Our Top Garage Gym Gift Ideas!

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1. Resistance Knee Bands

Price Range: $15 to $30

Knee bands are a versatile and budget-friendly option for anyone looking to enhance their lower-body workouts. The key is choosing the right material. Cloth bands are far superior to rubber bands, as they will not rip out leg hair or burn the skin.

Uses:

• Great for activating glutes before squats or deadlifts.
• Helpful for injury prevention and recovery.
• Ideal for exercises like hip bridges, monster walks, and goblet squats.

Where to Buy: Amazon and fitness retailers.

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2. Walking Pad for Desk Work

Price Range: $70 to $600

For the multitasker or someone working from home, a walking pad is an excellent gift. These compact treadmills fit under a standing desk and encourage movement throughout the workday.

Why It's Great:

• Helps reach step goals (e.g., 10,000 to 15,000 steps per day).
• Combats sedentary habits from long work hours.
• Easy to integrate into daily routines.

Tip: Start with a mid-range model for durability and reliability.

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3. Freak Athlete Machine with Leg Developer

Price Range: Premium

For those ready to invest in their fitness, the Freak Athlete machine is a game-changer. This all-in-one piece of equipment allows for a variety of exercises, including GHD sit-ups, Nordic curls, hamstring curls, and leg extensions.

Why It's Worth It:

• Perfect for small garage gyms with limited space.
• Extremely versatile and built specifically for individual use.
• A cost-effective alternative to multiple single-function machines.

Note: This is a premium gift but ideal for someone deeply committed to their garage gym setup.

https://freakathlete.co/

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4. Cable Rack Attachment

Price Range: $40 to $90

Transform a squat rack into a cable machine with a cable rack attachment. This compact and affordable addition opens up new possibilities for upper-body and isolation exercises.

Uses:

• Tricep pushdowns.
• Lat pulldowns.
• Bicep curls and more.

Where to Buy: Amazon or fitness-specific retailers.

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5. O2 Trainer, Diaphragm Strengthening Device

Price Range: $60

Improve breathing performance with the O2 Trainer. This tool strengthens the diaphragm, helping athletes optimize their respiratory efficiency during workouts.

Why It's Useful:

• Boosts VO2 max and overall endurance.
• Helps develop controlled and powerful breathing techniques.
• Simple and quick to use (just 3 minutes per day).

Amazon

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6. Kettlebell

Price Range: Varies

The classic kettlebell is a must-have for any garage gym. It is a perfect gift for someone new to fitness or looking to expand their equipment collection.

Why It's a Great Gift:

• Versatile for exercises like swings, goblet squats, and presses.
• Available in various weights to suit all fitness levels.
• Easy to find at most sporting goods stores.

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7. MOBO Board

Price Range: $90

This balance and mobility tool strengthens the feet, arches, and ankles. It is perfect for runners or anyone looking to improve stability and prevent injuries.

Why It Stands Out:

• Engages foot arches to enhance stability.
• Helps improve balance and ankle mobility.
• Ideal for rehab and prehab exercises.

Where to Buy: Purchase directly from MOBO or other specialty retailers.

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8. Chest Strap Heart Rate Monitor

Price Range: $50 to $100

A chest strap heart rate monitor is an excellent companion for anyone with a fitness watch. It provides more accurate heart rate data during activities like running, cycling, or strength training.

Why It's Useful:

• Ensures accurate data for heart rate zones.
• Enhances performance tracking during workouts.
• Compatible with most fitness watches like Garmin, Apple Watch, or Polar.

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Wrapping It Up

This holiday season, give the gift of fitness with these thoughtful and practical ideas. Whether it is a budget-friendly knee band, a walking pad for the office, or a premium piece of gym equipment, there is something for every garage gym athlete on your list.

If you want to take your fitness journey to the next level, join the Garage Gym Athlete community at garagegymathlete.com and start your free trial today.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast. Jerred Moon here with Joe Courtney. How's it going, Joe?

Joe: Great, man. It always feels like such a long time between talking now, because it is, from what we've been doing for years.

Jerred: It feels like a long time because it is a long time. Yeah, it's definitely a change of pace for the podcast episodes. Not hitting as much research, shorter episodes. But again, always looking for feedback from any of you who have been listening for a long time. Just let us know what you think in the community. Shoot us an email, let us know on Instagram, shoot us a message, whatever you got.

We always appreciate the feedback. But so far so good. I do like being able to tackle topics real quick and very straight to the point. That's been good for me just to get some ideas out of my head and recorded, but I also do enjoy talking to you and passing things out. How's your training been, man? How are things going?

Joe: So my body actually feels better now than it has, I think, all year. The healing process has been super slow, but I mentioned a few months ago that my heel is pretty much better after the PRP injection. Shoulder and wrist took a bit longer, but everything feels fantastic.

I can basically do everything, 90, 95 percent, without much of any pain. So I'm working back on getting my strength up, especially my shoulder, because I wasn't able to do a lot of pressing because of my shoulder issues. And then last week, for the first time in I think two years, I actually did a workout with power cleans, which was crazy and felt great because I love power cleans.

I wasn't really good at them, but that was my wrist injury. I just have not been able to do them. So I actually did a longer EMOM and tested it out and it was good. I stayed fairly light for what I'm used to, but it was still really good. And yeah, I'm really happy about that.

Jerred: That's good, man. Finally not hurt.

Joe: Yeah, I like it.

Jerred: Don't get ahead of yourself. I'm still plenty hurt.

Joe: Yeah, there's still things I gotta watch out for, do some extra PT mobility, stuff like that. But I'm pretty much without limitation. I just got to keep up with a lot of things. There's always upkeep, especially nowadays, but it's still pretty encouraging that I can pretty much do most any workout that I see come up. I don't have to think of, okay, I gotta back this down, I got to change this out, maybe I need to do this today instead. So that's definitely really nice.

Jerred: That's awesome, man. For me, I have a big update, an unfortunate update. The HYROX was this past Saturday and I did not run it. We didn't go. Long story short, and the reason it's unfortunate is because when you train a bunch for one specific thing, we had some specific programming. To catch anyone up who didn't know, it was me and one of the garage gym athletes. His name is Mark Bishop. We ran the ultra together earlier this year, which feels like two or three years ago at this point, in all honesty.

Anyway, we were doing pro doubles, and they shot us an email on Wednesday, HYROX did, with the start times for that Saturday. And it was close to 8 PM for our start time, and we were like, wow, that's pretty late. We thought this was a morning event, but then as you look through how they run the day, they just have so many people who sign up for this event.

And they prioritize the single competitors, just one person running the event, pro, and then all the way down. So they put pro doubles as the last thing. And then it just came down to the fact that, honestly, schedule-wise, it just didn't work. Mark was going to fly in on a really tight schedule. He was going to fly in Friday night, race Saturday morning, and then he had to leave Saturday night. With his schedule being a pilot, and then going into Thanksgiving week with family stuff.

So we looked at all these different ways to try and make it work. Other than him trying to fly in Saturday morning, compete Saturday night, and then fly out that night, it just wasn't going to work. So we ultimately couldn't pull it off. Super unfortunate for both me and Mark. We put in a lot of training to get ready for the HYROX and then we weren't able to compete.

So that's a huge bummer, but I still really want to do a HYROX. So I think I'm just going to keep training, which to be honest, training for HYROX isn't much of a stretch. If you're not trying to be super competitive, it's not super far off from what I would do on a weekly or monthly basis anyway. So I think I'm just going to keep training how I am. I was on more specific HYROX programming that I had created for myself. I will probably just slip back into a Hard to Kill track now, something like that for the meantime, and then see if I want to change anything up.

I haven't even looked at other HYROX events yet, but I'll probably get one on the calendar for sometime next year, even if I'm not necessarily waiting for it to be in Dallas again. But I know they do a lot of international ones. I'm not trying to go to Hong Kong to race one of these things. You don't want to come to Spain, because they have them in Madrid. When is the Madrid one? Do you know?

Joe: I know it was like two weeks before yours, but I know there are more that I get emails from, because I signed up for their wait list for the Madrid one because it was all booked up. I wouldn't be able to do it anyway. But yeah, they have Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, they're all over Portugal. So there are definitely ones that pop up and they open up new ones. So I've gotten emails about them, but I haven't really looked into them. Even Germany. What is that, like a seven to 12 hour flight?

Jerred: Seven to 12 hours of travel for a one hour event. Yeah, maybe don't. If I was going to Europe, we would just have to bring the family and be there for a few weeks. There's no way I'd fly in for one event. So that's up there. Otherwise, for sure. I get it, and I don't mind doing a race at 8 PM. It's not the end of the world. We could have done it, but they also let us know late.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. If I'm going to race at 8 PM, I want to choose my time slot when I sign up, so that I know I need to, because at 8 PM I feel like I need to almost change training for that. I work at 8 AM and at 8 PM I'm asleep, or in bed at least.

Jerred: Yeah. It's funny. I go to bed at nine o'clock pretty much every night, I'd say between nine and 10. And we were playing, there's this place here in Dallas, I think they're a franchise, so they're all over the place. It's called Chicken N Pickle. They play pickleball. They're these big facilities, they have pickleball indoor and outdoor, and then they serve fried chicken, basically. And we went there. You can spend a lot of time there. We got there at six and we ended up leaving at 11:30 or something like that.

But when 10 o'clock hit, we were still playing pickleball and I quickly became useless. I was in my eighth game of pickleball, and then all of a sudden my brain switched off. We don't care anymore, we're done with pickleball, we're done being competitive. So that probably wouldn't have happened at an 8 PM to 9 PM race. But it was funny how quickly the lights turned off for me. I was like, okay, I'm good, I'm ready to go home. You get in your routines and your habits, and it's hard to break after a certain point.

Joe: Yeah, we've pretty much relegated ourselves to doing almost nothing in Spain, because it all happens way too late for us.

Jerred: Yeah, I can't keep up with this crowd, this country, at all. Okay, let's get into a topic for the day. Thanks for the updates, and we'll continue these with Joe and I periodically. But again, like I said, we're looking for feedback from athletes who have been listening to the podcast for a while. What you want to hear more of, just let us know. However you want to contact us works for us. But today we're talking about Christmas gifts, right? Our top gift ideas for the holidays for the garage gym athlete. So do you want to kick things off, Joe? What's your number one, or number three going in reverse order?

Joe: I don't really have any sort of rank. I don't have anything ranked. My idea was, I was thinking between fifty and a hundred dollars for a recommendation, but if you want to go over that, there's plenty of lists out there. Jerred, if you wanted to get me something for Christmas, I wear a size regular Freak Athlete GHD that you can just, you know.

Jerred: Yeah. Yeah.

Joe: But I was going for the 50 to a hundred, because that seems like the gift-giving range, depending on friend or family. You see a lot of lists for 50 and below. You can get plenty of other things like resistance bands. I'm not going to mention the normal resistance band, but I also have a story for the first one that I wanted to say, and those are the knee bands.

And specifically the ones they sell, don't get the rubber ones. There are ones that are two or three inches wide and they're like a cloth material, because it will not rip out your leg hair. So that's really important, or it just burns your skin. So we got these and they're fantastic. I used to use them all the time. I was actually using them when I was injured and I couldn't lift super heavy, or couldn't put a barbell on, because I was still doing certain movements like squats, goblet squats, hip bridges, stuff like that. You put the knee band on and it really steps it up. It's almost like adding more weight because you're using your glutes a lot more.

Last week I was squatting, and a couple of weeks ago I was starting to have some tightness in my hip flexor or groin for some reason. When I was walking, when I was running, and when I was squatting, my groin or hip flexor got really tight and it was painful popping out of the bottom of the squat unless I went super slow, but I didn't want that. So I was like, okay, what's going on? Maybe my glutes aren't firing. So I put the knee band on, I did some monster walks side to side, and then I kept the knee bands on for the duration of my squat workout and the rest of the lower body workout. And I didn't feel anything in my hip flexor or groin for the rest of the workout.

So it was just a glute issue that I needed to make sure was firing, and it was just a medium sized band. Nothing to give a really deep burn, but it was just there as a, hey, you need to fire a bit more, you're not. It was really awesome to feel that, and okay, it's a simple fix. Those knee bands are pretty inexpensive. You can find them on Amazon, all kinds of different brands. They're great to scale up your lower body workout or to make sure you're activating your glutes, because that's a huge thing when it comes to lower body. Or in my case, it really made sure that I didn't hurt myself.

Jerred: And where do you get these bands? Amazon?

Joe: Yeah, Amazon.

Jerred: Yeah, I think bands that don't rip out your hair, that's a huge plus.

Joe: You look at the resistance bands, all you have to do is that. There's a brand called Tribe, I think that's the one that we have. They have several different ones. They're nice and thick. So don't do the rubber ones, do the actual cloth or whatever material it is. And they're 15 bucks right now. 15 to 30 bucks.

Jerred: Cool. I'll jump in. Mine's not going to follow the budget recommendation at all, because this is part me wanting to talk about this contraption I have, and then part recommending it. So yes, the Freak Athlete thing is what I'm suggesting, because I just got it. It was super delayed. When I bought the Freak Athlete a couple of months ago, I bought the leg developer with it. So you're able to do leg curls and leg extensions. But it was delayed. The Freak Athlete machine came, and that was a new thing for them. They said they'd send it in October, and then it didn't come in October, and then they said November.

So I just got it a couple of days ago, the leg developer. So I've had the Freak Athlete machine for a couple of months. And I would say I recommend this. I fully recommend it, in all honesty. It's just really cool to be able to do all the things that a Freak Athlete machine does. Where I think this machine would suck is in a gym, an actual commercial gym where many people are using it. People who don't care about the equipment, it gets too many uses throughout the day. In that capacity, this Freak Athlete thing would probably fall apart, not be a great addition to any kind of serious commercial gym. But for the garage gym athlete, just singular or maybe a couple of people, I think it's a phenomenal machine just because of how much you can do.

I didn't get the upgraded GHD and all these other things, and I don't know if it really matters, because I've already talked about how this thing isn't a legitimate reverse hyper, and I'd never use it for that. But it is great for GHD sit-ups and Nordic curls. And now the fact that I can do hamstring curls and leg extensions. I was wondering how the functionality was going to be on that, if it was going to suck or not be that great, but they nailed it. It's really good for being able to do leg extensions. I've done two workouts now where I actually added leg extensions and hamstring curls into the workout just to see how the machine would work. And it works great.

So I know that would be a really expensive purchase for somebody, maybe for a friend, but if you are a spouse listening to this, maybe getting it for your wife or your husband, that might be more in the realm of something that would be acceptable. And I think it would be a phenomenal addition to anybody who has a garage gym. So the Freak Athlete with the leg developer, because we've talked about this before, I really wanted to get a leg extension machine. I was looking at the one from Titan because it was, I don't remember how much, somewhere like 300 to 600 bucks. I was thinking about getting it because I wanted to be able to do leg extensions. But with that machine, all you could do was leg extensions. That was it.

So I was going to have this Titan machine and be able to do leg extensions. And now with the Freak Athlete, they added that. I can do leg extensions, curls for the hamstrings, and then all the other things that the Freak Athlete machine does. And I haven't even looked into how versatile they're trying to make it. It's really like a Swiss Army knife. They have some upper body kit now where, I don't know if you can do bicep curls and stuff with it, because it basically has that lever arm that you can do the leg extension on. So if you can find a way to get your upper body involved, which I think they did, now you can do all these different things.

So it is just such a great piece of equipment, and I'm not affiliated with the company at all. I get nothing if you go buy one of these. We're not a part of their affiliate program. I don't have a code you can use, none of that. I just legitimately think it's a great piece of equipment, that they built, like I said, really like a Swiss Army knife for the garage gym athlete. So really solid. If you need my address, just let me know. I was on their website the other day when I was building the leg extension, and they talked about international shipping. So I think you could get one.

Joe: I feel like they have a UK side or something like that, maybe, I don't know. So mine is also, if we're throwing a budget out, then I will take a concept-to-strength system for 1,500, Alex.

Jerred: So I don't know if we want to talk about that more, but I decided against that machine, because I watched it more. And the second I saw it in use, I was like, oh, there's zero eccentric motion. So that was my, I should have known that. I should have known just thinking through it. It should have been obvious there's not going to be any eccentric motion on this, which is good from an injury standpoint, no eccentric motion. If you only have concentric motion in anything, the chance of you getting injured is very low. But I'm just so torn. I don't think I've seen enough research on what happens when you train only concentric. But I know eccentric is pretty important. That would be the lowering, the stretching, right?

That's not happening. So when you're missing, there are three types of muscle contractions. There's eccentric, concentric, and isometric. You're missing two out of the three with that. I don't know if it's a good long term strength building thing. I'd rather get machines like the leg extension or something from Freak Athlete or something else. So ultimately I don't think I'm going to pull the trigger on that one, because of the lack of eccentric.

Joe: Yeah. When I saw it, I figured the best thing to do with it would be power or power endurance, because you can crank it up high, you can push really hard. You can push as hard as you can. There's no landing, there's nothing like that. And then you go back and you push as hard as you can. And 30 seconds of that, you'd be toast, and you get real powerful. But that's about the extent of it.

Jerred: Yeah, because I think when we first talked about it, the main reason I was interested was for my family, not necessarily for me. And that's where I'm bigger. Would this be great for my kids as they're building their strength and power, like you're saying? Yeah, I think it would be. But then where I land is, I need to do more research, because if I were to train my kids and I took away eccentric motion, is that only good for them because the chance of injuries has dropped significantly? Or is that bad, because we're missing a large portion of just how the human body moves? That's what I got to go figure out.

Joe: My second one will have the eccentric motion. This is what I got for us. I got us this last year. You can get a bunch of different sets of it. It does attach to your squat rack or something else, and that is a cable attachment with all different kinds of hooks and stuff that you can do. So basically it hooks to the top, it's like your pull up bar, you set plates on top of this little thing, you hook the cable to it, and then you can attach. I mostly use it for tricep pushdowns, which I love it for. You can do cables on it. If you sit on the ground or on something, usually it's on the ground depending on how high your thing goes, lat pulldowns are fantastic for it.

So you can transform your cage into somewhat of a cable machine to do a bunch of different cable exercises. You have to get a second pivot point in order to do lower things. I only have the top one for pulling down or pulling toward you. But to pull up, you have to get a second one, which some of you can. You can get them on Amazon, search cable rack attachment or whatever. And it comes with all different kinds of handles. Some of them come with multiple pivot points, and they range anywhere from 40 to 90. They're a great investment. I use mine at least once a month, maybe even a couple of times a month, mostly for the tricep pushdowns, which I think are still really good, and then lat pulldowns and stuff like that. So a cable rack attachment.

Jerred: I think that's awesome. Doesn't take up much room. We're leaning towards isolation in our old age, right? I don't know.

Joe: I don't know.

Jerred: What's coming up? So here's mine. Let me start with a question. Do you know how many steps you get per day on average?

Joe: Sometimes probably just seven to eight thousand during the week. I get a little notification, Garmin sets off at 7,700, but you know, sometimes I hit it, sometimes I don't.

Jerred: Yeah, I'd say I'm pretty good about hitting around 10,000. If I run that day it's going to be more, but just with the kids and their schedules, I'm pretty good to hit 10,000. But there are some work days where I don't do a lot and I could get four or 5,000. And that's not very good. So going into 2025, I've just been thinking about what kind of habits do I want to strive for or improve? And I want to try and hit consistently 13 to 15,000 steps per day. And normally when I hit 15,000 steps in a day, that's a pretty, I did a lot that day, because steps aren't always just you walking, right? It's like cleaning the house, or you did an extra activity or whatever.

So between my dog, which I'm now walking and getting more steps in, I think I can hit 15,000 steps per day. That's the average I'm going for, honestly, 13 to 15,000 for 2025. So I was thinking of other ways I can do this. I'm in a lot of meetings throughout the week, and some days it's just hours of meetings back to back. So I'm going to purchase for myself, and I think this is a great gift idea for anyone else, a walking pad for my desk. And I've been looking at them on Amazon, and the range is insanity. You can buy these for 70, up to three, six hundred bucks. I don't know which one's good, but you could start with a 70 dollar one, right?

You could start with that. I have a coworker who's going to try the 70 dollar one. I typically don't like to go bottom of the barrel when I'm trying out a new piece of equipment, so I'm going to probably go with one of the mid range ones. I'm definitely not spending 600 bucks on a desk treadmill. So anyway, these walking pads, they're not legitimate treadmills, in my opinion. It's not made for running miles and miles. Some of them only go up to three and a half or four miles per hour, which is a decent clip if you're trying to also interact with something on your computer. So my plan is just to start walking during meetings.

I already hate meetings anyway. And most of the time I just have to talk to people during meetings and not do a lot of work. When I'm working, I like to sit or stand and be pretty focused. I don't think I could also walk while I'm working, but to add extra steps throughout the day, that's something I'm going to be doing. So a walking pad is ultimately my gift recommendation. And like I said, the price range is pretty crazy. For as low as 70 bucks, you can grab one of these and get more steps in throughout your day. I already talked about walking. I did a podcast a couple months ago on where walking fits in for the athlete. It's phenomenal for you.

Getting more steps in is going to help you live a longer, healthier life. So any way we can do that, the better. And I tried scheduling walks into my day, but in all honesty, that's probably the most skipped activity I ever put on my calendar. It was like, okay, time to go for a 15 minute walk, and I'm like, I think I might just keep working. I would always make that decision. But I do think, like I said, I hate sitting in meetings anyway, so I'll just start walking during all of them.

Joe: We're gonna have to record a podcast while you're walking.

Jerred: Yeah, I can do that. I can walk and podcast. I'll probably be better.

Joe: Maybe, yeah, get the brain juices flowing. I probably won't have one of those anytime soon, at least not until we move again. But I can use my third recommendation while we do that, if we really want to. And this one is a PT tool, something that I've been using to help with my Achilles and my heel and stuff like that, and it's a MOBO Board. This is a circular piece of bamboo wood, and they have different pegs, different positions, and you essentially balance on it. What it's meant for is to really activate the arches in your feet, because a lot of times we have a hard time activating our arches. And that's something I'm working on a lot.

So there's a hole for your other four toes to go through, and only your big toe is on the board. So as you're bouncing on one foot, you're pressing down on your big toe the entire time, so your arch is constantly activating. But it's also, depending on what pegs you do, you're balancing on your ankle. So it's strengthening your foot, it's working your stability on your ankle. And I've been using this, I got it almost a year ago, and it's really helped out. I'm making Liz start to use it because I want her to start to use her arches a bit more. And I've started doing really light RDLs on it, because you're balancing on one foot while you're activating, doing all these things slow and controlled, as a really good warmup.

They are 90 bucks. They aren't on Amazon. There's a cheap version on Amazon, but I would just go for the actual one through MOBO, because I think the PT who created it was a running specialist PT. But I think it's really good. So it's a gift for somebody who's a runner, or just somebody who might need some extra ankle stability. If they have feet problems, doing more arch support would be really helpful.

Jerred: Yeah, that's awesome. That's what my third recommendation is in line with, not arch support, but hitting these auxiliary things that we know are important. So I actually have two recommendations, two more gift ideas to round this out. But my actual third one, it costs 60 bucks and it's called the O2 Trainer. It's like a lung trainer. It's supposed to strengthen the diaphragm. This is something I started focusing on right at the beginning of my HYROX training. I actually hired a coach for this. I'm still working with him and will be for the next couple months, because this is way more difficult than I thought. But I'm working a lot on breath work right now, breathing performance, because I could do a whole podcast on this and I probably will, because I'm still very much in the learning phases.

But I thought I knew how to breathe, and my breathing was all screwed up. I feel like I've always known that, that my breathing has been a limiter to some capacity. I'm talking about for performance, not just sitting around like meditation type breathing. But part of working through this is actually realizing how to utilize your diaphragm. And then once you're good at accessing your diaphragm, how to pull in more air, also how to exhale, and then strengthening the diaphragm.

Anyway, the O2 Trainer is something I'm using in conjunction with this program. And it's been really great to work on. Like I said, I'll probably do a podcast on this at some point, especially after I'm done going through the coaching phase and seeing what progress it might help. Because the guy I'm working with, he works with a lot of ultra marathon runners, and just the performance increases that a lot of these people have seen. They're already phenomenal athletes, right? And then he helps them become even better by just fixing their breathing, because you can get really fit without ever having to really focus on it.

You could just put in the work and you'll get really fit and you're fine. But the things that he really helps you do, increase your performance even more, like increases in VO2 max. Anyway, the O2 Trainer is part of that training. It's 60 bucks. I think if you just get that and start watching the videos on how to utilize it, and you use it, it takes three minutes per day. It's a super easy thing to use. So I'll say that, because it's something I'm using and it's fairly cheap. And I think it can make a huge impact on your training. The last thing I want to round out with is, in all honesty, what I've actually gifted the most to friends and family members, and that's a kettlebell.

Joe: That's what I was wondering, when that was going to pop up.

Jerred: Yeah, I didn't want it to be one of my top three, because I felt like it was going to be, if I was like, yeah, buy somebody a kettlebell, a barbell, and some plates. I wanted to be a little bit more creative in our podcast episode today. But legitimately, if you're trying to get somebody into fitness, getting them a lighter kettlebell would be really helpful. Those typically aren't that expensive. You can buy them from almost anywhere. Now you could even go to Target or Dick's Sporting Goods and all these places and buy decent sized kettlebells that aren't that expensive. So you don't have to worry about shipping. You could buy those as a gift for people.

I did that for my brother, I've done it for my in-laws, and they end up actually using it too, for deadlifts and stuff, or when they're at home. People get in more fitness, you realize, once you buy them things like this. So yeah, that's what I've actually gifted the most over the years, a kettlebell to different people in my family. So that's where I'll end it.

Joe: So going back to the breath, I was actually wondering if you were going to bring this up. Do you still use your nose bridge breathers?

Jerred: I do. I use it strategically now. I'm not wearing it all the time. I'd say I was using it when I would sleep, and then on certain runs, but now I'm not really using it when I sleep anymore either. I just don't feel like I need it. But I'm using it on these runs. So I'll get into it real briefly, but especially now that HYROX is over, there's a certain level of performance that you need. If I need to go run zone four today or whatever, I can't sit around and focus on breathing in and out of my nose, or making sure things are coming in and out of my diaphragm and all that. It's too much, I just got to put in the work.

But now that I'm not really training for anything, most of my runs are going to just these breathing practices that I'm being coached on. So I will use the nasal strip during these runs, because my coach thought it was a good idea. Let's open up the nostrils. He also taught me some things, if you don't have the nasal strip or you don't want to use it, there are other strategies to make sure your nose is open. So I am using that. But between the nasal strips, this breathing stuff, hiring a coach, I really wanted to focus on this at the end of the year and a little bit into next year is probably when I'll wrap things up. But it's just the next phase I wanted to truly try and master and learn a lot more about.

So I'm going on these runs now where I'm not paying attention to cadence, I'm not paying attention to heart rate zone or anything. All I'm paying attention to the entire run is my breath. So the runs aren't long, it'd be like one to three miles, but I do them more frequently. And I'm just focusing. Like I said, I'll have to do a full podcast on it, because I'm sure people are interested now, but it's not just, oh, make sure you're breathing in and out of your nose. There's so much more to it. There's so much like how to properly inhale through your nose, access the diaphragm, how that expands in all directions, goes into your chest. And then also the exhale is very important. There are multiple different strategies for the exhale.

So it is fairly complicated. Because I've tried, oh, I'm just gonna breathe in and out of my nose on this run. It never felt like that helped me at all in any real way. And so I knew there was something I was missing, and now it's obvious that I was.

Joe: That's something I would struggle with, but probably should get better at, because I definitely have a pretty quick fight or flight response when it comes to breathing. Slowing down breathing, or controlling and holding breathing, I'm like, oh my God, I can't breathe.

Jerred: Yeah, CO2 tolerance is another big thing, and you can read about that in that book, Art of Breath. Your body doesn't actually need to breathe, but it makes you freak out when too much CO2 builds up in your blood. It gives you that response, that you take that breath, even though you could probably make it another 15, 20, 30 seconds of holding your breath. It's trying to make you freak out, so you take that breath. So there's a certain level of being okay with that feeling, that tolerance. Because if you think about it, people are holding their breath. What are those, the deep sea divers, the freedivers? Yeah, they're holding their breath for six minutes and stuff. You'd think they feel uncomfortable at some point. They probably feel uncomfortable, and they're just training not only their lung capacity, but the ability to sit with that discomfort and know that they're ultimately okay.

Joe: I'd have one bonus one as well, and then I'll be finished. And that is for anybody, if you know somebody that has a Garmin, or a stupid square watch, Apple Watch, just kidding, or Polar or something, and if they haven't gotten themselves a heart rate monitor, a chest strap to do that, because you can get them anywhere from 50 to a hundred bucks. So still under the hundred dollar mark, but it's definitely worth it. Really nice to have, especially on runs. You usually get more accurate heart rate on certain activities. It's not necessary, but if you really need a gift idea and somebody has a fitness watch and does work out pretty regularly, it's pretty nice to have.

Jerred: Awesome. Yeah, great addition. All right, we'll wrap it up there. Hopefully we gave you some great gift ideas for your loved ones, friends, families, colleagues. And that'll be it for this one. If you want to become a part of our training, you want to be a garage gym athlete, go to garagegymathlete.com, sign up for a free trial, and we'd love to have you there. For all of our athletes sticking around, being a part of the community, doing the training, we really do appreciate you. But that's it for this one.

Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.