The 7-Step Science-Backed Goal Setting Method for Athletes

Hey, Athletes! The 7-Step Science-Backed Goal Setting Method for Athletes - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!

The 7-Step Science-Backed Goal Setting Method for Athletes

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IN THIS 30-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Jerred and Joe discuss goal setting
• They go through a meta-analysis study on goal setting
• Jerred gives the 7-step process for goal setting
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you: 

Reference these studies for this week!

• The performance and psychological effects of goal setting in sport: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Don't forget to watch today's podcast!

• The 7-Step Science-Backed Goal Setting Method for Athletes

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: [00:00:00] All right. In today's episode, we are talking everything goals and what science has to say about it. So do you actually know how to set a goal? Do you know the different goal types and do you know which goal type is actually the most effective? On top of that, I will be going over the seven step process for setting the best, most perfect goal according to the scientific research.

So that's what we have for today. Everything goals. This is the garage gym athlete podcast. And we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage basement and spare bedroom out there. I'm Jared moon. And with Joe Courtney, we are strength and conditioning coaches who have turned over 20, 000 people into garage gym athletes over the last decade, and we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today, we're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but.

From our years of experience. [00:01:00] So let's dive in.

All right. Let's dive right into today's episode. We're going to be covering some of the latest research on goal setting. Joe, would you consider yourself a goal setter? You set goals. I actually wouldn't. Yeah, it's rare. I just,

Joe: There's only been a handful of times I've actually set goals. We can get more into that if you want, but yeah I regularly don't have a set hard goals.

Jerred: And I'm the flipped. The opposite. So I'm definitely a goal setter. So let's get into what the science has to say about goal setting specifically. So the quick facts of the study that we're covering today, the research it is a systematic review and meta analysis. It was done in 2022. So a systematic review meta analysis, that means they're, it's a study of studies, right?

They're looking at all the other studies to come up with one conclusion. And the title of it is the performance and psychological effects of goal setting in sport. So the study was [00:02:00] conducted as a review of existing literature, analyzing 17, 841 articles, and they ended up selecting 27 of them that met the eligibility criteria.

So that's how they do a systematic review and meta analysis. They look at all these different studies. They set up their criteria and then after that criteria, they get down to how many meet the criteria that was 27. And I always like to dive into the study and see if I can find out why exactly the authors of the study were interested in doing it.

And sometimes they have that information and sometimes they don't. This time they did. So from the authors, the why behind this was. To provide an updated synthesis that assesses the general effects of goal setting and to disentangle the performance effects in psychological and psychophysiological effects of different goal types Thereby providing a more holistic account of goal setting effects in sport.

So They go on to say in the introduction of the study, looking at goals from scientific standpoint has been [00:03:00] around since the 1980s and they just wanted to dive into a little bit more. There's a lot of stuff published on goals, goal setting specifically in sports. So for athletes and what's effective and what's not effective.

So I think looking at the study and diving into it a little bit more, the three the big thing that came out of it for me was there were three different types of goals and one type was more effective than the other, so on and so forth. We'll get into all that, but it was performance goals, process goals, and outcome goals were the main things that they were looking at.

So just to. Define those before we jump into anything else. Performance goals are exactly what you would think. So I want to run a five minute mile. I want to lose a certain not, let's just, let's not say lose a certain amount of weight. So I want to run a five minute mile, something performance driven, something like that.

I want to lift a certain amount of weight. Process goal is exactly as it sounds. So you are dedicating yourself. To the process. The goal is the process. It's the doing every day. [00:04:00] It's the doing every week. That's a process goal. And then the outcome goal can be like the weight. So I want to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year.

That would be an outcome goal. And we can get into all the difference the differences in those. And I'll definitely get into which one's most effective. But I do want to get your take here as we open it up. What were your thoughts? In the intro of the study and what they were looking at or any first impressions as you started to dive into it.

So

Joe: this read more like a paper than a typical study that I'm used to. And I think the main takeaway made a lot of sense. I really liked it. I even pulled out like a quote from it. I don't have many notes on the actual study itself or the write up, but the, what I pulled from it is like really important.

And the main takeaway. was I liked how they got to that approach and what to get out

Jerred: of it. Yeah. So a few other things that I before we jump into. The different the [00:05:00] goals that matter and the ones that don't matter so much, there were a lot of other interesting things in the paper that I just wanted to highlight on before we went any further.

And one, people talk a lot about having a big goal out in the future. So like a long term goal, short term goal, all those kinds of things. And one thing specifically from. This meta analysis was, it said both short term and a combination of short term and long term goals led to improvements with no significant difference between them.

You can have a short term goal, you can have a long term goal, but according to the research, there wasn't really a difference in having one or the other. And I found that really interesting because I feel like some people are really in the, you need that five year goal, you need the ten year goal, you need all that.

And then some people were in the short term no, never planned more than a quarter, never planned more than 30 days, something like that. And then obviously a combination works as well, but there was no significant difference between them. I found that really interesting. And also long, it also said long term goals alone did not [00:06:00] have a significant effect.

So if you only had a long term goal, that seemed to be a negative. If you were just like, yeah, someday in 10 years, I want to do this thing. Or I want to be this amount of weight, or I want to have this performance goal, whatever, maybe it's too far out to be effective. But the science backs that up too.

When you have this kind of vague someday in the future goal. It's not going to really work very well. Another couple of interesting things. The specificity of goals, it said both specific and non specific goals led to improvements with no significant difference between them. I found this one very interesting because most of the time, if you are ever talking to anyone about goals, you read anything about goals they say to make it super specific, like it should be.

Super, super specific to exactly what you want to do, how you're going to achieve it, all those kinds of things. And I do think that helps in like your planning process and all those kinds of things. But according to the research, specific and nonspecific goals led to improvements. They didn't get into the [00:07:00] exact, like when it is a systematic review and meta analysis, they don't get into the exact details sometimes, which like you're saying, you're like, it read more like a paper.

So we don't know exactly the exact thing that was specific and nonspecific. But the way I take that is Okay, you can have a very specific goal or you can have a vague goal. Like I want to win this championship or I want to run that race. I want to run an ultramarathon sometime next year.

That's vague. But if I'm like, I want to run an ultramarathon on this date at this distance, and I want to run that distance in this time, they both are leading to the same outcome. And I feel like I do a combination of both of those sometimes I'm like, yeah, I want to do this thing next year, but I don't get more specific than that and I'll end up doing it.

But it's not as specific as a specific goal.

Joe: That's what I issued. I've run into with goal setting in the past is that you, either it's been in military training or if, and other things that they tell you to make a sparkle, it has to be what specific measurable, attainable, all these things.

And it's [00:08:00] okay, you want to do this? It's I want to do this. Okay. How long, when do you want to do it by? I don't know. I just want to do it. I don't know how long it's going to take me to get to that point, but I'm going to do it and I'm going to work on doing it. So I can't tell you how long it's going to happen.

If it's attainable, all these things, it's just, I'm going to work toward it. So I, so that's been my holdup with sometimes goal settings that I don't know how long certain goals are going to take. And then if I set it too short, then I don't achieve it. Then I'm let down. Or if I set it too long and I achieved way before, then it's I didn't set my goal,

Jerred: my bar high enough.

Yeah. And I think that's a problem with goal setting. So the smart framework you're talking about, yeah, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound has to have all of those. And that makes it a smart goal and smart goals. They can get you really far, but sometimes they can be really discouraging when you get down to that level of detail, if you didn't achieve it.

And so it can make people abandon the goal setting process. And that's what I see over and over again, as people, if you set a [00:09:00] goal too small and you just crush it, it was too easy. Then you're what's the point of goals. This is I can just go do things. And then if it's too hard, then it's just discouraging.

And you're just say you write it down every day in your notebook and you're like, I can't achieve this. And I never will. Or it's just, I'm not capable. Then that's also discouraging. There's like definitely a sweet spot sweet spot of smart goals. Like even cause you can use that framework, but there's still a sweet spot of okay, can, is this actually challenging?

And, I think that's probably where the attainable and realistic part of smart goals come in. But is it actually challenging enough to your skills? It's like right outside your capability. It's something you'd have to learn, grow and get better at, but you can eventually get there.

And I think when we're talking specifically about things, the garage gym athletes might care about, but this applies to anything in life. But if you are talking more performance, you want to lose weight. You want to run a certain speed. You want to lift a certain amount. You want to do a race.

You want to do things like that. You have to make sure it's in that challenge zone. I think you really have to make [00:10:00] sure that you're challenged. It's maybe not right now within your capabilities, but it's something that you can strive for. Cause too far, not going to happen too little, too easy, not going to stick with it.

And then the other thing I took, again, these are just like fun facts from the study was they mentioned like the three worst goal types is what I labeled them as, and they were. Mastery goals, outcome goals, and ego goals. And I'll describe each one of those, and the reason I want to describe these is because this might be how a listener is setting a goal right now.

And you should know, the science doesn't back up these types of goals. And some of them I was a little bit surprised about with the, these three types. So mastery goals, it's also known as task goals or learning goals. So focus on personal improvement, skill development and understanding. An example would be a student aiming to understand the material better regardless of the grade they receive.

So if you're just trying to master something. Maybe it's too vague. I, again, I'm not exactly [00:11:00] sure why this is a bad goal type, because if I was like, I want to master running, maybe it's too vague, maybe it's not like a specific thing that I'm getting better at, but those did not associate well with the goal being achieved.

And so I think that's fairly interesting. Mastery goals, not something that's great for goal setting outcome goals. So also known as performance approach goals, focus on demonstrating competence and outperforming others. So example, a runner aiming to win a race or be a competitor. So outcome goals are typically not great.

For you achieving a goal and the last one, ego goals. So also known as performance avoidance goals, focusing on avoidance of failure and negative judgments from others. An example would be a student aiming to avoid getting a lower grade than their peers. So I think that one's obvious, like an ego goal.

It just, it sounds like the antithesis of a goal to me. It's I'm just going to not do shitty. Like I've been in situations in my life where that may be like the lowest of the low [00:12:00] bar, but like just trying to avoid not looking bad or to avoid, not being the worst in class or avoid just avoiding negative consequences.

I don't think that's. Great for setting goals. I don't think it's great for leading yourself. I don't think it's great for leading other people either. So I think that was interesting that those are the worst goal types.

Joe: Yeah. Ego makes sense, especially because it takes certain control, certain aspects out of your control.

Like you're, if you're competing against somebody or marking yourself against somebody, that's person's also very driven. And if you fail, like you still did great, but like they might've just. You didn't achieve your you didn't beat them. So that doesn't, it still takes something away from you, even though they might still be, they might have an advantage or just have, it ended

Jerred: up better.

Yeah. So I mentioned at the beginning, the main ones that they studied were performance goals, process goals, and outcome goals. And. If you haven't realized by [00:13:00] now the drum roll, please. The best one were process goals. So process goals. And again, this is where you are just dedicating yourself to the process.

And this is like what we were doing right now as a challenge. And we did last year, we did the 300, 200 challenge at garage gym athlete. So the 300 challenge is where you had to train 300. Days in a year, 300 minutes per training day, 300 calories per training session. Did I hit everything? Is that all the 300s?

Is there another one? I think. I think that's most of them. So training sessions, calories, and minutes. So 300 minutes per week, 300 calories per day, and 300 training sessions in the year. And so what, when I accomplished that last year, I just went 100 percent process. So I just knew that I had to train at least.

An hour a day. So 60 minutes, I'd have to do that five, five to six [00:14:00] days per week, really six days per week. And then I would just make sure I had it on my watch and my watch would notify me when I hit 300 calories and I completely ignored any kind of performance or outcome. I just focus on that process.

Here's what I have to do every single day. So when I show up in the training session I have today. I'm going to train until my watch beeps, tell me it's 300 calories. I'm going to train until it's been an hour, and I'm going to do that six days per week. Boom. Mission accomplished. All you have to do is focus on the process.

So process goals are everything. Process goals are how you want to set your goals. And I'm going to walk you through a seven step process here in a minute on like really how to set a goal if you're really looking to, set a goal for yourself maybe before the end of the year or beginning of next year.

I'll walk you through that process. But the process goals are really important and it's something that we really focus on at Garage Gym Athletes. So if you're interested in getting into this stuff, like we talk about goals probably more than most fitness companies out there.

We have[00:15:00] like goal setting email sequences that people can get, become a part of. Typically all of our challenges that we do aren't. Lose 15 pounds in six weeks, weight loss challenge, anything like that. It's always like process goal, get your green dot, which means you've completed a workout, getting so much water per day.

That's how all of our recovery metrics are. So anyway, if this sounds interesting to you, you want to be a part of a community that does scientifically backed process garagegymathlete. com, sign up for a free trial, and you can see what it's like to really not only have phenomenal training, but also how to set your goals appropriately and.

Chase a process instead of just an outcome all the time. It works a lot better. So on the process goals, what I found interesting, they talked about in this, in the study was it hits you in two different areas. It was self efficacy and self regulation theory. So self efficacy is a person's belief in their ability to succeed or accomplish a task.

So [00:16:00] when people set and achieve their goals, it can really boost their confidence in their abilities. So when you have a process goal. Think about how micro that is. If the process is on a daily basis, you're like, I just need to do this thing today. And if you do that thing today. You're you get more motivated because all you have to do is do that same thing tomorrow.

You're not worried about this big giant target. You're just worried about the process and after you do that a couple days you start to stack these wins. You become way more confident in your ability. So self efficacy is on the rise and if you've been listening to the podcast for any amount of time or you've gone through any stuff that I've done with in a three fitness coaching work, we talk about the self determination theory and a major part of the self determination theory and coaching other human beings and leading other people is self efficacy.

It's making sure that they're motivated and they feel capable to accomplish what they're doing. The second thing is self regulation theory, which is just a way of understanding how people control and direct their own actions. So it's really this assessment and correction methodology, which is a part of process goals, [00:17:00] because if I set a process goal of.

Let's just go back to the 300 trap challenge. I want to train six days per week. I'm going to train for one hour per day and 300 calories per training session. Let's say I go through a week and then on Sunday I look and I'm like, okay. What do I need to change to make sure that's happening? Cause maybe I didn't have the best week.

Maybe it didn't go well. My first week, things were a little bit differently than I thought. Maybe it's harder to get to 300 calories than I thought. What can I do? So now I can start making adjustments and reviewing my process and my progress. And then making those adjustments. So the self regulation theory is really just utilizing data to make corrections based off of what your process goal is.

So that's something that you also need to do in a process goal is as you do the process, have this occasional look back, I do recommend it on a weekly basis to be like, Hey, what adjustments do I need to make? To get through this, but before I get into any more stuff, like what did you think about the study and the ultimate takeaway?

Joe: Yeah, I definitely love the ultimate takeaway of the process goal. [00:18:00] Cause that lines up to a lot of what we've read about in books. A lot of what we do, a lot of how we focus that's why I haven't focused that much on long term or specific goals, because I'd rather just focus on, If I want to get, if I want to run more, I'm going to think about, okay, I want to run at least twice a week and I want to do these certain things about running and then I'll look back at the last four weeks and see, okay, in this, in these four weeks, did I get enough longer condition in, did I get some sprints in that sort of thing?

And then eventually the running the the times, everything will come. And I liked, what they said about approach goals. So I don't know if you got into that, but they mentioned approach goals tend to be more effective than avoidance goals. And that is that kind of aligns with process goals because the approach goal is you're doing some kind of habit.

You are adding something to your routine. You're doing something proactive. To achieve your goal instead of taking something away. So this, and the example they gave was like when it comes to being on a diet or losing weight, people were focusing on getting more protein, [00:19:00] getting more water, getting more vegetables instead of avoidance goals, which were eating less sugar, eating less of the bad things, focusing on the bad things to avoid versus the approach goals, which I also really liked in that sort of context.

Jerred: Yeah, I think anytime you start, there really shouldn't be much negativity associated with your goals. That's my opinion. If you're setting goals are hard enough because a process goal is something. Typically it's a habit, right? It's something new you have to add to your life. So it's already difficult.

Why add any negativity to that? That's why I don't like I don't like punishment inside of setting goals for yourself. I know some people are all about that. I don't really do well with that. I don't like negativity around the goals. Yeah. I know, getting more water, like you're saying, as opposed to not doing something. I think that it just adds like a certain, it makes it unfun, right? And it just makes it like a, something that you don't want to do. And if you ever get into that situation with goals, then you're not coming from a good place and you're probably not going to stick around with doing it.[00:20:00]

But I do think goals are really important and you have to understand who you are. One thing I found really interesting I was thinking about it in my training this week. So I'm I'm doing some off books programming. It's not one of the tracks. And we can talk more about that in a minute, but one of the things that was programmed was pushups to failure.

And when I was doing the pushups to failure, it made me really think about my time in the military when I trained a lot of different types of people and I would do similar stuff. But I stopped programming pushups to failure because I realized there were too many different types of human beings in existence because you have person a, who I say failure, they're probably capable of, let's say 30 pushups.

And they do 15 because they don't they're like trying to leave some in the tank, but like maybe there was a little bit of muscle burn. So Oh, muscle burn failure. And then there's some people who just go way over the top. And they can't really, they almost can't do a second [00:21:00] set after you tell them to go to failure, which is true failure, like they're technically doing it, they're pushing themselves. They did so many, like what I found more effective, and this is my case for why you should set goals is in life. If you were to just say, I want to get faster or I want to get fitter, or I want to lose more weight, or I want to gain more muscle. That's saying, Hey, go train to failure because everyone has a different barometer as to what that is, but as a coach, something that I realized in real life, going back to that pushup example.

If I were to tell person a, Hey, I want you to do 15 pushups and they do 15 and I'm standing right next to him and I'm like, do five more and they do five more. And I'm like, Hey, do two more. They do two more, do one more. They do one more. And I'm like, do two more. You still got it. You can do two more and they do two more.

And then by the time you're done, they've actually gotten closer to failure. But that's how I typically set goals for myself in business and fitness and everything else is like. I [00:22:00] like real micro achievable goals, not too easy, but it's still a challenge, but I can achieve it quickly. And then I can move on.

If I want to push myself a little bit more, that's up to me. Like I can do that. Or, someone can guide me through that. If you do have a coach mentor or whatever, but that's how I prefer to set goals. Because if you just tell me in business, go make as much money as possible, that goal will never be done.

It's not something that you can just be, Oh I'm done now. It's okay, go do this amount. And then if you can do a little bit more, do a little bit more. If you can do a little bit more, do a little bit more. That's a better way to go about it mentally. Cause there's so many like psychological triggers and that's a lot of what this study talks about too.

And you can read the full study. If you want to get into the show notes, just go to garagemouthly. com, go to the blog and we always link to all of our studies and you can read through the show notes and everything that we have. But yeah, I think that there's a lot of your personal preferences that go into goal setting and how you like to be pushed and how you push yourself.

So don't just like. [00:23:00] Always set these train to failure type goals, make it more realistic to what you're capable of and what you enjoy. All right. I want to end with kind of the seven step process based off of everything that I read in there. So this is not necessarily.

My seven step process. This is the seven step process based off of this scientific literature on goal setting. So I took some notes and I hashed it out and this is what it came up with because they talk about a lot of things. Joe and I are hitting the highlights, like a lot of the highlights.

This is a very long study. They have they talk about the history of goal setting and they talk about other goal types that we didn't even mention, but they weren't they didn't have a, an effect size that were, was worth mentioning. So that's why like I didn't mention them. So there's a lot more things in here.

So if you hear me talk about something we didn't necessarily cover, it's just because there was a lot of information to study. So the first one is of the seven step process is set specific and challenging goals. So you want to [00:24:00] define clear measurable objectives, such as losing a specific amount of weight, lifting a certain amount of weight or achieving a particular fitness milestone.

So you do want to set specific and challenging goals. That's one thing that I mentioned already. Make sure it's specific and challenging. We talked about smart goals, but if it's just. If you don't have the challenging aspect of that, I really don't think that you'll. Stay in the fight. Like it's, if it's too easy it's stupid.

If it's too hard, you won't strive for it. But if it's challenging, then it's something that you will actually keep after. The second thing is use self regulation, use the self regulation theory to your advantage. That's number two. So monitor progress regularly, such as tracking workout routines, diet, and other relevant metrics.

Adjust training programs, diet and recovery strategies based on progress and feedback. So and I'll get into this, but there are a lot of ways, a lot of things that you can track and do now, but use that self regulation theory. And if I had to give you exactly how to use it, it's what I mentioned earlier, just.[00:25:00]

Maybe have one day a week where you look back at your current process goals, and then that's where you just make adjustments. That's it. That's how easy it is for me. I do that with most of the process goals I set, which I'm trying to always have a few process goals in my life, both personally, financially business, I always use Sunday evening after my kids go to bed to just do a quick check in here's what you said your goals were like, what adjustments do we need to make?

The third thing is focused on process goals, obviously. So set process goals that focus on the steps needed to achieve the overall objective, such as committing to a specific number of workouts per week, or incorporating a variety of exercises into the routine. If you wanted to be better at Olympic lifting, just making sure that, okay, then I'm going to Olympic lift twice per week.

And then you don't have to get more specific than that. You don't have to have a more detailed program if we're really just focusing on the process of instilling the habit that you will do Olympic lifting twice per week. So just focus on the process. I've talked about this in depth. I always set process [00:26:00] goals.

Any, it doesn't matter what it is. Even if it's like this big task that it definitely is a performance or outcome goal. I immediately. Distill that down to what the process is. And then I just focus on the process because I, if I have the bigger thing over my head for too long, then I will get discouraged.

So I just like to focus on the process. Number four, include feedback. So use self monitoring tools, such as fitness trackers or workout logs to gather feedback on performance, consider seeking feedback from coaches or other athletes. So that was a big thing that they had in here for us specifically.

I train alone. I train alone 99 percent of the time my Garmin gives me more feedback than any human being has in the last decade, right? Like I, I look at that kind of stuff. What were my paces? How was my sleep last night? What's my HRV. I'm looking at all the feedback from a wearable.

And I really feel if you. If you are a garage gym athlete or you train alone, you need some sort of a wearable to just start to adjust things, right? Like where are you gonna get this feedback from? [00:27:00] Next is just consider the setting And this one this was from the study. I didn't find it as applicable I want to put it in here because they talk about it Just making sure that if you are in like let's garage gym, for example Make sure that you have a goal that's conducive to operating in a garage gym with minimal equipment.

It's pretty simple. Like you, you shouldn't set a goal of I want to be the world's best bodybuilder, and you have, or you want to be the best bodybuilder in your town, but you have no way to really I do isolation movements or anything like you just, you got to consider your setting and what you have access to.

Number six, be mindful of timeframe. So shed set short term goals for incremental improvements and long term goals for overall fitness objectives. So we talked about that. Being mindful of the timeframes together. They seem to be a little bit more effective long term by itself is useless. And now the last thing is incorporate different goal types.

So include a mix of process performance and outcome goals to address various aspects of [00:28:00] fitness and motivation. Process is definitely the king. Goal setting, but it doesn't mean you can't have the performance and outcome goal types. It should be the process is the main part. It's like the 80 percent of what you're doing.

Then the 20 percent can be, Hey, there's still a performance in here. There's still an outcome that I'm shooting for. Like I would just said, if I set a goal, I know what the performance or outcome is, but then I distill that down to a process goal. And that's all I want to focus on then is the process, but you can have different goal types.

So you can track things over different time durations. So that's the seven step process, go through that and you will be setting better goals. Even if you don't want to do all that at a minimum, just make sure it's a process goal over anything else.

Joe: Is that something you made up?

Jerred: What? The seven step process?

No, not necessarily. Like I, that was just takeaway from the study. So I tried to stay away from my specific preferences. Cause mine might be similar to that, but just things that I as I went through the study, I jotted down like. This, the process that they talked about, the steps that they [00:29:00] had.

Joe: I would say the outcome is definitely the carrot, but the process is the stick. So you can't, get one without the other. So focus on, I always focus on I guess the process if I was to have a goal. So like back when I actually did the one time I I, which I mentioned a lot, but when I went from my 400 pound back squat, I set that a year in advance saying like in a year, I want to do this, but I also was focusing every week I was making sure.

That each of my lower body emphasis days were hit really hard that I was going after them every week that I was doing some sort of lower body hitting that a lot each week, no matter what, even if I was short, some kind of week, I was always doing some sort of legs each week because I needed to work toward it.

And I didn't, I only did one progress check there in the entire year.

Jerred: That's a bold move, but that is exactly what you did that you had the. You had the one goal out there, right? Like any year I want to do this thing. And then you just focus on the process, making sure you're hitting lower body twice per week, you said.

And

Joe: then pretty much I was following strength track, [00:30:00] but I, and we do a lot of, we'd end up doing a lot of legs, but I would always really emphasize on the accessory days. And a lot of times I'd push that day to Wednesday to make sure I was fresh and I was ready to go to hit it really hard.

But that was like my peak day that I was really making sure I was dialed in and going hard at it.

Jerred: That's awesome. Hopefully everyone got something out of this and you understand a little bit more now how to set goals, what the most effective goal types are, self regulation theory, self efficacy.

These are all real psychological principles. And if you realize that you are a human and you are going to do exactly what human do humans do, and that is you will fall prey to these psychological principles. You're not immune to them because you're the one reading the science. You know what I mean?

Use them to your advantage. Don't think that there's something that doesn't affect you because you're a special snowflake. All of these psychological principles affect every human being. Reading the study, listening to this right now. We [00:31:00] all have these. And so it's better to be like, oh, that is, it's better to just know what this, what self efficacy is and use it to your advantage and use, know what the self regulation theory is and use it to your advantage, as opposed to just thinking it doesn't apply to you for some reason when it absolutely does.

So use these to get better at goal setting. With that, I wanted to jump into training a little bit and see. One, do you have any training updates and also give some updates on my training for the 50 K I'm doing right now?

Joe: I got some new toys. That's about it. Some fun things that I've been playing with.

What'd you get? So I finally got a bench. I've been a garage gym athlete for five years now. I've yet to have a bench because I don't really bench much. I didn't have dumbbells that there was just no reason to have a bench. I use it more for like sitting down and maybe some ab things then, and then actually benching.

But I finally got a bench because Liz has been doing more like. Strength, bodybuilding type things. We have dumbbells now and I would like to actually bench . I also got a, that's awesome. I also got a belt squat [00:32:00] lever just similar to what you have. So one that's just a pin that hooks into the squat rack.

I've been wanting these, especially if there's days that I've been having a hard time front squatting 'cause of a wrist injury and I've noticed that doing belt squat when I've had it at. When I've gone on base it's cool to use, especially for hypertrophy.

And if I just want to rest my low back some and really get in some heavy, some higher like volume it's really cool to have. I do need to get some steel plates now though, not just bumpers because the bumpers, you can only fit so much weight on the small belt squat lever. So I need to actually get like steel plates to fit more weight on it.

So I got that. And then I got a pulley system. So pull downs tricep extensions, whatever you do with a pulley cable system. That's just, you stack plates on top of, you hook it up to the thing, and then you do your pulls. And so it'll be, it'll just be cool to use for some accessory work, some extra fun to just have, they're all fairly

Jerred: cheap too.

Yeah, the, I really liked the belt squat lever. Yeah, I got one, I guess this summer, it's pretty cool tool. That was, I had the same [00:33:00] gripe. I don't know. I don't think we got the same brand even, but I couldn't fit that much weight on it mainly because of the bumpers. And so I was doing some weird stuff. I was like loading all my bumpers, then putting like kettlebells on top of the plates and

Joe: I put a kettlebell on after

Jerred: seeing you do that.

Yeah. And so and I don't even know if that was like, does this. Is this still like the same? But I just feel like you can move a lot of weight on the belt squat. But anyway, that's a really cool tool. I don't know how someone didn't think of that ahead of time or earlier because belt squat machines cost thousands of dollars.

And it's just I hate spending a lot of money on one machine that does one thing and floor space. Yeah. It's take up your whole garage and you can, what can you do? You can belt squat. Yeah, I guess you could do a couple of other exercises if you really want to get nitpicky, but not a lot of things.

And so those, these things are really cool. Just add to your rack. If any garage and athletes out there want to check it out. Definitely.

Joe: Yeah, that wasn't, it wasn't very expensive either.

Jerred: Yeah. I don't remember what I paid, but it wasn't anywhere close to what about squat machine costs. I know that much.

So I want to dive [00:34:00] into 50 K training. So I'm doing the training, Mark Bishop. He was, he came over with the blood lactate test. He's been a garage gym athlete for a long time. He's officially joined. He's the one who told me to do the 50 K. So I'm doing the 50 K that he wants to do. And it is the death by five K ultra in Memphis, Tennessee.

If anybody wants to join us for that April 14th, I think of 2024. So we are about six months out as of this recording close to it. So we started a 24 week training program that I'm programming in conjunction with some running coach guidance, should I say? I'm still doing the programming, but I'm no expert on.

Running, even though I got the first eight weeks and it looks like it's just a bunch of zone too. So I'm like I've probably would've done the same thing. What I think I'm going to do with that is probably publish my programming for free to all garage gym athletes, if you're in the garage gym athlete community, because we're just doing it through a Google spreadsheet right now.

And if anybody's interested in how I'm combining a [00:35:00] 50 K training with a strength training, which is body geo I think I'm just going to publish it all for people in the garage gym athlete community, you can check it out. But one of the big things I'm doing differently, because the last time I tried to train for something, I got hurt.

And one of the things I am calculating this time is just the 20 percent of whatever my training time is. I have to dedicate that much time to recovery, and I'm actually tracking that in a spreadsheet now. So if I trained an hour and a half or whatever, I have to dedicate that 15 ish minutes to recovery, 15 to 20 minutes, whatever that would end up being to recovery.

That's something that I'm taking very seriously. This time is making sure that I'm doing, ice bath sauna, stretching, pliability, mobility, all those kinds of things, and just making sure that I'm good to go. And hopefully that will be enough. I have that lat strain that we talked about that happened before I even started this still dealing with that a little bit.

It's affecting my run performance [00:36:00] to some degree, but. I don't think it will last for very long. It really just feels muscular. I think it'll go away. So anyway, if you're interested in the training, that's something that we're doing. Tramp has jumped on board with that too.

Joe: He said he's not doing the race.

He's just going to do some extra running with you guys. I

Jerred: think he'll come. I think I can get him to come out to Memphis and run a portion of it. At least,

Joe: at least have him hold a camera

Jerred: or something. Just the way the race is structured, I feel like why not just do at least do one 5k man, just do one.

Yeah,

Joe: it's just the way it's spaced out. I think it wouldn't be too bad. It would just be when you get into, so it starts early in the morning, I think. So at least you're like waking up at a normal time, I'd probably get six in, but once you get to. Once the sun starts going down, you're just like shit, I'm tired.

It's been a long day. I should be going to bed soon, but I have to

Jerred: run through the night. That's why I liked the challenge because I could just run a 50 K, which I'm thinking about, which is just really a longer marathon, but this one. Adds a [00:37:00] little bit of that ultra flavor where you have to do something through the night, which is really shitty.

So if I ever want to do a hundred mile race, which I'm not even saying I want to do, I'm just saying if I ever wanted to do it, the chance of me having to run through a night on a hundred mile race is like a hundred percent. This also might be my one and only ultra. Who knows? I have no idea. I think I might end up doing it and be like, oh, yeah, this is really stupid and I hate it.

There's a strong chance that's what's gonna happen, but...

Joe: I know a guy in my guard unit who did was a UTMB or whatever. It's like a hundred mile trail race in the Alps. So it's not even just like a hundred miles. It's like a trail. I might be more than a hundred. I think it took him, I think he said it took him 33 hours.

But he said, as he was running like through the night, the first night, he didn't sleep well the first night and he was running. And as it got dark halfway through the night, he was like falling asleep while running. So he said he peeled off to the side of the trail, took a nap for 20 minutes and then got up and then started running again because it was just that long of a crazy of a race.

Jerred: No, thank you. See, I don't know. That's why I want to experience this one. So if anyone's interested you check it out. [00:38:00] I don't know if, I think it is called depth by 5k, April 14th, 2024 in Memphis, Tennessee. If you want to join I guess it'd be me and Mark will be there. Tramp is might show up.

Joe, you're going to be there. I know you'll be in a different country, but 50, 50

Joe: right now. I'm going to try, but we're going to see how it happens. Yeah. Coming from Spain.

Jerred: It might be hard. We'll see if we can get you out there. And if any other garage gym athletes want to come out, definitely definitely let us know.

And if you want to see my training we'll be putting that in the community. That's it. What's that for?

Joe: First unofficial event

Jerred: first. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. All right. I think that's it for this one. We can. We can wrap it up. If you do want to be a part of the garage, the math, the community, we actually have a community inside of circle software platform that we use to host the community.

We got off Facebook groups. And so we're in there. I'll be publishing my training in there. We also, do occasional live streams, trainings, those kinds of things, if you want to be a part of it, but then also be a part of the actual app and training stuff as well, then you should definitely go do those things.

Go to [00:39:00] garage, gym, athlete. com. You can sign up for a free trial. And. Get access to the things I mentioned earlier. How do we focus on process goals? How are we different than other communities? You'll see all that the second you sign up. And if you don't think find any value in it.

Cool. You're on a trial. We're not married. So you can just cancel that trial and you don't have to worry about it, but definitely something that you should go check out and for all of our athletes who've been around doing the training and staying consistent, really appreciate each and every single one of you.

That's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort will kill you.