And We're Back!

🏋️‍♂️ We’re Back! Life Updates, the New HQ, and What’s Next for Garage Gym Athlete

Welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast with Jerred Moon!
After the longest break in podcast history (well… my podcast history), we’re officially back—and more dialed in than ever.

This episode is short and real. I’m peeling back the curtain on where I’ve been, what I’ve been building, and what’s coming next for the podcast, the training, and the community. Let’s get into it.

🏠 Life Update: New Property, New HQ, Total Reset

Over the last few months, my entire world moved—literally. We sold our home, and along with it, I sold all of my previous gym equipment. That meant:

• No gym

• No studio

• Nowhere to record

In the past, I would’ve pieced something together—recorded on my phone, forced it, and pushed through. This time, I decided to take a break, not stress, and rebuild the right way.

💡 The New Setup: A Custom-Built Content & Training HQ

We bought a new property with a 1200 sq. ft. barn structure. We completely finished it and divided it into:

• 800 sq. ft. gym

• 400 sq. ft. studio and office

Now I have a dedicated space for podcasting, filming, training, and coaching. I’m investing in better video, better audio, and more consistent content to bring even more value to this community.

And don’t worry—Garage Gym Athlete is not going anywhere. If anything, things are just getting started.

🧠 Renewed Focus: Science + Psychology

As we gear back up, I want to return to one of my biggest passions: the psychology of training—not just the programming side, but the mindset behind sticking to a program and crushing it.

I’ve been diving back into Self-Determination Theory, a framework that explains why we stay motivated and how we fall off track. I used to study this like crazy when I first started coaching people who struggled with consistency—and I’m bringing it back to the podcast in a big way.

More on that below…

👦🏼 Youth Training: Lessons from Coaching Kids

As a dad (my oldest is now 13!) and a summer coach to youth athletes, I’ve seen firsthand how broken youth training often is. Too many parents treat 10-year-olds like mini-adults—overloading volume, intensity, and complexity.

In upcoming episodes, I’ll talk more about:

• How I train my kids and other youth athletes

• Why most programs get it wrong

• What I’m learning through real, in-person experience

It’s an underserved topic, and I’m excited to finally go deeper on it.

🧪 Creatine + Cognitive Performance: A Biohack for Busy Days?

Creatine is everywhere right now—and for good reason. We’ve talked about it for years, but the cognitive performance benefits are getting new attention.

A recent study shows that 20g of creatine can improve brain function under sleep deprivation. I tested it myself with a 4:00 AM meeting after only ~4 hours of sleep. I crushed the meeting, trained afterward, and had a full, productive day without the usual crash.

This isn’t something I’d do every day—but it’s a wild and useful tool to have in the toolbox.

🔁 Back to Basics: The 3 Tenets of Self-Determination Theory

If you’ve ever struggled with program hopping, low motivation, or feeling stuck in your fitness journey, Self-Determination Theory might be the missing piece.

Here are the 3 core tenets:

1. Autonomy – You have to want to do the thing. If you’re forcing yourself into training that doesn’t excite you, you won’t stick with it. Choose what you actually enjoy.

2. Competence – You need to feel like you’re improving. That could be heavier weights, faster runs, or mastering a new skill. Without progress, your motivation dies.

3. Connectedness – Do it with others. Join a community. Invite a friend. Share your progress. Even one connection a week helps build consistency and accountability.

“Mindless consistency isn’t the goal—engaged, intentional, measurable progress is.”

We’ll be exploring this framework deeply across upcoming episodes to help you stay motivated long-term.

🎙️ What’s Next for the Podcast?

We’re going deeper than ever before. Here's what you can expect:

• Science breakdowns on supplementation, programming, and performance

• Mindset episodes based on real coaching experience and research

• New guests + familiar voices (Joe’s coming back!)

• Tour of the new HQ with more YouTube content

And yes—we’re officially back to our regular publishing schedule.

⚔️ Final Thoughts

Thanks for sticking with me during the rebuild. This next phase of Garage Gym Athlete will be bigger, better, and bolder. I’m grateful to be back behind the mic and even more excited to level up what we deliver to you every week.

And as always…
If you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred:  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, Jerred Moon here, and it's just me today and I am back. I took a long break from the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast. I mean, long in my world, haven't taken that long of a break on the Garage Gym Athlete podcast basically ever. So this is gonna be a short episode.

Just kind of update you on what's been going on and what you have to look forward to. And then just some updates, uh, you know, around garage and Athlete around my life and, and all that good stuff. So, yeah, I moved, I think I. Mentioned that recently, building a new garage gym, got all this new equipment. But in the course of doing that, I was just completely toppled with not having a place to record, not having a studio, not having any of these things.

And most of the time in years past, I would've really stressed about that and found temporary locations to record and just made sure I got it done anyway or recorded. On my phone and published it anyway, and I just didn't do that this time. I was just like, you know what, I'm gonna take a break. No one's gonna care.

It's gonna be fine. So ultimately that's what it was. Definitely not quitting. Not stopping, not slowing down. Garage Gym athlete isn't going anywhere. If anybody had any concerns like that, I did get a couple messages on Instagram asking when the next podcast would be. So I do appreciate, you know, people reaching out and all those good things, but.

We are here. It is, it is just basically, you know, life stuff going on with the rebuild of hq, which I do wanna talk about some more. So if you've been following me on Instagram, you've probably seen some of this. I have been building a new hq. I've, I've always been a work from home guy, but we bought a new house, a new property.

And it has this 1200 square foot kind of barn space that we just finished completely. So within this space we have, I now have an 800 square foot gym, and then the other 400 feet has been partitioned off between an office and a studio. So now I have a very dedicated place to record podcast and in all honesty, to increase the content efforts at Garage Gym Athlete and everywhere else that I do content.

So actually. You know, having higher quality videos in the gym on the podcast. Better audio quality. I'm investing in all of those things to continue doing podcasts for a very long time. So again, not going anywhere. If anything, we took a break to reset and to get better. This podcast does not reflect that because I am still like, we're like 98% there on, on the studio, studio and everything else, but.

I just wanted to get this podcast out there and let everybody know what was going on. So if anything thing, things are gonna get more serious at Garage Gym Athlete, not less over the next couple of weeks and months. So that's what you have to look forward to. We'll be diving into science, having new people on the podcast, all sorts of stuff coming at you really fast.

So I'm looking forward to all that. I did completely rebuild the gym. If you didn't catch one of my previous episodes, when I sold my previous house, they bought all of the gym equipment. All the gym equipment is gone, and so I went over everything that I had to get. All of that is in, it's installed, it's built, and I have it all, and it's all awesome.

It's very intentional. Purchases. I'm gonna be going over some of those in future podcasts. What I like. And how things are working out, how the gym's working out. And there'll be a lot more videos on the YouTube channel for Garage Gym Athlete of me in the gym and giving that official tour. So I'll announce that on the podcast when I do a tour of the new HQ and the new gym.

So you have that to look forward to as well. Now that's about it on the content and live stuff that's been going on. You know, that's why the podcast was kind of paused. But we do have a lot of different studies and, and one thing that I've been looking at a lot lately. Is diving back into the self-determination theory.

So if you've been around the podcast for a long time, the self-determination theory, it's a body of research, started in the 1970s and it's something I've geeked out on for years. I mean, going back to when I first started as a fitness coach, because I wanted to understand, you know, when I started working with people who like weren't motivated and didn't know.

They didn't know how to stick to a program. I, I had not worked with those types of people before. Like I, I had started working with special operators who were very much, we'll do whatever you'd say. And then I got into this realm of working with people who just couldn't stick to the program. And I didn't understand.

I was like, wait, no, I can write the perfect program. Why aren't you doing it? In my mind what I thought the the perfect program was at that time. And then it was just like, oh, okay, we, this is what coaching really is. Coaching is like getting someone to see the result. It's not so much about the program.

And so I, I started geeking out on that stuff years and years ago, really diving into the psychology and I just haven't been, you know, as focused on it lately. But that's gonna be a big part of the Garage and Athlete Podcast moving forward. Is diving not into just the. Nuts and bolts of, you know, supplementation and concurrent training, but also the mindset, getting back to a lot of those things on like helping people stick to the programs, finding that little extra bit of effort and drive within you how to uncover it.

How to unlock it. And I'll kind of in the podcast with the main three tenets of the self-determination theory and what you should be thinking about as we head into kind of this next phase for Garage Gym Athlete. But that that's what we're gonna be focusing on, or I'm gonna be focusing on a lot on top of going over like scientific research, all those kind of things.

So that's what I, I'm diving into, that's what I've been studying and looking at for a while now, and I'm really psyched to be bringing that to the podcast and having some more candid conversations about just the realities of what it's like to. Battle. You know, battle yourself, battle that mindset. And then another thing I wanna bring to the podcast, because it gets a lot of, you know, a lot of engagements and a lot of questions whenever I talk about it, is training youth as, this is something that's obviously just progressed and evolved with me as my kids have age.

Like when I started this podcast, I don't, I think I only had two kids, and the oldest one was probably a couple years old, and now my oldest is 13. I've been podcasting for a long time. But I'm starting to train them and I, I train other kids during the summer as well, and that's only picking up more and more in-person training, not just my kids, but youth athletes in general.

And I've learned a ton and I've talked about it here and there, but I'd like to start talking about that more as well, because I feel like there's a lot of crap out there. And then as I interact with other parents and other training programs and other stuff like that, I also realize that most. Parents and adults are trying to train their children like they are tiny adults like that, you know, like your 10-year-old is just a small adult and they can handle all the volume, they can handle all that.

You know, all the demands of, you know, a typical advanced athlete when in reality you can't, not only are you doing the training wrong, you're doing the volume wrong, you're taking the approach wrong. I just see so much stuff wrong now that I'm in this world that it's crazy. And what's worse is I'm seeing adult level injuries, and not in my kids, but like other youth athletes, like injuries that you should only ever see from.

In an adult, like a serious athlete. I, I'm starting to see kids, you know, my, my kids' friends pop up with these things and it's just, it's mind boggling. Like I just can't get over it. So anyway, that's another new thing I'll be bringing to the podcast, talking about youth athletic training. What I'm doing specifically because I've done some high level stuff here and there, but I wanna get in the weeds a little bit more.

One, I think it's underserved, and two, I'm just. I'm no expert in this field. I don't have some sort of youth certification or whatever. Like I, you know, I just want to talk about this more because I think I have a lot of experience now in training youth athletes over the last couple years. I just haven't talked about it as much, so I'll be diving into that more as well.

And that, that's kind of new. That's like what you have to, to come, you know, what's coming on the Garage Gym Athlete podcast. And then another interesting study I came across recently that I hit that I just wanted to kind of like. Show or talk to the community about, which I thought was really cool, was I think if you are in this like fitness world, industry health world, you'll see that creatine is kind of exploding, and that's what we're noticing on our end is that.

Creatine Creatine's been around forever, you know, and we've talked about it on the podcast. In fact, if you go back to any of my, like podcasts where I talk about supplementation, I typically would only recommend two to three supplements that I thought it would be okay for athletes to take for long periods of time.

And it was, uh, creatine protein, and then fish oil would be like a third that I, I am pretty on board with. Everything else is maybe, maybe it'll help, maybe it won't. And creatine's really safe. And you know, I think there've been, it's like the most studied supplement. A lot of, a lot of good outta creatine.

But the direction, the reason it's exploding, I'd say just in the health world, is not just for the improved athletic performance and like muscle size and fullness and all of those kind of things. It's kind of exploding because of the nootropic effect, the effect it can have in your brain. And there's a really popular study that's been circling, circling, circling, called single dose creatine, improves cognitive performance and induces change in cerebral high energy phosphate during sleep deprivation.

So what's interesting about this study. Is you can act, if you are sleep deprived, you can take high doses of creatine and perform the same, if not better than if you weren't sleep deprived. And I put this to the test recently, and this is why I wanna talk about it, because I, this is the end of one experiment.

It was just me and it was just one time. But it's almost like a, it's such a cool tool to have in the toolbox knowing that this works in the acute sense. And so what I mean by that is when you're typically taking creatine. If you take it today, you're not gonna notice a huge improvement in your workout performance.

And then in all honesty, you need to take it consistently, five grams per day for two to three weeks, maybe up to a month to notice all of the benefits, to notice, you know, any kind of, you know, muscle change, performance benefits, all of those kind of things. It, it doesn't really work as much in the acute.

Sense, you're just supposed to take it and keep taking it, and then you can take breaks or whatever. But what's cool about creatine in the cognitive performance side of things is it does seem to work in the acute sense, specifically with this sleep deprivation and just cognitive performance in general.

So you can take this massive dose, 20 grams of creatine all at once. If you're like sleep deprived and then you have this, you, you're not as tired and your, your cognitive performance is still on point. So the other day. I had a meeting with a guy in Australia and you know, I'll, I'll spare you all the details of why that meeting, but we could not find a time to meet.

He was like, how about this time, whatever time it was in Australia. And I looked at my calendar and I was like, that is 4:00 AM my time. That's a start time of 4:00 AM So I woke up at three 30. I was pretty much ready for the meeting. By three, woke up at three 30 for this 4:00 AM meeting. I was pretty much ready for the meeting by 3 45 and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try this out today.

So I took 20 to 25 grams of creatine that morning and I was really on point for the meeting. Which was awesome. Had the hour long meeting, then I worked out, done working out. It's 6:00 AM I'm done for the day as far as like work training wise. And then I had my full day, right, like a full work day after that.

Kids schools, late night practices. And my son's football practice ends at 9:00 PM and I just felt good that entire day. Uh, and I didn't notice like that two or 3:00 PM lull. I didn't notice like any mental, you know. Degradation. Like I didn't notice anything. I just felt good and, and that's not always even the case for me on any given day.

Like sometimes if I have a really mentally demanding day, like a lot of conversations, podcasts, things where I have to be like more mentally on point, I'm kind of like done cognitively around three or 4:00 PM Like I can still function, but I'm talking about being really like on point mentally if I have a really, you know.

I just say big day, like where I'm, I'm having to be really focused in meetings or really focused in creating content or whatever. You know, I, I need an easy day for the rest of the day after that, and that didn't happen that day. So I, this is something I'm playing with again, this, I'm not like trying to say, Hey, this is the.

The end all be all. But it's something that I thought was interesting. I came across that research, gave it a try in a situation where I was gonna be sleep deprived. Oh yeah. So I didn't, when I woke up at three 30 or whatever, I, I didn't have eight hours of sleep. I didn't go to bed that much earlier. I actually had to stay up late.

So I only had a few hours of sleep. I don't remember how many it was. It was like. Four or five hours of sleep, something like that for that day. And I felt pretty good that whole whole day. Not something I'd wanna do. Like at the end of the day, I would always prefer to get seven to eight hours of sleep over trying to take 20 grams of creatine every single day.

Like I don't think it's that. I think it's a good bandaid. It's not like something I'd wanna do every single day, but something that's really, really interesting to me and thought, you know, I could share with the community and something we could dive into more, maybe cover the study even more in depth.

Now what I wanted to end with was the self-determination theory. 'cause I said I'm gonna be talking about it more, and I wanna just make sure you know, the three tenets of the self-determination theory. If you're out there struggling mentally right now, or you do struggle with sticking to the program or program hopping or whatever.

And the main three components of the self-determination theory are autonomy, competence, and connectedness. So that's autonomy, competence, and connectedness. And what. The self-determination theory looks at is your drive, your self motivation, what gets you to stick to things, how do we keep you motivated?

How do we keep you determined? And they've, there's a lot of sub-branches and branches of this research, but the main three tenants are gonna be the autonomy, competence, and connectedness. And so autonomy is just making sure. That you're doing something because you want to, you have autonomous, autonomously selected whatever it is you're doing.

So if we look at fitness, make sure that whatever you're doing is what you enjoy and that you want to do and not what something someone is telling you is, is the best thing to do. And I, I noticed this because people get caught up in trends, right? Like a big. A big, you know, trend right now would be what people are calling hybrid training, what we've called concurrent training for well over a decade where it's, oh yeah, you gotta lift and run and it's, yeah.

Whoa. What if you don't wanna do that and you get caught up in the hype of doing these programs or whatever, but you're not really that into it and you don't stick to it, or you're not as intense as you should be and you're not seeing the results that you want because you're just doing something that you've got excited about.

You saw online, you know, you saw an Instagram influencer do, and so you thought it'd be cool for you to do. That's not autonomy. Autonomy is like where you're like truly like. Interested in something and you select it. So you have to be very honest with yourself about the autonomy piece of this. And in honesty, you have to be honest with yourself on all of these.

So that autonomy piece is really important. And I've been talking to people about this a lot because if you don't enjoy something, just don't do it. If you are, if you don't want, if you don't truly want to lift weights and run and you're like, you know what, I just wanna play pickleball. That's it. Guess what?

That's great that that'll keep you in shape. Now, I'd love to throw some strength training into that if I could. But if I didn't have any selection other than pickleball or nothing as I want you to do pickleball, go do it. Right? Go do that thing. You selected it. So that's the biggest thing, is making sure that you selected whatever the activity is.

So really keep that in mind in your own fitness program and what you're doing. Now the next is competence. And this is making sure that you're actually getting better at something, that you have the ability to influence change. And so I think any form of fitness can be this if you want it to be. Because even in the most boring form of fitness, my opinion is like hypertrophy, bodybuilding, TR style training.

There's nothing more boring than. To me, but it's good. Like there's, there's a lot of good that can come of it. I've done it for years, so don't, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to argue competence in that other than the weights possibly moving up. Or the reps going up. So if I was doing barbell bicep curls with, you know, 50 pounds this week and I go up to 50 pounds, 55 pounds next week, yeah, that's competence.

It's improvement. I'm seeing that I can make progress. I'm getting better at something. Or if it's like, Hey, I did 50 pounds this week and I did 10 reps next week I'll do 12 reps, then 14 reps, so on and so forth. So. Tracking your progress in whatever you do is probably the most important thing, or if it's an actual skill.

And when we get to skills, you know, we're talking about things like you could use a sandbag, you could use a mace, you could use a kettlebell. These are all more skilled movements. A li Olympic lifts or more skilled movements. Anything that requires a little bit more skill, meaning practice, because you don't need to practice a barbell bicep curl a whole lot.

Like I could teach you a bi barbell bicep curl in about 30 seconds with perfect form, and then I don't really need to teach you again. Olympic weightlifting, you need a coach to watch you almost every session for years before you even feel like you almost have it figured out, right? So that's, that's the difference in competence, is you have to select something that you're actually getting better at.

That's also why, you know, going back to a pickleball example is like if you're, you can actually get better at that. That's why having some sort of sports program as a part of what you're doing, whether you play tennis or. Golf, uh, which I, I don't really include as a fitness routine, but like something like that, you know, there's a, a large competence piece where you're actually getting better at something, and so making sure that that's part of your program too will make sure that you're doing.

What's in line with all the research to say driven and motivated. So autonomy and competence. Make sure you can influence it. 'cause the worst thing that you, you could do is what a a lot of people do, which is like this mindless consistency is what I call it, is I've seen people in the gym who go to the gym each and every single day and they go for.

They're consistent as hell and they've done it for years, but they just don't look like they work out. And I'm sure their blood markers are great and like cardiovascular, all that, like respiratory, they're good, they're good to go. But if you wanna look a certain way or be able to do something cool, then your training has to be a little bit different than that, right?

Like you, you have to be. Getting better in some capacity. That's why having new cycles every 12 weeks like we do a garage gym athlete or documenting your progress tho, those kind of things keep you in the game mentally engaged and actually help you look good and perform well. You know? So tho those are the things that you wanna think about.

Now, the last thing is connectedness or relatedness is another term they use in the research, and this is just making sure that you have people to do it with. And this could be any kind of community, right? So. Garage gym athlete. We have an online community. I do think that, that, that helps, or having a training partner come over, even if you're a garage gym athlete, like I do most of my training sessions alone.

But if you could have one training session per week where somebody comes over, or if a neighbor wants to come over in the mornings, something like that, there has to be this connectedness piece. Now, I'm, I loved training alone, in all honesty. I do. I prefer being alone over having a training partner, but occasionally it's nice to have someone over just to, you know, have that training partner, to have that conversation, that interaction.

Maybe even teach them if you're more advanced. That's normally the role that I have when, when someone comes to train with me as I'm trying to teach them something, which I get a lot of, you know, personally, I, I really and love teaching people, you know, fitness and things like that. The mindset side of things.

So this connectedness piece I think is often overlooked when it comes to fitness. Like we just wanna put our headphones in and and go, right? But try to work this in somewhere, even if it's online community and like actually engaging with, Hey, here's the progress I'm making, here's what I'm doing. And other people are happy to engage with you.

Like I said, we have a community garage gym athlete, but there are a lot of places that you can do this or just even in person. So we're gonna be diving into a lot more. That's really just the high level of self-determination theory. I really want to dive deep into the weeds of the mindset and some of these specific studies that they have on self-determination.

So I think it's gonna be awesome. So that's a quick overview of everything at Garage Gym Athlete. I have a few more surprises for you, but I'm gonna hold off on those until the next podcast is recorded. We'll get Joe back on here and some other stuff. So, anyway. That is the update from me. Sorry for making you wait for so long for the la, the latest episode of the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast.

But we are back and back to our regular publishing schedule, so that's what you should expect of me. Alright, that's it for this one. Remember, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.