptually, to them, it’s like I’m doing less exercises, I’m in the gym. Not as long. Right. And even our people that have 60 to 75 minutes to train because that’s probably the vast majority of our pieces are more in the 60 to 75 minutes bucket. Right. We still do a lot of condensing with them because I think from experience, people waste a lot of time in the gym on just cursory items and movements and exercises that aren’t really getting them anywhere. It’s creating fatigue without creating a reasonably good output or outcome for you. So that’s just a waste of time.

Keiran Halton: Yeah, absolutely. The feeling like you put in a good effort versus the actual metrics that we can track, like the training density and playing those games with yourself numbers, it’s like that’s the stuff that actually matters. It’s hard to judge unless you have a coach or somebody who has that experience. I mean, coming into Silverback, that was my program is a whole bunch of fluff. And I thought I was doing good because I was doing a lot. But it’s just a lot of poorly executed movements and exercises.

Condensing Your Stress Input Signals

 James Cerbie: Yeah. If there is a takeaway here, maybe there are a bunch of good takeaways here. But the thing that I mean, people, if they’ve listened to me for any period of time, I talk about condensing your stressors all the time. And that still, I think, is front and center, one of the most core big rock principles that people need to have in their training. Condense stressors so that you’re giving the organism enough stress to force an adaptation at this thing. If you’re not doing that, you can work your ass off and you’re not going to get any better, which is where a decent amount of people are stuck, unfortunately.

Keiran Halton: Yeah, I agree with that. Big time. I think one other thing I wanted to do was think about it in terms of the accessory that I really like, that I first got from you from Silverback in the fourth block was the horsepower and the idea of I still think it’s really good to always have your main output kind of strength movements. Personally, I kind of still like doing one output upper, one output lower, balancing that however you see fit. But then for the people who can’t get into the gym for like a strict cardio day or they like feeling that high intensity effort or whatever it is, we like those fusion sessions where it’s almost like a Watt or a Mexican or an Amwrap where you’re just cycling, like, two to three movements together. And it’s not just a random wide for the sake of just sweating and dying. If we look at, like, if we were doing a squat and bench press for our main list, then we could do an M wrap of, like, how many calories on the skier walking lunges and push ups where the walking lunges and the push ups and the sky, where you’re getting a little more upper body actually support your main efforts for that day.

That’s always a really fun one. And I remember messaging you saying, hey, I don’t want to miss out on the guys doing the more hypertrophy work. And you kind of pushed me that way as a backdoor kind of way to get a little muscle building there as well.

James Cerbie: Yeah, I really like that layout. That’s a really fun one. The skier thing is funny because when we were at our last training camp in Kentucky, Ryan Liquor started talking about the skier, and he’s like, I don’t know what anybody else sees when I see the skier, but I just see Lats. He’s like, I see a Lat warm up. That’s all I see. He’s like, you reach out in front and you just like, get this thing going down. He’s like, It gets your lap going. I don’t know what else you would use this machine for.

Keiran Halton: The skier. Oh, you mean the Lat warm up machine.

James Cerbie: You need the Lat warm up machine. I love it.

Keiran Halton: Yes, but that’s always a fun one as another alternative for people with that nice.

James Cerbie: I like it. Man. This has been really good. I think we had a couple of big takeaways here for people. So the big takeaway number one is just being very honest with yourself and having a very real look at your calendar and your responsibilities and acknowledging what you would want to do for training in terms of time and what you can actually do for training in terms of time, and then look to add later on. Don’t get underwater too quickly. It’s demoralizing. It sucks for your progress. Two, make sure that you are prioritizing the big rocks first in your training. Get those in above everything else, and then add pebbles if you have time thing number three. And this, I think, ties into that concept as well as making sure you’re condensing your stressors. Right. And if you’re working hard on the big rocks like we’re talking about here, that’s one strategy, one way in which you can ensure you’re condensing stress into what we want. Right. Like the big rock movement and then take away number four is that the skier is a Lat warm up machine, obviously. Did I miss anything?

Keiran Halton: No. I think underline and Bolt the Latin warm up. No, but to your point, make sure that you’re a dog trying to get off the leash. You’re not drowning under your own schedule and condensing the stressors. I think that sums it up best, I think.

James Cerbie: Beautiful. All right folks, we hope that you have an amazing week. We recently just popped open a free Facebook group for folks. Essentially a place where we’re going to share just tips, strategies, tactics, ways that we can help working professionals fast track to better strength, physique and performance goals. And so if you want a place where you can interact with us a little bit more on Instagram, obviously you can send us DMs and chat with us there. The Facebook group is another great place because we’ll post the podcasts and other training videos and walkthroughs and just helpful tips and resources for you. So if you have questions, if this sort of thing excites you and you want to be able to chat to the Rebel team about this and ask questions on the Facebook group, you can go join that totally free to join. Great place to connect with us. You can also DM us on Instagram obviously we’d be happy to have a little back and forth and chat about how you can better implement these strategies in your training to fast track your results. Otherwise have a great week, folks.

Keiran Halton: Thanks guys.

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