5 Reasons Why You Can't Have it ALL

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 am your host, Jordan Kunde-Wright, founder and head coach of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club. I'm on a mission to help people build sustainable, healthy lifestyles. Before we jump into the episode, I want to remind you that registration is live for the second annual Twin Cities Kettlebell Open hosted by our friends at the Athlete Lab in Little Canada, Minnesota. Just like last year, we will include a video submission option for participants who are unable to make the trip in person. It will 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. Now, this week, I am talking about a topic that's kind of in my crawl recently. It's summertime, and all of the digital marketers are on full force, making their promises about try their rapid fat loss program, and you'll lose fat and get stronger and build muscle, and improve your endurance, and your performance, and, and, and, et cetera. It really sets up faulty expectations for a lot of end users out there. If you've fallen victim to over-hyped programs, you're not alone. I've, I've bought programs that I was like, man, that sounds awesome. This is going to be amazing, only to end up disappointed. Or, you know, the part of the problem, there's, they're setting themselves up to disappoint people. When you promise everything, and you only deliver, you know, one or two things, people are going to be disappointed, but if they framed it better, people would actually have some benefit from the program and be excited about the benefit that they got, but since they're expecting everything, and they only get, you know, a couple of things, they're not so excited. Anyways, so this episode is five reasons why you can't have it all at once. We really get into some of the limitations, and why, why that is a true statement, and then a few things that you can do about it. So I hope you enjoy the episode. I hope you find it useful. And as always, I want to thank you for listening to the podcast. I appreciate you being here, and I appreciate you taking the time to listen to what I have to say on these things. If you find the episode useful, please share it with friends. Give us five star rating and review, particularly on Apple podcasts, if you have the time to do so, even if you're not an Apple listener. But that is the biggest thing that helps us grow our reach. You can share it on social media, even just send me a DM, let me know that you appreciated the episode. It means a lot to me. It's part of what gives me the feedback that this is valuable, not wasting my time jabbering into this microphone. So I really appreciate it. And of course, the biggest thing that you can do is register for the Twin Cities kettlebell open. I would love to see you come lift with us. And of course, you can always support our work by supporting our sponsors, who is affiliate links you'll find in the episode notes. And last but not least, if you would like to work with the coach, and you would be interested in potentially having me as that coach, fill out the coaching interest form, which you'll also find linked in the episode notes. And without further ado, let's step on in the platform and talk about the five reasons why you can't have it all at once. All right, welcome into the platform podcast. I am your host Jordan Kunde-Wright. And this week, I am recording with COVID 19 zero stars do not recommend I'm a few days in now gotten over the worst of it, I think. But if I don't sound quite like myself, that is why I am still COVID positive found out my son was COVID positive. Then I got COVID positive and my daughter is COVID positive. So it's been an all week thing here in the Kunde-Wright household. And I'm definitely feeling it kind of felt like I got hit by a truck. Honestly, it was combination of terrible cold and the flu fever, body aches headache sore throat, all that. And then you can hear the congestion blah, blah, blah, I'll spare you the details. But if you can avoid it strongly advise avoiding it. But I also think at this point it is probably a matter of when not a matter of if it sounds like this most recent string is very, very contagious spreading like wildfire and has taken down years truly I am fully vaccinated and I am thankful for that. I'm hoping that is why my symptoms are relatively mild, even though it did knock me out of work for a couple of days. I'm going to probably keep this one brief, but I'm also trying to be more consistent with falling through on recording on a cadence and not making excuses for myself. So this is an exercise and not making excuses, even though I think having COVID is probably a reason and not an excuse, but I have given it several days to feel better. It's not like I'm recording this with a hundred and four degree fever or anything like that. So hopefully my voice has, you know, the Phoebe effect going on where it sounds actually better when I'm sick than what it normally does. I don't know, y'all can let me know, but the topic of today's podcast is five reasons why you can't have it all. And I will add the parentheses at once five reasons why you can't have it all at once. This is something that I work really hard with my clients on intake to make sure they understand is that you we've all seen the infomercials, you know, the latest and greatest program comes out and you're going to you're going to blast fat while you build muscle, get stronger, build endurance, look better in your clothes. Have stamina for days, make millions of dollars, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's all going to happen in, you know, just eight weeks if you follow our program. That's bullshit. And I'm going to give you the reasons why that is you cannot have it all at once. The body just doesn't work that way. Sorry, it's, I know it sucks. I know it's seems not fair. I know it seems like there are people who can get all the progress that they want at once. But that's not really true. I can, I can guarantee you that it's not really true. Let me talk about the framework called the triangle of awareness, which is understanding that at the peak of each of the points on the triangle, you have your health longevity and another, at another point, you have aesthetics, how do you look physically, how do you, how do you look, how does your body look. And then on the other point, you have performance, how does your body perform at its chosen sport, discipline, whatever it is, how is your body performing those three things are peaks of the triangle because you can only optimize for one of them at a time. This is what I explained to people all the time when we start the process. So where would you put yourself within this triangle now you can move directionally in towards multiple goals simultaneously, especially if you're brand new to training like that is the one caveat I will give to this. It's like the only way that you can do all of the things at once is if it is your first time exposing yourself to an intentional weight training program first time exposing yourself to an intentional physical fitness regime. That is what we call the newbie gains phase and that is super super valuable and at that time the first time you have exposed your your body to physiological stress in a design fashion, you will see improvement in cardiovascular endurance as well as muscle strength and size as well as reduction of body weight as well as reduction in body fat. Like that is the one time that your body will do all of these things simultaneously and that is because it is a brand new stimulus and your body is like holy shit what the F is going on. So it makes a lot of adaptations quickly and the important thing to note about that is that that newbie gains phase is happens one time in your life is the first time you do a functional exercise program and it is relatively short lift a few weeks to a few months is typically what I see in research. So if you think you can do all of these things at once but you've already done some some strength training you've already done dieting sorry you probably missed the boat on the newbie gains phase so now you're going to have to do it in a systematic way focusing on one to two things at a time but getting into the reasons what are the reasons why why can't you have it all at once right because of course we all want it at once. We all want what we want right now we are in the instant gratification society where you can order things on Amazon and get it the next day sometimes even the same day you know you can order door dash and have it in hours you can order groceries and have it in hours you don't need to leave your house if you don't want to which is great especially for me right now in quarantine the ability to get anything I want delivered to me within a period of time is pretty freaking awesome i'm not going to lie. Convenience is phenomenal but we've gotten so used to that that we expect that to be the case in our fitness goals as well and it is not unfortunately and what are the reasons what are the reasons for that and I will start with reason number five biological inhibition is a real thing and that's kind of what I am getting out with the triangle of awareness what does that mean I know this that's a couple of big words was biological inhibition mean. It means that some goals are oppositional to one another the the gaining of muscle inhibits losing fat during that phase like wait what that doesn't make sense I get I get I can build muscle and lose fat everybody says that I can do that all at the same time no i'm sorry you cannot you can. Can improve body composition by adding muscle mass you can improve body composition by losing body fat but those two goals require very different nutritional environments in order to build new muscle tissue you need to be in a coloric surplus you need to have more. Key low calories coming in what you're burning in order for your body to build new muscle to lose body fat you need to be in a coloric deficit. This is law of thermodynamics without being a coloric deficit your body will not lose much body fat you need to be in a coloric deficit to lose body fat so those two goals biological inhibition is a real thing if you want to gain muscle you need to be in a surplus you want to lose fat you need to be in a deficit you can't be in both a surplus and a deficit. At the same time it just doesn't work could you eat at maintenance and try and build muscle at maintenance and lose body fat at the same time sure you could try that but the entire reason it's called maintenance is because you're not supposed to significantly change in body stores so i would just say. I would just say either focus on gaining muscle or losing fat those things are are inhibited inhibited inhibitory uh excuse me inhibitory of one another so I would say focus on either gaining muscle or losing fat another example is getting stronger and improving aerobic efficiency so now we're talking you know not from an aesthetic perspective but from a conditioning. It is very very hard to get stronger while also improving aerobic capacity right so raw strength i'm talking with one rep maximum strength right you can get strength endurance gains because aerobic efficiency is a big part of strength endurance i'm talking raw one rep max like the purest application of strength getting stronger wall increasing aerobic efficiency is. All increasing aerobic efficiency is in there they inhibit one another because getting stronger requires activation of anaerobic pathways and improving aerobic efficiency requires aerobic pathway activation so you can't be anaerobic anaerobic at the same time biologically inhibited right so biological inhibition is is is a real thing there is a reason you can't do all of these things at the same time so that's reason number five. Reason number four is motivation is a finite resource right so the reason you can't have it all at once is because you probably don't have the energy necessary to the mental energy i'm talking about necessary to pursue all of the things simultaneously if you're trying to train enough to. Get stronger while also doing other type of training to improve your aerobic capacity while also doing other training to try and improve your mobility doing other training to improve your flexibility doing other training to improve your power. You would do nothing but lift weights and i don't think you would frankly have the motivation to do it for very long very very very very few people have the motivation to train like a pro athlete for an extended period of time even pro athletes get tired of it even pro athletes need an off season. They intentionally have periods where they decrease their their training load where they decrease their stress and that is partially because motivation is a finite resource and that correlates to the third reason and that is that energy is a finite resource your body can literally only produce an absorb so much energy a day. Right so even if you have the motivational say Michael felps and you are singularly focused on a goal and you are training obsessively for it. There is still a biological cap to how much energy your body can intake process digest and convert as well as. produce for output energy is a finite resource so the energy that your cells can produce is a finite resource that's why there's actually diminishing returns with exercise because your ability to train and produce enough energy and then recover from that stress because in order to recover from that stress you need to be able to. digest ingest breakdown digest absorb all of those calories to support that level of intake that also takes time that's why basically all Michael felps did from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed at night was either train eat or sleep. Like those were basically or some other form of intentional recovery from his training stress right so there were only certain things that he had enough energy for he did not have infinite supplies of energy nobody does. Nobody has infinite supplies of energy so we need to take into account that energy is a finite resource. And that also correlates to reason number two time is also a finite resource so given an unlimited amount of time you might be able to produce and you might be able to produce and use enough energy to. To accomplish all of the goals that you want and that's assuming that you have the motivation to do so assuming you have all the motivation in the world and you had infinite time then maybe you could produce enough energy and train enough to stimulate all of the different systems enough but that still is undermined by the fact that biological inhibition is a thing so I would say even with even with endless time endless energy and endless motivation you still wouldn't be able to have everything that you want. Time is a finite resource you only have so much time and as such it puts natural constraints on how much energy you can produce how much energy you can absorb how much motivation you have how much time you can spend training etc. I know that should that's probably super obvious right of course time is a finite resource everybody knows that but it's one of the things that people don't take into account enough when they're thinking about building their plan. They act as though they have as much time as they want to train they're like well I can definitely train two hours a day and then if you prescribe them two hours a day you find that they don't get two hours they get an hour or they get 90 minutes but they don't get two hours in even though they said that they could right because other things get in the way life gets in the way kids job significant other social life etc. And all of those things are important right but you only have so much time and as such you can't accomplish all of your goals all at once you can't have everything all at once because time is a finite resource. And last but not least the number one reason that you can't have all of your goals all at once is that the more you progress in one area the more stress it takes to continue improving. So there is a physiological cap on how far you can turn the dial on intensity on stress and that can be volume like just the total amount of weight lifted or the total distance run that can be intensity the pace at which you do it the the percent of one rep max. Max you know there's a lot of different ways to quantify intensity and then also duration right so like we were just talking about time is a finite resource so time under tension is also finite right and you can't crank the dial once you get it to 11 because it's won't allow to it can't go up any more right you can't turn it up any louder than that so if you have maxed out either the volume intensity or duration or all of the above if you've maxed out all of those things for what your body can recover from for the amount of motivation that you have or the amount of time that you have once you've maxed out those things right you can't continue to improve. So the principle of progressive overload creates a natural cap on how much you can improve in any one particular area. Hopefully that makes sense the more stress you put on your body to improve in a particular area the more stress it then needs to continue stimulating adaptation that is the basic principle of. Adaptation to impose demands which you talked about in our last podcast episode right so if you didn't listen to that one go back and listen to talk about general adaptation to impose demands stimulus response and adaptation right. Because of that principle you can only improve so much in any one area calling all kettlebell drinker you honorable warriors and wielders of the steel the time has come to raid. Join us and fight for honor glory and the spoils of battle sign up today for the Twin Cities kettlebell open on October 22nd in person in little Canada Minnesota or by video submission from anywhere in the world. Come fight for your clan or for glory all your own to be told in your saga claim your spoils and may your name ring out forever in the hall of champions. Up today at Twin Cities kettlebell club dot com so the top five reasons why you can't have it all once number one. Where you progress the more stress it takes to continue improve number two time is a finite resource number three energy is a finite resource number four motivation is a finite resource and number five biological inhibition is a real thing. So now that I've told you why you can't do it all at once i'm not saying you can't do it don't hear what i'm not saying not saying it's hopeless i'm not saying you shouldn't you shouldn't do it or you shouldn't try all i'm saying is you need to reassess your goals and reassess your plan because you can't do it all at once but you can do it all. You can get there you can have it all you just can't have it all at once so what can you do. First make one area the primary focus for your training stimulus for a period of time. So if you see your biggest limitation being your aerobic capacity, then you should design your training block. To focus primarily on improving your aerobic efficiency now as we discussed earlier that might mean that your strength. That's secondary or put on the back burner and you're not going to get stronger during this training block and it's very important that you understand that going into it so you don't get frustrated with the process right you don't get frustrated when you're not as strong as you were before right. That's not the point of that training block your focus on improving aerobic efficiency and if you're seeing your aerobic efficiency improve and you're also doing the things that you need to do for recovery. You are going to hopefully maintain your strength as much as possible without degradation while improving your aerobic capacity right so focus on a particular area that you want to focus your training stimulus on. Second ensure that the nutrition that is going into your body supports that goal right so as we were just talking about before if you're one area of focus for your training block is you want to get stronger. It is very hard to get stronger in a caloric deficit so you need to make sure that your nutrition supports the area of focus. If you are looking to lose body fat and improve the way your body looks then you need to be in a caloric deficit and you need to be okay with your strength diminishing in your performance diminishing you will not perform as well as well at your chosen sport when you were in a caloric deficit especially the more aggressive the deficit is and the longer you've been in a deficit right so make sure that you have a primary focus for your training stimulus and then ensure that your nutrition supports that goal make sure that they are not inhibitory of one another make sure that they are aligned right. Number three have a plan for periodizing both nutrition and training so things should go in a cycle you should have a plan that focuses on different areas there should be a period of time where you work on strength there should be a period of time you work on building muscle not the same thing as strength. Growing muscle is different thing growing strength strength is primarily a neurological adaptation muscle growing new muscle is a different type of stimulus so hypertrophy is different than a strength block right so there should be hypertrophy block there should be a strength block there should be a power block power is rate of force production how quickly can you move weight. So there should be should be a power component right there may also need to be anaerobic or endurance component to your training there may need to be a mobility focus block right there are different areas of focus that you need to have at different times and you need to work through those in a progressive way and making sure that those align with your nutrition or that your nutrition aligns with how you are. Setting up your training plan right making sure that your nutrition supports both your training your training and your life right so that goes into number four make sure that your plan takes into account your life. And your personality I guess you could call those four and five or you could call them you know just number four I call them just number four because it's this is the personalization component right what do I mean by it takes into account your life well first that's the first the first hurdle because as we talked about before time as a finite resource so making sure that it actually accounts for do you have six hours a week to train do you have 12 hours a week to train can you train three days a week or can you. Can you train six days a week right those things matter making sure that the plan fits your life is important and understanding if your life does not align with a particular goal and i'll use the example of improving aerobic conditioning aerobic conditioning needs consistency of stimulus now it does not need as long of a duration is a lot of people think but it needs consistent application of stimulus you need 20 to 20 to 60 minutes. five to six times a week to improve to consistently improve aerobic capacity right so if you don't have the ability to do something most days of the week improvement of your aerobic conditioning is likely not in the cards for you in that block right so you need to account for your life making sure that the plan fits in your life. right so that's one component and then your personality now if you've heard my interview with Mike Milner you know a lot about neuro types and i'm very big on neuro typing in that personality profiles matter because your personality dictates what you will enjoy and what you and what you enjoy is what you will adhere to right so if you've ever done a workout program that one of your friends sweared you know just swore by up and down told you it was going to be. the best you're going to love it it's so great and you tried it and hated it that's likely because it fit their personality and maybe not yours right like i've tried p 90 x for example was a terrible program for me because it was all over the place there was something new every day and i felt like i was constantly trying to learn a new move or. trying to do something different all the time and some people loved it for that it wasn't a good fit for me because of that right so taking into account your personality and making sure that a program gives you what you need some people need a lot of variety some people need a lot of consistency right and understanding. what that is for you is an important component of making progress towards your goals right so make sure that your plan takes into account your life and your personality right and number five it probably should come as no surprise that i'm going to say work with a coach if this sounds like a lot of work and a lot to understand it's because it is. there is a reason people do this as a profession there is a reason that people have multiple certifications and ongoing education that's because it's an ever evolving science and there's a lot of work that goes into it if you're going to fully periodize a plan. looking at training stimulus as well as nutrition and then incorporate lifestyle as well as personality takes a lot of thought and it takes a relationship and it takes effort on the coaches part right so i would say hiring a coach is a really good plan not to say that you absolutely need a coach and i'm not saying that it should be me. I think most people should work with a coach some people can do this for themselves and they're very successful at it and more power to you that's awesome but I think most people would benefit from a coach and even people that can do it for themselves a lot of times higher a coach to do it for them because again time is a finite resource and investing in somebody else to compensate them to take the time to think of it so you don't have to. you can be really useful and especially since frankly most of us are better at designing for other people than we are for ourselves myself included. It is better to work with an objective external party a second set of eyes who will make you do the things that you're otherwise probably going to try and avoid and make you do. The things that will make you better faster and tell you the things that you probably need to hear but don't want to admit to yourself all of those things are important things that a coach can do for you so. Five reasons why you can't have it all and five tips on things that you can do right so make one area primary focus ensuring your nutrition supports that have a periodized plan for both make sure that plan takes into account your life. Make sure that plan takes into account your personality and if that sounds like too much work for you then work with a coach hopefully you found this episode helpful. I am going to go take some more medicine and head my positive covid ass off to bed i hope you guys enjoyed it and i will talk to you next time thank you for listening to this episode of the platform podcast will be back with a new episode soon please be sure to leave a. If you're reading in review of the platform podcast in your app of choice support our work by supporting our affiliates and of course if you have questions or you want help reaching your goals reach out to me till next time thanks for listening.