How to Execute a Water Cut | Bobby Hicks & Audrey Carlson

Welcome to the platform podcast where we talk to coaches, athletes, experts, and real people to learn about their approaches to training, nutrition, mindset, and much more. I'm your host, Jordan Kunde-Wright, founder and head coach of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club. And I'm on a mission to help others build sustainable, healthy lifestyles. Before we jump into this episode, I want to take a second to make an important announcement about the Twin Cities Kettlebell Open. The event will still be taking place in person in Little Canada, Minnesota on October 23rd, with Delta causing all sorts of restrictions and travel issues for a lot of people. We've also decided to include video submissions for participants who are unable or unwilling to make the trip in person. So now no matter where you live, you'll be able to participate in the Twin Cities Kettlebell Open. You'll be able to submit your videos until midnight central time on October 22nd and still be eligible for all of the same prizes as our in-person competitors. Just go to our website, Twin Cities Kettlebell Club.com for details. This week is a special episode where I have two guests returning, Bobby Hicks and Audrey Carlson. And I brought them back to discuss our experience implementing a water cut protocol that I learned in my level two nutrition certification with nutrition coaching institute. And what our experiences were like in the pluses, minuses, the fun, the suck, and what we learned from the experience as well as what our results were. So I really hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. It was great fun and I really appreciate Bobby and Audrey doing this with me. And being willing to share their experience with the audience. So I hope you guys really get a lot out of it. Please feel free to hit me up with any questions. And as always, I'm incredibly grateful that you listen to this podcast. The best way you could support me is to register for the Twin Cities Kettlebell Open on October 23rd and maybe tell a friend or two. Just go to our website, Twin Cities Kettlebell Club.com for details. And of course, if you haven't already, please be sure to leave a five star rating and review of the platform podcast in your app of choice and support my work by supporting our sponsors whose affiliate links you'll find in the episode notes. And if you want to step onto the platform and competing kettlebell sport or you need help with your nutrition, please reach out to me. I hope athletes of all levels reach their goals without wasting time using my integrated coaching approach. And follow me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, Twin Cities Kettlebell Club.com or email me at Twin Cities Kettlebell Club at gmail.com. Now let's step onto the platform with Bobby Hicks and Audrey Carlson. All right, we are live streaming on Facebook and I am on with my friends, Bobby Hicks and Audrey Carlson. So welcome into this week's episode of the platform podcast. This is the first time we have had a live stream with multiple guests. I think this could get interesting, but I think it'll be a lot of fun. So the reason I asked these to on is they were brave enough to be guinea pigs for me as we worked through a water cut protocol for the Riddle struck open, which was what two two weekends ago now. Is it already two weekends ago? Yeah, I feel like it's probably coming up about that. So thank you guys both for coming on. You guys want to say hi? Hello. You guys all know Bobby from multiple appearances on the podcast already. And Audrey was on, gosh, I don't even remember. It was sometime during quarantine when we were talking, it was during dry January, like right, right leading up to dry January. So she was on and helped me talk through how to successfully navigate a dry January. So thank you for being return guests and very much appreciate it. Thanks for having us. And the comp was on the 14th, just I just checked the calendar. It feels like two weeks ago, but it was actually just eight days ago. Yeah, I can't, I can't do, I can't do time anymore. It's just, it's become so nebulous. It's like coming reps, you know, it's like, I just knocked out 15 reps in that set. And then you actually go back and look at it and it was like 11. Yeah. I can't, I can't do that. And I can't count gummy bears. I, they go by, you know, it's just handfuls. I just, you know, how many handfuls of gummy bears? All right. Yeah, Albany's only Albany's 12 flavor. But don't come at me with that harboro garbage, Bobby. Yeah, I've learned. You converted me. All right. So the, uh, the water cut protocol, I wanted to give the audience a quick, a quick overview of the water cut protocol before we dive into your guys's personal experience. And I also did the water cut, um, not because I was within anything resembling striking distance of a lower weight class, but just out of solidarity with people. I, I try and make it a point. If I'm going to ask somebody to do something that I have, uh, either done it myself or I am willing to do it myself. So, um, we went through this water cut protocol. And I want to give credit where credit is due. This is not my protocol. I did not design this protocol. This is from NCI, the nutrition coaching institute, where I have my nutrition certifications. Um, this is from their level two certification, Jason Phillips, um, super high level nutrition coach. And uses this water cut protocol with UFC athletes. And they have actually reviewed this water cut protocol with the UFC, um, to, to walk them through it and to, to ensure safety and efficacy. Um, and the UFC signed off on this protocol, they like it, uh, quite a bit. And I'll explain some of the reasoning behind that as we, as we go through it. And I want to give credit where credit is due. This is not my protocol. I did not design this, but, um, I did execute this with, with Bobby and Audrey, uh, as well as myself. So it goes, it goes basically in five phases. Um, but I also want to couch it in the, in the understanding that ideally, you, you do not come into any type of cut any before competition where you, you need to cut a bunch of weight. Right. Um, and I want to give you within striking distance of, of the weight class that you want to be in. So ideally, you should have a full training camp or a full prep cycle where you can first dial in your nutrition and lose weight in a very sustainable way so that you are close to the weight that you want to compete at. And this protocol is just a way to manipulate water that is stored in your body to go down a weight class without adversely affecting performance significantly. So I want to couch it with that. This is not a miracle thing. This is a way to lose, um, you know, between, between five and 25 pounds, depending on how big you are as a human being, um, in a fairly short period of time. So we're talking about this is a 12 day protocol. We start, we start 10 to 12 days out from, from when you need to weigh in. This is almost entirely water weight that we're going to lose. So this is not sustainable. You will put this weight back on and as we'll talk about. So I just want to be very, very clear in how I couch this so that this is not weight that stays off forever. This is weight that you, that you flush out and then put right back into your body. So ideally, you want to be close to the weight that you, that you need to perform it. So phase one is a water load. We start that 10 to 12 days out. Typically, lose, you know, between three to five pounds. Again, this is all going to be couch with the it varies. It depends on how big of a human being you are. So, and we'll talk through what each of our individual experiences were in each of these phases, um, as we get into it, but just the overview is phase one is a water load phase. As we start 10 to 12 days out phase two is car production. So five days out, we reduce our carbohydrate intake by about 40% of what your current intake is. And then you reduce it another 40% on day four. So four, four days out from, from when you need to weigh in and you do it 40% off of the reduction that you just did. So it's not off of your previous total. It's off of the off of the initial reduction. Right. So you just reduce it. So the additional 40% phase three is sodium reduction or sodium elimination as it were as much as you can actually eliminate sodium. So we do that three days out. We eliminate sodium and then phase four is the water excretion phase. That's when we pull water from intake. It's approximately a day out. Again, depending on how close you are to the weight that you want to compete at, if you've already dropped a bunch of weight in the previous phases, that allows you to keep water in longer. So we want to stay as hydrated as we can for as long as we can and continue in taking water for as long as possible. And so we don't pull water until the last, that's the last manipulation is the water excretion part. And then there's the water one day out and then there's the sweat phase, which is, which is part of phase four. That's the water excretion phase. So you do between 30 to 60 to 90 minutes, depending on how much weight you need to lose. So you do sweat phases where you excrete water either with sauna, a hot bath, or if you live in one of the climates that either of my guests live in like Austin, Texas, or Florida, just anywhere in Florida, which is always hot and humid, you can just go outside and go for a walk because it's basically like sauna. Depending on the time of year, but you really, you really just work to to excrete excrete water through sweat and then phase five is post weigh in refeed and that's re uptaking carbohydrates sodium and potassium replenishing electrolytes. So those are the five phases. We're going to I'll I'll give you a little bit more information about them as we as we go through them, but I wanted to give you just a framework for this for this episode. So those are the five phases and we'll talk about those phases and what are experiences. We're with them and how much weight we kind of individually lost in those in those phases. So with that, I'm going to I'm going to bring my guests back in. So Bobby, what were you trying to compete at? What was the weight that you were trying to compete at and how close to that were you when we started. So first off, hey, yeah, thanks again for having us on here and stuff again, like this could be a lot of fun. So initially, you know, it's like my body weight kind of average, you know, before you and I started working together was kind of fluctuating between 207 207 pounds to 209 pounds. I'm kind of the worst when it comes to, you know, I'd say like 100 plus kilos or no, no, no, not 100. See, I can't even do that. You know, it's like 90 plus. Yeah, it's like 95 92 or 95 kilos. I think it was somewhere around there, you know, carry the two. Yeah, I'm terrible at conversions. Let's just not worry about it. We're talking to Americans anyways. Yeah, we'll talk in pounds. Sorry to our international story to those of you in Canada. I'm going to talk at pounds. You'll have to do the math. But yeah, so anyway, like I basically was kind of averaging around like 272 to 209 pounds and you know, like this was purely experimental. I had never really done like a proper water cut. You know, like if I would go into a weight class or like a competition and one of the cut, I'd usually just kind of fast a little bit the day before. I had a couple of pounds just for that. But I wanted to, because again, I had no idea there was no standards for me. I didn't know what I could drop. So I was hypothetically. Let's go from like the 92 plus kilo weight class that I was, I think like normally competing in. And I was like, let me see if I can either drop down to the 84 kilo weight class, which again now hindsight, like that's absolutely absurd. Which would be like about 185 pounds in America. And then if that's 22 pounds from where you're walking around on a 22 pound cut. Or the next option would be just one single weight class down to the 89 kilo class, which would bring me closer to around like 195 pounds, which is. I knew right off the bat. It was like, that's absolutely attainable. That's something that I, it's a goal of mine to kind of naturally lose body fat and composition stuff like that to get down to around there anyway. So it's like, that'll be a nice kind of ending point. And that's where you landed. Yeah. And we'll, and we'll say like Bobby and I started working together without a full camp. So the one, the piece of advice I started with, Bobby and I have, have started working together on just doing some natural reduction of his body weight that is sustainable. But we didn't have a full camp to, you know, we didn't have a full 12 weeks to, to reduce his body weight in that, in that way. So that's where we were he bravely volunteered to, to, to do this. And then Audrey, same question for you, where were you, where were you at when we started and what were you, what were you trying to, trying to get to, for, for competition. Yeah. So I was in between the welter and super light weight. So I was at 170 ish pounds. So, you know, 79.4. And then wanting to get to the 74.3. And so it was really just a five pound difference. So I was like, you know, I don't want to gain five pounds because my nutrition goals right now or some trying to lose fat and get back to, you know, like 145 pounds. That's what I was. I can ask that by the way. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you with your help. So, yeah. So I was like, you know, I can either just stay or just for fun. And of course, I'm always down for an experiment. So I was like, sure, let's see, like five pounds trying to cut five pounds. Like that didn't seem, you know, like craziness. Yeah. And I'm going to be the, I'm going to be the end of the bell curve for you all. I was, I was, you know, I'm in the Clydesdale division as everybody knows. So I, you know, I was when we started, depending on the day, you know, my body weight fluctuates more than, than, you know, smaller humans. So, you know, I can fluctuate five pounds on a, on a given day. So I was, I was, you know, around 275 on average, but, you know, as high as 278 as low as 272, depending on, you know, when and where I weigh in and all of those, all of those factors. But averaging around 275 when we, when we started this. And so, for me, me fluctuations are fairly, are fairly large. And I think in general, like a 10% reduction is probably about, about attainable through this water cut. You know, and I'm going to, again, couch said it's a, it depends on you. Depends on a lot of factors. But, you know, about a 10, about a 10% fluctuation is typically about what you'll expect from this. So 15, you know, 15 to 15 to 20 pounds is reasonable for larger humans less than that for smaller humans. Right. So for me, like 20 pounds was totally reasonable because I am, you know, a big person. So phase one was was the water load. Right. And that's where, if you're already hydrating appropriately, it's typically, you know, about, you know, about your body, an ounce per, do you take your body weight divided in half and, and drink an ounce of water per pound, you know. And that's typically what most people, you know, would be recommended. So, you know, for me, that's, you know, 100 and, you know, 135 ounces a day. So basically a gallon a day for me is, is kind of, is kind of what I was doing. Bobby, you were in pretty similar, you're in pretty similar baseline. Right. When, when we started because you live in Florida, which is super hot and you training your garage, which is super hot. So we keep, we try and keep your, your, your fluid up and Audrey kind of the kind of the same thing because you live in Texas. So we try and keep your fluid fairly high. So you were both, like over 100 ounces a day was kind of your target when we started, when we go to the water load phase, we double that. Right. So, so Audrey, how, how is that for you when I was like, hey, double your normal water intake. Yeah. So I, I average around 100 ounces a day. Until then it was like, okay. So now I got to drink three gallons a day. I was like, whoa. And I thought, first day, I was like, oh, this, you know, that'll be okay. And then you can see my notes and my tracker by the fourth day, I was like, fucking water. It was rough because I normally I get up twice in the night to pee. And this was like six times in the night. I was just like, wow, this is hardcore. Yeah. And Bobby is like, it's similar for you. Right. Like is, I mean, we went to 250 plus. You were just, we were just thinking of it in gallons basically start going like two to three gallons a day. Like I, the funny thing is like, in general, I don't normally track liquid. Like, I just kind of, I have my cup that, you know, I have right here in my hand. And it's like, I just fill it all day long, constantly. And it's like, there wasn't point for a long time where I had a gallon of water that I would just refill every day. And I would just use that as a metric. But when it came time for the actual like water loading aspect, I just, I had an idea of like how much water I needed to drink for a normal day, you know, I was comfortable with doing. And then I was just like, I'm just going to do this all day and time just absolutely uncomfortable. But for me, it actually became one of the things for one because it's so hot down here. I just enjoyed drinking it. And then it got to a point after because we did this for almost two weeks. So it's like, by the end of the, by the end of the, by the end of the, the first week of doing that, it got to the point where if I was drinking any less than a gallon and a half a day, I was, I was actually like, parched like my mouth would be like, like, Puckray because I'm just like, I need water, you know, yeah. I mean, we call this the water load phase. It could really just be called the piss fest because like when you, when you, when you drink this much water, you really start peeing a lot as as Audrey said, right. And, and ideally, if you can do it, you want to get most of it in in the morning so that you can taper off water before you go to bed and you're not, you're not having to wake up six times in the middle of the night. That's easier said than done. I was, I was kind of the same way where it was just like, I was like, wait, am I currently drinking water? Okay, then I'm falling behind. I basically just needed to be drinking water constantly. And the reason we do that from a physiology perspective is your body needs time to change the hormones that signal you to retain water. So under normal hydration circumstances, your body is has a D H and I'll do our two hormones that signal how much water you're how much fluid you should retain. And by hyper hydrating, what happens is your body turns off those signals. So it basically says, okay, we have so much water coming in that we do not need to retain water. We need to just excrete everything that's coming in. So we basically just turn on the faucet and put our heads under it and just keep drinking and drinking and drinking and by doing that our body responds by decreasing the hormones that tell us to retain water. So that is that is the intention of phase one. And actually in this phase, despite the fact that you are drinking gallons and gallons and gallons of water every day, you can expect to lose between two and four pounds in the in the first week. You know, I lost four pounds the first week. How did you how did you do, Bobby? So I mean, like one and preface again for everybody that's listening and not actually wear this like so we all have been actually plugging into a very really a candy. Kind of like what Google doc that Jordan actually made from and so it's a spreadsheet. Yeah, so it's like we actually log in all of our daily kind of like macros and our steps and all these other analytics that you'll probably get into on David. So I have like all of my stats and metrics in front of me and it's like data. It's great. And it's like, you know, it went from kind of basically being around like 206 pounds was kind of like a generalized average, you know, for a couple of days. And then when I started doing the water cut, it went from what really quickly from like 206 and then dropping down to about 202. Yeah, pretty, pretty quickly, you know, and then especially after we started, which you'll get into good when we started doing like the carbon impulation and the sodium cut like it just fell off like it's kind of insane. Yeah, Audrey and kind of similar for you as well, right? You saw, you saw a pretty not immediate reduction, but after a few days of water loading, you saw the, you saw the reduction happen as well. Yeah, definitely. And I'll talk more about it when we get to that point with the sweating thing that just blew my mind, like totally blew my mind. And I, the thing too with the waters, it wasn't so much the peeing because I'm, you know, fairly used to that since I drink so much anyway or, you know, as much as I should for this climate, but I was like my stomach was so full. And you know, you hear like, oh, you know, you're not really hungry. You're thirsty or, you know, drink a glass of water before you eat, and then I'll fill up your stomach. This is the point where I was like, yeah, and I'll talk more about this. My calories were probably much lower than what is recommended, but just because I was like, I can't put anything in my stomach. Yeah, volume, volume in the stomach. Yeah, I, that is one thing I didn't mention. That is definitely part of it. Your stomach is just full of fluid all the time, which also I will say for those of us doing kettlebell sport makes jerk and long cycle in particular, long cycle for me was harder than jerk, like jerk, at least you're, you're dropping the weights on your stomach, but you're not bending over. But like on long cycle, it was like just sloshing around in my stomach. And I'm such a baby when it comes to that. So I will say the training experience of training with that much fluid in your stomach was super weird for me. And I did not enjoy it. But of the five phases. This was, well, the four phases of the cut. This was the easiest phase that was just drinking water. This was also like one of the first times that like, you know, because again, I drink a lot of water, but this is one of the first times where I would be training and I work up to like the 32s and I'm doing my like long cycle or jerk sets with the 32s. And then like I actually had to like sat down at the very end of like that, that one training set. And I was like, I had to hold back the, the, the need to like vomit because it was just I've never had that sensation because I'm not normally continuously drinking as much as I normally do when I'm training. But I was trying to keep up with it. And I was like, I'm going to throw up if I keep doing this. I didn't drink during training. I stopped while I was while I was training. I couldn't, I can't, I can't do it. It was a quick lesson. I figured it out really fast. Yeah, my normal routine is I don't consume any liquid like at least 30 minutes or food before training. I don't eat anything for like two to three hours before training. And then even the liquid because of that, you know, just the full tummy. So yeah, it was challenging. Yeah, it's easier, easier part for sure. And then just to plug, I'm not sponsored. But this hydrate bottle is fun. Hydrate with an eye. It's a smart bottle. And as an app. And so it tracks it. It's like got this little sensor that calibrates the weight of water. And you can, and you can tag it like it's blue tooth. I'm like, you can like, weren't you? Yeah, I'm like friends with a few people. Yeah, Nora. And then like the coworker turned me on to it. And I got Chris one. And so it's really fun because you can compete. You just hashtag influence the shit out of me right now. Like I've got my little turvis that I got from like my nephew. And I'm just like, I gotta throw the shit out the window. You can, they have all different kinds of bottles. I recommend the steel stainless steel versus plastic because of the condensation. This doesn't get condensation. And then you can even pay extra to like program the colors of your lights. I'll show y'all when it's telling me I need to drink. I'll hold it up so you can see the little light show. It's like a little disco in your hand. So it's silly, but fun. I like. Anything anything that helps, right? Like if it works for you, like that's, that's huge. Like I just, I'm, I'm constantly drinking. It's funny. My desk always had like I have, I have, you know, one mug. I've got my, my massive thing of coffee. I've got another thing for like, I've always got like six or seven cups around my desk because I'm always drinking. And I'm like, instead of just bringing my cup upstairs and refilling it. It's like I'm upstairs and I fill up a different cup. So like I end up with just the collection of cups around my, around my desk. It's like a weekend thing. I bring all my cups upstairs from my office of the work week. Yeah. Well, it was interesting to see if I was actually drinking as much water as I thought I was because like Bobby. I wasn't actually ever measuring and I just, you know, constantly drinking until I was like, yeah, I'm actually actually doing it. Well, and for people that live, especially in the warm climates, it is really interesting and Bobby alluded to it, right? It's interesting to see like when you first actually start adequately hydrating. A, how much you're just general feeling improves, like you just feel better, like when you adequately hydrate. And then your performance improves, right? And you know, adequately hydrate is not this, not the hyper hydration. But like when you, when you just increase your water intake. And it's like amazing how much better you sleep, how much better you train, how much better everything goes. So down here in Florida, it's one of those things where you're drinking. And like as I'm drinking currently in my water, I'm still thirsty drinking. It's gone. Right. So that's, that's phase one, the water load phase. And we keep that water load going the entire time. Right. So again, the idea here is we want the hormonal signals that tell that tell our body to retain water to shut off. So we have to maintain that high level of water intake throughout this entire process. So that's 10 to 12 days out. And we do that. So basically that first week is where hyper hydrating, we keep that water intake going. And then we get to phase two, which is the car production phase. And this is when, so five days out, we're going to reduce our carbon take by 40% and for those of you that that aren't watching on, on Facebook, Bobbi just gave me the double barrel middle fingers because he was, he was not happy when I took his carbs away. So I loved his stories like send carbs and salt. So we, we cut your carbs pretty, pretty significantly. It was a big, it was a big, it was a big change for you. So, so talk, talk about it. What did you do? Okay. So, so again, let's, let's work off of like stats that we've got. So on average, my carbon take. Okay. My average carbon take was 290 grams plus. Okay. Like that was, that was what I was normally getting on a regular weekly basis for performance. Y'all. Absolutely. Like, you know, if I had less than 250 grams, I noticed it in my training. And I, and I would leave notes as well. Like, you know, for my performance would be like a six instead of like an eight or a nine or something. So we had to drop it by 40%. And so, you know, that Monday, it went down to 164 grams. And then the very next day, we dropped that by an additional 40 grams. And again, this is the most important thing that like I had asked Jordan. Jordan, it's like, okay. So I'm just like, I'm dropping carbs and I kind of like having fun and like filling that up with the extra protein of fat, like extra calories. And you're like, no, no, you're dropping calories and getting rid of the carbs. And like, that's it. So then we dropped down to, from 164 down to, well, I consumed 164. And then the next day, I consumed a hundred and 106 grams of carbs. And I kind of stuck with 100 grams of carbs or less for the rest of the week until weigh in. And I mean, you know, to be fair, like if you if you are looking to kind of like shed waterway, that was that that was the ticket. Like I instantly dropped looking at this and went from 206 pounds. And then within two days, doing nothing else. I was still drinking a ton of water, dropped the 202 pounds. And then just two days later was when we did the water cut. And that's when I dropped down to 194 pounds from just sweating. So I mean, like the sodium cut was huge shoe will get to that. But like God, the carbs really helps. But that was just the most awful, cruel thing that you could do. Yeah. And this is why this is why low carb diets work for reducing weight. But they don't work necessarily or they're not any they do work that anything that puts you in a calorie deficit works. But they they're not any more effective at reducing body fat than any other calorie controlled, you know, reduction into. In total intake, right. But they work for reducing weight because for every gram of glycogen, which glycogen is just a fancy way of saying carbohydrate energy that is stored in either your muscles or your liver. Those are the two places that your body stores glycogen it converts carbohydrate energy to glycogen, which is a readily available fuel source that it uses for any highly oxidative, you know, high intensity type of training, right. So it's always using a mix of fat and carbohydrate energy. But that comes mostly from glycogen, especially in exercise. So this is why it is super important if you are training regularly that you eat carbohydrates because your body uses that as it's preferred fuel source for high intensity training. So every gram of glycogen that you store in your muscles or in your liver, two grams of water are attached to, right. So when you take away a gram of of carbohydrate energy is stored as glycogen, you actually reduce by three grams, right. So there's an added effect of it, you excrete water and you don't have the glycogen great for reducing weight terrible for how you feel and how you perform, right. I know Audrey and I train, you know, in the same training sessions, a lot of times as part of the Twin Seeds Cannibal Club team, like I don't know about you, but for me, like not having the carbs, the weights suddenly felt way fucking heavier, like 20 kilos felt like 26 or 28 kilo bells, like it was super, I couldn't believe that. Did you have that same experience. And I was supposed to do two sessions that week, and I only did one and I couldn't even, it was supposed to be seven, one minutes, for ins long cycle with the 16s. And I could only do six. I mean, I was like, I'm going to like straight just face plant like I was so, but that was like on that final day, you know, and the rest of the time I just did walking and stretching because yeah, I was like, I was, I felt like not well. Yeah, this is what this is why training like training intensity and like performance, particularly like goes down significantly if you if you don't have carbs. So this is the tradeoffs that we make, you know, reducing reducing weight for aesthetic purposes or for, you know, for way in purposes, you don't expect your training to your training performance to also be good, right, especially if you're not adapted to being in a low carb state. So yeah, so we reduce 40% day five, five days out from way in, we reduce another 40% four days out from way in and we keep that reduction the entire way. So you do see a color overall color reduction. You see an overall food volume reduction. So that's another way that you'll lose weight from this is you won't you'll just have less food volume in your digestive tract, right. So in your stomach and in your intestines. So you'll have less food volume. You'll, you'll excrete the glycogen as well as the water that goes with that. So the, the, you can expect to lose, you know, between between two and, and, you know, five or six pounds. Again, depending on how big you are, right, you'll, you'll lose another couple of pounds and up to I would say six six ish pounds in this phase where you do the carbon reduction and calorie reduction, right. And then we move on to phase three. Which is we cut out sodium and sodium is an electrolyte makes things taste good, right. Salt is one of the, the, you know, the main five things that we taste, we take, you know, salt, fat, acid, heat and sweet, right. Those are kind of the main things that you cook with salt is a big part of that. I honestly found the cutting out sodium to be the hardest thing I found that he was cutting cutting out the carbs. Did you guys did you guys find that as well. Yeah. For me, it was challenging because Jordan knows this because he's my nutrition coach as well as my kind of all sort of coach is I don't cook. And so I sort of like fake cook. I get like trader Joe stuff. I get, you know, premade meals like from HB that it's, you know, it's fresh food, but it's technically process in the sense that, you know, it's got all prepared it for you. Yeah, exactly. And so it's harder to control the sodium with that, right. So that was my challenge is like, okay, I have to eat. Whole foods, you know, because even my protein shake, a little sodium. So, so that was challenging. So like you'll see on day four, like I had 856 calories that day because I was like, first of all, I don't have any energy to even lift the food to my mouth. And secondly, like, what am I going to eat? You know, so I'm curious about. And that was under the prescription. You know, I did not prescribe calories that low. I just. That was just me being like a fucking last day, like, just I don't even care. I'm going to bed. So I'm curious, Bobby, like, how many milligrams of sodium did you have? Did you track it? So like, I wasn't tracking the milligrams of salt per se because again, like mine, I do cook a lot. And I actually love to cook. And so that made it easier for me in the sense of like being able to kind of just make sure I'm not adding any sodium. And unfortunately, like, you know, my girlfriend, Kiko, like she was very on board with this, like she just kind of added salt on her own stuff if she needed, but like kind of like you, like I had my routine breakfast and stuff that I had to kind of alter. So like my protein shake, it has a little sodium, but it wasn't a ton. So I wasn't really stressed about it. I would normally have a salad, but the salad did have some sodium in like the dressing. So I was like, okay, I'm going to use less of the dressing at least just to kind of compensate for that chicken. Chicken, I would just cook in advance and just know sodium and stuff, but like in general, though, I did find that like my intake of food during those days when I had to cut the sodium was like severely down. Like, for example, even when we did the carb depletion, you know, it's like I was dropping from an average of run. 2500 calories, let's say, 25, 2700 is kind, I think 2700 is what you'd program for me, you know, but I was eating maybe around like 2000 calories, you know, or less, because it was just, I wasn't, I wasn't even interested in food. Like you, like, Jordan had to have a little pep talk with me one day when I was just texting and it was like, this is absolute fucking bullshit to hate this and everything sucks. You can be salt, you know, and what cake, you know, and I don't even like cake that much. I just really wanted something, you know, and he was just like, look, man, food is fuel. You got like one more day left of this. He was like, I just want you to eat. And so like I got creative and that was kind of one of my notes to like had to get creative. You know, and like, I would just mix eggs with chicken. And it's like, my meal would be, I mean, just jacks in protein, like I've ever sent a photo to our group thing. And it was just like 90 grams of protein in one meal that I had, because it was like two breast of chicken and like three eggs and hot or no, I couldn't even use hot sauce, because it was. There's a lot of a lot of so did it, but not in Sri Ratchit, right? So that's right. This is where like, and this is where we were kind of kind of helping each other out or is like, okay, so what can I have. And like so, like this. And I don't usually recommend the food is fuel mindset to my to my clients, but there are phases, there are times, right. And there are times when we have to shift our mindset. And this was one of those times where it's like, okay. For the next two days, we're not eating for pleasure. We're just like, you just kind of got to, I won't even say grin and bear it. You just have to frown and bear it and you just like, you just eat the food. It's just like, okay, I'm eating plain oatmeal. I'm eating, I'm eating unsalted eggs, right. Eggs with pepper and Sri Ratchit sauce was like one of the things that that I ate, right. And like, I didn't even do my protein supplement because it had 300 milligrams of sodium. And I was like, no, I'm not doing that, right. So like, I was doing plain egg whites, plain eggs, plain chicken, plain pork chops, or not a pork chop, like pork loin, right. Like lean, lean cuts a meat, plain, I got a bunch of grass fed steaks that were very lean. And I cooked those. But like season season season them, but no, but no salt on them. So it was like, just pepper and garlic and onion, right. Onion powder, right. So like seasonings you can do because there's no sodium in the in just the ground, you know, granulated garlic and things like that. It's like, you do have to get creative. And it does. I mean, frankly, it sucks. Like, that was the hardest part for me. I was just, I was just like, God, this food is just, because I like food. I'm a fat heart. Like, I like food. I eat for pleasure. I like, I like eating, you know, I like, I like cooking. That's why I like cooking. Yeah. I want to, I want to taste the food that I'm putting the time in the 11 respecting, you know, and inside the end of the day, you kind of have to like, you have to juge up your food a little bit and give it a little like facial just before you eat it because it's like, you wanted to taste good. It's good. Look good and all this. And then like, when you kind of go to this, that was just awful. I mean, like, I actually was had the best part of that was just like, making sure that I was drinking because at least that kept me from feeling hungry. You know, yeah. But it was just like some hydration was on point, but then inside gone that last day, we had to cut hydration. And that wasn't eating anything fun. And it was just like, this is, this is so bad. Yeah, it was, I mean, but I do have to say, like, the first time you have salt when you, when you reintroduce it, like, I had a, I had a stack of pancakes on the refeed day or blueberry waffles actually is what they were like, it was so good. Like just like anything. And I made eggs too. And I put salt on my eggs. And I was like, oh my god, these eggs are the best ever. It was just because I put a little bit of salt on it. It was the same way I normally make eggs, which are not super exciting. It's just scrambled eggs with like, you know, a salt and pepper, like not super exciting. But after going through that, it was like, oh my god. I love all of the salt. It's so good. It like made my mouthwater. It was just, it was kind of crazy. But I mean, I lost, I lost five pounds the day we cut sodium. How much, how much did you guys lose, because like sodium cutting sodium stops again the water retention, right? So you excrete more, you excrete more water. How much, how much did you lose, Audrey, when we, when we cut, when we cut sodium. Yeah, that was a pound that I lost. And just to give you an idea like I average like 2500 to 3000 milligrams of sodium a day. And I was around 800. So it was like, I was still getting some. But it was a significant, significant reduction. Yeah, yeah. So I did. And then, you know, my average carbs are like 185. That's my weekly average. And so I went from, you know, Thursdays 49, 37, and then 20 on that last day just because like I said, I just couldn't even do anything. And then the refeed date 341 grams of carbs, bitches, I was like, yes, back to life. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we get through the sodium cut in phase four, as we talked about, you know, a little bit, we've all kind of alluded to it as we pull water. That's the water excretion day. And we do that as close to the way in as, as possible. Again, we want to stay hydrated for as long as possible. But this is the biggest, and this is the biggest drop that you'll get in this because it's a water. Reason. So suddenly, when you've been drinking two or three gallons of water, you're just automatically eliminating several pounds worth of water that would otherwise be in your body just via just via intake. And then remember, we have, we have caused a D.H. Naldosterone to shut off. So our body is still has still has excretion signals going. So it's saying, hey, we've got plenty of water coming in. Go ahead and go ahead and excrete the water that's in your body. We turn off the faucet, but the body doesn't stop excreting. Right. And that's what the, that's what the important thing is, right, is people mess that up. That is the biggest mistake that I see that I've seen people making water cuts is that they pull water too early. And then when it's time to sweat, they wonder why their body can't sweat or why they're not sweating enough, right. And it's because the hormonal signals that tell your body it's safe to sweat because there's been water present are no longer there. If you cut too early, 80 H. Naldosterone go back up and they might go really high actually, because, because you, because you have cut water too early. Right. And so then your body wants to hold on to every ounce of water that it has in its body. Right. We on the other hand were like I went for a walk in Minnesota, which where it was like 82 degrees or 85 degrees and I was sweating like just buckets. I was, and it was a casual walk with my dog because this was at the end when I had very little energy. I went for like a 20 minute walk with my dog. I walked less than a mile and I was just pouring buckets of sweat to the point where I was like embarrassed when I like walk by my neighbors and they wanted to talk to me. I was like wiping the sweat away from my head. And I was, I was embarrassed because I was just like dripping sweat as though I just run a marathon or something. But it's like a big Yeti. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just a sweaty Yeti, man. It was, it was not, it was not good. And Bobby, you had that similar experience. Right. You were talking about like you were just pouring buckets of sweat. Once you, once you went to, once you would, and you have a sauna in your garage. Right. So, yeah. You had the luxury of having a son. I will say luxury loosely, because I tried to, I tried to kind of make the absolute most of that day because I thought that I was going to be going and waiting until the end of the night. And then you actually a little earlier, just like, yeah, let's try to get like a little early sweat right now. We'll test it out and see how much you lose that will help us kind of like gauge tomorrow for the proper cut. And so I was like, okay, so I went for without any water as well, I kind of did like a cut rate. And I went on a two mile or two plus mile run. And then came back and then jumped in the sauna that I had preheated, you know, like while I was on the run. So it was nice and hot when I got back. And I sat in the sauna for like, I think it was only maybe 30 minutes. Yeah, it was 27 minutes of memory serves when you sent me the text message. And that was, that was the hardest thing. I mean, like the sodium cut, like that was miserable. But the hardest thing I think I've probably done in like one of the hardest things have done in my entire life was sitting in that sauna and just just sweating, you know. And that's why I only wanted you to do 30 minutes because I didn't want to come into the next day and be like, hey, you got to sit in the sauna for 60 minutes based on because that is not mentally easy, right? I did it again. I basically like when I was done, I weighed myself and just kind of gauge like how much I would lose in a 30 minute period of time. And I dropped, I think, down to like maybe about like a hundred and 98 pounds or a hundred 99 or something, I was like, okay, so like a 30 minutes, but it's going to give me a little bit of sweat out. I went to the store and I have an ice barrel as well. And so I went out to the store about 120 pounds of ice. Brought it back, added that to my ice barrel and everything and I jumped in there got like nice and cool again and had that handy so that like when I started to kind of get like that dizzying like I'm going to pass out inside of a sauna like I'm dying, you know, I would just jump out for a minute walk over and dunk my head in the ice barrel. If I needed to, like, put a nice cube of my mouth just to kind of like regulate my brain from from dying, which is again, if you guys are listening to this, don't do this. This is purely experimental, like I'm not encouraging this, but it was, but then I did it a second time later on and having that, if you guys are going to do this, make sure you have a cold towel, make sure you have something that's wet and cold handy while you're doing some kind of like extreme sweat session. Even if it's in like a hot bath because it's like you need to be able to like regulate the temperature of your brain because that was that was the thing for me where it's like after that I was able to actually put it on my neck or my head and I was still sweating buckets, but I was able to endure it a lot more easily without the idea of like literally just about to puke on the floor. So I'm going to thank you for the reminder I'm going to I'm going to do my best David Thomas Tao and say, fall disclaimer, you, you should do this with supervision. If you're going to do this, you should do it with supervision. You should check with your doctor before you do it right. Make sure you do this in a safe way. This is that I'm trying to give you a protocol that is safe and effective, but work with a professional work with a coach. Do it under supervision right because like I was I was checking in with Bobby to make sure that he wasn't going, you know, too far too fast and especially being mostly by himself, you know, in Florida. The last thing we want us for anybody to have major complications and we were doing this, you know, for funsies, you know, we were doing this because we wanted to try and we wanted to try and experiment with it. And this is a good skill to develop if you're if you're going to, if you're going to do weight manipulation, water manipulation, but it can be dangerous if done badly or done incorrectly, right. So, you know, be smart, work with people, work with people who know what they're doing, follow up, follow a safe protocol and listen to your body, right. Don't don't push, don't push too hard. So that's my that's my disclaimer, not medical advice, you know, don't you don't have to do this. You can try it if you want to, but if you're going to work with somebody to help you supervise it to make sure you do it safely. So with that said, Audrey what you don't have a sauna in your garage. I don't have a sauna, but yeah. So here's fun thing is I moved my platform into the dining room to prepare for the comp because I was like I've got to do the comp inside an air conditioning. No way, can I do 10 minutes and mostly I was thinking about holding onto the bells because that's the hardest part right they get so sweaty and slippery. So I had moved that in and gone it set up. And so this is what blew my mind is even in the air conditioning doing like a 20 minute workout right like mobility warm up. Like I said, that six one minute sprints because I couldn't even do the seventh one, you know, not in my usual super hot 90 degree 80% humidity garage. I lost a pound because I weighed myself before doing that 20 minute workout and after and I sweat out a pound. Like in 20 in 20 in 20 minutes you sweat a pound. Yeah, it's it is it is it is pretty crazy. So, you know, the sweat component is is the important part. And so for me. I did I did some kind of similar what Bobby did I went and did my cat about training, which was terrible. I felt like garbage. I did my cat I did my cat about training and it was like the 40ish minutes long cycle light I reduce my weight like I was I was I was working down a bell weight I was doing 16s. And it was really just to to move and get the sweat started. And my garage is is hot because it's not it's not the air conditioned and I didn't turn on the fan. So I had no air circulation. I got my sweat going. And then I went and took a hot bath after that. So then I did a 60 minute so then I did a 60 minute bath after doing you know like my all of my long cycle. And I dropped I dropped 11 pounds in that in that session right like that. And now again, I'm a big guy. I was 278 when I started, but I dropped 11 pounds in the in the span of in the span of 90 minutes because because my body was just sweating and sweating and sweating and sweating and sweating right. So, and this is the this is the point that when it's time to sweat. Your body will actually excrete because it still has the hormonal signals. Well, and then I did my bath about two hours later and same thing I was just like and I couldn't quite do an hour so so hot so I would like sit on the edge of the tub a little bit then get back in. So I did about 50 minutes. But yeah, and then weighed myself and I was like that was almost another pound, but not quite, but then the next morning. I was a little bit shy just a few ounces shy. And so I just got in the bath and did like a 15 minute bath and then made weight so it was like just bath. At that part was the most enlightening was just how much we sweat. And then especially with exercise and hot climates and just how important it is to hydrate even though I knew that you know cognitively intellectually but just really seeing the number change. And the amount of sweat was pretty wild that and then the amount of protein that I could actually eat when I don't have the carb calories to rely on like I nailed my protein numbers which Jordan knows I don't like that's where I struggle. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the platform podcast. We interrupt this interview to share some exciting updates about the Twin Cities kettlebell open happening October 23rd here at the athlete lab in Little Canada, Minnesota in the heart of the Twin Cities and now also available to compete in online by a video submission. 27 degrees of peril has finished designing our event t-shirts and has given us a discount code tckb10 for 10% off all of his apparel and those shirts will be customizable by pre order up until a couple of weeks before the competition so you can check out the website for details on that. We also have two belts from Denis Vasilev at Belivator as well as six pairs of ursa spare foot athletic training shoes which are my personal favorite for snatch as well as deadlift and gpp and our friend Nikolai Pushlove from the Seattle kettlebell club is providing his new made in the USA pro kettlebells for competitors to try out and use on the platform if they choose as well as support from expiring nutrition and others. And if you have any other ideas or connections to interest sponsors please reach out to me and don't forget to register for the event on our website Twinsies kettlebell club dot com now let's get back to the interview. Bobby how much how much did you how much did you drop in the in the sweat between the sweat sessions like you drop you drop quite a bit during during your sweat sessions and that last day and a half like you drop quite a bit. Yeah so I basically the way I timed it was like we did like the test one around three o'clock the day before I did a second session around like seven o'clock that same day when I had the ice barrel and stuff so I could kind of like jump back and forth and I lost like it's kind of funny because I've actually dropped down to about. I think like one ninety six or something the one ninety seven you know and I was like oh that's cool but I knew that I was going to drink a little bit of water before I went to sleep you know so I had maybe like about like eight ounces of water which is more than I wanted to but it was like a drug like I couldn't. Shocking up with some ice and I just savored it and it just I couldn't get enough went to sleep woke up the next day and I weighed myself and I think I was somewhere around like one ninety nine or one ninety like one ninety eight one ninety nine but I set my alarm for three thirty in the morning because I knew that I had to get my way in that day that morning and I had to do a video project at like six a.m. for sunrise at the beach like that same day. So I was like I can't just like sleep in you know and then comfortably take my time I had to set an alarm for three in the morning or sorry three thirty I got up turn on my sauna sat in the sauna for an hour right just listen to a podcast and stuff until 4 30 got out hopped back in the ice barrel because it was still like it went from 45 degrees Fahrenheit to about like maybe like 52 degrees Fahrenheit I just sat there like head under just for like 30 seconds and then in the ice bath for like eight minutes or so. Something like that got out dried myself off entirely my hair because I was like every tiny ounce of water like way too much you know so I like dried myself off in the garage and I'm not even awake at this point I'm just delirious and I jump on the scale at like for 50 or something like that and it was one ninety four point six so I was pretty happy so I went from the day before weighing it to a one zero done to one ninety four point six. And then after the refeed which I'm sure we'll get into stuff I only jump back up to the exact same way so two one point two so even after like eating a lot of food and rehydrating and all this other stuff I didn't put up like 55 pounds or anything you know it's like it was actually just the water weight brought me back to where I was that natural home is basis of weighing exactly and that what's actually even cooler is I've been doing my regular weigh in and just did it just like the other day which is like almost a week later right and I'm going to do it. I still weigh about the same you know so yeah yeah and I had I kind of did this I didn't I didn't have a 3.30 a.m. wake up but I woke up earlier than I normally do but I got up I got up and took a into just like a 10 minute hot shower and let the steam get into the into the bathroom and got sweating again and then and then tiled off and and weighed in and I was honestly shocked like I was I'm not going to lie I was shocked like 252.8 for me so I went from 278 to 252.8 so it's totally so insane it's like it's like a 25 a 25 pound fluctuation in in 12 in 12 days right but again like that's 10% ish of my of my weight you know my body you literally sweat a bucket yeah for sure it was yeah it was yeah it was it was pretty it was pretty crazy and then yeah and then I and then I got to refeed so let's talk about the fun part of which is the which is the refeed phase and this is actually super important to get right to because one I think one thing that you know I made sure that I explained to both to both of them is you don't just sweat out you don't just sweat out water obviously electrolytes go with that right and so it's really important that you get electrolytes back into your body. But you don't want to just like crush all of the same electrolytes at the same time because you can get cramping or diarrhea right like you you got to you got to make sure so we alternate between sodium a sodium heavy meal and a potassium heavy meal so like a lot of people are like well what's potassium heavy like that's going to be bananas potatoes are going to be high in potassium as well as like honey do melon right there are those are some some some potassium heavy sodium super easy because that's just salt you just salt things so like the first thing that I had was a stack of gluten free blueberry pancakes with blueberries and peanut butter on them and I actually put pink Himalayan sea salt on top of my peanut butter to get extra sodium and then so much better oh my god and then and then maple syrup Minnesota maple syrup that my father-in-law actually like tapped from a tree and they boiled it made their out like like actually it's like actual local homemade maple syrup like and a bunch of fresh blueberries and I crushed those fuckers along with along with three eggs with salt and pepper like that was my that was my reefy that was my first reefy meal right so that was super heavy super heavy and sodium and then at lunch I had I went potassium heavy so I had I had potatoes I had potatoes and banana and a steak and you know like so a steak a steak and potatoes and chip and then I had a chipotle burrito bowl as my third as my third meal right so that was again back to sodium sodium heavy with the cilantro lime rice and steak and all the sauces and everything and God that was just so so freaking good right so but alternating between sodium and potassium heavy meals but really making sure that you're getting a bunch of carbs right like Audrey said you were 300 plus grams of carbs on your on your reefy day right I was over I was over 400 grams of carbs on my reefy day like so Audrey what was what was your first reefy meal like what was the first thing when you got to eat the first thing I did was I had these homemade Madeleine cookies that my coworker had made for me what is a metal cookie huh what is an Italian cookie it looks a little bit like a shell it has it's like a cookie and a cake yeah and she addicted and white chocolate because I don't like regular chocolate and then and then crusted it with pistachio so I had four of those I had saved them for three days because she had made them earlier in the week and I had wrapped them up and saved them intentionally I was like that's going to be the first thing I eat I did the same thing also yeah you did yeah my my sorry I mean like my neighbor my neighbor's kid came by like the very first day of like the carb cut down and came by like yeah and like she came by like the very first day of the carb cut and I was doing really good I felt fine and stuff and I was tracking everything and it's like she comes up to our front door at like seven o'clock at night and she was like I made you guys some cake you know and I was just like sort of a bitch you know I even told her like how badly did you want to punch me at that point I was just like I can't be having this right now okay I'm going to a cake was just like you should put it in the freezer that way you'll be good so I was like okay and I did that and ate it so worth it yeah so worth it I ate those then I had oatmeal with banana and like my usual breakfast and my protein shake and then that night I seriously mauled a pepperoni pizza and then a peach milkshake I crushed an entire I crushed an entire pepperoni pizza like thin crust you know but it was you know it was a solid like 1300 calories worth of pizza yeah it was so good so what was that day that day my calories was 2681 2681 with 341 grams of carbs and then the next day was 2622 and then Sunday I went back to my normal so yeah see the funny the funny thing for me is that it's like if you actually look at my chart you know for for weeks because like we've been doing this you know for weeks and weeks a week so I've been every single thing is filed out and nice and categorically organized and then for like the day of the day but it's the last day I believe of like the actual sodium cut and then into kind of like the pre like weighing and stuff like this there they're like three days where I just I did I didn't I didn't track anything I was just like fuck that I don't even care you know so so different and then when I actually started to like refeed and eat and like introduce food again it was just like ice cream don't even care almost like I didn't track anything and it was like so Sunday I kind of made like a week ass attempt they trying to remember what I ate and I'm looking at like man you definitely ate way more than 157 you know calories for the food you know well and you you much too much to Steve Roodle is sugar and we got to give a shout out to Steve thank you for working with us on on letting the athletes weigh in the morning before the competition yeah he worked he worked with us because he knew I was doing this experiment and he was like yeah totally fine you know he let us send our with our weigh in videos in the morning so that we didn't have to wait until like Friday evening to do to do weigh in and you know have to do another day of of depletion so we got to start refeeding early in the morning so shout out to Steve thank you very thank you very much for for doing that it was it was very very useful but Bobby you much to Steve Shagrin didn't lift until Sunday so you actually got two days of refeed and replenishment rehydration in because he started on Friday did another got another day on Saturday and then and then Sunday Sunday I know is a good reason because who lifted with you yeah I was going to say it's like to be fair you know it's like I actually felt really good the next day like after after the the the cut and stuff I was replenished and I took the time and so Saturday I was intending to lift and I felt really good but I've been coaching my sister in law Amanda and it was her very first competition and Jordan I've talked about this plenty of times where it's like you you are more invested in like the athletes that you're working with than your own set you know and so I was just like she couldn't do it on Saturday and she was really nervous and she wanted to do it on Sunday and said and I was like yeah we'll just do it together you know and so like I got a lot of shit for it but you know what I don't even care have to wait until the last minute to submit your video though you could you could have submitted that earlier if we're being honest they wrote to me and they're like Bobby you just need to make sure that you submit your video to the Facebook group by 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and I was just like you know what just because fuck you I'm going to do it at 259 or sorry 559 but even though it was done I did my lift hour hour before uploaded it and it waited and I sat in front of my computer for about 35 minutes and then waited until 559 and then submitted it just because just just because just maybe that guy that Florida that Florida man yeah so all right but you you perform you performed admirably and Audrey was like a drunken mess on the on the platform at the end and not not actually y'all she was not actually a drunken mess but there's video of her on her on her Instagram profile where post uh you did 60 reps long cycle with the double 16s which is awesome that was a great that was a great fight um you did you did a great job but she said something along the lines of and she literally laid her head on her kettlebell um and just like laid on the platform so I've done it so many times actually it was it was like gibberish though I could not understand it and I watched it like four or five times um so did you feel still depleted when you lifted or did you feel like you were recovered and replenished uh enough do you feel like do you feel like the cut affected your performance adversely in the lift or do you feel like yeah it's a good question I'm not sure like I felt fine Saturday morning but you know like we talked about just rookie mistake like I ran out of time and I didn't do my normal warm-up so just I didn't feel like myself because of that like I it takes me a long time I have like that old woman endurance kind of thing where it's like I need lots and lots of warm-up and then I hit the point and I'm warmed up and I can go you know for a long time comparatively so so that was just my mistake and so that was mad about that so I don't really know was that the variable or was it just that you know the cut control your variables y'all don't introduce confounding variables don't exactly don't make rookie mistakes like not giving yourself enough time for warm-ups right give yourself extra time on warm-up for for competitions or using a different brand of chalk on the very first day that you're like the day you're lifting yeah don't don't change anything on competition day and that's why I wanted to do at least one set in my dining room because you know state dependent learning right I was so used to working out in my garage in that heat that setup and so I wanted to at least have one run through but I probably should have given myself you know definitely more time and then with the tech you know you're kind of stressing of like getting that all set up but I will say shout out like you said being able to do the weigh-in the day before not just because of this but just that one extra detail I didn't have to worry about because like in-person comps it's different right it's like kind of fun you go down with your team you weigh in the night before then you go pick out you know but like with the comp in February that was stressful of like doing it right before your flight of like weighing it and all that so yeah yeah yeah it was a nice aspect yeah Bobby you you had a different approach and you you had a pretty solid a pretty solid grinded through a 10-minute set with the with the 24's and got 47 47 or 48 reps on officially up yeah okay so let like just just to clarify because you know it's public records you know I unofficially it was it was amazing because you know this was actually also just to say thank you again for jumping on because when we had this set up you know Amanda was just like maybe we could get some people on like you're the Facebook thing and it was like okay and like everybody's busy at that last minute so nobody jumped on and then you jumped on you were like hey I want to watch your set and stuff and so you and Steve actually made it happen where we used this zoom link and you guys actually watched virtually while Amanda and her family were in the garage as well cheering me on and we cheered her on but it was one of the things we're like this was actually the closest that I'd been to a real competition since you know like last year in March at the at the Arnold's but it was one of the things where I kind of went into this just one like the only goal I had and again to clarify is 48 reps unofficially but because my form is just absolutely trash and I have to work on this it was only counted 35 reps so to be fair it was the hottest day hottest most humid day in your garage too so you were fighting some grip issues and you changed your chalk like dumb dumb on the day of the competition so you were fighting some grip issues at the end too I'm making excuses for you no no because of the shoulder rack or yeah basically like my grip fatigued early and that's just because my clean technique hasn't been the best so like so Jordan I've actually been like working on that which I've been feeling better with so that's good but you know it's like my grip was fatiguing and then it's it I just told them before it was the most humid day I think like that I trained in the garage yet and I've been training in my Florida garage since you know January and that day in particular was just like absolute nonsense just brutal so by minute by minute five my grip was kind of taxed because my cleanness the best you know by but I was I was hanging on by minute seven any like semblance of chalk that was on my bells or my hands was gone so at that point it was pure just kind of like force of will is I don't you know like your shirt says yeah just pure fucking grit and I would just like kind of like lob them up onto my shoulders but I didn't have the proper hand insertion to kind of like get that with that 45 degree angle across the hand and so it's like I would kind of just lob it up my shoulders and then feed it through and bring it down but sometimes it's still difficult for me to actually get my hands in right away so the long and short of it my only goal was to finish the 10 minutes I did not care if I made 35 reps or 48 reps you know I changed the technique a little bit too so I would actually do my clean and then I would do like rest in the rack and then I would do the jerk and then I would come back and rest in the rack again for a couple of new breaths and then recycle it and having the extra rest period after the jerk I wanted to go as slow as possible because again all I would have to do is finish and I did well I'm impressed Bobby because I know humid you know sister here with it's so hard to keep the bells for a three minute four minutes at much less 10 you know I thought it was impressive and and my ending like I said it down it was genuinely so excited I just like shouted at the camera like I finished and you had a luscious mustache and some and some mutton chops going like you got to check out the only reason I finished you know at the station here got a lot of fan at this at this fellow on Instagram you could see you could see Bobby's you could see Bobby's 70s style porn stash and mutton chop facial hair which he doesn't have anymore unfortunately and I had to ditch my Mohawk because I have a client I have a client faced in meeting you know in a couple of days so I didn't want their first impression on me to be wearing a Mohawk I will bring it back though I got to say I like I already miss it like I'm like and this is the look I've rocked for a long time just the the beard and the in the shaved head but I'm like I kind of already missed the Mohawk so I will bring I will bring the Mohawk back but you know it was it was fun my my performance was a bit of a bit of a struggle I'm going to do a separate episode on my reflections on the riddle struck open but I'm kind of unsure whether or not like I woke up the morning of the competition I got like a 93 sleep score and an 89 recovery score vice versa I don't remember but like so I felt like I felt pretty good like I felt really good going into it I felt like I was I didn't feel depleted from the cut I felt like I was kind of back to normal I felt pretty good but the day of like starting like when I turned on my heart rate monitor like getting ready to start like I was in I was already in zone one and I think it was just nerves like I honestly I just think I was really excited I was nervous you know I was nervous because I think I was nervous because I signed up for a 10 minute triathlon and and my training cycle leading up to it there was a lot of gaps in it there was life you know a lot of things you know excuses but I think I was probably nervous because because I knew I didn't have the training to to justify that level of output that I was trying to to put out and so then my long cycle set did not go well because because my heart rate was so high I went like straight to the black zone basically like after after minute three my my heart monitor basically thought I was dead because I was like in the I was in the one I was in the 180 something on like the top of zone five for me as supposed to be 177 and I was in the 180 so I was over max heart rate technically right and I grinded that out until like seven and seven and a half minutes and then set them down got pissed picked them back up and grinded out another like 16 reps or something you know none of those counted obviously but you know I did the you know I did the stupid the stupid thing of deciding I was going to you know I turned it into a workout basically and so then I then I took a couple hour break came back and just did a five minute jerk set and a five minute and I only took I literally took like 12 minutes between my jerk five minute jerk set and a five minute snatch set and just bang those out and I was like I'm fucking that and then I went and then it went and started started drinking October fest and and having and having whatever food I wanted to have because I still put up you know 13,000 kilos or something like that you know so it wasn't it wasn't like I didn't do anything that did just I was very disappointed with my with my performance that day so but then we all had ice cream and everything was good that's true or at least I had a lot of ice cream over this next few days that is that is true it was yeah it was it was still it was still good so all right I'm gonna I'm gonna let you guys go soon but I want to I want to give you a chance to to tell like give me like your your best lessons learned from this experience like what were your main takeaways that that like what was good about it we covered a lot of what's talked about it but what were like your main takeaways from this from this cut I'll start with you Audrey yeah so I would say like I mentioned just how much you sweat you know just from working out being in a hot climate and so just the importance of water you know basic but just really cool to see the data you know and then the protein you know like I went way over my protein well actually I hit the protein of what I'm supposed to be having which I just can't have and Jordan has intentionally lowered my protein just to make me feel better that like I'm actually hitting a number even though it's still low so yeah just having to be creative like Bobby was saying and think of like okay what foods can I have you know um so those those were the two main takeaways for me and honestly like I totally enjoyed the experiment and you know liked doing it especially knowing that y'all were also doing it um but I wouldn't do it again like not for five pounds you know it's like I was I lost exactly five pounds which is the goal I got exactly what I wanted you know and I was joking like I think with Amanda we were messaging that you know then that minute nine and ten I will be glad that I can do less reps for that five pounds but um you know it just was it was just really hard mentally and I don't know that I want to have that kind of mental stress before a comp in the future yeah and I think we I completely neglected to say that the reason that we choose to do a cut is that in kettlebell sport for people that aren't familiar like your rank is based on what weight class you compete in and the number of reps that you need to complete to achieve a rank is lower if you're in a lower weight class so if you want to get rank one and you weigh you know 165 pounds it's a lower number than if you want to get rank one and you weigh 185 pounds right so so the reason that we do a cut is to get into a lower weight class so that you don't have to put up as many reps to achieve the rank that's why we that's why we would do it I'm not sure how many people go to this lengths to do it for kettlebell sport I don't think I've I've seen very many people that do it like this um to this level but um anyways that's why we would do it so mine was mine was a five rep difference right so for five pounds I was like I would get to do five less reps maybe I'd feel differently if I'd hit my goal of 66 reps I'd probably be like oh yeah I was totally worth it nailed it but since I you know Peter Dowd it doesn't seem worth it but what about you Bobby yeah I mean uh you know it's like we're we're using tips like tips and tricks just what we're what were you're doing what were you keep what were your main takeaways from it like what did you like you know what what did you learn from the experience so I mean I'd say that one I actually really enjoyed the process of drinking more water you know I already again drink a gallon of water and you know like if you are not actively drinking plenty of water you probably should be uh because you just feel better in general but I liked the idea of drinking extra water and and you know like it was kind of an interesting fun little thing to notice how like you you just naturally could just lose a little bit of extra you know like weight not body fat but weight just by increasing your water intake just because your body is flushing it out more naturally because there's hormone increases um but I I'd say like you know I thought it was an interesting experiment just to kind of one see just how difficult it is because like the main thing a lot of people were saying to me especially like family and friends that like just don't get it they're like what like you're cheating you know you're trying to you're trying to drop down to a different way class and then and then compete back in your regular way class like a couple days later that's cheating and I'm like if you had to do this you would realize that there's nothing about this this cheating what we are doing is is infinitely harder than what a normal person is doing you know and but it's like again you're doing it for the for the sake of if you are competitive and and trained enough like you should be able to have fewer reps that you would need to reach rank you know um I'm not there yet so it's like I don't really care about that but so I don't think that I'd be doing this necessarily for like the twin cities or anything like that I might do like maybe a slightly modified version of just like just I don't know like maybe not quite as intense like dropping the sodium entirely out and stuff like this and like you're sitting a sauna like three times for an hour and 90 or like 90 minutes you know but um I think in general it's one of the things where anybody can do this as long as you actually have like the proper protocol and the guidance of maybe somebody that you could like refer to for questions and help if you track your food it's extra helpful but it's not necessarily worth it if you are not an elite athlete already you know it's like it's just a fun experiment for us we're not within striking distance of the rank I think yeah you know I think that's kind of what both of you are getting to us like you know Audrey Audrey was in striking distance of her of her rank but to be fair to her um she just got transitioned to 16 kg bells on long cycle not that long ago this this was not a competition where we were going for peak performance um this was this was a mid a mid cycle mid meso cycle uh test out phase for us right so it helped me design her next phase of training um for the twin cities kettlebell open which is where we're trying to peak her at um so she is going to get those 66 reps in October because she's got the training to back it up she'll have the she'll have the she'll have the training behind her to back it up and she's doing cleans on cleans on cleans on cleans on cleans right now with her with her 16s so um but I think I think I think if you're if you are like if you're like me and you've missed rank before by one or two reps yeah and like man it's you know it would be kind of nice to be like oh I just all I need to do is cut five pounds to be in a lower weight class and I can and I could I could achieve rank even with the performance I just put out right like that's got that that would be it's nice to have this tool in your bag as as one you could go to when it makes sense right like if you're close on getting to a lower weight class or you're really close on on achieving that rank or you've already got the output necessary to achieve that rank if only you were a couple of pounds lighter and in a lighter weight class right like it is a nice tool to have in your bag but I also think it was kind of both of you alluded to like there are some good fundamentals in this that apply outside of a water cutter outside of a weight cut right just diet fundamentals of you know learning to learning to be able to manipulate variables like your carbohydrate intake and like learning to be able to hit your protein and all of those things right I think those things are super super helpful um and this is just a good this is also just a good exercise and like oh yeah I can do hardship if I set my mind to it and I'm just determined and I plan and I'm structured and I like you can you can do hardship for even for a short period of time like this was only two weeks but it sucked like it wasn't it wasn't fun it was fun in the experimental mental exercise of it but going through it at times it sucked yeah let's say like this like getting through the this is the first time that I've successfully come I mean successfully to lose but like the first time I've actually finished a 10-minute set with the 24's and not set them down you know and I would do that three times over before I would actually want to do this again this was easily so much harder so if you guys are really kind of trying to just make yourself a little you know stronger mentally and like at like that tenacity uh this is definitely a great way because like when I was doing my long cycle it's just like that was way worse if I could get through that I can I can finish the 10 minutes and I did it you know and it was a lot easier comparatively than sitting in the sauna and sweating out like all that extra weight you know yeah for sure well and I will say um I will say that because we had the 24 hour refeed that's why we were able to do a little bit more challenging protocol if you have less or less if you have to weigh in the day of the competition it's a different protocol so don't don't follow this if you're if you're weighing in the morning of and also you don't have to do all four phases right you especially phase two and phase three you can do just phase one which is the water load you know two weeks out from when you need to weigh in start doing the water load and then do phase four which is the water excretion phase right because you'll still get the same hormonal response phase two and three are really just about manipulating how your body stores fuel and how your body stores water right but you could you could do just phase one where you water load and and get and get the hormonal changes and then a day before you need to weigh in you pull water and you do the sweat phase right and yeah that's a good point especially if you're like within a couple reps of rank and within a pound or two of the way class like you get easily dropped two pounds the closer you are the closer you are to a weight class and if you don't and and you don't want to do the the carb reduction because you really need to be at a high level of performance right still because that's what really affects the performance output is the reduction in carbohydrates right and that's we all felt that right so you could just do phase one in phase four right that that is that is totally possible um but again that that can affect electrolyte levels and things so again work with work with somebody to make sure they're monitoring you and keeping you safe on this but you know you don't have to go to this extreme but this is you know this is the protocol that UFC fighters use this is the protocol that Olympic uh you know wrestlers use and you know other people that are Olympic power lifters you know you know et cetera like people that are in people that are in uh weight class controlled sports use a protocol like this because it it is effective it is consistent um it is fairly you know the fact that we all saw the same response across uh three different weight classes two different uh you know two different gender identities right like um you know or you know there's there's there's uh there is some science behind this right and it's uh it's it's a lot of fun to play with those things um in theory it's academic and intellectual fun if for nothing else the bonding experience those worth it yeah for sure so all right gonna be respectful of you guys this time thank you very very much for for coming on and sharing all of your uh all of your insight and your experience thank you for being my guinea pigs and volunteering to do this with me um i really i really very much appreciated it was great um it was fun working with you guys and uh i look forward to continuing working with you i'm really excited to uh get to see you guys in person in october so we've got eight weeks we got we're eight weeks out from today um you know um so are from yesterday i guess uh before the 26th kettlebell open so i'm really looking forward to to seeing you guys here on the platform and uh kick and ask so thank you so much for doing this really appreciate it you're welcome thanks for being an awesome coach uh appreciate that thank you very thanks for listening to this episode of the platform podcast i'm jordan konee right we'll be back with a new episode for you next week please don't forget to register for the twin cities kettlebell open on our website twin cities kettlebell club.com and if you have a question or a suggestion please email me at twin cities kettlebell club at gmail.com and don't forget to follow us on social media at twin cities kettlebell club and if you want to step under the platform and competing kettlebell sport please reach out to me until next time