Dominate your fitness levels. Work around injuries, train for longevity, and accomplish your goals in life. Mike Lerario sits down with Chuck Ritter and Greg Walker in the famous Falcon Snail Pub to discuss how to program your fitness programs intelligently and with purpose. We talk about important references everyone should have on their bookshelves and how to train past severe injuries.
Dominate your fitness levels. Work around injuries, train for longevity, and accomplish your goals in life. Mike Leraio sits down with Chuck Ritter and Greg Walker in the famous Falcon Snail Pub to discuss how to program your fitness programs intelligently and with purpose. We talk about important references everyone should have on their bookshelves and how to train past severe injuries.
Our first bonus episode and episode with video! Check it out on YouTube here.
Books From Episode:
Check out Atomic Athlete Here
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Mike: Okay. Hey, Mike Lererio, your host for the Objective Arete podcast, and this is episode one of the bonus series. And today I have the, uh, pleasure of speaking with Greg Walker, owner of Hatchett Brewery, formerly of the United States Army, uh, and also Chuck Ritter, currently with the United States Army Warrior philosopher, and soon to be retired, both of whom are the founders of Objective Art.
So gentlemen, welcome. Good to see you.
Chuck: Thanks for having us. Thanks. Having me in My thanks for having me in my own Irish pub. Yes, right. We're here in the Falcon
Mike: Snow Pub. Uh, it's, which is a, a really great recreation of something that you might find in, I don't know, Dublin Cork. What part of Ireland are we in, Chuck?
Is what? What was the inspiration for this? It's kind of
Chuck: a mash, it's, it's weird too, because I didn't realize that there was so much animosity between like, you know, Scottish and Irish and, and English until I went to Scotland and I was talking about how it was cool to visit England for the first time.
Yeah. And I was like. The music stopped and the, and this is lit for real, stopped and they like sat down and they gave us a whole lecture and history on Scotland. It was really cool, but like,
Mike: it's not England. Like what? Yeah,
Chuck: right. It was, it was wild. Um, but, so yeah, it's kind of a, it's kind of just a mix, right?
I got British stuff over here. I got Irish stuff over there. Is that your heritage? Irish. Irish. That's why middle name is Patrick.
Mike: That's why
Chuck: I'm so pale.
Mike: Hmm. Yeah. Greg, you look like you have some Nordic blood in your. Background.
Greg: I'm mostly German, but uh, my name is Scottish. Mm. Ironically. Mm.
Mike: Cool. Well, I'm Italian pretty much, although on my mom's side there's some Scot Irish
Mike (2): Rio.
Mike: You make me a nice pizza pie. Hey, hey, hey. Uh, yeah. So we're here in the Falcon Snail Pub and today, this first episode of the bonus series, uh, we're gonna talk about fitness and training. Um, Chuck, you've had 34 surgeries.
Chuck: Yeah, like recently had my 34 surgery three weeks ago. I had a bilateral hernia operation where they, they're going in to fix one, but they ended up find a four 20 side.
So they fixed that. And about 14 or 15 weeks out from having a new left hip, you know, a year before that I got a new right hip and then back fusions and. Lots of fun.
Mike: Did you ever go into the knife for anything like an appendectomy or anything before you guys started getting blown up and shot for a living?
Chuck: Uh, I had some actually, so I got weak genes. Like I say that jokingly, but it's real. I have weak gene, but that's where the hernia came from. You weren't supporting the, my, my testosterone levels are always chronically low, but I had two hernias when I was younger. Uh, you know, I had a lot of ear problems I had to do surgery on when I was younger, blown eardrum before I joined the military.
So there's a few things. Okay.
Mike: But the vast majority of the surgeries you've had are a result of the lifestyle, let's call it a lifestyle choice.
Chuck: Yeah. The 34 are all related to To combat? Yeah. Or the job. Somehow
Mike: Got it. Right. And so with each one of those surgeries, I mean, that's a setback in a way, right?
I mean, you're fixing yourself, but in terms of your fitness and conditioning, e every surgery requires recovery time, right? Yeah. And, and gotta take care. So, so talk us through that. Like what do you, what is that like, and how have you approached the, the cycle of wellness to injury, to surgery recovery?
Wellness again. What's that like?
Chuck: So it's, you always happen to start over from scratch. Like right now, I just had to start over from scratch again. I thought it was at a certain point after this last hip surgery had the hernia surgery. You gotta be careful. So it's a slow progression up. I thought I really how to walk, you know, at least three times now.
But one of the themes that I keep seeing, especially online that's kind of concerning, is I'll talk about my goals, which are maybe a little outlandish. You know, I plan on running a 50 race in November and then I. Every services physical fitness test in December with a good friend of mine. And
Mike: real quick, this is March right now, we're talking about almost,
Chuck: yeah.
So it's, it's right around the corner, right? Yeah. So, but that's a goal I have. And people are like, why are you beating yourself up? Or, you know, you're fitness weirdo. You're like, you know, you don't have to beat your body up anymore. It's no, no, no. Investing in yourself physically, in a, in a smart, intelligent way is not beating your body.
That's a, that's a. That's a smart investment. As long as you're doing it intelligently. I'm not, not waking up at four 30, like, oh, I'm just gonna go run a hundred miles. That's not what I'm doing. I'm doing a very intentional, you know, planned out progressive program that leads to a desired instate and that has checks and balances in it, and it's based off, I got this stack of books here in front of me because I do want to go over that in a minute, but this is, I'm basing the programming off of advice and input that I've had from.
Being able to have access to professionals. That's just been an amazing thing. And also, you know, my own research and then what I've tried and, you know, people are like, well, you know, you just keep hurting yourself over again. Like, no, no, no. I've never actually had a surgery due to me hurting myself in training.
In fact, the only time I've ever hurt myself in training or before I had access to professionals, which was, you know, around the 2010 timeframe, I, I did do some stupid things like that. Like I had a bone graft in my, in my face where they were fixing my jaw. The day after a major bone graft where everything was sewn up 'cause they cultivated bone print Here.
I decided I was gonna go to 12 mile Ruck mark with my friend. I told my buddy Rich Cole, I was like, Hey, let's go to 12 Mile R. He's like, are you sure? That's smart.
Mike: Yeah. I don't need my mouth to go on a ruck march. Yeah. And that was, I
Chuck: was really dumb and I really messed myself up and some of this stuff came a little, you know, loosened up in there.
Me being an idiot.
Mike (2): Yeah.
Chuck: But once we had the systems in place, you know, luckily in my job we had, you know, trainers, we had sports psychs with therapists, we had dieticians. And once I started actually listening to 'em, 'cause we were all raged against the machine at first, like, oh, I know what I'm doing. I'm just gonna go out there and run every day and do dumb stuff.
I was able to start really building plans that that worked. Like when I got shot in 2013, I got shot three times. I bled on the operating table. I had to relearn how to use this arm. I was able to redeploy in two months because I sat down with the experts. We built a, a plan, everything from nutrition to physical therapy to how I was training my, my mind, a balanced stability.
I was able to redeploy it in two and a half months. Within three months I was back at deadlift and above 500 pounds running, you know, 40 minute, five mile. So it's, it's possible as long as you have goals and you do smart, intelligent training towards those goals.
Mike: Right. Yeah, I, and I think it's, it's a great place to insert this.
Idea of measures of performance versus measures of effectiveness. Mm-hmm. Right? Like they're different and you need both, probably, especially for something like this. Like, you know, how much am I lifting and what's the result of that? Mm-hmm. Right. So, um, very cool.
Chuck: I agree. I'm a, I'm a large guy, so I know that my power weight ratio needs to be much more refined now.
So I need to drop about 25 pounds. I'm. Probably ever deadlift that max like 500 pounds. Again, it's just, it's just not needed. Do. I'm gonna max the Army's combat physical fitness test. I need to, I think I need to do 3 45 3 times, which I think is, is very doable. I don't think it's gonna add a whole lot of mass to my body, and that's fine for my goals.
I don't need to be this big, strong person. You know, I used to pride myself on being able to run a's so 40 minute, five mile and lift a ton of weight. I don't need to do that anymore. My body won't handle it. I'll just, I'll, I'll be injured if I do that. Yeah, it, it's dumb. So. With my goals in mind, you know, and we'll go through the, some, like, some of this stuff later because I think people should invest.
If, if nobody, if you don't invest in any other books and fitness, I think these three books are what you people should buy no matter what you're doing. We'll go over that in a minute.
Mike: Cool. How about you, Greg? What are you working on? You're looking good. Oh, I
Greg: appreciate it. Um, I've gone back to kind of what I used to do even in high school, but just kind of standard bodybuilding, old school lifts.
Um, I did, it's a constant, uh, cycle for me where it's. A question of priorities. And so usually when I find like it's a trigger, I'm like, Hey, I haven't been working out in a while. It means that I need to get, reassess my priorities and get back into it. 'cause for me, honestly, a lot of the physical fitness stuff goes way beyond physical.
It's a lot of mental clarity, uh, emotional regulation, um, just being able to perform better, uh, in general. So like that's something I've learned over time that I kind of took for granted, I would say. Yeah. But, uh, I'm also not trying to bench three 15 anymore. Like I. I like doing five by fives. I like, again, they'll kinda old school stuff, five by fives.
Um, so it's a progression of just, it's more strength training. So, uh, five sets of five at, um, a failure, weight, whatever that is for you.
Mike (2): Mm-hmm.
Greg: And you can calculate that based off one rep max, that type of thing. Yeah, that tends to be what I go to and then I build progressions around that. Um, and I also now I try to do.
Four-ish five times a week, but it'd make it a 30 to hour long session. Yeah. So nothing crazy like we used to do the two hour workouts, that type of thing. And it's just more sustainable. It's something I can fit into my calendar, uh, that still gives me the same benefits, uh, without having to go to like the extreme per se.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I find that, um, you know, setting expectations along with goals is kind of a key thing. When I'm traveling, uh, and I do a fair amount of travel with work, I will. Adjust my expectations. Like, I like working out every day, but I know that when I'm working with clients and I'm traveling, that probably isn't gonna happen.
So I'll take, you know, if I'm going away on a five day trip, right? What's, you know, half of that, two and a half or whatever that is, half plus one day. So if I work out three times in a five day work trip, I'm happy. Right. So setting, I think setting expectations is a key aspect of that, especially when you're busy.
Mm-hmm. Right. Would I like to work out every day? Absolutely. But sometimes I can't. Then the other thing is I was introduced to this concept of NEAT a few years ago, neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis, right? Which is just a fancy way of saying burning calories. And uh, you know, the idea is if you slept eight hours a day, and that's a big if for a lot of us, and you were in the gym for one hour, you'd still have 66% of the day.
Where you could burn calories. So if you were to park your car as far away from the entrance to the building and walk in instead of as close as you could if you took the stairs instead of the elevator, you know, those kinds of things, they're choices you can make that will help you get your steps in if nothing else.
And, uh, so I've become a big fan of, of Neat. As I get older too, just for reminding myself to make better choices about, uh, what I'm doing. The other thing I would say real quick that I, that I think that, um, you've touched on both of you is this idea of balance in that it's more than just exercising, right?
The army came out with the fitness triad, or the, well, no, the performance triad, what do they call it? Performance triad. Mm-hmm. Performance triad. After I came off active duty, I was like going, damn, I've been screaming about this for years. Right? That it's a three-legged stool of. Sleep, nutrition, and exercise, and you gotta do all three of them in appropriate measure.
Most guys are failing not because they're not exercising or not eating right, but they're doing those two things, but they're not getting enough sleep or they're getting enough sleep and they're eating well, but they're not exercising, right? And so it's usually when people are screwing up, it's 'cause they've let one of those fall outta whack one or more, obviously.
And so if you can keep those three things in balance. You know what I mean? Balance, right. I think that's a great way to approach it as well. Cool. Alright, Chuck, talk to us about these books, man. What do you got here?
Chuck: So, I got four books, but you can't buy one of 'em. So the one on top though, wearing my Atomic athlete shirt represent a big believer in, uh, atomic Athlete Jake Signs the owner is, or one of the owners, he's on our board of advisors for objective RA.
Mike: Also a great podcast episode.
Chuck: Yeah. Which yeah, be coming out soon. Tune in. But the reason I like Atomic is, you know, one of their, their. One of the things they pride themselves on is that they very, they have very low injury rates in the gym.
Mike (2): Mm-hmm.
Chuck: And they say, yeah, our, our, you know, you know, when you look at our, how our people are progressing, it's, it's probably a little less aggressive than, you know, if you went to the military athlete or some of these other ones.
But it's more sustainable in the long run, and they really take time to educate people on what they're doing. Like, Hey, if we're doing this programming. For the next eight weeks in this cycle, this is what we're going for. We're really working on strength endurance, and we're working on aerobic capacity, and then we're gonna cycle off that and we're gonna do a hyper hypertrophy program.
That always me, me up, I don't know
Mike: why it's such a simple word to say. It's not
Chuck: hypertrophy. Hypertrophy would be like a, you know, a trophy that's, that's pretty hyper you hypertrophy, you know, building muscle and then going, Hey, we're gonna go into this, the strength cycle, right? But what they, they did here is they built us a program called Special Operations Physical Fitness Instructor course back in the day for the NCO Academy.
And it was all geared towards teaching the cadre really in depth how the body works. So you can train around anything. You can, you know, if you got goals to, to do a power lifting competition a year, you can actually train for that. You know, parts of the program were the cadre to take a, you know, a fictional person that say was a power lifting to run a marathon a year, and they had to like, go through and, and explain how they, they were gonna get in there, but really talk about how the programming was gonna, you know, specifically.
Help the body adapt in what ways? You know, like, you know, volume and intensity are, they're inversely related. You open one down the other and then your body only really cares, cares about, you know, time under tension, time under stress. Like what's the, what's the stimulus you're giving it and how much time you put in your body under that to get the adaptation you want.
Yeah. Whether it's, say you want more efficient mitochondria or more powerful mitochondria and using a TP better to, to, to really build your, you know. Aerobic base so you can have a, you know, a higher anaerobic ceiling as they, as they describe it. But so I go through there 'cause they, they break it down into different, and then 12 different really, um, you know, bins of how like you can train different parts of your body.
And again, they don't cleanse the best model. I think modeling's important, like we gotta model things so we can understand them and, you know, maybe. There might be better models or might be not, but I think their model
Mike: works. What's the quotation? All models are wrong. Some models are useful.
Chuck: Some models are useful, right.
So it's a model. And I, and I like, I like, I like their model. I obviously use other models too. I use our, our trainers, whatnot, but they just use basic science and actually what they use is based off these books here, um, which we'll go over real quick
Mike: and, but real quick too. So people can't get this, 'cause this was a special program.
Can't get that. But they can go to the, they can get
Chuck: to with these, everything that's in that. You can find in these three books right here.
Mike: But they can also go to the Atomic Athlete website and won't they, uh, don't they have tailor made programs that people can Yeah. Can plug into? Yeah, they
Chuck: do. Yeah. Your atomic athlete, their programs are amazing.
Um, I think it's very affordable. Actually, you know what? There is four books. I don't have the other one down here. There's a really thick book upstairs called The Lore of Running. And even if you're not a runner, that book goes from A to Z and how the Body Works. How to, how to train appropriately. Um, kinda like this one, like this is, this is one.
If you look in an atomic athlete, you wouldn't think this is a good book for anybody. It's training for the new Alpinism, a manual for climbers athlete. Um, mark Twight. It says the for word. I actually mark Dwight in here a lot. Mark Dwight started, um, Jim Jones. But this book again has everything you need to know how the body works.
They really go into really how to increase your, you know, they really go into like lactate threshold via two max. How to increase your body's ability to. Have strength endurance versus just strength. How have your body's ability to have, you know, a better aerobic, you know, better aerobic capacity, better work capacity?
Yeah. So your body is better able to, um, process lactate and not get, you know, worn out. And over time too, like, you know, um, chronic work capacity where yes, so you can do something hard today and wake up and do something hard tomorrow. How to build your training programs intelligently. It's all industry.
Like it, it doesn't matter if you're a power lifter or your marathon runner, I think everybody should pick up, uh, training for the new Alpinism and read it because it's, it's is, it is truly an a, an amazing book.
Mike: Well, I mean it because it's, it's out there on the extreme, right? Yeah. I mean, if you're at altitude, an alpine altitude, I mean that, that's what that does to the body.
I just think about the, the 14 peaks documentary with Mims, uh, the Tibetan, uh.
Chuck: Yeah, that's a great show. Former, former, uh,
Mike: yeah, like, you know what that guy was able to do in his capacities? Well, because he was training for this kind of a extreme altitude.
Chuck: That's cool. Even if you're not doing anything extreme, like the basics are the same thing.
This, and, and, and all these books cover when you read 'em, you're like, oh, that's, that's same thing. This says there's a different way of power, speed, and endurance, you know, skill-based approach to endurance training. So if you're looking. To do some, even, even like, you know, endurance training when it comes to like weightlifting and stuff like that.
This is also a great book that we base, you know, it's got, this one's got everything from mobility, the stability to, to actually building a training program. And then the last one, which is always super corn, is supple leopard. One of the things I wish I would've started putting in my programming when I was younger was to
Mike: be more supple,
Chuck: more, yeah, to be more supple was more mobility like this one, you know, really it goes over.
Just really common sense exercises. You can put any routine that you're building your program, so you also stay mobile in those areas and you're not just breaking your body down. And, and a lot of the things that our trainers, that's when you start reading like, oh man, all my trainers at work really, I mean, I hated some of this stuff.
I would, this is stupid. Like, 'cause you do something like, it would seem simple and you just couldn't do it. Right. Like, like stupid glute ham raises and. And you're like, okay, now I see, like I would come back to my trainer, like, I see why you're making me do that. And the reality, why I suck at is I, I shouldn't have been sucking at it.
'cause that was a, an imbalance.
Mike (2): Yeah.
Chuck: And, and now, later in life I really put all those kind of like, really weird exercises into my programming. So, you know, I stay up on it and I'm always left to bang generally. And yeah, I don't, I don't regret. In life, but I do wish if I could go back
Mike: Yeah. I, and add
Chuck: some, add some that, some mobility in there.
Mike: Sure. My wife has been doing yoga for years and I was always like, yeah, whatever. Yoga man. A couple years ago I took it up. I've got this great app called Asana Rebel, and it's right there on my phone. And, uh, man, I, I don't do it enough, but I do it now on a regular basis and I find that, you know, at 64 years old.
Mobility is such a key piece of you kinda look like a yogi,
Chuck: you know? Do I Yeah. You kind of got, you got the physique for that? I would, I would take a yoga glass from Michael Rio. Would you? Italian. It's
Mike (2): Italian yoga.
Chuck: Okay.
Mike: But, uh, only if you're gonna yoga
Mike (2): and a pizza.
Mike: I'm not gonna let you be behind me though, when we're doing the stretching exercises.
Um, hey, I do gotta say though, and this is one of the coolest things I remember ever doing with you, was in, in 20, uh. 23 when we went to the Philadelphia Phillies training facility there in Florida. And um, you know, the baseball players were cool, but the coolest thing for me was watching you interact with the strength and conditioning and the physi physical therapy people.
And seeing the reaction on their face as you're talking to them about your programs that you've done for your recoveries, from being wounded, from being blown up, from being shot, from having all these surgeries. And they were just in awe. They were like, they were sponges. They couldn't get enough of what you were talking about because like, you know, if this were a religion.
You're certainly a, a disciple, an apostle, if not Yeah. You know, uh, the, the Messiah when it comes to this, '
Chuck: cause it works. And I think they were, they were so fascinated because everything that they preach and now they've got a something or someone in front of them, like, well, he did everything that we preach and it actually works, right?
Because it, you know, they see, you know, the lower end of it with people. Like, no, here's somebody that's actually recovered from very traumatic things. Not because he's some type of superhuman, but because he just actually applied. What's been proven to work, right? Yeah. I
Mike: mean, you were, uh, intentional and you were discovering and you invested in your, your outcomes, which I think is all of us could say, oh yeah, that's what we ought to do.
But very few
Chuck: of us put the energy into doing that. You gotta invest in yourself, like we talk about all the time, selfishness, like, be selfish. Invest in yourself and, and that selfish investment. Of batching out time during the day to do some kind of physical training. Whether, and maybe you, you know, maybe you're missing limbs or you really can't, while you, or something, any kind of emotion, like people like, oh, you know, moving like that hurts.
Like, okay, well if you go to a physical therapist or anybody that helps fix a problem, they're not gonna give you like some magical healing power. They're gonna. Do some manipulation, but then they're gonna give you a bunch of exercises. Yeah. To do that are going to suck and it's gonna hurt because you're moving through these ranges of motion, breaking up scar tissue, strengthening imbalances, and making sure that you can move without pain.
Sometimes like when you're doing like nerve glides, you're just, you're stretching out your nerves because there's some problem there that you have to fix. And the only way to do that is through movement and manipulation of your body. Yeah. You have to do most of the work, like physical therapist, like he's, they're doing like maybe 5% maybe.
Then really they're, they're doing an evaluation. They're helping, you know, get something, but then it's on you to do the rest of it, and you have to dedicate that time and nothing's gonna happen overnight. Uh, you can't rush that type of stuff. It just doesn't work. It's not like they're magic. And I think that that's just like now to go do something, get up.
Yeah. Even if it's a while after my back fusion, right? Like, okay, today the goal is I'm gonna walk five minutes, three times a day. Okay. Not 10 minutes now. Okay. Three times a day. I'm walking 30 minutes at a. At a clip, right? Yeah. Um, like right now, uh, last week, you know, I'm just upp in my mileage. Like it was like a mile and a half run, mile and a half, run, a two mile run.
So this next week, Monday's a two mile run. Wednesday's a two mile run, and then Friday's a three mile run, and then Saturday's a five mile walk. And in between that, it's it's spin bike sessions and I'm just going up in volume, going up in 10 minutes at a time. Even though it's, I can do way more than that, I feel.
Because you can do more. I mean, you should do more, right? And yes, I, before the hernia surgery, I was way above that, but I gotta make sure I don't reinjure this. That's right. And I gotta make sure, you know, and while I'm doing that in the afternoons, I'm doing other workouts and a lot of those workouts, right now I'm in what's called, what I call phase one.
It's, I call it a, i, I think I called it something Terminator, like building the metal endoskeleton or something. I forgot what I named it on the programming. But it's six weeks dedicated to like, I'm not even doing full pull-ups, I'm just, I'm coming up into like a halfway or up and I'm holding. For a number of time and I'll slowly go down and each, each time I progress, I'll hold it for another five seconds.
So right now it's, it is like 22nd holes for five rounds and then hanging at the bottom for a good 30 seconds. Right? So really making sure I'm stretched, making sure all my tendons and ligaments, 'cause I've had this arm rebuilt. I've had to re, you know, relocate my bicep tendon. I gotta be, be careful, like a lot of weird, like really slow lunging movements.
A lot of really weird, like really slow kettlebell squats and whatnot. Just making sure that. I, I could do more than that. I'm just deadlifting 65 pounds, right? Like for reps, just making sure my body and everything is, is good. You know, doing a lot of core stability work and just, and it sucks. Like, man, I, this feels like I'm doing nothing right.
Um, but I am, because right now I'm sore from doing something that felt like nothing. Yeah. But there's, there's places where I'm like, yeah, okay. That was, I needed that. Yeah. And, and in fact, next week I'm just gonna add just a little bit to that. I'm gonna add a little bit more range of emotion there. Then at the end of the six weeks, I'm sorry, did you say
Mike: range of motion or range of emotions because
Chuck: Yeah, both actually when you're in there, it's kind of emotion.
You're like, man, I should be able to do way more than this. Yeah. And I was like, I can, I can physically do more, but I'm not, like, yesterday I got kind of stupid. I'm like, you know what? You know the leg tucks, the knee tucks the, where you bring your knees up to the elbow, it's the army head for physical fitness is like, man, I'm three weeks out from the surgery and I haven't practiced these probably in probably a year.
I got a video, I knocked out like eight of 'em, like with no problem. Like, how do people not do these? How can, but then I was like, you know what, that was probably dumb and I'm probably gonna feel that in the surgical area tomorrow. And I did. I woke up this morning, I was like, yeah, I can, that was probably pretty stupid, right?
So I do keep a, I keep a note, um, in my notebook. I don't have my notebook down here. When I open it up for my trainer says, don't be a dumb ass today. Yeah. And I, I make sure I read it every morning because I need to put it in the gym too.
Mike: That's good. That's like Notre Dame play like a champion today, you know?
Right. Don't be a dumb ass today.
Chuck: I probably just need to put a big screen TV in there and that's all it says is just flashes when you, it has like a motion sensors like, yeah. That's all it says.
Mike: Don't be dumb ast.
Chuck: Don't be a dumb ass today.
Mike: The mind remembers the body forgets another, uh, I think appropriate quotation.
So, okay. Greg, you working on a, a 50 kilometer race too, or are you just getting 50 barrels of beer in the truck within, less than, you know, a certain number of minutes or? My goal
Greg: now is, uh, I'm getting back into Juujitsu. Um, I found like playing soccer, like I always used to enjoy running. What I liked about running is having some activity to do.
Yeah. Like having a goal associated with it. So, um, two, a lot of the mobility stuff, jiujitsu really helps me with that. Um, I love the community aspect of it, and so that's my short term goal is to compete in a, I'm still a white belt, but compete in a local competition for that probably by this fall.
That's been my goal, so to speak, outside of just the standard programming
Mike: for, for those of us who don't know, like the white belt's not the very lowest, right? Oh, it
Greg: is. Oh, it is? Okay.
Mike: Okay. All right. So what in your progression on the way to black is what yellow, red, or, I mean, is there,
Greg: um, it's a white blue.
Um, it takes a while though for jujitsu box, purple, brown, black. Yeah. It takes, uh, about two years, I think, to get to Blue, roughly.
Mike (2): Wow.
Greg: So I've been doing it for about a year and a half right now. Just getting your ego checked every time you get there every day. Well, that's part of what I love about it.
Like
Mike (2): yeah,
Greg: it's, it's a great community too. 'cause you can get hurt, but everybody's very respectful. Uh, Uhhuh, um, it's, yeah, that's perhaps the most, gee, nogi where you guys, uh, I do mostly, gee, I like the Nogi. The nogi feels more like applicable. I, um, yeah, it's, and it's a different feeling because unless
Mike: you're walking down the street wearing your, gee,
Greg: probably maybe a par in jeans, but yeah, that doesn't happen.
Especially in North Carolina.
Chuck: Yeah. You always keep it, your truck. Like, hold on, gimme a second.
Greg: And then they run when they see the gee come out. Yeah. With that white belt. Especially with that white belt. Yeah. I dunno if that'll have the intended impact, but Yeah.
Mike: Oh man. Um,
Chuck: cool. What about you, Mike? What are you, what are you training for?
Like, we haven't talked about your physical fitness programming as you, so now you know you're not, you're not exactly the youngest man anymore. You've been through a lot of life. No, you're right. And you went through, you know, what was it, 89, you graduated at West Point 83. Okay. Wow.
Mike: 79. I went in 83. I came out Yeah, it's, it's a long time ago.
It is a long time ago. Um, uh, what am I working towards, man? A, a lower handicap in my golf game. I only walk when I golf unless I'm forced to ride in a cart because it's a tournament or something. I always walk. So for me that it's okay. So golf is, there's a mental aspect to it, keeping me sharp. Um, not overthinking, but staying in the moment.
Staying in the shot. Uh, obviously there's mobility to it. If you're not stretching ahead of time and afterwards, the golf swing can really wear you out. I mean, your back, if you're, I mean, there's some issues there if you're not careful. So there's actually golf injuries. Yeah. Yeah, I can show you. I've got a picture I like split my lip open because I was trying to chip a ball up onto the green on the other side of a cart path, and it went right into the edge of the cart path and came back and hit me right in the mouth.
So, stupid shit can happen too. Yeah. Um, and you can get hurt. Uh, no. I, you know, and I just, my general wellness and, and, uh, wellbeing comes from staying fit, I think. I mean, when we met in. 2013. I was about in as good a shape at 52 years old as as I ever was. I mean, I think I was in pretty good shape in my thirties and forties, but I was kind of crushing it at, at uh, 52 there in Afghanistan and, and the facility we had at at Camp Morehead and the, you know, the fact that I could actually go running mountain camp up a mountain.
Um, and I'd get up really early to do work, and then I could take like an hour or even almost two hours and, and just before lunch to work out, and that was great. Um, but I, I like what our friend Pat McNamara says about, you know, the reasons why you work out. Um, there's only four reasons why you work out.
It's, uh, wellness and longevity, number one. Number two, to save your ass. If you have to get out of a burning building or a burning vehicle. Uh, number three, save somebody else's ass who's in a burning building or a crash vehicle. And then number four, kick somebody's ass. And I love when he says, you know, Hey, do I do I like it if I walk past my wife naked?
And she goes, damn. He goes, well, yeah, of course I do. But that's a bonus. That's not a reason to work out. And, uh, so Pat, thank you. Um, appreciate that. Uh. Not that I've ever walked past him naked, uh, yet, Rebecca, I haven't done that yet. Um, no, I think it's, uh, it's, it's great just to stay 'cause you're not getting any younger, none of us is gonna get any younger.
Uh, if you're familiar with Peter Attia and the stuff he does, he's basically says you've gotta a reverse engineer. Like what are your expectations when you're 80 or, you know, and, and what do you wanna be able to do? Pick up a grandkid. Walk up a flight of stairs, what's that gonna take? What kind of strength does that require?
What kind of aerobic capacity does that require? Recognize that you're gonna lose about 10% every decade. If you can't do that shit right now, there's no way you're gonna do it in 20, 30 years. So figure out what you need to do there and, and have at least, well, in my case, you know, 20, 30 years, I gotta build up 20 or 30% above that, if that's the objective I have.
When I get that old.
Greg: Yeah. So it's those little experiences I think that really drive that home. Like my dad ended up in a motorcycle accident right around the time my sister was, uh, trying to get married. Mm-hmm. And so he ended up in a wheelchair. Wow. And so, um, and he was really light at the time, but being able to carry him into the wedding so that he could be in the wedding was very rewarding for me.
So it's, again, it's not, it's funny how things progress over time. It's not about benching three 15. Or looking jacked. It's, it's about just being functional, I think. Oh, I was just gonna say,
Mike: oh, as you were saying that, that's the word that came to my mind was functional. Right? Yeah. And that's why one of my favorite books is, uh, Christopher McDougall's Natural Born Heroes.
'cause it's a history book, but it's also a book about what does it mean to be truly fit, to be functionally fit. If you haven't read it, it's a great book. He, he looks at these, uh, British dirty tricks, guys that kidnapped a German general off a Crete. Got him to a submarine and to to Egypt during World War ii.
And it's like, how did they get him from this side of the island to that side of the island, to the submarine? What were they eating? How were they, what kind of movements did that require? What kind of capacities did that require? 'cause I've never been to Crete, but apparently it's a pretty, pretty rough terrain, rough environment.
Great book. But he puts it exactly into, so you know, he spends time with a ex ballerina. Picking weeds at a prospect park in Brooklyn to make a super salad. Uh, he goes to Brazil to learn these different. Functional fitness, uh, routines and that were developed by guys who had been on a ship when some island in the Caribbean had a volcano that blew up and all these people died 'cause they couldn't swim out to a boat that was just offshore.
Um, and so I think that to me is what am I working towards? I'm working to be as healthy as I can be, as functionally fit as I can be to do all the stuff I think I need to do. To save my ass or somebody else's ass. Not really into looking to kick anybody's ass these days. But, uh, anyway, that's just,
Chuck: so when you said super salad, like a super salad or a soup or salad,
Mike: super salad.
See, now you do okay. Yeah. Gotta be careful in enunciating. Uh,
Chuck: what, let me ask you this. Do you, do you eat soup or do, do you drink soup?
Mike: Depends. I mean, if it's a chunky soup, I mean, you know, you got a French
Chuck: onion maybe with a bunch of cheese. Yeah. With the
Mike: bread in there and the cheese or uh, if it's a minoni with like, you know, a lot of good stuff in there.
Why are we talking about soup?
Chuck: I don't know. Because you get super salad, right? Soup is good
Mike: food. I think that's a tagline for, uh, somebody get
Chuck: Italian. You'd like the soup. Yeah.
Mike: Italian wedding soup. Love that. My mom used, my mom used to make a mean Italian wedding suit. Nice. Yeah. Um, cool. What else we got?
So we've, we've talked about our goals and objectives and programs. Any, anything else, uh, about fitness we need to tell our listening audience? Audience? Uh, one of the things
Chuck: that I really took away from atomic athlete that I think that everybody should put into their entire lives, right, is in the military we have these things called rats that we, we try to, like you see, especially in special forces, you see teams doing these, what we call rats, which is.
Random acts of training, something really cool, really sexy. I'm sure it was a lot of fun, but does it actually lead to your desired end state of what you're trying to validate on or certify on, right? Yeah. Um, and people do random acts of life, right? They don't sit there and plan stuff out. Atomic athlete calls with their philosophy, the four Ps.
Um, they say, Hey man, whatever you do, follow the four P's, whether it's your life, finances, whatever, whatever your goals are, the four P's, which is have a plan, right? Not well before we get to the plan, have a purpose, right? Have goals like, what am I, what am I doing, and, and why am I doing it? Right? Kinda gets back to what you were talking about, making sure you're like, you're not, you're not, yes, you're doing the right thing, but then are you doing that thing correctly, right?
Like, yes, I'm running a marathon in November and I could do PT every day, lifting a lot of heavy weights, right? So I'm doing the right thing. I'm, I'm physically training every day for hours. I'm doing it wrong. So when I go run the 50 mile, it's not gonna Right, it's not gonna make sense. Right, right. You can, you can do that if you're not careful.
If you're not, if you're not following the four piece, have a purpose. Know what you're, know what you're going for, and clearly define that in your head so you can visualize it and then have a plan, right? Like, okay, well how am I gonna get here? And within that plan, you want to use puritization, which means blocks.
So like for me, the periodization is, hey, this first six weeks. I'm not really doing a whole lot of like, super heavy. I'm just doing like body weight movements, really functional, making sure everything can move properly, making sure all my ligaments and tendons are where they need to be. So when I'm moving into the next phase, I'm much less likely to get hurt as I'm ramping up the mileage and running as I'm ramping up, you know, my weight and everything that I'm doing with, you know, pullups.
Um, you know, I'm not planning on a bench press oil, you know, more really aggressive pushups and, and other things. Then, you know, so it's blocked out. So you're switching out, okay, this is a, a stability, whatever phase, a base phase. Now I'm gonna move into more of like a base building foundational phase, and then I'll move into like hypertrophy phase where I'm building a little bit of muscle, right?
And then I'll move into whatever strength, endurance phase, whatever, phase it out using periodization. So I'm not, it's not getting stale and my body is like, you know, your body does react stimulus and it'll start plateauing out that way. I don't. Don't plateau out. And then you want whatever you're doing to be progressive, but feasibly progressive.
So you're, you're coming up here, right? And then maybe you're taking a little bit of downturn in some of those areas as you, as you periodize into this next section. But then you're coming back up here to where, you know, it's kinda like this, this really almost like an emulating curve to where yeah, it's slower, but.
It's, it ensures longevity. Mm-hmm. And it mitigates or minimizes risk. Right. We always talk about like that you do have to have acceptable risk to win. Yeah. I'm taking acceptable risk by, by pushing myself, but I'm also minimizing the stu the stupidity factor. Right. That's why I gotta say it too. Like, I gotta write and like, don't be a dumb ass today.
So I think that the four P's are are pretty brilliant. That's cool. That way you won't run into random because random acts of life too. Like, well, you up and do random stuff. It, it might lead to your desired instate, whatever your goals are. But it might not. Right. So there's a difference between like just working out and training.
Like training. Because planned and intentionally, you know, it's gonna lead to your desired end state, whereas just working out it may. Right. But you don't, you don't know.
Mike: Right. So that was purpose plan, periodization and progression. Yeah.
Greg: Cool. I appreciate you turned me onto them. I hadn't heard of them before we started doing this.
And like I started off with the CrossFit stuff and that was my biggest issue when CrossFit was very young. It's come a long way since then, but it was all, in my opinion, random acts of training.
Chuck: Yeah.
Greg: Very
Chuck: hard random acts of training. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And smoke
Greg: you. But like I just didn't get a lot out of it.
And so I went into CrossFit endurance, which I got a lot of value out of. And then right before I deployed, I got turned on to military athlete. And so it was cool to find out that atomic ath, the atomic athlete came from military athlete. And that the biggest change they made is, uh, essentially avoiding a lot of the overuse injuries.
Yeah. Because that's what I struggled with. I used mat, uh, military athletes, uh, program for the selection. I ended up with tendonitis. I had a pulled hamstring. Mm-hmm. Um,
Chuck: and the programing does
Greg: work.
Chuck: It, it, because, I mean, Jake and them obviously had a lot to do with that, but it it's very aggressive.
Greg: It is, yeah.
Um, and it's good, it's intentional as well, but I just. What I like about Atomic Athlete, and I've been peppering that into my stuff ever since we started this, but it is much more sustainable and I don't have nearly the injuries I used to have. Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. I think that's key. Right? That's some of the best advice I ever got before I went to a selection program was don't overtrain, I.
You want to be when you get there, you wanna be healthy. Yeah. What they didn't tell me was when I get there, I also wanted to be fatter than I was. 'cause I was way too lean. Uh, that was part of my problem. But anyway. Cool. Well, gentlemen, thanks, uh, for everything and, and your insights to wellness and fitness.
I. Um, looking forward to seeing where we are in a couple of months in Chuck's, uh, 50 kilometer. And, uh, so you're doing all of the services, fitness tests, that's the thing. Does that include the Space Force? I'm curious to know what they're Apparently,
Chuck: yeah. I mean, do they have one? I don't know. It's gotta be even less than the Air Force.
Yeah, the Air Force one is kind of strange.
Mike: Yeah,
Chuck: it's like 1.5 mile run. It's. That's how
Mike: far it's from the cockpit to the officer's club. Yeah.
Chuck: I know there's quite Air Force people listening, but I remember I was so, I'd be so upset. I'd run up the track all the time down in Tampa when I was going to a a course down there and they would take their PT test, the Air Force.
When they would, when they would get to the end of their 1.5 miles, they would, they would just fall down and lay down on the, on the ground. So I would, I would step on them on purpose and kick them. I'm like, this is, you're, this is dumb. I don't know if this is a cultural thing or maybe this is a unit thing, but that was ridiculous.
And they were so mad and I would get yelled at, like, I was like, well, don't, don't, if, if I'm running full speed and you lay down in front of me, that is your fault. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Can't, don't do that. Yeah. So we're gonna do that, but um, in ending this, you wanna check out Atomic Athlete, their logo is on the front of our web
Mike (2): page.
WW David. Yeah, Mike's right there.
Chuck: Objective ate.com. Just scroll down there, click on that. We've also got, um, um, TV physios on there who is one of the physical therapists who helped put me back together. Teddy Ballard. He's written some, some articles for us. Um. Check him out. 'cause man, he's got some great videos on his Instagram.
He posts all the time just about things that can help the everyday person get through whatever. Yeah. Make sure when you're training, uh, TV physio and check him out. Yeah. He helped me out my hip. Yeah. Surgery. Yeah. So, yeah, he's a great guy too, man. Yeah. Check him out and, and eventually we're gonna have some, we're gonna have some book lists on our website, right.
It's, uh, this whole thing's a work in progress. Yeah. So if you would like to see something like hit us something in our contact info and they're like, Hey, can you. Do an episode on this, can you maybe provide this information? Right? Because as we build, you know, everything that we're doing out, which we're not gonna really launch a, a ton more until, you know, midsummer.
Uh, but we can release some stuff before that too, if it's gonna help somebody. Yeah. Hey, here's, here's a good book list of. If you're gonna read nothing else, read these things and take this from remember. Yeah.
Mike: And I just wanna point out too, for the people that are watching, uh, note that the, the two former officers are not wearing a safety reflective band like Sergeant Major is.
Yeah, that's, uh, that's good man. Because www
Chuck: do chuck ritter.com you can get these right for real. Like where
Mike: the shopping cart
Chuck: hand a shopping cart. Right. Handmade by Sergeant Major. Right. Um. Cool. Well, people will probably never see those. You know, I built the office upstairs where I could sit there and do a lot of work on, on all that stuff, but I purposely, instead of a, a carpet, it's, it's fake grass.
Because I'm sitting there, I'm like. Just on the grass, I'm mad at myself. Right. And that way I turn that anger just into, into
Mike: positive energy. Energy into energy. So
Chuck: I get to channel like the fact that I'm just on this grass and not caring.
Mike: Yeah.
Chuck: Yeah. It's,
Mike: it's good. Well, we'll make that a, an episode for a future date.
Um. The, the, uh, the things that piss off Sergeant Majors. Yeah.
Chuck: I used to carry like a, a small roll of it and I'd go into the bathroom and just roll it out in front of the urinal and stand there. Wait for somebody like, what are you doing now? Do this.
Mike: Alright. Alright, well great spending time with you guys and, uh, we'll, uh, we'll do this again soon.
Yeah. Cheers. Thanks.