00:00:43.80

Alyssa

Welcome to the Uphill Athlete podcast. We’re here to inspire and educate athletes.

 

00:00:50.62

Drew

It’s true.

 

00:00:50.90

Alyssa

And today I’m psyched to bring on Drew Hammond, who has been on the podcast before. um But those of you have tuned in, yeah, you have been.

 

00:01:00.58

Drew

Forgot about that.

 

00:01:00.66

Alyssa

I was looking back through the episodes. um But those who are kind of, let’s say within the last, honestly, year or two, it’s been a little bit. um Last year or two, we have Drew back on and

 

00:01:13.20

Drew

I’m unknown. I’m an unknown.

 

00:01:15.09

Alyssa

Yeah, ah pretty known.

 

00:01:16.84

Drew

Long time listener, second time caller. Happy to be here.

 

00:01:20.70

Alyssa

Happy to have you. Drew, I’ll give a little, little highlights of Drew and then ask him about himself. But Drew has a lot of experience in special operations and military. He’s big into hybrid training, which is definitely a term that has had sparkles around it for a while now.

 

00:01:42.78

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:01:42.80

Alyssa

He has an MSC in strength and conditioning, also tactical strength and conditioning facilitator, certified strength and conditioning specialist, CrossFit Level 2, which we won’t hold against you.

 

00:01:58.81

Drew

I think it’s expired. In fairness, I think it’s expired.

 

00:02:00.41

Alyssa

Okay. you. All right, he loves to test limits and inspire unconventional athletic journeys.

 

00:02:02.65

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:02:08.34

Alyssa

He’s the co-host of mops and mows which highly recommend you check out and he coached my husband through dive school during COVID when my husband was literally laying on a bench using rubber bands to pretend to swim.

 

00:02:26.00

Alyssa

So we all had fun with that.

 

00:02:27.93

Drew

We were making it up as we went along, but it worked. He passed.

 

00:02:31.06

Alyssa

What are you going to do at that time? We were all making it up.

 

00:02:33.01

Drew

Yeah. It was a great time.

 

00:02:34.69

Alyssa

We’re always making it up.

 

00:02:35.92

Drew

Unconventional.

 

00:02:35.84

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:02:36.56

Drew

What was the word that you used? Unconventional training.

 

00:02:41.16

Alyssa

Exactly.

 

00:02:41.59

Drew

Perfect. Nailed it.

 

00:02:42.66

Alyssa

Yeah. Well, thanks Drew. Thanks for being on.

 

00:02:44.85

Drew

Of course.

 

00:02:47.31

Alyssa

So how did you get into, well, first off, I want to say this podcast is going to be looking at strength, which is something all of us endurance weenies aren’t the best at.

 

00:03:01.59

Alyssa

Um, yeah, happy to have you here. How did you get into the tactical side of things? Drew is also our tactical coach at uphill and yeah, a little bit about that journey.

 

00:03:16.83

Drew

Uh, it was, I mean, I’ll use the same word again. It was unconventional. Um, I went to school for business, actually a business degree.

 

00:03:26.15

Alyssa

Oh, I didn’t know that.

 

00:03:27.53

Drew

Well, here’s a better one.

 

00:03:27.37

Alyssa

Okay.

 

00:03:28.59

Drew

My minor is in African studies, um, which I’ve used zero times, but for folks that, so I went to Chapel Hill. So for anybody who’s familiar with UNC and UNC sports and sort of the controversy around the African studies program, I was.

 

00:03:43.72

Drew

involved in all of that unknowingly. I won’t go into it. You guys can Google it. It was a great time. Um, anyway, while in school, I had strongly considered joining the Marine Corps, which is my exposure to the military setting. Um, but interestingly, the guy in charge of recruiting in this region got kicked out. So my, uh, my plans were derailed somewhat. And I instead ended up in graduate school in Scotland doing strength and conditioning, and did a little bit of work.

 

00:04:11.27

Drew

with the British military over there. They had a rehabilitation unit in Edinburgh that I worked with and did not know at the time, this was like mid 2000s, I guess, that the military, the US military and specifically special operations was just getting started with embedded human performance. um So the best I can recall is that I had my resume online somewhere. And one of the companies that was awarded the contract to employ strength coaches for Air Force Special Operations found me and thought that I was suitable. I think they had the wrong person, but um they hired me. And so I left grad school and went right into strength and conditioning for Air Force Special Operations. So that was me as the coach, effectively

 

00:05:00.35

Drew

dual hatting as somewhat of an injury prevention guy and also somewhat of a nutrition guy and also somewhat of a mental health guy, but primarily a training guy. Uh, we hadn’t built the rest of the team yet and I had a hundred and ish, 150 ish, uh, door kickers that were looking to me for coaching. So that was the start of doing the thing right out of grad school. And then,

 

00:05:26.39

Drew

For folks that I guess are somewhat familiar with the way that the military works, the special operations side of human performance was getting built out, still is getting built out, but I kind of rode that wave and then moved back home to the East Coast. That was out in Arizona, moved back home to the East Coast to do somewhat of the same thing, but now with the conventional army. So whereas before I was on the floor coaching programming.

 

00:05:50.94

Drew

Now I’m more of like, I say that I’ve gone corporate now in that I manage a team that provides that service for 2000 soldiers.

 

00:05:56.51

Alyssa

Okay.

 

00:06:00.52

Drew

So still very physical training heavy, but um balancing a lot more of the other disciplines. And then while that’s all been going on doing remote coaching and remote health care type stuff, I think the nature of this industry is such that you sort of have to have side hustles.

 

00:06:18.44

Drew

So That’s the background. Like I said, the CrossFit cert has expired, I think. Most of the most of those certs probably have expired, but I think I still know some of it.

 

00:06:28.05

Alyssa

You still have the knowledge.

 

00:06:29.33

Drew

I think so.

 

00:06:29.67

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:06:30.63

Drew

And I think truly by virtue of me just not being good at endurance, I’ve become kind of that’s the quote unquote strength guy for uphill. I don’t know if I’m going to be the smartest person in the room, lest I just be the worst runner.

 

00:06:41.99

Drew

um So yeah, that’s my background.

 

00:06:45.60

Alyssa

Love it. I actually did not realize you had never actually been in the military.

 

00:06:53.46

Drew

No, yeah.

 

00:06:53.56

Alyssa

I think I kind of knew that, but yeah.

 

00:06:56.47

Drew

and well and What’s interesting is that, and again, not to get in the weeds with contracting versus civilians versus active duty or whatever, but most people in this space are either former military or

 

00:06:56.28

Alyssa

ah

 

00:07:10.83

Drew

From the other side, a lot of the coaches in this space are former professional sports and I was neither. I was never active duty, but I was also never a coach in sport. I had always been a coach in the tactical setting.

 

00:07:22.09

Drew

So I think I’m a little bit of a rare breed in that sense, for better or worse. But yeah, I was a contractor and then since then I’ve been a civilian working for the military.

 

00:07:32.11

Alyssa

Nice.

 

00:07:32.88

Drew

Hey, thanks.

 

00:07:32.69

Alyssa

You’re special, Drew. We can say that.

 

00:07:34.59

Drew

I appreciate you. Yeah.

 

00:07:35.79

Alyssa

You’re welcome, yeah.

 

00:07:36.14

Drew

My mom used to tell me that growing up and so I’m glad it’s carried on.

 

00:07:40.18

Alyssa

Yeah, mine too, but yeah. So, now that’s super, yeah, it’s super interesting. It is kind of funny how the side hustle thing seems to always be present, but

 

00:07:55.00

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:07:57.09

Alyssa

getting into the coming at things from a strength background versus more of the endurance background and do you coach you primarily coach tactical athletes um do you have kind of like say because we will will have I mean just to be

 

00:08:12.68

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:08:19.78

Alyssa

I think, to state the obvious, there’s less probably tactical people listening to this episode than there are people who are mountaineers, runners, alpinists, ice climbers, skiers, and all of that.

 

00:08:32.40

Alyssa

What do you think about, and this is what we want to focus on today, and coming from an endurance sport perspective that requires a lot of strength from a strength first versus we always tend to, I think, put strength second?

 

00:08:42.95

Drew

I mean, I don’t know if I would

 

00:08:50.05

Alyssa

Like, what do you think about that?

 

00:08:52.96

Drew

Um, I mean I don’t know if i would. I wouldn’t go wholesale first as much as I would say strength not second, if that’s fair to say.

 

00:09:03.03

Alyssa

Yeah. yeah

 

00:09:04.40

Drew

Only because the reason I say that is I don’t think a lot of folks that are outside of the tactical setting realize the sheer amount of endurance that is required to perform well, especially for some of the peak events like selection events into special operation units and that sort of thing.

 

00:09:24.38

Alyssa

much

 

00:09:26.80

Drew

And what’s interesting is that as the embedded human performance concept has grown over the last couple of years in the military setting, there’s almost been a shift away from thinking of tactical athletes as strength power athletes and starting to shift towards tactical athletes as endurance athletes who have to be strong.

 

00:09:45.87

Drew

um Which is why I say it’s, I wouldn’t come at a, like if somebody comes to me and says, hey, I want to assess for

 

00:09:50.41

Alyssa

It’s not much endurance.

 

00:09:56.89

Drew

XYZ unit in six months or a year, whatever. It’s not like, okay, let’s jack up your deadlift and your bench press and you know all these sorts of things, but also maybe go for a couple of runs. It’s more, how far can we push your endurance while maintaining and in some cases building your strength? Because bear in mind, yes, you might have to do a 40 mile rock. That’s a graded event. That’s like some ultra endurance stuff.

 

00:10:27.08

Drew

Before that, there’s also a PT test where you have to deadlift 350 pounds or whatever um just by nature of the way that the military sets up their PT test.

 

00:10:26.92

Alyssa

Totally.

 

00:10:36.40

Drew

So you end up with this really interesting problem set that you have to solve for, which is how do you do the least amount of work to get as strong as you need to while also doing the least amount of work required to go as long as you have to for these different things?

 

00:10:54.06

Drew

because I think a lot of folks think about what’s required to engage in combat, but before you get to combat, you have to get selected for some of these units. And in order to get selected, you have to be able to do some pretty heinous and long duration stuff. So sure, you have to run a marathon, but when you get to the end of the marathon, deadlift 500 pounds. That’s basically what we’re trying to figure out how to do.

 

00:11:21.48

Alyssa

No. And I think to tie that into saying someone who is an amount of year, because to be honest, like I know that it’s, like, we’re using the term tactical, but that’s not that different from climbing in the rainy year where you have to carry a 50 pound pack.

 

00:11:36.57

Drew

No, not it’s That’s the thing.

 

00:11:39.07

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:11:40.72

Drew

like They’re very, very similar. um And I think what I would say is you often hear, oh, you know no matter who you are, you have to like it helps to have an aerobic base.

 

00:11:51.75

Drew

The bigger aerobic base you have, like the better off you are, no matter what it is you’re trying to do. And I agree with that. I would also posit that no matter who you are, the stronger you are, the better you will be at whatever it is you’re doing, climbing or near, doing an ultra. If you’re weaker, you’re more likely to get injured, less likely to complete the entirety of your tat, whatever it might be. So I think there’s an argument to be made that you should excel, like quote unquote, at both of those things. It’s just a question of balance and what does Excel actually mean in your given context.

 

00:12:25.74

Drew

um So yeah, I know we’re circling so many rabbit holes, but like, that’s kind of what that’s kind of what you we try to figure out.

 

00:12:31.79

Alyssa

Yeah,

 

00:12:34.99

Alyssa

yeah well, I mean, I think that’s the part that as coaches keeps you coming back. It’s like, how do you figure this out?

 

00:12:39.96

Drew

Yeah. Well, and that’s that’s the thing too. And you mentioned hybrid as like a buzzword and ah it is, I think, certainly in the last couple of years on social media, it’s taken off and it’s become like the new sexy, um which is actually super interesting because you are starting to see things happen that are defying sort of traditional, at least strengthened conditioning knowledge, but arguably endurance knowledge too. And what I mean by that is,

 

00:13:07.81

Drew

There’s plenty of people on Instagram now who are stacking like the 500 pound dead blow sub five minute mile, 500 pound squats. I mean, there’s some crazy things that are happening. um And I think that we’re so we’re starting to hopefully move away from this misconception that getting stronger is going to make me a bad runner or getting better at running is going to make me weaker. like I think that we think about it in extremes. And like certainly, if you want to go for a sub two hour marathon, strength might deplete some of that. But if you just want to finish the marathon or maybe finish in the top 10% or whatever, you can be stronger than you think you can be. On the other hand, it’s like you’re not going to… so if you’re trying to win a gold medal in the snatch or the clean and jerk, like yeah, you probably don’t need to run a marathon.

 

00:14:01.06

Drew

but You could be stronger than most people and still be able to sign up for a 5K on a whim. um Hopefully, we’re getting more towards that as normal, but I don’t know.

 

00:14:06.58

Alyssa

Thanks, Jack.

 

00:14:10.75

Drew

i Maybe not.

 

00:14:13.19

Alyssa

Yeah. Well, it’s funny because I kind of joke about the hybrid athlete with a few friends and we always say, you know, it’s just like, Oh yeah.

 

00:14:23.26

Alyssa

So you’re just someone who’s strong and can run. Like a lot of people should be, you know, it’s kind of like, Oh yeah.

 

00:14:28.77

Drew

Yeah. Yeah.

 

00:14:31.53

Alyssa

Shouldn’t we all be hybrid athletes? I mean, obviously there’s, um, you know, periodization, et cetera, but I’d hope that most people could be

 

00:14:33.62

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:14:43.88

Alyssa

pretty strong and run OK or you know whatever endurance.

 

00:14:45.47

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:14:47.99

Alyssa

like They’re not mutually exclusive. They kind of pull. you have There’s some give and take in it, but probably can be stronger and run further than you think. Yeah.

 

00:14:58.23

Drew

Yeah. And it’s funny because I think if you look back, at And I love this sort of stuff like old school physical culture and and like the old school, I mean, most of it is like, you know, bodybuilding on the beach or whatever, but you look at a lot of what those folks are doing and it is the type of training that we would now think of as quote unquote hybrid because you know, we have to label everything, but certainly from the eighties, nineties, like we, we did go through a period of thinking that you had to specialize absolutely in a particular discipline and anything

 

00:15:30.89

Drew

Anything that was, anything that didn’t look like that discipline was assumed to then detract from the end goal. And I think in some cases that can be true, but for the general population, there’s nothing that says you shouldn’t be able to sit down and stand up with some weight on your back. Also run down the road without being out of breath. Also touch your toes, like just, you know, simple stuff that I think a lot of people leave behind in pursuit of some perceived singular goal.

 

00:16:00.38

Drew

um but I’m sort of proselytizing at this point.

 

00:16:04.89

Alyssa

I mean, it’s a good, it’s a good hill to die on.

 

00:16:07.99

Drew

Yeah, yeah.

 

00:16:08.28

Alyssa

Yeah. It’s also, I mean, I think too, again, unless you’re at a very specific point in your life where maybe you are a pro athlete, maybe you are really a joke and you do need to be a little bit more specific.

 

00:16:24.27

Drew

You.

 

00:16:31.53

Alyssa

I also would like my athletes to be well-rounded, where it’s like we’re not so polarized that they can’t do a pull-up. That, yeah, they can’t touch their toes.

 

00:16:41.58

Drew

Right.

 

00:16:43.03

Alyssa

It’s like, okay, then we’ve gotten way too far in the endurance direction.

 

00:16:46.47

Drew

Right.

 

00:16:47.36

Alyssa

Because that’s like, that’s a human, like you should be able to pick up this box and be okay.

 

00:16:47.61

Drew

Right.

 

00:16:51.87

Drew

Well, it goes both ways. It goes both ways, right? I mean, like, yes, for the endurance athlete, having some strength is important. I mean, you could get into the weeds with things like bone mineral density and all that sort of stuff.

 

00:17:02.00

Drew

I mean, even just from a longevity standpoint, but Conversely, and we’ll probably do this a bunch while we’re talking like the same holds true for the other side. Like there are guys that I know who can squat in a house and deadlift a car, but they can’t sleep without a CPAP because they’d like to die.

 

00:17:19.38

Drew

So, you know, cool. You’re super strong. That’s awesome. I would prefer it if you could, you know, go get the mail at the end of your driveway without being out of breath.

 

00:17:25.29

Alyssa

ah for you

 

00:17:30.22

Drew

So. I think both ends of the spectrum, both camps would probably do well to look over the fence at what the other side is doing. And that’s really where kind of the capital H hybrid athlete falls, but interestingly also where the tactical athlete sits because I guess in my opinion, you have to be able to do both of those things.

 

00:17:53.49

Alyssa

Yeah, to be honest, I mean when before you were on board, I’ve coached a couple of tactical peeps to do some selections.

 

00:18:06.93

Alyssa

And it was really fun because it was like, oh, you’re not terrified of strength training. Excellent. And you’re also kind of excited to do more of the endurance stuff because traditionally, that’s probably something you’ve done a little bit less and they follow direction really well.

 

00:18:13.85

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:18:23.32

Drew

Yeah, that’s the best part.

 

00:18:23.38

Alyssa

But yeah. But it was very fun to have people who were so psyched on strength training because with a lot of other athletes I have, it’s like pulling teeth where it’s like, wow, you nailed all your runs, but you forgot all the strength this week.

 

00:18:38.60

Drew

Yeah. Whoops. I forgot my strength. Sorry. I was out running.

 

00:18:41.48

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:18:43.65

Alyssa

yeah So I want two, we’ll call them prototypes of people. uh let’s say they’re both we’ll start with one climbing right near 120 ish pound woman has to carry 45 pounds minimum up right near we’re talking end of june climb date coming in not a lot of strength background isn’t doesn’t love strength worried about bulking up

 

00:19:24.29

Alyssa

How are you programming her strength in the neck in the next little bit? What are you thinking for preseason? And then yeah, walking through kind of like a little outline. He has not been primed on this, so this is all coming down.

 

00:19:36.53

Drew

Yeah, it’s fine. We totally practiced. um I mean, preseason, as with anything, you have a lot of room to work on weaknesses and and kind of, I mean, some of the phrasing I use is, you know, push the ceiling versus raise the floor. And so in preseason, I’m all about raising the floor, like addressing all the basic variables. And and in this case, for this particular athlete,

 

00:20:00.22

Drew

It sounds like the big gap is going to be strength and particularly absolute strength. And I may make some enemies by saying this, but for endurance folks, a good way to think about absolute strength is the same way you would think about your aerobic base. Like ah a broader aerobic base will allow for more intensity work later on. Similarly, a broad base of strength will allow for more muscle endurance type work later on because you’re pulling from a much bigger capacity to move mass, which is effectively what strength is. And so for her, in this case, yes, obviously we’re going to include the rucking and getting under load and and building up hip strength and midsection strength and core strength and all the things that you would do for ah a loaded movement uphill. um But I think where my stuff might look a little bit different from others is that we would also be including some basic strength moves.

 

00:20:53.33

Drew

um things like back squats, things like deadlifts. If somebody is not partial to a back squat, they don’t like having a bar on their back, that’s fine. We could put dumbbells in their hands and do the same thing where we could do split squats. I mean, there’s all kinds of different ways you can go at the movement patterns, which is how I think about strength, less movements and more movement patterns. um So I guess, you know, upon first contact with said individual, it would really be figuring out where are there aversions

 

00:21:24.34

Drew

to strength training? What about strength training sort of scares you, I guess I would say? Because I do this with my tactical guys too. I mean, sometimes there’s an aversion to deadlifting because they think they might hurt their back or sometimes they actually do have a hurt back. And so spinal compression through axial loading, like with a back squat, is off the table. So we might look to switch something up. So during the preseason, specifically for strength, I would probably be implementing a big variety of different movements to figure out what she falls in love with. Like what does she like? Assuming this is somebody who hasn’t done a lot of strength training, and hasn’t been exposed to a lot of these movements, we can use movement variety to break down a lot of preconceptions about this type of strength work while also simultaneously showing her that her endurance is not necessarily suffering. Like we can balance our stressors throughout the week

 

00:22:20.41

Drew

and that’s getting a little bit into the weeds, but we can balance it in such a way that she can still do the endurance work that she knows and loves, but also hit some strength stuff that she may not have been previously exposed to. She might find that her runs actually improve because she feels a little bit more robust. Um, when she throws the weight on her back and does start doing some of that more sports specific stuff, as we get closer to the event, it might feel a little bit lighter. She might move a little bit better because she’s stronger, not to mention our likelihood of injury.

 

00:22:49.60

Drew

goes down because again, she’s a little bit more bulletproof. um So that’s how I would, I mean, that’s sort of a vague answer, but like, that’s how I would come at it from a preseason standpoint, playing around with rep ranges, playing around with movements, figuring out what she likes so that when the time comes and we do have to whittle away a lot of that extra volume, we can hone in on the things that we saw that were successful during preseason and really get the most return on investment.

 

00:23:17.70

Alyssa

I love that. What would you say? And I’m going to follow up with something else, but first thing. In terms of volume, are we talking three times a week? Four times a week? Like what does that look like?

 

00:23:30.17

Alyssa

You’d think.

 

00:23:30.80

Drew

I think my immediate reaction to that question is typically less than people think. um

 

00:23:38.90

Drew

and um’ like For me, i would probably and I say would because this is what I actually do. like I think three days a week is a good starting point in a preseason situation.

 

00:23:51.31

Drew

Because again, if this is somebody who hasn’t been exposed to much strength training, one of the thoughts in the front of my brain is we need to build habits and we need to build exposure. And if we only do that once a week, we’re not really getting into the habit of maybe going to a gym or or at least getting under load.

 

00:24:04.32

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:24:10.86

Drew

Now, how long each one of those sessions are depends. I mean, it could be short, but it’s okay. We’re still getting into the habit of doing strength work. And because we’re talking, like I was saying previously, about introducing more variety and different things like that, it just gives me more opportunities to plug frequency across the week. um So assuming it’s three days a week, maybe it’s two. you know Sometimes i’ll create sort of two primary sessions and then ah a third session that’s kind of a floater. So, hey, at the very least do these two. If you get to this third one, great. If you don’t, not a big deal.

 

00:24:48.28

Drew

um And that gets into some of the autoregulation stuff. I know that we’ll talk about but Getting even further into it like rep ranges and things like that typically Anywhere from like, I don’t know 8 to 15 ish would be ah a Starting point any any more than that like 15 and beyond you’re you’re sort of not going after strength you’re going after more strength endurance anything below that um and I think Sure, it’s going after more absolute strength, but also I think it scares people who are not used to doing strength.

 

00:25:22.90

Drew

um So I think the 8 to 10 to 12-ish to 15-ish range is is good because for somebody who’s not used to taking weights to the level of fatigue that they need to to create a stimulus, you can at least hope to get close to that

 

00:25:22.70

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:25:42.15

Drew

in that rep range. Whereas if I were to say, Hey, you know, go to three reps, they might take a super lightweight and do it three times and think that they accomplished the goal. And realistically, that’s not what we’re after on that end of the spectrum.

 

00:25:55.23

Drew

Vice versa. If we’re going after 25, 30 reps, who’s to say what the right intensity is for that? I mean, you’re just winging it at that point, but probably the longer answer than you wanted, but that’s, that’s kind of where my head goes with volume.

 

00:26:02.12

Alyssa

Yep.

 

00:26:08.09

Alyssa

No, this is great. I mean, I think it’s, to be honest, I think there’s so much room for growth in this area, to say the least.

 

00:26:17.50

Drew

Yeah, no pun intended.

 

00:26:19.11

Alyssa

No pun intended.

 

00:26:22.09

Alyssa

And you keep popping up other questions and I can even get back to my ah point that I wanted to make, but one last question, then I will get back to it. How are you layering this with, say, a higher intensity workout in there and a longer effort? How is that stacking for you?

 

00:26:42.60

Drew

So what I do, and this is just me. I mean, this is kind of the hot kind of how I was taught and learned to sort the hybrid setting, which other folks might call it concurrent training or whatever.

 

00:26:54.03

Alyssa

ah download have have

 

00:26:55.82

Drew

Yeah, hybrid, hybrid, hybrid. The term I use is called consolidation of stressors. I didn’t make that term up, but the logic is that your body doesn’t really know the difference between sprinting, squatting.

 

00:27:08.69

Drew

like It all comes down to tension and energetics, which that’s really as deep as you need to go. And All that really tells you is that If I think about training from a bioenergetics and a muscular tension standpoint, I can now start to tease out the more muscle endurance type work and pair that with more of my low intensity, high volume endurance work. And similarly, I compare my higher intensity, low volume endurance work with my higher intensity, low volume strength work. And so across the week, and again, these are ideal scenarios. Nobody ever really has these down in an ideal way, but across the week you end up kind of

 

00:27:45.78

Drew

earlier in the week, hitting higher intensity, lower volume strength and endurance work. And then as you move through the week, sort of moderate intensity, moderate volume, that might be where you see your tempo run and some of your more upper body type strength work. And then towards the end of the week, usually because people just logistically have more time for it. That’s where you’ll see your higher volume, lower intensity, endurance work, and also your higher volume, lower intensity strength work.

 

00:28:10.90

Drew

um I’m painting that with a very broad brush, but effectively what that ends up creating for your standard athlete is a situation where early on in the week we experience a lot of intensity. We don’t experience a lot of volume. Maybe that’s where we consolidate soreness with the lower body so that by the time we get to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, the lower body has more or less recovered. So we’re prepared for a weekend of long endurance work.

 

00:28:37.36

Drew

I think that where people go wrong when they try to do strength and endurance is they take a strength program and they take an endurance program and they put them together. and That might work for a couple of weeks, but what ends up happening is that if you’re doing legs on Monday and then sprinting on Thursday. It’s like your legs are sore Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And then you sprint, your legs are sore Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And that just never really balances out. So if you kind of stick to that consolidation of stressors idea and the higher intensity and then the higher volume and lay that out and organize your training that way, you create a lot of opportunity for pursuing both things at the same time.

 

00:29:21.56

Drew

Does that, I don’t know if that answered the question or not, but.

 

00:29:22.93

Alyssa

No, that’s fantastic. Yeah. No, it is that it is. It does because this is something. Yeah. I always talk to athletes about where I’m like, we’re not going to absolutely crush you on a Thursday or Friday because your, your long effort is going to suck.

 

00:29:39.48

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:29:40.48

Alyssa

So no one’s having fun and that quality is really low.

 

00:29:40.89

Drew

right

 

00:29:45.60

Alyssa

So it, yeah, you got to balance it out more.

 

00:29:48.21

Drew

yeah And I just think cognitively too, because again, the population that I tend to work with more often than not has an aversion to endurance.

 

00:29:48.97

Alyssa

Um,

 

00:29:56.22

Drew

They don’t have an aversion to strength. And what I find is that by laying the week out that way, they get super pumped Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ish. Cause it’s like, this is the stuff I know and love, and they can kind of prepare themselves for what’s coming on the weekend, which is typically long rocks, long runs, whatever it’s going to be for the event.

 

00:30:05.23

Alyssa

oh

 

00:30:17.20

Alyssa

Yeah. No, I think that makes total sense. So one, to go back to a point you made and then I’ll give you another profile and then we’ll talk about auto regulation. ah I love that you said, we’ll try a bunch of different exercises and see what she likes.

 

00:30:36.54

Alyssa

that I would like to highlight that underline because I think so many people. Get this idea and I say this all the time to clients like if you are miserable doing this training.

 

00:30:50.17

Drew

Don’t do it.

 

00:30:50.24

Alyssa

Let me know, don’t do it.

 

00:30:51.51

Drew

Yeah, yeah.

 

00:30:51.67

Alyssa

Well, yeah, there’s first off. People apologize to me for not liking running. I’m like there are literally 8000 other sports. Let’s find something else for you.

 

00:31:01.28

Drew

Yeah, I’ll make no apologies.

 

00:31:01.32

Alyssa

You don’t have to like running.

 

00:31:02.48

Drew

I don’t love running.

 

00:31:03.65

Alyssa

Good yeah strength is.

 

00:31:04.99

Drew

I like to swim.

 

00:31:06.72

Alyssa

I hate swimming.

 

00:31:07.84

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:31:07.75

Alyssa

Hate it.

 

00:31:08.30

Drew

See, there you go.

 

00:31:09.08

Alyssa

Yeah?

 

00:31:09.78

Drew

I like the bike.

 

00:31:10.02

Alyssa

There you go.

 

00:31:10.46

Drew

I’ll bike all day long, but biking and swimming? Sure. Running? I don’t know.

 

00:31:14.53

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:31:15.36

Drew

I’m getting better.

 

00:31:15.42

Alyssa

I can’t hold my legs.

 

00:31:16.85

Drew

But that, I mean, that’s a really good point.

 

00:31:17.02

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:31:18.21

Drew

um So I say that’s a really good point. I realized it was my point. So now it’s just like a mask.

 

00:31:21.98

Alyssa

Yeah, you made a great point. and Well, Pat, you’re still on your back.

 

00:31:23.52

Drew

Great point by me. That was something I came to in the tactical setting through kind of interesting logic, which was that

 

00:31:26.11

Alyssa

um closer to

 

00:31:34.18

Drew

Coming from a master’s degree in strength and conditioning, it’s a very formalized way of learning about training. Spreadsheets like this movement do this, can you know that like it’s very structured. And I was thrown into a scenario that had no structure. um So here I was thinking, oh, you would do a test week one, you’ll train for 12 weeks, we’ll do another test and we’ll decide if the training worked.

 

00:31:58.29

Drew

And that’s how I started to program for the population that I was working with, the special operations world. And what quickly happened was like, hey, coach, that’s great. um I’m out of town next week for training. Or I know we had this lift on Wednesday, but we did a jump mission last night, so I’m exhausted. So periodization, capital P periodization sort of fell apart very quickly. um And then what I started to realize was that this myth of tactical strength and conditioning was predicated on the idea that being stronger, bigger, faster, makes you kill more bad guys. I mean, that’s sort of the story we tell ourselves.

 

00:32:39.22

Alyssa

That’s, that’s, wow, yeah.

 

00:32:41.18

Drew

And inevitably out of, let’s say it was the 150 guys that I was working with, maybe let’s say 50% of them did the training that I did. And there were 50% that just did whatever they wanted. Some of those guys didn’t really train at all. They would deploy, they would come back. And in some cases,

 

00:32:58.35

Drew

Private so-and-so who didn’t really do much strength training, didn’t really do much running, but killed a bunch of bad yeah bad guys and was phenomenally successful on deployment. It’s like, well, if that’s what we’re going after, what are we really doing in the gym? like It doesn’t matter if you back squat or front squat or deadlift. So I say all that to say, to the point we were talking about earlier, movements started to not matter all that much.

 

00:33:23.40

Drew

And whereas before I felt that, oh, you wanna get stronger, you need to do a back squat, a bench press, a deadlift, a chin up. Well, if a guy didn’t like back squatting and would rather front squat, like, okay, that’s fine. But I didn’t realize that for a number of years. And what ultimately I arrived at was that the best movement for the goal you’re trying to achieve is the one you’re gonna do. Like it doesn’t matter if like the literature tells me that,

 

00:33:52.98

Drew

If the literature tells me that the back squat, yes, the best movement, I forget exactly what I said, but the best movement for the goal you’re trying to achieve is the one that you’ll actually do.

 

00:34:04.10

Drew

um Which is to say that, like yes, if you are training for a powerlifting meet, you need to peak for back squat bench press and deadlift.

 

00:34:04.78

Alyssa

yeah

 

00:34:16.52

Drew

Nobody who’s deploying is training for a powerlifting meet, so we don’t need to peak the back squat, the bench press, and the deadlift. I absolutely understand that you can maximally load the back squat more than you can load the front squat. Sure.

 

00:34:30.17

Drew

But if the athlete’s not going to do the back squat, then even the lightest front squat is going to be heavier than the back squat that they didn’t do. Same with the bench press and the shoulder press and the deadlift and the Romanian deadlift and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Any of the thousands of movements you can choose from. In endurance, it’s the same way. Like if I just want to build your aerobic base, but you hate running, fine, we’ll get on a bike. like There’s not a one-to-one carryover, but that’s OK. You’re at least doing something that’s kind of achieving the goal that we’re after. And if and when we need to specialize, that’s where movement selection, I think, is a much bigger part of the conversation. But I’m becoming long-winded. For our architect that we’re talking about with this lady who’s climbing Rainier, my primary goal early on is just finding what she likes to do. And then later on, we can build off of that.

 

00:35:16.16

Alyssa

I love it. Yeah, it’s honestly no, it’s so I cannot tell you how obvious that seems. And how people like I’ve had more than once for athletes will just fall off the radar completely.

 

00:35:32.42

Drew

h Yeah.

 

00:35:33.84

Alyssa

And you’re like, hey, what’s going on? And they’re like, well, I really hate doing that.

 

00:35:37.82

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:35:38.73

Alyssa

Can we talk about it?

 

00:35:39.42

Drew

I think what it is, I think what it is truly, and I say this from a strength training perspective, but I think endurance is probably similar. Most of the maxims in strength and conditioning that you would think come from literature, come from literature that’s based in powerlifting, because most of the strength literature is powerlifting. It’s squats and bench presses and deadlifts because it’s very controlled. It’s like it’s simple. It’s a single modality. So there’s a misconception that powerlifting is sort of the ultimate display of strength, which really isn’t true. And similarly, I think for folks like me who aren’t necessarily endurance athletes, from the outside looking in, it seems like running is like the ultimate modality for endurance. And so if you don’t like running, you’re not going to do endurance. And it’s like, well, we know that’s not true. You can

 

00:36:27.80

Drew

go cycling, you can go hiking, you can go for a walk, you can go for a swim, you can go skiing. like There’s all kinds of things you can do, but I don’t think people really think about that because what gets shoved down their throat is run or squat bench deadlift. So here we are.

 

00:36:43.46

Alyssa

Here we are. That’s why we’re having a podcast. So, I mean, thanks for that.

 

00:36:46.47

Drew

Yeah, exactly.

 

00:36:47.63

Alyssa

But yeah, there’s a lot.

 

00:36:48.31

Drew

Of course.

 

00:36:49.48

Alyssa

There’s so many great choices out there. You could long distance pogo sticks and I would be stoked for you.

 

00:36:57.00

Drew

I’m sure like if you Google it, somebody’s done it.

 

00:36:59.65

Alyssa

A hundred percent.

 

00:37:01.15

Drew

Yeah, there’s nothing new.

 

00:37:01.38

Alyssa

Scootering, yeah.

 

00:37:03.21

Drew

I got a razor scooter for Christmas.

 

00:37:03.13

Alyssa

There’s nothing new.

 

00:37:04.73

Drew

I’m freaking pumped. My four-year-old stole it from me, but like i’m I’m going to steal it back because I love that thing.

 

00:37:11.09

Alyssa

That’s amazing.

 

00:37:12.26

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:37:12.17

Alyssa

I got mine at like 11 and it was a pretty big deal.

 

00:37:16.67

Drew

Yeah. Wheelie bar. Did you have a wheelie bar?

 

00:37:21.16

Alyssa

I don’t think so. I wasn’t that cool. I had to wear elbow pads, wrist guards, and knee pads. Yeah. My parents were like, you can get this, but.

 

00:37:29.55

Drew

My issue was I would hit the brakes going downhill and because the wheels were whatever that plastic stuff is, you’d create a flat spot and then you end up with like a clickety clackety scooter.

 

00:37:36.28

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:37:40.95

Drew

because you Anyway, yeah, endurance.

 

00:37:43.14

Alyssa

yeah Endurance. Yeah. My husband, well, Cody was a skateboarder. and So whenever he sees, um,

 

00:37:50.08

Drew

That checks out.

 

00:37:51.96

Alyssa

Yeah. Kids on razor scooters. He’s always like, I just want to knock them off of the scooter.

 

00:37:56.43

Drew

I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come scooter with Cody.

 

00:37:56.47

Alyssa

I just hate scooters.

 

00:37:58.47

Drew

Cody and I are gonna scooter together.

 

00:38:00.17

Alyssa

It is great, whatever. Well, I mean, we’re in San Diego. Well, not currently right now, but normally, which is like the birthplace of all of that jazz.

 

00:38:04.07

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:38:08.95

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:38:08.82

Alyssa

There’s skateboard carts all over.

 

00:38:10.80

Drew

There is, I just googled it while we’re talking.

 

00:38:10.88

Alyssa

yes ah

 

00:38:15.26

Drew

There is a pogo stick world record distance. Most of it is just well, most of it is just singular jumping.

 

00:38:18.32

Alyssa

What is it?

 

00:38:22.23

Drew

Here’s one, here’s one for the Uphill Athlete community.

 

00:38:22.16

Alyssa

Okay.

 

00:38:24.55

Drew

I will stick to the tallest mountain in America.

 

00:38:28.17

Alyssa

Whitney or Denali?

 

00:38:29.19

Drew

So, I mean, let’s, well. I don’t want to play it because it’ll be loud and it’ll take up air time, but here’s one of the comments. Bro, this man is so underrated. So again, there’s people out there, listeners, who are getting after it.

 

00:38:51.66

Alyssa

I truly aspire to be an underrated pogo sticker mountain climbing.

 

00:38:56.57

Drew

Hey, I’m just saying it’s out there. If you want to do it, it’s out there.

 

00:38:59.94

Alyssa

i mean

 

00:39:00.82

Drew

Somebody’s done it.

 

00:39:01.98

Alyssa

Someone’s done it, yeah. I fell into the category of running. How boring.

 

00:39:06.18

Drew

I know.

 

00:39:06.48

Alyssa

We can do better.

 

00:39:07.49

Drew

I know.

 

00:39:09.94

Alyssa

Okay, so second scenario. And I think this will be interesting because it maybe plays a little bit into the nutrition background.

 

00:39:21.42

Alyssa

We have a 55-year-old, we’ll give him a name, Joe, investment banker, used to have a background in strength, played a sport in college, football player in college, soaked in getting into mountaineering, wants to climb the mountaineers route on Whitney.

 

00:39:26.77

Drew

Joe. Oh.

 

00:39:41.57

Alyssa

um And he is overweight though. Like, let’s say 20 pounds, probably overweight. And he is pretty strong, but he’s not great at endurance. Climbing in June. What are you thinking?

 

00:40:06.57

Drew

I think maybe somewhat controversially for him, I don’t know if I would change his nutrition so much as at the start as I would keep it stable and introduce more aerobic work and see if the additional volume created the caloric deficit that brought the weight down. um Because he has a, but well, actually one of the first things that came to my mind is when he mentioned he played football, I’m gonna ask him about injuries. Inevitably, there are gonna be some.

 

00:40:34.42

Drew

um I say that because I actually work with a lot of people in various capacities who fit this archetype, and that’s typically where the conversation goes. um But assuming we’re okay there, assuming he has some exposure to the weight room, which you would think that he would if he played football, and he’s strong enough, we can kind of maintain strength. And all the things that I talked about with our previous example Joe probably has a good idea of what movements he likes and doesn’t like. So we can sort of shorten that exploratory phase a little bit and instead vector that more towards endurance. So if mountaineering is the ultimate goal, then yes, we’re going to have to get under load on our feet, cover some miles. But if we’re more pre-seasoned, if we have some time, maybe he’s on a bike doing some non-impact stuff. Maybe he’s on a treadmill, so it’s lower impact or an elliptical if we really need to go in the other direction.

 

00:41:30.27

Drew

um But just building up his aerobic base the same way you would with anybody, while probably still maintaining strength, but being mindful of total volume with an eye towards that nutrition piece to see if the number on the scale is going the right direction. I think anybody listening to this podcast is going to be familiar with that feeling of losing a couple of pounds and feeling lighter on your feet. I would think that that would inevitably happen if we’re looking at like a 20-pound shift in weight.

 

00:41:55.59

Drew

um So all of the same things that we’ve already been talking about still apply for him in my mind in terms of balancing stressors across the week and doing this, that and the other. It’s just that I’m probably turning the volume knob up a little bit more on the endurance stuff. Um, he probably hasn’t moved under load. He probably hasn’t thrown weight on his back and walked for a long distance. So we’ll do a lot of that. We’ll maintain his strength. If he’s not losing enough weight, we’ll start to tweak his nutrition. Um,

 

00:42:26.24

Drew

But by and large, i don’t I don’t think that it would look that different from our previous example, who we didn’t give a name to, um with the exception of he has a little bit more of a training history in strength.

 

00:42:41.23

Drew

So we have a little bit more information there that we can work off of. I don’t know if that answered it or not.

 

00:42:46.61

Alyssa

ah the No, it does. I mean, I think we’ll call her Bessie. Yeah.

 

00:42:51.32

Drew

Bessie.

 

00:42:51.15

Alyssa

Oh, Bessie.

 

00:42:51.69

Drew

Yeah, Bessie.

 

00:42:52.71

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:42:53.32

Drew

Bessie loves the gym now.

 

00:42:53.53

Alyssa

I think she does. Yeah. She got really into it. I think that the point that is coming across to me that I kind of was probably leading a little bit is like, it doesn’t have to look that different.

 

00:43:10.64

Alyssa

Like yes, slight shifts, but it’s not like you’re throwing

 

00:43:11.19

Drew

Yeah. Mm hmm.

 

00:43:16.23

Alyssa

everything out the window and completely changing it. It’s just like okay where are our folk, depending on your strengths, where are we slightly shifting that kind of like 10% almost?

 

00:43:22.47

Drew

There you go.

 

00:43:29.95

Alyssa

10 to 20%?

 

00:43:30.21

Drew

Right. And I think, I mean, I’m glad you gave it a number. Cause like the 10 to 20% of the nuts and bolts reps and sets volume, what, like the things that people think are a hundred percent are really liked 10 to 20%. And so to your point, whether it’s Bessie or Joe, what I’m really trying to get after early on, but really the entire time is like, what, what do you enjoy about, like, let’s focus on what you enjoy because again,

 

00:43:58.59

Drew

We could write the best program in the world, but if they don’t do it, it’s the worst program in the world. The best program is the one that you’re going to do. And so we’ll have your goal in mind and we’ll move towards that goal, but we’ll do it in such a way that you enjoy the process.

 

00:44:10.37

Drew

Um, I think a lot of people think that training not only has to be hard, it also has to be annoying and frustrating and miserable.

 

00:44:17.71

Alyssa

miserable yeah

 

00:44:19.56

Drew

It’s like, well, those are different things.

 

00:44:19.94

Alyssa

yeah

 

00:44:20.76

Drew

It can be hard and fun. Um, and that really, to me, it comes down to structure, movement selection, all that kind of stuff. That’s where the fun comes from.

 

00:44:30.98

Alyssa

If you don’t actively hate yourself while you’re working out and a little bit after and a little bit before, did you actually get a workout in?

 

00:44:38.27

Drew

That’s how I feel about running.

 

00:44:43.18

Drew

Just miserable the whole time.

 

00:44:45.90

Alyssa

Yeah, see, I can’t say that about strength that much because I was a college lacrosse player.

 

00:44:51.72

Drew

Yeah, you’ve been there.

 

00:44:51.59

Alyssa

So I actually really enjoyed strength.

 

00:44:54.56

Drew

Exactly. Everyone loves strength.

 

00:44:55.69

Alyssa

I kind of like it, because you can, you can, like, to me, I can’t really range in running, especially with the distances that I run. It just, like, it doesn’t work, but you can, like, get really mad and emotional and they just be like, yeah, that’s great.

 

00:45:07.18

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:45:10.40

Drew

It’s also nice to be useful. like and i And this is not a knock against endurance athletes. like i It’s not to say endurance athletes aren’t useful.

 

00:45:16.71

Alyssa

No, please, it is. Yeah.

 

00:45:21.06

Drew

However, comma, like knowing

 

00:45:23.12

Alyssa

Who needs to run a hundred rows? You can drive it. the so

 

00:45:25.76

Drew

If I’m moving from one apartment to the next or whatever, like I need you to help me lift the piano. I don’t need you to like to run 100 miles to get lunch for us, although maybe so. i mean But it is nice to just know that like the thing, I’m not gonna hurt myself picking up the thing, whatever the thing is. um So yeah, maybe that’s a nod towards my strength, people.

 

00:45:51.47

Alyssa

I actually helped move a piano a couple months ago and I feel pretty good about myself, yeah.

 

00:45:55.34

Drew

Nice. That makes you a hybrid athlete. Technically, you’ve done it.

 

00:45:59.61

Alyssa

I don’t know if I should, yeah.

 

00:46:02.53

Drew

Put it in your Instagram.

 

00:46:03.88

Alyssa

I should, yeah, really should.

 

00:46:06.90

Drew

Yeah, for sure. Everyone else is doing it.

 

00:46:08.89

Alyssa

If someone else is doing it, then maybe I can get picked up by a VPN or something.

 

00:46:12.21

Drew

Hybrid AF, I think, is the move.

 

00:46:14.51

Alyssa

Oh yeah, okay, great.

 

00:46:16.20

Drew

Yeah, there you go.

 

00:46:18.26

Alyssa

Um, love it. Okay. Well, that’s super helpful because to be honest, that kind of paints a picture for two very common demographics of people that we get. But I want to touch on a term that you have brought up once in this and then in conversation before, and that is autoregulation.

 

00:46:39.92

Drew

Auto-regulation, my favorite phrase.

 

00:46:40.11

Alyssa

So go for it.

 

00:46:43.95

Drew

um There’s a couple of different avenues. but So I’ll come at this from the perspective of common misconceptions that I see with people getting into strength training. One of the biggest ones And this is with strength coaches too, is this assumption that you have to be very rigid with your prescriptions and you have to, again, we talked about, you know, do a one at max and then week one is 75% of that and week two is 77 and week three is 80. Like it’s this very rigid um approach that looks really nice in an Excel sheet, but falls apart as soon as anything happens to anybody, which being human beings, things happen to people all the time.

 

00:47:26.31

Drew

um And traditional strength and conditioning holds that if something happens on the program, it’s the fault of the athlete. Like the athlete should have been more compliant. The athlete should have structured their life a certain way because heaven forbid the coach was wrong. The coach can’t be wrong. The coach has all the information. They have all the knowledge. They go back into their magical cave and they come out with the beautiful program and the athlete goes and does it. And if they don’t finish it, it’s their fault.

 

00:47:53.38

Drew

And I just, that didn’t ever really work with me in the tactical setting because I had to be able to respond to the realities of this athlete, which is somebody who is in and out all the time, overseas, different environments, different equipment access, competing stressors, all this different stuff. So I say all that to answer the question, which is what is auto-regulation? Auto-regulation is basically just setting up training in such a way that it responds to your readiness on a given day.

 

00:48:21.09

Drew

um And if you Google it, you’ll find all kinds of different definitions, but that’s effectively the gist of it. It just allows for you to program in such a way that you create flexibility and fluidity, which is really nice for hybrid athletes or endurance athletes because the competing stressors that you’re getting from the endurance side of the house affect readiness. And so if, for example, I was working with either of the two folks we just talked about, and I was thinking that, hey,

 

00:48:52.75

Drew

Six Tuesdays from now, we have to squat sets of three at 85% because that’s what my program says. I don’t know what Joe’s going to feel like six Tuesdays from now. I don’t know what’s going to be going on in his life. I don’t know any of these things, but if I’m beholden to this idea that he has to hit a certain percentage of his arbitrary one or max, I’m exposing him to all kinds of risk for injury. I might be pushing him too hard that day. I also might not be pushing him hard enough.

 

00:49:20.83

Drew

and so Auto-regulation is a tool that I use literally all the time now. I haven’t i haven’t programmed a percentage in years, if I can recall. I’m always using auto-regulatory tools, which I’ll get into here in a second, instead of programming in absolutes, programming in constraints. So I’m sort of providing a left and a right limit based on the stimulus I’m trying to achieve.

 

00:49:47.19

Drew

And then the athlete navigates those limits in such a way that they’re able to get after it on any given day. So some of the tools people will see if they go down the auto-regulation rabbit hole are things like rate of perceived exertion, which also exists in endurance. ah Reps in reserve is kind of the twin sibling of rate of perceived exertion. It just flips it on its head, and I’ll dive into that too. but um Rep ranges is another tool that I use. um And I will often, actually, I will always combine rep ranges with a rate of perceived exertion. So I create two constraints. And then what ends up happening from the coaching standpoint is that you move away from this idea that you have to test, train, and then retest.

 

00:50:35.57

Drew

And instead, your training becomes a real-time test of where the athlete is at. And so every training session provides you with information that then dictates what the next week’s exposure to that same training session should look like. If I have a weight in my mind that I think that the athlete should hit and I have an idea of how hard that weight should feel,

 

00:50:57.99

Drew

and they report back to me that it felt a lot lighter than it should have or it felt a lot heavier than it should have, then I have a data point I can use to steer training in a different direction based on how they’re responding. The opposite of that would be I lay out those 12 weeks of training that I’ve talked about and I don’t care how the athlete responds. He needs to follow my program because this is the optimal because this book or this research paper tells me that it is. I think that you have to factor in the human element and one of the best ways to do that is auto-regulation.

 

00:51:27.47

Drew

And now I will pause for questions.

 

00:51:31.88

Alyssa

I love that. I mean, no, like, yeah.

 

00:51:35.30

Drew

Well, and to be clear, you can do it with endurance too. I mean, this is not just a strength thing.

 

00:51:38.23

Alyssa

Oh, yeah.

 

00:51:39.08

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:51:39.92

Alyssa

No, it’s 100%. I mean, we moved, uh, in training plans from heart rate to RPE because A, altitude.

 

00:51:51.01

Alyssa

Let’s just throw that out there. and Heart rate just doesn’t really, yeah, not, not that I do.

 

00:51:52.40

Drew

Right. Heart rate is messy.

 

00:51:57.17

Alyssa

Heart rate is very messy.

 

00:51:59.10

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:52:00.36

Alyssa

Yeah I would also say the other piece is I really with my athletes hardly ever do like a three-week build and then a one-week recovery because guess what life often dictates when that’s life always dictates when that’s gonna happen or they were just freaking tired and you know it you go okay you need a light week or in late few days

 

00:52:22.79

Drew

Yeah. Mm hmm.

 

00:52:29.55

Drew

Well, and the other thing that ends up happening, and again, I often get blamed for bashing percentage-based training, which is fine because I do it. um If I lay out that 12 weeks or whatever it is,

 

00:52:43.11

Drew

Inevitably, the first couple of those weeks were probably undershooting. We’re not really achieving the stimulus that we’re trying to achieve. And then maybe towards the tail end of that, we’re actually overshooting. So we’re exposing the athletes to risk and we’re pushing them a little bit harder than we should. So what you end up having is like maybe there’s only one to two weeks out of 12 where you’re actually training at the appropriate intensity. Whereas if you use those constraints, like I talked about, hypothetically, you’re at the right intensity every single time. It’s just You have to move away from this idea that the weights always need to go up, that the runs always need to get faster, that the distances always need to get longer, and accept that there’s going to be some undulation week to week. And then it’s the job of the coach to monitor that at a macro level to make sure that, yeah, there’s undulation, but we’re moving in the right direction. If you’re not moving in the right direction, then you make a change. But you don’t need to change things all the time artificially, thinking that change is what

 

00:53:39.67

Drew

drives progressive overload. I think that’s another issue that a lot of strength coaches have. It’s this reverse causality where progressive overload means that I have to add more weight to get stronger when actually the way that it works is I can add more weight because I got stronger.

 

00:53:54.33

Drew

And that doesn’t really seem like a huge shift in thinking, but it’s actually a fundamental difference in how you think about training.

 

00:53:57.16

Alyssa

That’s a big test.

 

00:54:02.98

Alyssa

Yeah. No, it’s an absolutely massive shift.

 

00:54:09.84

Alyssa

I love that. Yeah, that’s great. You’re doing a pretty good job here.

 

00:54:14.04

Drew

I just nerd out.

 

00:54:14.21

Alyssa

I think we might have you back on.

 

00:54:16.02

Drew

I just nerd about this stuff.

 

00:54:16.27

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:54:17.81

Drew

um But yeah, I mean like ah so for people listening to this, I probably have no idea what I’m talking about. um Rate of perceived exertion, you mentioned. I mean Most folks conceptually understand that on a scale of 1 to 10.

 

00:54:32.45

Drew

For me, with strength training and also with endurance, but specifically with strength, We’ll typically only hover around seven, eight, nine. I mean, you can’t really gauge a one or a two or a four, um which is why I mentioned reps in reserve as another option. um And those two are somewhat interchangeable. So all that reps in reserve is telling you is like, if I say, hey, go go do a set of five back squats with two reps in reserve, that would mean that you would use a weight that allowed you to squat

 

00:55:07.98

Drew

for five reps, but you could have done seven if you had to. So there’s two reps in reserve. I will literally ask athletes, which of those two concepts makes more sense to you? RPE or reps in reserve? And depending on their answer, that’s what we’ll use.

 

00:55:22.94

Drew

The challenge that you get with tactical guys is that having gone through what they’ve gone through, a 10 out of 10 rate of perceived exertion might be like way actually harder than we want it to be on a given day in the gym. and so A reps and reserve concept might land where we we want to land in terms of an intensity prescription. um so That’s kind of two ways to to play with your intensity.

 

00:55:46.54

Drew

And then with volume, I mentioned rep ranges. You can also go crazy with it and have like set ranges. And I’ll do that too. Like if I’m not super concerned with… volume on a given day, I’ll say, hey, do three or four sets, depending on how you feel, of the following circuit or superset or whatever. And if they’re feeling great, they’ll do it four times. If they’re not feeling great, they’ll only do it three, and that’s okay. I think variance freaks coaches out because they have this perception that they need to control everything, otherwise the athlete’s just gonna go off the rails and like,

 

00:56:17.33

Drew

I don’t know, I fell off a cliff. um But I have found, right, I have found that variance does a great job driving athlete autonomy, which I’m like a huge proponent of when it comes to training because autonomy creates compliance and buy-in and all the different things that we want as coaches.

 

00:56:19.82

Alyssa

They might happen, don’t they?

 

00:56:35.42

Alyssa

Absolutely. I mean, I’ll be honest. I switched coaches in May. I’ve talked about this before. My old coach compliance, like there was no room for, for error for plus mine, you know, like on the numbers.

 

00:56:48.02

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:56:54.48

Alyssa

My new coach is like, if you wake up and you feel like crap, don’t do it today, do it tomorrow.

 

00:57:00.62

Drew

Yeah, right.

 

00:57:00.96

Alyssa

And it’s like, whoa, I’m, I’m like, trustworthy. I understand. Like I’ve been training for 10, 10 plus years.

 

00:57:05.58

Drew

Yeah.

 

00:57:07.90

Alyssa

Like it’s shocking.

 

00:57:09.21

Drew

What?

 

00:57:09.92

Alyssa

And I know, and I do think that autonomy does take, like when you have a brand new athlete, it’s helping, it’s giving them the tools to kind of be like, Hey, what does that kind of feel like? And that’s why I’ll do a lot of times if I have a newer athlete, a hybrid of heart rate and RPE, if the heart rate can be relatively predictable, because it’s like we are understanding what that feels, especially if they’re newer, or they were raised in the era of if you’re not absolutely destroyed and killing yourself, it’s not a good workout. um But

 

00:57:49.30

Alyssa

i

 

00:57:51.88

Alyssa

Yeah, we should trust them.

 

00:57:54.49

Drew

Well, I mean,

 

00:57:54.44

Alyssa

can We really should.

 

00:57:56.08

Drew

I guess there’s sort of two, there’s two asterisks here. One would be that there is a certain subset of athletes that enjoys the complete and absolute control of the training plan.

 

00:58:07.93

Drew

Like there are folks that don’t want any autonomy and that’s okay.

 

00:58:08.34

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:58:11.92

Drew

The other thing is that without regulation, there’s a learning curve associated with this that you have to account for. And that’s why I sort of threw out the reps and reserve concept as well because I mentioned it through the lens of tactical guys, but also I find with the beginner strength athletes framing it as a reps and reserve thing tends to make more sense than an RPE thing. I mean, they can conceptualize because here’s what I’ll see a lot, right? It’s like, okay, do three sets of five at an RPE e of eight.

 

00:58:47.46

Drew

and they’ll do the first set of five at a hundred pounds and then the next set of five at 150 pounds. And then the third set of five at 175 pounds. And it’s like, well, if like a hundred pounds was an eight out of 10, how’d you do 175 pounds at eight out of 10 as well?

 

00:59:03.17

Drew

And they’re like, Oh, like what you’re supposed to increase each. so it’s a little bit wonky.

 

00:59:07.71

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

00:59:08.54

Drew

Whereas if it’s like, you know, doing three sets of five with two reps in reserve, You could make the argument that that’s the same thing as an eight RPE, but it might logistically make more sense to somebody. And what I have seen is that when you use that tool with beginners, it maps a little bit better to how they’re actually feeling because it makes sense for me to say, do a set of five, but like use a weight that you could probably do for seven. They’re like, oh yeah, okay, that makes sense.

 

00:59:36.98

Alyssa

Yeah. Well, I think it’s also as a coach, understanding what RP means to someone, like getting their RP scale versus what might be your RP scale.

 

00:59:43.43

Drew

Right.

 

00:59:47.23

Alyssa

Because especially if you have a newer athlete, they’re like, Oh, that was a nine. Like, what?

 

00:59:54.87

Drew

Really? Was it?

 

00:59:55.82

Alyssa

Yeah, really? Yeah. Or I’ll see, they had, you know, eight by two minutes of uphills and they market like, and they’re supposed to be hard and they market it too. And I’m like,

 

01:00:06.50

Drew

Yeah.

 

01:00:07.36

Alyssa

okay that’s now where we’re very going for and then you start to like they you start to kind of like get a sense of what that actually means but that does take a little bit of time because for that newer athlete that could have felt like an eight because like they never really experienced what an eight or a ten whatever that means is and then they do a workout and they’re like

 

01:00:16.46

Drew

yeah

 

01:00:26.28

Drew

Yeah. Right.

 

01:00:33.23

Alyssa

Or they climb something and like that was a 10 or that was a nine.

 

01:00:36.10

Drew

Yeah.

 

01:00:36.38

Alyssa

You’re like, yes, that shouldn’t like that makes sense.

 

01:00:37.77

Drew

Yes.

 

01:00:39.86

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:00:40.52

Drew

The trick that I’ll use, and anybody who’s worked with me listening to this will immediately know what I’m talking about. I use double progression a lot, which is another in the weeds term that I’ll kind of walk through here. But a question that gets asked a lot with auto regulation is like, okay, great. But like, how do you progress this? Like, what does next week look like in the week after and the week after? And I struggled with that for a long time because everything that I was learning was just based on a singular session and RPE makes sense and is like a singular session. But how do you make it harder each week? How do you progress? You know, all these kinds of things.

 

01:01:14.33

Drew

So it’s your point for the beginner who doesn’t really understand what an eight out of 10 means, or maybe it adjusts on any given day. I will pair, like I mentioned, an RPE or a rep in reserve with a rep range. So instead of three sets of five, it’s like three sets of five to seven reps at an RPE e of eight.

 

01:01:34.62

Drew

And so what I’m saying to them is pick a weight that allows you to fall somewhere between five and seven reps at what you would consider is like an eight out of 10 intensity level. And I’ll keep that prescription fixed for weeks. I mean, they’ll do the same thing for weeks. And what I’m looking at is using the same rate of perceived exertion, the eight out of 10,

 

01:01:59.30

Drew

Are they able to constantly hit the top end of that rep range? If so, my guidance to them is going to be, hey, next week, add weight because we’re at the top of this rep range. So yes, it may feel like an eight out of 10, but like the data is telling me that we’ve got some room here, so let’s increase weight. What you would expect to see is that the following week, they add weight to that and they end up at the lower end of the rep range because logistically, rp would. But with a beginner, they might just always think it’s an eight out of 10. They may just get stuck there, not really understanding what it should feel like. And I can still capture what I’m after by adding the rep range in there too. So the guidance would be, hey, we did the same prescription last week. If you were at the top end of this rep range, add more weight. If you were at the lower end of this rep range, use the same weight, try to get more reps. And we’ll just sort of flirt within that rep range

 

01:02:53.59

Drew

If I want them to peak more towards absolute strength, I’ll just bring the rep range down so intensity goes up. If I want them to move more towards muscle endurance or hypertrophy, if they’re trying to gain muscle mass, we’ll just move the rep range up. But we don’t have to change the rate of perceived exertion. That can kind of stay fixed to give them some time to actually feel what an eight out of 10 is or a seven out of 10 or a nine out of 10 or whatever. um But that’s like the little trick that I’ll use for folks. And they’ll do the same thing for weeks.

 

01:03:21.49

Drew

Until they stop adapting to that stimulus, I won’t change it.

 

01:03:26.57

Drew

I think it’s boring for some people, but man, do they get fit.

 

01:03:28.36

Alyssa

Yeah, hit I know. I mean, I’ve had more than one client, like I need a lot of variety and I’m like, yes, but also a lot of varieties isn’t going to necessarily get us the goals that we need to.

 

01:03:39.40

Drew

Metcons.

 

01:03:44.70

Drew

Yeah, I know.

 

01:03:46.13

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:03:47.10

Drew

Well, and you can do it. like because this is more of an endurance audience. Like another thing I’ll do is you can do this with intervals and I’ll do this with guys all the time. It’s like running a 400 at what you think is a hard pace.

 

01:03:59.37

Drew

And if we have a pace that we need to hit, maybe we’ll use that.

 

01:04:02.44

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:04:03.84

Drew

Rest as long as it takes you to complete it and then just keep doing it and keep doing it until one of two things happens. Number one, you fall off of, you die.

 

01:04:12.01

Alyssa

You die.

 

01:04:14.24

Drew

You fall off of your initial pace by more than whatever constraint I choose. Maybe it’s two seconds. Or you hit the volume I’m after for the day. Maybe it’s 10 repetitions or eight or 12. I mean, these are the decisions you make as a coach, but that same prescription can stay fixed for weeks and the athlete will set the baseline for the day based on how ready they are. So that captures the auto-regulation piece. And then they’ll build volume based on their volume tolerance for the day. Once they hit my ceiling, say it’s 10 reps, then that next week I know they’ve maxed that stimulus. We’re going to change the stimulus, but until they’re able to hit

 

01:04:48.86

Drew

the 400 at the pace I want with the rest I want for the volume that I want, we’re not really gonna change anything. Variety for me comes with like wonky ass metcons and weird core work. That’s where people can have some fun.

 

01:05:02.38

Alyssa

I love it. and That it’ sounds like it. Yeah, gosh, 400s are so hard.

 

01:05:07.59

Drew

Yeah.

 

01:05:08.80

Alyssa

You really hurt. Well, that’s fantastic. I feel like that’s the direction I think we’re really trying to move in.

 

01:05:19.84

Alyssa

And I also love, may I say this to clients all the time when it just comes to endurance pieces and people, I mean, get really hung up on the heart rate piece and they’re staring at their watch the entire beautiful hike that they’re doing.

 

01:05:32.57

Drew

Mm hmm.

 

01:05:32.55

Alyssa

And I don’t know why I always say this, but I always say, well, what happens if someone chucks your watch off the edge of the cliff and you don’t have it anymore and you can’t look at your heart rate?

 

01:05:38.30

Drew

Yeah, exactly.

 

01:05:39.67

Alyssa

What are you going to do? Because we’re going to look at RP. And I don’t know in what context in my brain that, like, some Sasquatch comes up, rips the watch off their hands, and chucks it off, but, like, that’s always what I imagine.

 

01:05:52.31

Drew

Yeah, well,

 

01:05:52.19

Alyssa

So that’s why we practice the P for that situation.

 

01:05:53.93

Drew

Well, for my population, like they literally aren’t allowed to wear watches when they do these events.

 

01:05:54.88

Alyssa

Yeah, they aren’t.

 

01:05:59.21

Drew

And so it’s like, sure, we can get super sexy with data, but what happens when it’s not there? So we’ll use the watch or the pace or whatever.

 

01:06:06.82

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:06:10.66

Drew

It’s like the check on progress, but most of the training will default to more subjective metrics.

 

01:06:18.66

Alyssa

Yeah. We love subjectivity because we’re humans and humans don’t.

 

01:06:23.21

Drew

It freaks people out in the research settings though, man, they don’t know what to do about it.

 

01:06:25.07

Alyssa

It does. I know. So true.

 

01:06:31.21

Drew

That’s the, I mean, I’ll plug this cause we talk about it. I’m often those all the time. And Alex calls it Hammond’s law, I think, or something like that. But, um, everybody knows the phrase, what gets measured gets managed. And then sort of the thing that I jokingly added to the end of it is not everything that needs managing is measurable because we’re talking about Sleep, stress, the music you listen to plays a part, the relationship that you’re in plays a part. All of these things become just as, if not more important, as things like heart rate, even things like RPE. But what’s nice about RPE in this conversation is that it can become a catch-all proxy for a lot of those things. It factors in the fight you had with your spouse the night before, the music you’re listening to. um If there’s a hot date or a hot girl,

 

01:07:19.84

Drew

in the gym and you’re going to put out a little bit more. I mean, these are realities of training that I think people try to pretend don’t exist. And it’s like, okay, sure. But like when you’re on the road and your dog walks in, why do you start going faster? It’s because something’s watching you. Like, let’s just be real.

 

01:07:35.59

Alyssa

Yeah. Yep. I have this conversation all the time with clients where they’re like, well, I moved across the country and my life is entirely new and I’m not sleeping at night and I don’t know why my workouts aren’t going well. And you’re like, okay.

 

01:07:49.39

Drew

I don’t get it. Like my times have gone down. It’s like, well, it’s because you’re stressed out.

 

01:07:51.59

Alyssa

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we ‘re tired. Yeah. Yeah. I also love how we often get to find out huge life things about people like way before anyone else.

 

01:07:59.35

Drew

I know.

 

01:08:02.70

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:08:03.86

Drew

Yeah. That’s, that’s why I think, I mean, I’m biased.

 

01:08:05.69

Alyssa

I’m pregnant.

 

01:08:07.09

Drew

I’m biased, but I feel like coaches,

 

01:08:07.43

Alyssa

My father died.

 

01:08:09.55

Drew

Yeah, coaches play a big role in kind of a mental health space.

 

01:08:13.50

Alyssa

Oh yeah.

 

01:08:13.76

Drew

Certainly more Certainly more than the coach education allows for. I think there should be more of that, but that’s probably another topic.

 

01:08:21.14

Alyssa

Yes, absolutely. Also I shouldn’t laugh. I said my father died and then I chuckled. I didn’t mean that. That’s not a good thing. That’s something I ever chuckle about with a client.

 

01:08:30.76

Drew

It’s a coping strategy.

 

01:08:31.55

Alyssa

It’s, yeah, a coping strategy. Um, but it is wild how much we know it’s great.

 

01:08:37.47

Drew

Yeah.

 

01:08:40.68

Alyssa

It’s scary sometimes, but it’s great. All right. Two last fun things. And then we’ll wrap. This has been very fun training with a weighted pack versus vest thoughts.

 

01:08:57.81

Alyssa

Preferences.

 

01:08:59.16

Drew

Um, man, that’s a, that’s a niche question. Um, preference for me, and this is a cop out answer, but it would depend on the athlete profile.

 

01:09:13.56

Drew

Like if you are looking to do a mountaineering objective, the pack will be on your back. Thus we should likely train that way versus if you’re training for deployment or a selection event.

 

01:09:25.89

Drew

Yes, the pack will be on your back, but you will likely also have a load bearing vest of some sort.

 

01:09:29.34

Alyssa

um

 

01:09:30.24

Drew

And so we’ll train for that. Um, having said all that though, I do notice a lot of folks these days doing more like casual rucking, which has become like a weird,

 

01:09:42.15

Drew

buzzwords like people like my mom like, oh, I think I should start walking around the weight vest. I was like, what the hell?

 

01:09:48.43

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:09:49.44

Drew

um I think.

 

01:09:50.39

Alyssa

I’ve seen instagram reels that people are like, I changed my life wearing the vest on my one mile walk.

 

01:09:53.26

Drew

Yeah.

 

01:09:55.89

Drew

Wearing a vest.

 

01:09:57.35

Alyssa

You’re like, Okay. Well, all right.

 

01:09:59.22

Drew

Right. So to say so so to get into the weeds about you’re in the weeds question,

 

01:09:59.43

Alyssa

You’re welcome.

 

01:10:05.18

Drew

My thought would be that for a general population type person, a weight vest will probably create less soreness than a pack because the load of a pack is so, I mean, it’s distributed completely behind your center of gravity, whereas the weight vest is much more centrally loaded.

 

01:10:22.28

Drew

So might be a better starting point, but again, it would depend on the ultimate goal, if that’s fair to say.

 

01:10:27.93

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:10:30.39

Alyssa

Love it. It’s totally fair. I also love what you did, you’re doing back to me what I did to you on your podcast, where I just kept saying it depends so much.

 

01:10:38.14

Drew

ah Exactly. It depends. Right.

 

01:10:40.60

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:10:40.83

Drew

It depends.

 

01:10:41.10

Alyssa

friends All right. Last question. I kind of love this one. Step ups versus treadmill versus Stairmaster. Why? Which one?

 

01:10:51.71

Drew

So my answer for this, and again, context, tactical athletes, rucking, but mountaineering as well. I actually like a multi step set up, which is deflection of your question towards a different answer. But what I noticed with my guys was that I would program high volume step ups and they would have the concentric phase that I was looking for, the stepping up action. But reversing that movement and coming back down to the ground was not necessarily what we were after from a mountaineering standpoint. And so what I started to do was line boxes up.

 

01:11:27.14

Drew

three boxes, four boxes, five boxes, so that they were stepping up and then also stepping down. And we got to train the eccentric component of that movement. If you climb a mountain, you have to come back down the mountain. So you’re stepping down the whole time. I would have guys do laps, like 300 laps of a five box setup. And that became kind of like the ruck training that we did. um So I don’t know if I answered it directly. I would say step ups, but adding the step down component,

 

01:11:58.25

Drew

Understanding that the eccentric piece of that is going to create some soreness, some fatigue that you might not get if you’re just doing the concentric phase, which would be the stairmaster or the step up. Treadmills are fine if you can add an incline to them. If you can’t, then obviously I would throw that out. I would say stair stepper or box. um But I could make a case for any one of those three things. If you asked me what my ideal setup would be though, I would say that, that multi step up step down thing that I explained.

 

01:12:33.27

Alyssa

I have never thought of that and I feel so dumb saying that because I always think about the download but you’re you’re not stepping backwards down a mountain you’re yeah brilliant okay well

 

01:12:46.54

Drew

Yeah, exactly. I actually have, I have videos, man, if people, well, my Instagram is private now, but if I scrolled way back, you may be able to see them, but I have videos and pictures of guys in the gym, super short ranger panties, heavy rocks.

 

01:13:02.47

Drew

We have multiple boxes and they would just do laps. Like guys knew like, shit, I have 500 laps of the three bucks step up thing because you get the eccentric component and that’s, that’s part of it.

 

01:13:12.19

Alyssa

It makes so much sense. No, that’s genius.

 

01:13:16.27

Alyssa

I love that.

 

01:13:17.28

Drew

There you go folks, an endurance takeaway from the strength podcast.

 

01:13:24.72

Alyssa

That’s awesome, Drew. Yeah. Well, you’ve earned your way back on, so good.

 

01:13:30.16

Drew

Yes.

 

01:13:30.60

Alyssa

Well done.

 

01:13:30.95

Drew

Yes.

 

01:13:31.89

Alyssa

Any last things you want to touch on before we wrap up?

 

01:13:37.17

Drew

Um, no, I would, I would, as a, as a fellow podcast host, I would say to folks, if any of the things we talked about today inspired questions, reach out and we’ll have a conversation about them. Um, yeah, I would, I would love to talk more about strength, hybrid training, combining the two.

 

01:13:46.51

Alyssa

Yeah.

 

01:13:51.47

Drew

I know there’s no such thing as a dumb question. And if strength training is something you’re totally unfamiliar with, like, trust me, I’m more than happy to talk to people about it. So I drew at uphillathlete.com.

 

01:14:03.41

Alyssa

You heard it here first, folks. Send them everything.

 

01:14:06.90

Drew

Send me all your questions.

 

01:14:07.15

Alyssa

You’re free.

 

01:14:07.58

Drew

Happy to help.

 

01:14:08.94

Alyssa

I don’t put my email out that often. I put the general uphill email out, and then it gets home with me if I need it.

 

01:14:13.64

Drew

Oh yeah. I’m more Googleable than I probably want to be having our own podcast. Like it’s people just finding me.

 

01:14:19.64

Alyssa

That’s fair.

 

01:14:21.00

Drew

So might as well tell them where to go.

 

01:14:23.27

Alyssa

It’s very fair. Yeah, I’m, to be honest, probably more Google-able than I should be too.

 

01:14:28.98

Drew

You’re a professional athlete. Like I can Google you’ll there’s another person that shares my exact same name that does. Uh, and I mentioned this in another podcast that we did, but, um, like cartoon wrestling drawings.

 

01:14:44.45

Drew

So if you Google Drew Hammond and that’s what you find, that’s not me. I don’t know who that person is, but we share a name. So if you’re into that, yeah, we’ll see.

 

01:14:51.89

Alyssa

Maybe one day you’ll meet. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Drew, thanks for being on. It was super fun to connect and chat about this.

 

01:14:58.57

Drew

Of course.

 

01:15:02.19

Alyssa

And yeah, we’ll get you on to talk more strength. And honestly, if you don’t feel like picking pigeonholed in this, we can talk about other things too.

 

01:15:11.17

Drew

I’ll talk about whatever.

 

01:15:11.10

Alyssa

So.

 

01:15:11.98

Drew

I’ll talk about baking, gardening. These are some of my passions, woodworking, so whatever anybody’s interested in.

 

01:15:18.05

Alyssa

Love it. Well, Drew is available for coaching. You can reach out to him at Drew at Uppalathlete.com.

 

01:15:26.24

Drew

There you go.

 

01:15:26.56

Alyssa

You can check out his ah podcast, Mops and Moes. It’s great. Really enjoy it. And you can check us out at uphillathlete.com and look at Drew’s bio and, you know, see how amazing he is.

 

01:15:44.76

Alyssa

He’s very accomplished despite what he said.

 

01:15:47.64

Drew

Oh, wow. Thanks for listening, guys.

 

01:15:50.64

Alyssa

Yeah, thanks for joining the Uphill Athlete podcast. If you can like, review, subscribe on your favorite platform, that helps us to reach more athletes and get them stronger because that’s what we’re here for.

 

01:16:03.42

Drew

Boom. Exactly.

 

01:16:04.69

Alyssa

Boom.

 

01:16:05.59

Drew

Do it.

 

01:16:06.68

Alyssa

Do it. Thanks for listening, everyone. And we’ll catch you on the other side.