Andy (00:01.291)
All right, all right. So I just looked it up and 11 years and one month ago, we recorded a pod episode and sort of coined our term for maintenance mode in training. And we've referred back to this a lot of times when people have asked us about

what we're going to talk about today. we, so we realized that this is sort of a good time to sort of refresh and frame this concept a little better because it's been quite a while. So we're to talk about maintaining, but not just maintenance on its own, sort of how it fits into the broader scope of your practice.

Ryan (00:49.274)
Absolutely. mean, that podcast was so good that we felt we didn't need to do another one until now. Of course, I'm Joe.

Andy (00:59.877)
Sometimes when you nail it, you nail it, you know?

Ryan (01:02.214)
Yeah, we nailed that one, tell you what. But yeah, it's a great time to talk about this. So yes, absolutely.

Andy (01:09.122)
Right. So I polled our community members a couple of weeks ago and basically asked, you know, which phase of training are you currently in? the options were building, maintenance, recovery, and exploration. And it was very interesting because more than half of the people said they were in a building phase. And

Ryan (01:27.536)
Recovery,

Andy (01:39.554)
We'll get to this in a minute why that's interesting. But what was even more interesting is that most of the people who said they were in a recovery or maintenance phase felt some sort of shame or failure or a need to almost apologize for it, which I found really, really interesting. So most people were building and the people that weren't building wished they were building.

Ryan (01:52.007)
Hmm.

Andy (02:04.238)
And so I think that it's really important. Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk about this in terms of seasonality and phases. And we've talked about cycling, we've talked about periodization, you know, we have articles and discussed it on the pod before, but it's important to understand that you can't always be building. As much as that sounds really nice, we just can't. That's not the way our bodies work. You know, the,

Ryan (02:04.732)
Which is interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy (02:34.072)
planet has four seasons and we as organic entities have evolved to respond to those. Professional athletes have an on season, they have a season, they have an off season. Nobody, nobody performing at a high level in anything can constantly just do that thing all the time. Look at your profession, look at the best people in your profession, they are not constantly performing at peak.

So we have to recognize that there are seasons to things. So we're gonna talk about the seasons, sort of how they fit together and how to make the most of them even when you can't always be in the season that you have been told by media is the most important. Anything you wanna add before you get in?

Ryan (03:20.9)
Absolutely. No, let's just get into it. I think that was great. Yes.

Andy (03:25.272)
Yeah. All right. So I just sort of made my kind of point that all of these things are important and we'll say more of that a little bit. But first, let's go through each one and sort of go over what they are, what's important about them and how you use them. So let's go on and just go for the money. Everyone thinks that training is about building. So let's talk about the building phase, the building season.

and sort of what that is.

Ryan (03:57.64)
Absolutely. This is great. So this is typically where we see the majority of the Instagram posts. And I kind of laugh here because this is really where, you know, you're working on a particular, whether it be skill, it's a quality, it's where you're really putting all of your attention in order to get to that next thing, whatever that is. And I'm half joking about the Instagram thing because this is really where you see the progress.

and where people are working hard and, and, and, you know, just push in and grind in and things and great. Okay. The thing about this is that, when we try to live here too long, then it can actually, not be detrimental to what we actually want. And so the problem is that a lot of people don't understand that this is the phase where really it's about focusing on a single thing.

and not trying to do everything it wants. And I want to say that again, what it's not is not trying to improve everything it wants. The reason why is you have to be focused on making the priority the priority and doing the things necessary in order to help you to work on that particular thing. And so this is where the other things, it's not that you necessarily don't

do them, but they need to be put on the back burner. And Andy, I always like when you talk about the cooking metaphor in that you want to have the main thing that you're focusing in your cooking right now in front of you that needs your attention, that's front, right in front of you. And the other things that you can put on simmer, they go on the back burner and you check in on those from time to time. And so during the building phase, you really need to be focused on what's right in front of you so you don't

burn it if you're cooking and same with everything you're doing. So to give some examples here, looking at building strength and in terms of GMB, we can be looking at integral strength. And so you spend time specifically focused on that program. You're not trying to mix and match and put a different bunch of everything in there. Your focus is on that single program. And in this case, could be integral strength. To give another example.

Ryan (06:26.386)
We just go through the list of everything. It could be, you know, the mobility for a particular body part that you're maybe, I don't want to say struggling with, but that you want to improve. And so, yes, it could be another program. An example could be mobility, mobility program that we have. It could be building coordination using our sequences program or other floor work, local motion where floor loco, which is actually

I love that program. just absolutely had a blast creating it. But again, those are looking at our programs as specific focus solely focused on those things. A lot of people think, but am I going to lose my gains in something else? Honestly, it doesn't matter because your focus is on that single thing right now that's in front of you. You can always come back to those other things later. But another example.

that we have down here building speed, working on explosiveness for your martial arts. This is a season. This is a single period of time in which you spend your time on the priority and that's it. If you are a martial artist, maybe this will make sense to you, but this is how I train. I will give myself a month and I will only focus on a single technique.

And for some people that can be difficult to wrap your brain around. Again, it doesn't mean that you don't use other techniques when you're sparring. But the bulk of what I'm focused on is that single thing. And that's exact same thing when I was working on particular skills in GMB that I would do. Great example is when I was working in my one arm handstand. I did that for three months. And that is literally all I did. Just the one arm handstand and the things that would help me for that.

And I remember after three months, I posted that video, Andy, you had me do this. You're like, hey, do a quick video. As soon as you finish your one arm handstand, just show people that you can still do pull ups and it's all good. And, you know, I just cranked out those chin ups. Maybe I lost a little bit of the gains in my chin ups, but it didn't matter because I was really focused on the building phase of that one arm handstand. This is where people can get caught up because once again, building means

Andy (08:47.153)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan (08:53.116)
focusing on the single thing and not trying to improve everything all at once.

Andy (08:59.054)
Right, because you cannot build multiple things at the same time. I mean, not if you want to do it well. Just even to take this very literally, like imagine buying like four Lego sets. You've got the Millennium Falcon, you've got the Pyramids of Giza, you've got Ariel's underwater like playset and the Lego Teenage Friends ice cream stand, okay?

Don't ask me how I know all these things, but let's say you bought those four Lego sets and you're trying to do them all at one time and you've got the instructions laid out, you've got all the pieces, you're gonna have a hard ass time trying to build all four of these things, which are different levels of complexity and different numbers of pieces at the same time. It just doesn't work. It will be much better if you start out with a freaking ice cream stand because it's easy, it takes like 10 minutes, then you.

Ryan (09:44.764)
Right. Right.

Andy (09:55.67)
move on to like the Millennium Falcon and you focus on that. I mean, that's like something like 3000 pieces is gonna take you a week plus. You can go to something else, right? But you don't try to do them all at one time. Trying to build multiple things at the same time is really, really hard. So we can't. So with that said, let's move on to maintenance mode because what do you do with something when you're not building it? And the answer is mostly you wanna just maintain that. This is like,

Ryan (10:16.85)
Yes.

Andy (10:24.62)
What you're saying, Ryan, about people being afraid of losing gains, well, you can take active steps to avoid losing those gains. You can take active steps to maintain things that you're not building and keep them at a level that's acceptable to you without having to put a lot of focus on them. And this is just like, you you said the metaphor of taking something off the front burner and putting it on the back burner.

I don't know how to cook, but I have watched the guy at Waffle House while he's making my hash browns. And I have seen that he does not just focus on one area of the griddle. He's got this whole like giant griddle of stuff and different dishes that are being moved around on there according to their priority and the timing that they need to be finished so that they can be plated and sent out to people, right? So this is really the thing is to

Understand that this isn't also just your training. This also includes other things in your life. Do not think that you are going to focus hard in the gym and get jacked while you are also in the most demanding part of your professional life and your family is having twins. I'm sorry, that's unrealistic. Some of those things have to be in maintenance mode while you are focusing on, let's be honest, the twins. Right? So.

Like, you can ask Jorlo

Ryan (11:54.76)
No, I was just thinking of that actually, because yeah, I remember when Jarlo, when Jarlo has twins, by the way, if you're listening, and I remember when the boys came around and boy did things change for Jarlo. So yeah.

Andy (12:05.304)
Well, he still says he has very few memories of that first year because he just like there was no time for anything but that. So yeah, so this is the thing. So when you're building, you can only really be doing it in one kind of phase of area of life at the same time too. So how do you maintain? So let's talk about keeping quality, keeping skill, maintaining that capacity, even when something is on the back burner.

Ryan (12:10.418)
Surviving, yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

Ryan (12:35.1)
Yeah, absolutely. When, when this is happening again, that back burner thing, we'll keep coming back to this because you're checking in on those things. And I really think that this is a good way to look at it because with those things that you're just trying to maintain, you're simply going back to revisit them to remind your body that you can still do them.

That might sound funny, but really that's what it is. Sometimes it's just a matter of reminding yourself that, yeah, I can ride the bike, the bicycle after having not been on a bicycle for a year. And, I'm feeling a little shaky. I'm going to maybe just today I'll spend a little extra time riding around the neighborhood and then I'm good. I'll put it back in the garage and I'll come back and check it later. So if we're looking at it that way, for example,

If your priority right now, let's say that you really need to focus on your mobility. Well, having a couple of strength sessions a week is great. But again, it's touching in on those. You're not going into the strength session and say, you know what, I think it's a good time to try and get a PR on something. No, no, no, no. You're going in, you're listening to your body and just saying, OK, this is where I am today and it's great. And.

Go back to our previous podcast, by the way, to look at the red, yellow, and green sessions. And you can look at it that way as well, because going into those, you might have a great day, and that's good enough. know, having a great day, things are going great, you do a little extra work, but you're done. And remember, it's not the priority. You're just checking back in on it. It can be doing some shorter sessions. Again, just checking back in and making sure.

that you can do it. And I laugh because this is where a lot of people who practice handstands fall into the trap into thinking that they should continue training handstands every single day. If that interests you, if that's what you want to do, have at it. But I have found that once you get to a certain level, and I'm not just talking about handstands, like really anything, and you're happy at that level,

Ryan (14:52.582)
It's actually easier to maintain it, of course, than it was to build up to it. And so as long as you're going back to it from time to time and checking to see if it's still there, you're good to go. Now, what happens is. However, I just want to kind of. Touch on this briefly. We're focusing on something else, a priority, something else, and we're maintaining something.

We go to do that thing that we're maintaining. Notice that we're slightly slipping and then Alissa would want to change everything and make that part of the priority as well. So I get it, but keep the priority of the priority, as I mentioned earlier, and you can always come back later to spend more time on bringing that thing back up to speed. But moving forward, though.

you know, just enough conditioning to make sure you're good to go for whatever you need to do. It's really looking at checking in and just making sure you're still good enough. That's really, really important. And so there's going to be reduced frequency of what you're doing. Obviously, like I just said, know, reduce volume, of course, because you're not doing as much. But then also, I would say the intensity of that, depending on what you're doing, probably won't be at such a high intensity.

Andy (16:10.67)
Thank you.

Ryan (16:13.121)
simply because you haven't been doing it as much. nothing wrong with that. It's simply just a regular check-in and making sure that you are good enough.

Andy (16:24.662)
This is one of the good things in traditional martial arts about kata too is because you have these routines that you can just do one and you've kind of checked like a bunch of techniques and a bunch of things and you don't really have to spend a lot of time on them, right? So, you know, just having those sort of anything that you think is important. If you're not in a building phase on that, you don't even really have to include it in your workout or anything. You can just

Ryan (16:29.731)
yeah.

Ryan (16:35.538)
Yeah.

Andy (16:52.792)
do like five pull-ups. You can just do a handstand for a few seconds. You can just squat down, stretch your legs around and be like, yeah, okay, feels good. And that takes you, like honestly, those three things take you like less than two minutes. And you can be checked in on your strength, your mobility and your skill level across those things in less than two minutes. And then you can spend the rest of your time building on what you really wanna focus on. So again, maintenance is not something that takes a lot of time.

Ryan (17:06.748)
So quick. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy (17:23.09)
but it's not something that you need to worry about or feel bad about or feel that it isn't worth your time or isn't valuable. So the other thing that a lot of people in our poll seem to feel like they needed to apologize for is being in a recovery phase or, I mean, you might even call it damage control. And this is something that, depending on how you look at it,

feels like either it's natural and important or it feels like you've messed up. So when we phrase this damage control, it sort of sounds like, I've hurt myself and now I have to do it. But the thing is, is all recovery is sort of controlling damage. mean, building, pushing yourself hard causes some amount of damage and stress load to your body and so you have to be able to manage that. Recovery is where this happens and

Knowing that you need to take a week off because you've been sick, or knowing that you need to take a few weeks off of heavy squats because you broke your ankle, it doesn't mean you're a failure and, oh, should be, I, you know, I wouldn't be able to squat, you know, three plates by now, except I broke my ankle last year and it really, dude, who cares? Like, the fact is you can walk, and if you had not taken that recovery time, you would not be able to.

Ryan (18:38.952)
Yeah.

Ryan (18:46.664)
That's right, yeah.

Andy (18:47.094)
So the recovery is a positive thing. It's not a consolation prize. It's not something like that. Recovery is important. And every time you think that the recovery time that for an injury is a mistake tax that's taking you away from what you would really want to be doing, think about it more globally. And you can probably find that if you had not...

taken that recovery time or if you had not gotten injured, you probably would have pushed yourself too far in some other way. Yeah. So, yeah, how do you think about managing this?

Ryan (19:18.404)
Absolutely.

Ryan (19:24.378)
Lip. Yep. Well, this is great. And I'll give you an example right now. I'm actually in recovery mode right now for my thumb. And I told you this, Andy, while back, I dislocated my thumb. so obviously it doesn't allow me to do a lot of the stuff that I wanted to do. But instead of me just working through the pain and pushing past that, I just took a step back and say, first off, OK, what do I need to do in order to make sure that

I'm healing properly. It's very important. And then how can I work around it? And so this is another way to look at things. And so a lot of us, to be honest, we'll say, my goodness, something happened. It doesn't have to be an injury, of course, you you could be traveling or something like that, whatever. like, first off, assess the situation, figure out what's going on. And then

instead of beating yourself up over it, just say, all right, it happened. What can I do? And then do that. So again, working around it. So, you know, recently I post every day to my Instagram. You wouldn't know that I've dislocated my thumb unless you watch some of the martial arts stuff I do. And you notice my hand is taped. And so what I've actually done is I still continue to train my martial art, but I literally taped my thumb to my hand so I can't use my thumb.

so that I don't injure myself worse. It's not at a point by the way where like me training is going to make it worse and that's also very important. So don't do something that's going to make it worse. But I'm working around it. But damage control again it's you're still training but the not perspective the objective thing of that has changed and that's all it is. And we can always train something else.

Just because you were doing one thing and now you can't do that thing doesn't mean, oh, I'm going to stop. I'm done. I shouldn't do anything. No, there's always something else that you can do. So some examples have some things listed here. Maybe you hurt your wrist. You're doing a lot of locomotion. I mean, I don't know. I like to do kettlebells recently. Maybe doing kettlebells, you hurt your wrist or something. OK, great. It happened. That's fine. All right.

Ryan (21:50.184)
You can reduce the load, reduce the intensity, take a break and stop doing kettlebells for a while. There's other stuff you can do that's still going to help you, you know. You know, lower back issues, what it is, you know, life happens, but it's working around this and looking at just basically how can you again, reduce intensity, complexity. You keep moving, but you're doing something that's going to help you to continue to

heal if you're injured while still moving. so the other thing though is and I want to come back and look at this a completely different way. Traveling. A lot of people feel that they need to continue to work out when they travel. I used to be that guy. I was I remember, you know, family vacation. Oh, I'm still working on my handstands. I got to work on my handstands, you know, lose my gains, whatever like take the time off.

Andy (22:26.039)
Yeah.

Ryan (22:49.426)
to relax. I think that's a good thing. And so recovery in that way is looking at completely stepping away. And then when you come back, then you assess, you know, what you need to do to get back on track. So just a little bit of a different example there. But you're not losing anything. I want to be clear with everybody. If you get injured, great. It happened. OK, you can always build back.

Don't think that you should push through this or that you're a bad person because you took time off to recover. Because you took time off to recover, you're going to be better later. That's something I feel is very important. Wish I had learned that earlier on in my life.

Andy (23:32.77)
Yeah, I think one of the things about damage control is it's especially to distinguish from maintenance mode is maintenance is something that's doing fine and you can just kind of like keep it simmering at that level. Damage is where you have to take some active steps to recover from something. And this is where it becomes not just about your training and it's easy to put it in the context of being injured.

but there's also a lot of things that sometimes require active damage control as well. And that could be stress from work or family or life. And you might just say, look, I would love to really push myself in training, but what I really need to be doing is taking some active damage control here and spending 10 minutes focused on just relaxing breathing, taking a walk after dinner to get some damn time away from my family, because they're driving me nuts.

know, little things like this, these are the things that they seem really simple, but don't forget that any stress, be it from training, from life, from sickness, from playing video games, from whatever, any stress that you introduce to your nervous system is shared. It's one global thing. You don't have a nervous system for training and a nervous system for work and a nervous system for hobbies. It's one nervous system that when it is jacked up,

needs to be regulated back down before you can have productive building sessions on anything else. So look at damage control, again, as controlling, not just waiting until the damage is done and responding, not damage response, damage control, how you can actively be recovering and pre-recovering from things so that the lasting damage is less, right?

And that's kind of where it fits in a trajectory. So yes, it is very much a key when you have an injury or take something too far, but it's also a manner of looking at something that maybe you're not trying to maintain that area so much as you know that if you don't take some active attention to it, it may end up being something that causes damage down the road. So it's a more active thing than a response. So with that, let's get into

Ryan (25:47.68)
That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy (25:53.122)
the last season and this is something that a lot of people leave out. And I think when we're looking at training, it's something that people feel is almost frivolous. So we talk about this in GMB, a lot of exploration of movement and some of this comes under play and you know, like trying, you

more complexity and chaining movements together and experimenting with things and having fun, learning how to do new challenges that don't necessarily make you stronger or build your cardio health or whatever, but they have a lot of value to them in terms of building robustness around your strength and your capabilities, but people see these things as kind of like extra.

And I think that if you look at it as exploring, it might feel like it's less valuable than building. But if you change the frame, and let's now also bring performance under this. Because if you look at athletes, if you look at people in the military or law enforcement, for example, if you look at being a parent, and times where you really have to just focus on

Ryan (26:56.232)
you

Andy (27:15.53)
Actually, this is a really challenging time for my family and I have a responsibility and I don't get to focus on A, B or C right now, right? I have to really put all of my time and attention on taking care of my family. Okay, any of these situations, it's not building, it's not maintenance, it's not damage control necessarily, but you're performing, you're using your peak resources and you're, you know,

doing them in ways that are improvised that you may not have trained for. And so this is the sort of phase, the season, where it can be something that you choose voluntarily to pursue for pleasure or for the joy of your sport or to just like enjoy your training or whatever. It could be something that you do on vacation or whatever, but it can also be that you are performing.

because it's your job or because it's a sport that you're involved in or because your life situation or career literally demand it. So this is a phase that a lot of times people feel like is not as important. But even if you're just exploring, things are important to understand that exploration is training for performance. Because you're training your body and your nervous system to be able to improvise and make use of all of these things that you've built and maintained.

in a way that's not scripted and not in the safe confines of your program. so exploring and performing are two sides of the coin, but I think that they're necessary to really be actualizing yourself as a physical person. You cannot ignore the necessity of performance.

and actually think that you are building. You know?

Ryan (29:03.944)
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. Because you first have to build the capabilities to be able to get to the point to do that. And I like what you said there. And there's. I think there were three different ways that you were looking at it. And so when we first when you first started talking, I was thinking of my summers, because literally that's the season where I'm more in exploration mode. You know, I don't.

Andy (29:32.974)
A lot of people, right? You go to the beach, you swim, you're climbing mountains and stuff. Yeah.

Ryan (29:33.244)
have any pro programming zero exactly right with yeah and so there's no programming for me in the summers and.

Andy (29:43.002)
And just on that note, we have a lot of people in our community that are into winter sports and many, so actually very recently, so it's still March, and we've recently had a lot of people riding in their training logs and stuff. I haven't been training much this week, but I was skiing six hours a day, four days last week. Well, dude, you're fine.

Ryan (29:47.856)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Ryan (30:00.274)
Yeah, yeah, Right, that's why we're training, right? And that's the thing. And that's really what I wanted to get at was the fact that that's why we're doing it. It's for that stuff. So it's that ultimate expression of our physical autonomy. And so this is why in the summers I've just always left it open because I just...

Andy (30:06.36)
Yes.

Ryan (30:30.118)
the rest of the year was kind of for, you know, this, if you will. But then you brought up, you know, some other good points about being a parent and things like that. And of course, those have to change because those are the sort of things where as a parent, let's just be honest, it's all for our kids, really, you know, the majority of the time. And you always want to be able to be there for them. I think the one thing that has bothered me for years now is the fact that for a lot of the kids sports,

They're now year round rather than seasonal. I don't like that. That's just something I just think that's putting too much stress on the kids bodies at a young age to be performing literally throughout the year instead of having what we just talked about different seasons where they can either build, maintain or focus on recovery, recovery if they need to, and then have their own season. Now in high school sports,

Andy (31:28.428)
Right, Kelly Sturette talks about this a lot because his daughters are involved in youth sports and he and his wife were both very high level pro athletes and just more and more kids from a young age are being forced into specialization tracks in their sport and they're in training this fragility and they reach a peak sooner and are unable to continue growth.

Ryan (31:31.621)
Yeah? Yeah?

Ryan (31:46.16)
Yeah. Right.

Andy (31:57.706)
later on because they've lost, they have not trained some of these other broader attributes and things. if you are a coach or have kids in sports, please check that out because he talks a lot about this. so Kelly and Juliet at the ready state and their podcast has a lot of information on this. Sorry, not to sidetrack, but I, I've always found that very, very interesting.

Ryan (32:20.2)
Yeah, it's great stuff. No, no, no, no, absolutely. And this is great. But but it just reminded me of because, you know, my daughter seeing it, you know, swimming her whole life and we moved to the United States and she's in high school and she said, Oh, my goodness, daddy, they've got seasons and and I can do multiple sports. And I was like, yes, you can. But so that was just another example. But bringing it back, though, to to what we're talking about as far as being having that capable body for the things that you want to do. And so

you know, throw this question out for you like, yes, you might be training for your thing, but are you training more than you do your thing? And I hope that you're using the time when you're using exploration and and and this season, if you will, performing to truly, truly just focus on that thing that you enjoy. Of course.

can be anything, you know, if you are looking at things within GMB, because you know, me, this is what I love to do, is the ground flow type stuff. know, our sequences program I already mentioned, Florida Loco, which, you know, we have even elements and things like that, but this could be your martial arts, could be hiking, climbing, whatever it is. And what we're looking at during this particular season of exploration is more variety.

more variation within that particular thing you're doing, trying different things, not limiting yourself to a single thing. So again, if we were to go back to let's say any kind of summer sports, maybe I have no idea, like stand up paddling, hey, let's try that or whatever. And doing these things because you can, because you spent time building up the body to be able to do that. And so

We're not looking at doing things perfectly when we do this. It's way beyond that. It's really, to be honest for me, it's pure fun. I'm just looking to see how much enjoyment I can bring out of doing this particular thing during this particular season.

Andy (34:31.096)
Yeah, yeah, it's really great. The performance and exploration side of things is really where we get to.

use what we've been supposedly building in the gym all year, right? And it doesn't mean it has to just necessarily be once a year. That's not what we're saying at all. can, and for many of us, should be multiple times a year. Your cycles can be as long as an actual Earth season, or they could be weeks. It's completely fine. And I think that this is something that's really important when we look at.

All of these qualities, if we're building strength or stamina or mobility or building skill in a certain movement pattern or something, all of these things have different costs to our system. They take different times to develop. They have different needs in terms of nutrition and rest and training time. They have different decay rates. If you stop paying attention to them, how long they fall off, right?

Strength can last a good little while. Skill, once you've got a skill, lasts almost forever, right? As long as your body still has the capacity to do that thing because the nervous system remembers these things somewhere. your recovery needs for all of these things are also gonna be different too. So it's important to understand that like, you your cycles don't have to be a prescribed set or anything. And this is again why having

Ryan (35:48.124)
Yep, yep, yep.

Andy (36:11.128)
programs that are made by coaches that understand this stuff is really really important right because Like we make elements to build all this stuff in and if you go from elements to integral strength You're moving to a different season of your training there a different emphasis And if you go from there and then you know, maybe work on one of the other programs All of this stuff is built into the flow of how we have our curriculum set up So you don't really need to worry too much about it. Am I doing these things correctly?

And we also have practices that you can put between the programs for like a couple weeks of break, like Floor Local, like you mentioned, is something that's great for time between focus programs and stuff like that. But all of these things take different amounts of time, different amounts of recovery, and as you're focused on them, you have to go through seasons, and they're not necessarily going to be like three-month seasons. They might be longer or shorter. But what's interesting is this isn't just for your training.

This also applies to life stuff, right? So again, you might be in a building season in your career and a maintenance season in your training overall, right? So it kind of depends how granular you want to get with things, how macro or micro or whatever, because you might say that you're mostly maintaining in your training, but during what amount of energy you have, you're going to be focusing on building mobility during that time, right? And that's fine, but...

Ryan (37:17.832)
Hmm.

Ryan (37:35.336)
Sure, yeah.

Andy (37:38.606)
Don't get too lost in the weeds about getting too micro with stuff. What's most important is that you understand overall in my training right now, I'm mostly focused on damage control because I'm having a really tough time with something else, right? And I just don't want to, you know, don't want to injure myself, don't want to have low energy, you know, or be fatigued while I'm addressing this thing that's going on that I have to focus on. So this.

place of life stuff and it's all cycling these things and understanding that anything you want to do, has requirements, it has costs, and it has different needs. And so you can't pull all of those things from the same pools at once. All of those resources come from somewhere and you have to replenish them at some certain rate that you're able to.

So let's talk a little bit about just sort of to kind of wrap up like we mentioned that we had pulled our community and a lot of people Felt that they should be building Right. So let's address the emotional side of this to the mental side is because it is really important we get told that We should be pushing 110 % and we've talked about this in auto-regulation and stuff like that before but we get shown

You know, what is a workout? It's a thing that makes you sweat and takes you to your limit and it produces results. We love results. We love before and after photos. If somebody's been working out for two years and we say, well, you don't really look like it. Like we want to know what is the result because if you don't get results, why bother doing it, right? Well, sometimes there's results that you can't see and sometimes there's other reasons that you're doing a thing, right?

So, yeah, what do think, Ryan?

Ryan (39:35.08)
Well, first and foremost, think that no one knows what we're going through and where we've been. So, you know, it's better to focus on really what you need right now. That's what I think. And so rather than thinking you need to be building or most people think that, is that really what you need right now? And that's how I like to look at it. And building, yes, can be fun. But we were joking before

we started this today, like, maintenance mode is kind of my favorite, to be honest. You know, I don't think recovery is anyone's favorite, but it's necessary. But maintenance mode, I think that the reason I like maintenance mode is because it actually reminds me of when I do that thing, how much work I actually put in before to get to where I am. And because I looked at cycling,

in terms of prioritizing what I needed at that particular time and then putting that into maintenance mode to work on the next thing. And so once again, if you really understand that building, yes, is necessary, but be clear about where the end goal for your building is, I think is good because we just continue to build and build and build and build.

And sometimes we end up building something that just topples over because it's too high. We spent too much time on it. yes, again, really, I think there's a time and place for building. But I think if we can be clear about when that starts and ends and then when we move into maintenance mode or wherever we are, I just think that mentally can be a lot easier for us to actually enjoy what we're doing. Because once again,

we're not trying to do more exercise in GMB. We're trying to figure out just the right amount that lets us enjoy what we want to do better instead of just having the focus on doing more GMB.

Andy (41:51.8)
Yeah, totally. yeah, all of these phases, all of these seasons have a purpose, you know? Like, you cannot just be freaking harvesting stuff if you're not letting, if you're not planting seeds and letting them grow. That's, you can't, it doesn't work that way, you know? You can't just be pulling oil out of the ground unless you also have a bunch of dinosaurs that live and go extinct and get buried for a million years. Like.

Ryan (42:07.644)
Mm. Shoot. Right.

Andy (42:19.342)
just the way it works, right? This is how the sausage gets made. you know...

Ryan (42:21.446)
He

Andy (42:27.342)
Dinosaur sausage. That dinosaur jerky, probably high in protein. Untapped market, I think. So it's just important to understand that these seasons all have a value. Pro athletes do not play all year. They cannot. The demands on the body and mind of playing high level sports

Ryan (42:29.96)
Yeah, that was interesting right there. Yes. Yeah.

Andy (42:57.016)
Several times a week are intense and this is why most of them are jacked up and have injuries most of the time. And this is why they have to have a prolonged recovery phase and a building season and a pre-season and all of this stuff. So don't think that you as a recreational athlete who also has a job and other responsibilities and probably eats like shit most of the time is going to be in a building phase constantly. I'm sorry my friend, it just ain't happening.

So you gotta prioritize. And so to do that, I wanna leave with kind of four questions that you can use to sort of know where something is at in any of these seasons. And they're really simple. It's one, what do you need to get better at right now? And that's where, that's what you should be trying to build, right? And then think about, well, in order to do that, what's good enough that you don't really need to focus on it much? And those are the things you put on maintenance most.

But then also look at what is kind of like unstable or overloaded or messed up. And that's something that you might need to put a little bit more energy into damage control. And then lastly, what's something that you just want to have fun with? And that's where you get to have a little bit of exploration. And you can choose to mix in whatever proportion of these things you feel like relative to whatever else is going on in your life. But you take those things

And remember, if you don't make conscious decisions about your training, some bullshit influencer on Instagram or some supplement company is gonna make those decisions for you and charge you $29 a month for their OnlyFans or $200 a month for their supplement to be able to partake of the decision that they've made for you. You get to choose. You get to choose. But remember that if you don't, someone else will. So...

Don't take it lightly. Spend five minutes thinking about this stuff and then choose a program that has these things built into it that addresses those needs for you.

Ryan (45:00.86)
Right. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. And then to wrap it up, just the big thing is to know what season you're in once you figure that out and then use the appropriate training for that. And that's it. And that's it. And do that. And I well, I know you're going to be better off. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah.

Andy (45:14.926)
Yeah. And then just ride that season out. Yeah.

Andy (45:29.622)
All right, that's it. Thank you for listening and we will violate your eardrums again in a week or two.

Ryan (45:36.904)
Yeah, thank you. Bye bye.