Beast over Burden powered by Barbell Logic

Training while traveling presents challenges, whether your a frequent business traveler or someone who only travels to visit family or for vacation. Either way, we have to decide to train or not to train and then how to adjust training before, during, and after to best meet our goals. If you are someone who rarely travels and NEVER misses a workout and you finally go on a vacation, it's not important to your long term progress to miss a week or even two. Again, though, there aren't a huge number of people in this category. For more people, it will be important to both maintain the habit of training or at least exercise and the training can help destress or at least make you feel better if on a vacation. If you're a frequent business traveler, training while traveling is a must: you cannot progress if you don't train on the road, so you'll have to develop a strategy and habits to train on the road, to include what to pack, gyms to look for, and how you train on the road). Now, let's discuss some travel hacks for lifters Matt likes to train first thing upon arrival and before departure, as it helps make travels days feel more productive and he knows he accomplished training on those days. These aren't days to hit PRs, but to get some work done. A pro-trip here is if you train at a big gym they often have showers, so you can train and still shower before getting on a plane. This also helps as training the first couple days after travel tends to not feel great, so you will have trained on the last day of travel and not feel behind on your training. Niki recommends to search for "powerlifting" when you're looking for a gym, as this probably will help you find gyms that will have the equipment you'd like to have. Both Matt & Niki acknowledge, however, that even big globo gyms tend to have at least 1 squat rack. Some hacks for travel:

• have liquid chalk in a travel size so it can go on your carryon bag
• if you check a bag, use a hard shell case to help protect your gear (and potentially any whiskey you take home
• pack your A7 shirts, as you'll experience some terrible benches
• Niki likes to have a small draw string bag that goes in her suitcase with her gym equipment
• Matt uses his backpack, which is also his carryon
• consider packing cubes for clothes
• eBags are great backpacks
• if you travel frequently, have pre-packed toiletry bags
• know where you can get higher protein options in the airport, or pack some
• drink water frequently

Lastly, how should you train while you travel? This depends on your goals and preferences, but in general, we can offer some ideas and tips:

• not a great time for PRs - get some work done & maintain the habit
• know thyself: will you want more frequent, super short workouts or fewer, longer workouts
• have flexibility with equipment and difficulty
• explore the space: try out new equipment and exercises you can't at your home gym or local gym
• front load stress prior to travel (go for PRs before the trip)
• communicate with your coach ahead of time so he or she can plan accordingly
• plan the training around your commitments and, for vacations, tell your family (don't go to the gym when your wife wants to go to a museum)

So, there's lots to consider and ways to train during travel better or worse. How do you train while you travel? GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Noah Hayden continues his discussion with Niki & Matt, now laying out & discussing his proposed exercise selection criteria and programming criteria. Below are his proposed exercise selection criteria.

• train the most muscle mass
• in normal, predictable movement patterns
• requiring normal coordination when possible
• over the longest effective range of motion
• to lift the most weight
• that is structurally sustainable
• with exercises that have a wide therapeutic window

What are we looking at when we discuss the longest effective range of motion? We're looking at the movement of the joint: how much the bones move around the joint. A good proxy for this, however, is the distance the barbell moves. We also need to think that it's not really a huge deal if someone is using a safety squat bar instead of a low bar back squat. The low bar squat is our default, but if they can't low bar squat we adjust and do the best we can. How do we take these exercises and create a program? Below are the programming criteria Noah proposed.

• train all major muscle groups
• with the least number of exercises as is practical
• that do not interfere with other adaptations
• any movement done to failure must be as low skill as possible
• in the minimum effective dose required to continue making progress

This goes back to the discussion of goals in part 1, but if you're training for a sport, you can't train strength optimally as you have to prioritize the sport (you have a time budget and a recovery budget). Strength needs to help your sport performance, not take away from it. These criteria also help with choosing when we add accessories. Initially, the deadlift is enough stress for the muscles of the upper back. But at some point it isn't, so we need to add chin ups or barbell rows or pull ups or lat pull downs. Check out the Barbell Health Series, where Noah first pitched the beginnings of some of these ideas, and his article, where he discusses these in more detail. GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Noah Hayden joins Matt & Niki to reexamine the exercise selection criteria. Noah first pitched these ideas in episode 3 of the Barbell Health Series & then Noah Hayden refined them in an article for Barbell Logic. As coaches, we likely love lifting, and this passion helped motivate us to pursue a career in helping others lift and experience the benefits of strength. Many of our clients, however, do not share the same passion, and while getting stronger will benefit them--and strength will likely get them closer to their goals--we cannot ignore their goals and prioritize strength about our clients' goals. Strength, in fact, is not the most important thing in life (nor the only thing). When it comes to programming, examining why we program a certain lift rather than another, we have to think about the why and then we can develop the how. A bit part of the why are the client's goals. We need to think about how we improve quality of life for the client? How do we help them meet their goals? We're Barbell Logic and we're strength coaches, so we understand the importance of strength and advocate that simple, hard, effective training should be a part of any fitness routine. If, however, we put 100 more pounds on a client's deadlift as their waistline increases when they wanted to get leaner, we failed to help the client meet their goals. In his article, Noah outlines what he considers the fitness attributes. While there are different lists, people tend to argue over whether two attributes should be combined or divided or whether there should be more that might fall under another. Below is his proposed list.

• strength
• endurance
• power
• mobility/flexibility
• agility/coordination
• precision/body awareness
• body composition
• lack of debilitating pain
• mental fortitude

In the next episode, Noah, Matt, & Niki decide on how examining the client's goals, understanding the why, and understanding the fitness attributes helps leads to Noah's proposed Exercise Selection Criteria and Programming Criteria. GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE! Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/ Connect with the hosts

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Time is your most valuable resource, and you don't know how much of it you have on this earth. Because of this, protecting time, being efficient, and knowing when to trade money for time is important. Its importance heightens if you find yourself in a situation where you make enough money that you can make more money on your work than completing a menial task, such as mowing the lawn or cleaning the house. You might actually make more money paying someone else to do this.

This isn't the case for everyone, and there are times in people's lives where they simply have to lower expenses and be thrifty.

If you find yourself in a situation where the more you work the more money you make, then you need to think about finding time blocks where you don't work and being efficient with your work.

If you find yourself with a fixed amount of time at work (eg a 40 or 60 hour work week) then you need to figure out how to leverage the time you have outside of work for both enjoyment and to complete the other tasks in your life.

Regardless of your situation, it helps to consider the money-time tradeoff and how some investments of money can lead to more money in the future (and, of course, how some investments of time can lead to money in the future). Thinking this way can help clarify what you should do yourself or hire out and help block off time for leisure and family and enjoyment.

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Chris & Matt Reynolds like to wake up early and GET AFTER IT. If you don't, that's okay, but you might try before you write this off and it's super important to have a consistent sleep schedule regardless of when you go to bed and wake up.

You can't make up for lack of sleep on the weekend, and your body will learn and adjust to a regular sleep schedule and be better off for it, as opposed to inconsistency.

If you want to try this, give it a try for 3 weeks. If after 3 weeks you hate waking up early and going to bed early, that's okay: you're probably an evening person. You might then want to work on being more consistent with your sleep and how you still make time for leisure and family.

One benefit that early sleep and wake provides is that many people have social activities in the evening. If you're an evening worker, you'll have to compete with these and find ways to work around these. It also can give a natural break to work and family life, and you can complete your work for the day (barring a true emergency) and then give your full attention to your family when they arrive.

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Let's talk about focus. This is something people don't do well these days. Focus has atrophied due to smartphones, social media, the internet, TV, etc. Focus, however, is critical to productivity, success, happiness, and getting done deep work.

Something that can help both improve focus but show you how hard it is to focus and how easily you get distracted is meditation. The practice of bringing your focus back to your breath or a mantra helps build the muscle of focus and helps you see your thoughts.

Also, you can't multitask. You may move from one task to another relatively smoothly or quickly, but you can't actually do two things at once.

Knowing what distracts you and blocking those things out helps. For many, distractions may be broken down into visual or auditory. Know which one distracts you and plan accordingly (noise-cancelling headphones, for example, if you're distracted easily by noises).

More focus means more productivity, and if you value time with family and other activities, you can be more efficient with work and urgent tasks and then spend more time doing those things that are important and give you value.

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Matt & Chris share a technique they use all the time, called the Pomodoro Technique. This technique is perfect for both knocking out urgent tasks or carving out time to dedicate to deeper, important work.

The original approach is to dedicated 25 minutes to totally uninterrupted work followed by a 5 minute break. You can string together multiple blocks as you get better at this. Also, if you string together multiple blocks, you often need a longer break every so often.

25 minutes isn't set in stone. You may need to do longer or even shorter blocks. The principle, however, is totally uninterrupted time. If you get distracted, you QUICKLY jot down a super short note to clear your head but ensure that the task that popped up in your head (e.g. I need to take out the trash) gets accounted for. With one hand, simply jot down "trash," and then continue your work.

Preparation can help here. There might be certain times of the day or locations where this isn't feasible because distractions will be inevitable. You also might need to do things to help prevent distractions: you may have to wear noise-cancelling headphones. You'll need to have your phone elsewhere and not have notifications turned on. You might need to notify your loved ones that you need 25 minutes uninterrupted time and explain the purpose.

Ultimately, this is about getting the urgent things done so you can get the important things done, which include spending time with your family. You can, of course, apply this for important tasks, such as creative work.

Try the Pomodoro technique to increase your efficiency with both urgent and important tasks.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE!

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We all have things we think are important, we want to get done, but we continue to put off. This occurs because of the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks and the 4 different types of actions that occur (as an action can be urgent & important, neither urgent nor important, urgent but not important, or not urgent but important).

We tend to put off the important but not urgent things. If they're never urgent, there's never pressure to complete them. Ultimately, we need to put pressure on ourselves to complete them.

This doesn't mean we ignore the urgent: the urgent has to get done. With the urgent, we have to find ways to be efficient or have others do these things (e.g. have the groceries delivered, have someone else mow the lawn). The important and urgent things have to get done. Items that are neither urgent nor important really need to be examined: how much value do you get, for example, scrolling through social media or binge watching Netflix. We need to eliminate or at least limit these activities.

All this requires, of course, identifying what's important. This comes down to what provides us value. You decide what's important.

This relates directly to strength training and dieting. Strength training is not urgent, though it's important. We can increase the urgency by having accountability and protecting the space. Over time, we impart urgency on strength training, "It's getting close to training time, I'll have to do this later."

The same goes for food. If eating is always urgent, then you'll find yourself eating the most convenient items, which will usually be unhealthy. Preparation prevents food from being urgent, because you're prepared and have food ready.

Lastly, completing the urgent is still important. If you have urgent things floating in your head when you're attempting to get your important work done, you'll be unable to focus and accomplish the important work you want to complete.

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE!

Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh

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As advocates of strength training, we encourage people to add strength training as a habit. Many of the most important things we need to do to live a more fulfilling, productive life, however, involve breaking bad habits.

Bad habits don't have to be bad in a moral sense. They ultimately don't provide us value and bring us closer to our goals. They might waste time or money. They might prevent us from building positive habits. They might make us less healthy or happy.

Stopping these habits can be difficult. The win of not doing these is often not enough. We can leverage the fact that as humans we dislike losing more than we like winning, so we need to devise punishments or negative consequences for doing the habit and have SOMEONE ELSE hold us accountable.

A note here is that the consequence should not be related to the habit. So, for instance, if you want to stop eating after 7pm, doing extra cardio or depriving yourself of food is counterproductive and can lead to other issues.

Making a bet or putting money on something is a potential option. If, for example, you don't stop the habit in a specific amount of time (and you'll likely need to quantify that) you give your friend a certain amount of money. Or, you could owe your spouse $5 anytime you do the habit.

Whatever habit we've decided to break, we've already decided that there are long term consequences that we don't like. But when we continue these habits, the long term negativity is hard to think about. Adding a short term negative consequence means we create a short-term negative consequence to discourage us.

The other idea to this is that ultimately we have to get through the initial difficult time with discipline and the motivation will catch up. We won't have the same urge to continue the habit and we'll see the benefits of having abstained.

A couple books they recommend are The Power of Habit, Thinking in Bets, & Atomic Habits

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE!

Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh

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Scott & Matt share some of their productivity tips: what to do, what to not do, and what equipment or apps help them.

When it comes to equipment and apps, both of them find having one huge monitor, 2 monitors, or 3 monitors helps, as one monitor simply adds time to tasks on the computer.

Scott has also found value in having a scanner to digitize documents. He puts these on Evernote and finds this saves time, helps keep these organized, and saves space.

Both Scott and Matt value a quality backpack and headphones, which can help prevent noises distracting you when you work.

Much of productivity is organizing tasks and ensuring dedicated blocks to get both urgent and important tasks done. Preventing distractions--including notifications, family interruptions, and your phone going off is critical. Matt follows the Pomodoro technique, which recommends blocks of completely undistracted time to knock out tasks on your tasks list. The general recommendation is 25 minutes, as it's long enough you can complete plenty of tasks but short enough that you can fit a few into your day and it doesn't become too inconvenient for others around you.

Scott has some tips as well.

Ensure you don't put projects on your task list. If you find that something stays on your task list, there's a couple ways to deal with it. If it takes less than 3 minutes to do, just do it immediately, as it takes 3 minutes to put it off. If it's really a project, break up the projects into tasks and put those tasks onto the list. Finally, if the tasks are important but not urgent, create a Sunday Maybe list where you can put important tasks that are not urgent so you can both organize them, put a place for them, but not feel guilty because they've stayed on your to do list for weeks or months.

One other note is to consider the trade off with time and money. There may be things that take up huge amounts of time and that you don't enjoy. If you can afford to spend the money and feel the trade off is worth it, have someone else do it for you (trade the money for the additional time and fill that time with important things, which--important--may end up making you more money).

GET STARTED with one-on-one online coaching FOR FREE!

Get your FIRST MONTH FREE on all strength and nutrition coaching plans. No discount code needed and includes a 10-day, no obligation trial. https://bit.ly/2MKeOoh

Special offers from BLOC and our partners: https://barbell-logic.com/offers/

Connect with the hosts

• Matt on Instagram
• Niki on Instagram

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• Barbell Logic on Instagram
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• [email protected]