How Much Water, Sleep, and Exercise Do I Really Need? | Aggressive Life

the main thing there, main takeaway, is meet your body weight, goal body weight and protein, and then drink half of your body weight in ounces of water a day. Half in ounces of water. Yeah, so half your body weight in ounces of water every single day. That's ridiculous. I'm about 200 pounds on a good day. Yep. 100 ounces, you're on crack. That would be my goal for it. You're telling people, you have a goal that people don't have a life and all they want to do is piss all day. That's ridiculous. People can obtain it. Come on, you're part of the water cult. Brian, this is gonna help you get to those goals that people want to achieve. You could do it, for sure. Really? Yeah, absolutely. Dirk, you plan on doing any of this stuff, by the way? Yeah, I would be peeing all the time, too. Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty good at water. You need half your body weight in water cleaning your body, that's what you need. Yeah.

Just half my body weight in soup. Yeah, right, right. Welcome to the Aggressive Life, and welcome, happy Quitter's Day. Yeah, Quitter's Day. Second Tuesday of every year is known as Quitter's Day because apparently that's when we're expected to quit whatever we decide to do come the next year. It's kind of sad, really. It's sad we've got a holiday about that, sad that we joke about it. It's also somewhat sad that it's true. Of all the things that people decide to do on an annual basis, the new things they decide to do, about 80% of them are health-based. So I don't know if that's you or not. Maybe you made a resolution this year. Maybe you didn't make a resolution this year. Maybe you just have a desire to get more physically fit. Today's podcast is for you, gonna get you going a different direction or support you in the direction you're going to right now. Sean Zitt is with us. He's a nationally recognized trainer and coach. He currently lends his expertise in Faster Way to Fat Loss. It's an at-home training program, and he's here not just to give us some interesting tidbits to think about, but he wants to get you and I moving in 2026. I came into the studio, gave him a hug,

said, oh yeah, yeah, there's some muscle mass there. Yeah, there's some real muscle mass. Welcome to the aggressive life, Sean Zitt. Thank you, thank you. Did you just create muscle mass because people are making fun of you for your zits? Your last name is Zitt. Have you ever had zits in your life? No, well, I've had my fair share, but you spoke a couple weeks ago about how your name meant something to your craft that you did, and it made me wonder, and I was like, what did my family do? They had some zits on them. I'm going to have to start looking into it. Yeah, you've got to have, you've got to be able to get over a joke or two with that last name growing up, that's for sure. Totally, has anyone ever popped you, popped you one or something like that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, at one point in time, it was Papa Zitty Pop. I mean, it was just one, or Zitty is a common nickname I had when I was a child, but you just got to be able to laugh it off. You know how that goes. If you don't, they're just going to give it to you more. Did you have any sisters? No, no sisters, just one brother.

I think you get through that better with a guy being a guy than a woman. A woman, someone messing with her zits, that's, you know, that's- Yeah, that could have went a different route. Yeah, not good at all. So tell me, tell me about your story, your journey with physical fitness and your body and all that stuff. Yeah, for me, physical fitness started off, you know, early on playing sports, and that was my path. When that came to a close, you know, throughout my teen years, I was an angry kid, kind of mad at the world kid, depressed. A lot of that stemmed from losing my dad at a early age. Mom was working constantly to provide for me and my brother. So mom got me a gym membership one year, and I approached that training completely opposite than what I did as an athlete. At what age was this? I was probably 17 or 18. And about that time, you know, as soon as I started, I just felt this relief of, you know, the depression that I was feeling in my life, having to seek validation from other peoples. It just brought confidence in me. It instilled work ethic in me as well. And I just fell in love with it instantly. I truly did.

And, you know, it became something that wasn't in my life to where, you know, I was doing that almost every day at that point. So that's where I got my start into actually working out in physical fitness. 17, 18 years old. So you weren't doing any sports at that point. Nope, nope, nope. I was not doing any sports at that point. And, you know, once I got there and realized how much I loved it though, I seen right away, I could have a career in this. At that point in time though, I didn't know how hard that was. Really? Yeah, absolutely. What kind of working out did you do when you were 17 or 18? Is it the same as you do today or how did that change? For the most part, yeah. It stemmed from, you know, me looking in, flipping through magazines, seeing guys that looked the way that I wanted to look. And, you know, I guess you would align that more with a bodybuilding type style, which is pretty similar to what we do. We just have a lot more emphasis on mobility to our adult consumers, our adult clients. So for me back then, you know, it was all about walking in the gym, achieving a pump and, you know, digging into the encyclopedia of bodybuilding from Arnold Schwarzenegger and, you know, Tom Platts, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So things like that caught my eye, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And I had, I had a bodybuilding vibe going on as well when I was in high school. And I don't even, you don't hear about bodybuilding at all, really never took off the sport. Like there's, they're never getting a TV deal or anything like that. Is that, what's going on with that sport right now? I think it's more the YouTube is where these guys are really taking off. I think doing like mini doc series or just day in the lives. And I think, you know, somebody like Chris Bumstead, for example, he was the classic physique winner. I don't even know him. He's got multimillion followers through Instagram, through YouTube. And I think that's where he generates, you know, all of his streaming services is YouTube and things like that. They might have a documentary on like Amazon, but I still, it's obviously not like football or basketball or baseball or anything like that. But I do think right now in this current stage, it's actually probably more popular than it was when I was a teenager or so. Yeah. Well, yeah. Back when I was in high school doing, you know, muscle and fitness magazine, I think that's actually just muscle. Then they added the fitness part. Yeah. There wasn't anything to see. It wasn't on any TV or anything. You just had to go down and wait for that magazine to come out every year. There wasn't any information. It wasn't in any newspaper or anything like that. That was it. Those were the days. That's what I really liked.

Right. But now you got the kids, they have the social media as well. So when they can add some muscle, they can post a cool picture. That's true. So all of that just follows in line as well with that. I don't know if you know this history, but Arnold Schwarzenegger obviously is the OG. Really brought her on the map and brought the whole Hollywood factor to it. His first movie he was in, you know, the first movie Arnold Schwarzenegger was in? No, I don't. I can't say I do. Conan. Conan. Okay. Yeah. Conan. That makes sense. And do you know what happened coming out of that movie? What's that? This is fascinating. His first Hollywood movie, which is always his dream, right, was to get movies. He's from Austria. He's got that thick accent. He wants to come to America to make it. And it was always his dream to just keep going higher and higher and higher and higher. So it's now his first major, major studio movie, but he's been out of bodybuilding for, oh gosh, I don't know, at least five years. And so now he's got to be this big buff warrior. So he goes into training and he realizes, man, I'm training. I may as well just compete in the Mystery Olympia again, which is the Super Bowl of bodybuilding.

So he enters, he enters it and he wins it. And Frank Zane and Metzner, they're sort of smashing trophies because apparently he didn't work on his legs as much as they should. And how much was a sympathy vote or not, we don't know. But my point, all that being, you couldn't find that out. I didn't find that out until the magazine came out, which was like weeks after the Mystery Olympia. Like, oh my gosh, it was... That made it so much more unique though. It was completely. I didn't like that. Here's my beef. I want to get into all of your stuff you have to say. I want to get some personal help for myself and just give an overarching thing that there's my beef about, not just bodybuilding, but just general person who works out. Why? Like, I see people who are giving themselves muscles, yet they never use them unless they're in the weight room. They don't chop wood, they don't cross country ski, they don't hunt and have to pack out an animal. I just see people like, what are you doing? Not very functional. And as a trainer in me, I encourage people to do those things, obviously. I probably fall a little bit of victim to that myself. Just the aesthetic factor of building muscle, I do think it can build a lot of confidence, but I do try to put that to work as much as I can. But we also try to focus on more functionality now as opposed to just being this big old piece of muscle. But more than anything, you're going to reap benefits from building muscle that are going to help you long-term and help you live a more prospered life.

It's important to put those things to work as well. Yeah, I don't think it's wrong to just put on muscle because you want muscle. I'm saying it's kind of hard to be motivated to work out when you don't have a reason to work out. Right. Absolutely. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. What's your opinion on this? The hardest thing I've done in the last year is an elk hunt I got back from a couple weeks ago. It was so, so hard. We took horses in, a guy's actually part of our church, Crossroads is part of it digitally, Ben, Rocky Mountain Outfitters. Rocky Mountain Outfitters? Rocky Mountain, I think that's right. He set us up really well. He got me to be part of the church because I got to meet him the first elk hunt I did with him and he said, you're a pastor? And he's been streaming our church, it's kind of cool. In case you don't know, he's part of the rest of my life, that's like my day job, it's called senior pastor. This is just a little side thing on the gig, a little side hustle, which I get no money from, by the way, either. Side hustle, I'm supposed to get money from. I get no money, Dirt, you get money from this, Dirt. Yeah, you pay me for it.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. Anyway, we went back this year and it was a high country hunt, so they had a base camp, an outfitter's tent, a canvas tent with a potbelly stove, and we rode in three and a half hours on horses to get to this thing at 11,000 feet. Then every day we would hike up to ride horses, come in to hide up horses and hike up to 13,000 feet, trying to find it. You get the animal down and then it's a whole nother thing. It's really hard, not just your cardio, because you're at elevation you're not used to being at. Yeah. All that is background to say what I felt this year more than ever before, I'm feeling flexibility start to get me. I've always had a flexibility problem, but this time I was saying, okay, now this lack of flexibility, it's getting hard to function because I was sore on that horse. I had a hard time putting my puffy pants on, those down things over, taking the big heavy boots and lifting them up high enough to put one leg. I was having a hard time because I was sore from the horse, getting down on the ground to lace up my shoes. I just, oh man, this is now a problem for me.

So I'm motivated on this. Your thoughts about flexibility and aging? Yeah, well, as you age, your muscles wanting to deteriorate. That's just what's naturally happened. So even if you don't have this aspiration to build a bunch of muscle, you should want the goal to at least maintain the muscle mass you have. And lifting weights is one of the greatest ways, if not the greatest, to have that flexibility. Growing up, when I got my first certification, they talked about doing shoulder presses and bringing it down to 90 degrees. And now as we've progressed- Hold on, bring it down to 90 degrees. Yeah, so just coming down right here, just up to that field goal post. Don't touch the back of your neck. Same thing with squats. Don't go below parallel. No ass to the grass. Yeah, no ass to grass. And now they're learning, well, this is great for range of motion. And working that full range of motion, that's what you're gonna do when you're out in the real world. Oh, so you should do ass to grass and doing squats. If you can, absolutely, if you can. And a lot of people are gonna have to work up to that,

Brian, obviously, just depending on the client and where they're at. But especially if you're starting at a young age, though, you should start with that full or close to full range of motion as possible. But you got in the real world, when you had to pick up the animal you killed, you got to pick it up from the ground. You have to lift from here and you have to lift from here, right? So what happens is we build these strengths in these certain ranges of motion, and then we go beyond that range of motion in the real world, and that's when injuries take place. Right. Yeah, so. Well, there's that guy who, I don't remember his name, the knees over toes guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's his whole deal, right? You just say, never put your knees over your toes. Like, no, no. Yeah, yeah. And that's why he's been able to. Yeah, he's made a killing off of that, for sure. He's gotten people to jam basketballs and everything because of the full range of motion. Yeah, absolutely a lot of benefit. I do incorporate stuff like that

with my athletes as well, for sure. Yeah, and you're still fighting a lot of the old school trainers on that, that just how things have changed and how this can help as opposed to, it's not helping you. Right. The problem with your whole industry, on the lifting side and the nutrition side, there still isn't, doesn't seem to me to be common rights and wrongs. It's like every article says something different than the last guy. Yeah, it's bad. Red meat's bad. No, red meat protein's good. Supplements are nothing but piss pills. Oh no, no, you need supplements because the way we've engineered our food, you don't get the right stuff. No, don't take your knees over your toes. No, take your toes over your knees. Start with cardio. No, don't start with cardio, do it afterwards. But it's like people, every article or every whatever has to contradict what came before so they make a name for themselves. So the rest of us go, I don't know. Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more.

Really? 100%. So you're frustrated with that as well? Very, very frustrated. And that's part of my mission. And when I talk to clients, I try to say these things humbly, but I've just. I've got proof in the pudding with the amount of people I've worked with and then the results I've seen on what those people have done. And when I came into the fitness industry as a trainer, there was different things that I was being taught that I did with clients that didn't work. So you just see these things take place on clients after clients, and you look back at your notes and you start to see transformation. Well, that worked for them. That worked for them too. It's just data. How many clients do you think you've worked with? Digitally, 500,000. In person, probably over 300. Definitely over 300. I'm near 500 probably. And then you take the athletes in that consideration. Now we're talking thousands in person. So a lot of people.

And so you've got, you're saying you have regimented notes. Oh, absolutely. From the time I was like 19 years old. And you're seeing the patterns of all of them line up. Correct, yeah. So you're at this point, your source of truth is an XYZ magazine or XYZ university that published a study. You're going, hey, this is just what I've seen. Interesting. Yeah, the average client, Brian, is it's not the client that wants to obtain this crazy transformation or physique that you see every so often. It's your average mom and dad that are just wanting to get in better shape, to be able to play with their kids, to feel a little bit better about themselves when they look in the mirror, to feel healthier, to eat healthier, and to implement these things into their kids' lifestyle as well. So the average client that I work with isn't this guy that's trying to step on a bodybuilding stage. It's not a guy that's wanting to go compete in the NFL, which I do work with a lot of athletes at the high school I'm at.

But yeah, so the average client that you work with just isn't after all these crazy, crazy goals. I was just at doing a deer hunt, and I had a friend out, and he put a deer down, and it was down in the woods. I mean, with a bow, you shoot the thing. They don't drop immediately. They run anywhere from, generally anywhere from 30 to maybe 100 yards. You've got to follow the blood trail. You've got to find them. And then they always want to go downhill, too. When they're shot, they're like, oh, let's climb a pill. They want to go downhill because it's easier, and they can go faster, and there's water, and there's water. And they can go faster, and there's water. They start to get dehydrated. And we got his deer, and just dragging him up out of the woods, probably, I don't know, maybe 50 yards, dragging her up out of, it was a her, dragging the doe up out of the woods. He just made the remark, like, man, he's in shape. We're about the same age. And he said, man, I don't have many friends I think that could do this. I said, yeah, you're right. People our age are around 60. Yeah, there's not a lot of people

who have any functional fitness at all. I mean, they may have, they may not be obese, but nobody goes into an old folks home because you can't run a six minute mile. You go into an old folks home because you can't lift a gallon of milk anymore. That's right. Very, very few people just stay on top of their game. Why is that? Is it people just don't want the pain of lifting? Is it people are confused? The people, you get lazy as you get older? What's your opinion of that? I think a lot of people that don't even set a goal or a resolution, I think there's a lot of fear that lies there, what will I have to do to get to what I want to get to do? And that's a lot of the problem we see with social media and these online trainers these days, or I don't want to name drop any people, but you got to go do this and it's got to be hard. It's got to be crazy every single day. And as a trainer, I'm going to tell you the exact opposite. You don't want it to be super hard. You want it to be obtainable. You got to have obtainable goals. And it shouldn't cut into your life to where you can't operate at a normal frequency. You should be able to recover from your workouts. You shouldn't be so sore.

You can't sit on the toilet. Like all those things that were pounded into us from the time that we were young. It's just got to be. You were pounding, you should be so sore you can't sit in the toilet? Oh gosh, yes. That was the actual verbatim? Oh gosh, yes. Really? Oh, you're supposed to poop standing up? Yeah, I mean, it's happened. Aerial poop, that's what they called it back then. Really? And it was like, if you're not doing aerial poop, then you're not doing squats? Yeah, you're not working hard enough. But no, absolutely. Like just push beyond discomfort. If it feels good, you're not doing it right. These are all common phrases that you hear in the world, especially in athletics when I was a kid. Obtainable goals, things that you can achieve, things that you can stick to for a lifetime. I think when you look on social media, you look at the internet these days, everything's a quick fix. And as people, that's what we want anyways. We want these quick results. We want things to change in three weeks and be to our goal.

And that's just not the way it works. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. and you know, the guy who enjoys the walk, right, is gonna have better results than the guy that's just worried about that destination. You gotta learn to enjoy the walk. Yeah, yeah, I came to that, people say, ask me, hey, what are you doing? What's your workout? And my words are always the same, fuddy-duddy. I do the same fuddy-duddy thing I've been doing now for, gosh, probably now 20 years. It's a very basic, some machines, some barbell. I'm not doing freaking cross-training. God bless all you do cross-training. I just know that if I'm gonna fire myself to cross-training, I'm not gonna do it forever. It's just, where I am, I'm not gonna do it forever. Same fuddy-duddy thing that I do all the time. I think if you could survey, you know, I don't even say 90, every single one of the clients that I work with, which is a lot, that would be their feedback. He's consistent. We do a lot of the same thing. And I go on preaches all the time. I'm not very active on social media, but when I do, usually it stems around something like that, around the world of working out.

Like, I know it's boring, it's, you know, consistent. We're doing the same thing over and over. That's a good thing. We wanna be consistent. We wanna do the things that are gonna help us propel and do them a lot, and we wanna get good at them. Repetition's what makes you really good. Well, and I think there's always something, there is something for the person who needs something fresh. And if CrossFit keeps you fresh and you, awesome, awesome. Yeah, couldn't agree more. My thing is just about moving parts don't rust. What is it you're gonna keep doing? And just do that. Absolutely. I get along with that perfectly fine. I'm right in that realm with you. So let's cover some myths or truths. Like, give us the rules. Like, what's the rules as you see it, as far as how many weeks or how many days a week do you have to work out? What body parts? How much cardio versus strength training? Rules of what you should do before, what you should do after? Just like, do you have a standard deal of- Absolutely. And I think this will cover, too,

kind of the failure rate that we see on New Year's resolutions, especially when we're talking about physical fitness. Easy. Like, we want things to be obtainable. So I always start a client out, I say, two days a week. You give me two days. And we can go about that several different ways. We just need to do a push, a pull, a hinge, a squat. And if we do that twice a week, now we're really working. A hinge, okay, that'll kill me. You're talking about like a deadlift, straight leg deadlift, something of that nature. A squat, even with a dumbbell or a barbell. And then a pressing movement, like a bench press. And then maybe like an overhead pressing movement. And then a pull, like a row. And if you can do that twice a week, you're gonna be really successful. And that's really obtainable for probably a lot of our listeners right now. And you know, I've even done this with clients before. I'm like, how many, a lot of people like the idea of doing something every single day, though. I am one of those people. And if you can do something small, you just pick one lift every single day, that's it. And it might take you 15 minutes, 15 minutes, Brian. Like, I see a lot of programming out there as well that is really good.

Like, there's a lot of fitness companies that are promoting like 15 minute workouts. And you hear that and you're like, oh, that's probably like a hit workout. No, it's just one lift. You're just bench pressing today, that's it. You're gonna do like six sets of that and you're gonna really focus on your form, you know, put the form over your ego. And then the next day you're gonna squat. The next day you're gonna do a hinge like a deadlift. The next day you're gonna do an overhead press. The next day you're gonna do a pull. Just something as opposed to doing nothing. It's something that you can obtain for a long time. Yeah, there's something about whatever you're gonna do that you build confidence in your own voice. So when you say to yourself, all right, I'm gonna work out for two times 15 minutes a week and you actually do that for three weeks in a row? You're not 15 minutes on like the two days. So if you're just doing two days, we probably want our workout to be more around 30 to 45 minutes. And this is just for our average consumer, average adult. Well, whatever it is, though, I'm not saying for the 15 minutes that that's gonna be what your muscles need, but I'm saying for mentally a simple thing that we can then do after a few, oh, I did that.

Absolutely. You're gonna find that you're gonna wanna then increase it. Especially, this is what I tell my clients as well, a lot of them, if you can do it first thing in the morning. If you can do that first thing in the morning, which I understand, maybe that's not realistic for everybody, but if you can do that first thing in the morning, you're gonna statistically succeed much better in your day. I'd argue and say, wake up and pray first, but then do your 15 minute workout and then that's gonna lead to a healthier mindset. I mean, I don't know about you, and I'm sure we have our, you know, people that are listening right now that might finish a workout and they wanna go hammer a Reese's cup, but most people are gonna get done with the workout. They might wanna go, you know, man, I feel pretty good. I might wanna go home and make some eggs now. I might wanna go have a protein shake and just get you in that mindset of positivity, of accomplished. something before you set about your work day or being a parent, things like that. So I have a friend who tried to tell me that, you know, unless you're working out four days a week, it's not doing anything for you. And I decided not to engage. I thought, okay, well, in many weeks, I'm not doing four.

I still think I'm doing all right. So you would disagree with that? I would strongly disagree with that. Why? Because I've experienced with it. Here's the one thing too, like when I used to work, I don't work much hands-on with adult clients anymore now that I'm out in the world that I am in virtual fitness. But when I did, most people can't afford to pay a personal trainer five days a week. It's just the way it is. And, you know, realistically, you're gonna get these clients maybe two days a week. That's probably what they can afford. And I would say probably 75% of my clients was about that, about two days a week. And a lot of them would just do those two days a week and they'd be upfront with me about it, but I would gear their workouts around that and their regimen around that. And I've seen incredible, incredible progress. You gotta think you were doing nothing. And now you're just doing this one little thing. Because here's what happens to a lot of gym goers that go four to five days a week. They go in there, they do crush it, they exhaust themselves, and then they don't recover. They don't recover from what they're putting their body through.

So, you know, they're working muscle group A on day one, and then they might be repeating it again the next day or the following day. And they just simply never let that muscle recover. Then we could talk about their sleep. That's probably a mess. Their stress that's through the roof. All these things come into play. If you can go two days a week, it's probably a little less stressful and a little bit more obtainable for most adults. Okay, so the rules, back to rules. What's another rule? How much cardio, cardio before lifting, cardio after lifting, just go like that. These are the absolutes. Yeah, again, we had cardio, and that was another thing that was just pounded to us years after years. Cardio is important. I'm not telling you not to do cardio. But I like, people that don't love getting on a treadmill, they don't love getting on elliptical steps, man. We do have technology around us that allows us to track our steps throughout the day. You know, a lot of people can get to 10,000. I always like to push that envelope a little bit. Let's get to like 12 or 15,000 steps a day. That's gonna get you in pretty good where you need to be cardiovascular-wise.

Now, then when people think about getting on a piece of gym equipment and doing some cardio, they think about complete exhaustion, pushing themselves to failure on that machine, and you just simply don't need that. I would 100% say you need to prioritize strength training over cardiovascular fitness. Now, I will always prioritize that strength training over what I would do the cardio. So strength training's first, and then maybe hit that cardio second, unless you're hopping on a treadmill to hit a slight warmup and stuff like that. But you know, you do have a lot of runners, a lot of distance runners in this world now. Popular thing. And I don't discourage people from doing that, though. You just gotta be able to feed your body. If you're doing your thing. Yeah, just feed your body. That's awesome. Absolutely, yeah. It's back to our CrossFit discussion. Like, hey, if long-distance stuff does it for you, not my thing, but man, if that keeps you moving active, great. Yeah, we have a lot of clients in the fashion way that they do distance runs, marathon runs, but they also have this goal of putting on muscle mass. And you just have to break down the simple facts to them. Well, you're burning this much, this many calories a day.

This is how much we have to eat now. This is how much protein we've gotta consume. And when they do that, and they pair that with strength training, their times actually improve on their marathons or their distance runs. Huh. Yep. I thought you were gonna say it decreases because now they're carrying around more weight with muscle. No, no, no. You actually have the capability to push a little bit more, and a lot more, and you're stronger. You can get through a lot. Now, these clients probably aren't putting on 20 pounds of muscle, but you know, just enough to help propel them maybe on that last leg from where they're getting. Right. Yep. All right, I'm still trying to figure out if we've got any discernible ironclad rules. The only thing I think I've got from you so far is you don't have to hurt yourself every week. Preferably, you should have something you wanna do and you can do every week. Yeah, absolutely. The other one is it sounds like you're saying, eh, cardio, if you like it, do it. If you don't, don't do it. I like to think that some of my cardio is when I'm doing supersets,

that I'm huffing and puffing, and that's cardio. Yes, no. Yeah, in a sense, but like, for example, if you were going out on a big hunt, if that was one of your resolutions to get in better shape for that, we'd be doing some cardio, Brian. Yeah, and we'd probably have a separate day for cardio, or we would do it after our lift. You know, whether that be 30 minutes on a stair climber or a treadmill on an incline, maybe a slight jog, all those things are gonna help you on those hunts, for sure. How about no-brainer stuff from your experience as far as what you should eat right before workout, what you should eat, drink right after workout? That kind of is another rule, almost, in itself, is you can't out-train a bad diet. You just simply can't do that, but you know- Cannot run your fork. Yeah, that is a fact, but I've actually- We tried that before I've been in those phases and that's probably another thing that helps me relate to a lot of clients I work with I've been through a lot of the same things that our clients are dealing with but yeah Absolutely, you can't out train a bad diet and when we talk about like that feeding window leading up to a workout Everybody's different, but you know I like to have you know if I'm training in the afternoon I like to have probably like an hour and a half two hours before kind of let your food digest Having some carbohydrates to help me push help me be a little bit stronger in that workout But you heard me say earlier I encourage a lot of people to train first thing in the morning a lot of times that's fasted and that's completely fine to do And what that looks like on the other end maybe at dinnertime I'll have a lot more

Carbohydrates than what I had for breakfast or lunch to kind of help me push for that workout in the morning time I don't think I don't do anything beforehand other than 80% of time I might drink a protein drink nothing wrong with that. I'm not throwing that I'm not that's right I'm a big smoothie guy like I love a protein shake in a blender throw a banana in Maybe a little bit. I find it too lazy. I have that I find like I just spend more money and buy the pre-mixed stuff That's in the that's in the refrigerator at the place. Just because I'll actually do it I've got it. I got it over here in my bathroom. I just never take the time my wife cut those out of my diet I'm no longer allowed to have really yeah, they're just ultra processed and really more so than the powder um yeah Yeah, just to keep them preserved and stuff like that Don't know exactly what chemicals are in them because I'm being honest with you when it came to protein goals I was kind of a meathead growing up. I would just consume it Yeah, yeah, we've leaned more towards that way in our household getting rid of any processed foods I mean even as far as like storing our food in glass containers as opposed to plastic And she gets me all the time I'll do something. I'll just get that slap in the back of the head. What are you doing? Come on now. I gotta be a guy still somebody Absolutely So she's not gonna support by drinking the protein drink out of the carton and that has called camera was called It's got but it's got 40 grams of protein and zero grams of sugar That's right when I'm on the road going to Florida to film some workouts I'm tilting those back then yeah, like not around right right all right, so what other what other rules are there? as far as What body part should you train together not train together I'm actually a big proponent for full body workouts really every time absolutely Interesting fill me in every time. I want to get first off I want to elicit the most change I can with the least amount right I don't want to like overdo things but if I can get you to squat press pull and And Overhead press and hinge if I can get you to do that all in one day just one exercise I think yeah

We're really working and then we increase our frequency that we're hitting those muscle groups as opposed to only hitting them once a great once A week we can twice a week so if we get like that full 48 hours in between those workouts. We should be recovered Near recovered, and then we can hit not chest and bicep one day legs and shoulders another day There's a time and place for all that triceps and back well. That's my time and fuddy-duddy workout Doing that same thing for like I said long you're gonna know if you got three times just do full body three times That's my favorite Why I think because especially for a new client one of the things that they struggle with is form So if you're only doing something once a week You're only getting that practice once a week if we can do twice a week We can improve your form you get better at this movement, and then we can add weight quicker and get stronger quicker for sure But at in the end game We you do want to miss mix up your training frequencies your sets and your reps like a lot of people I'm gonna take a guess Brian when you do your chest and triceps I'm gonna probably say you're like three sets ten to twelve guy. Okay, my wrong yes I'm upset right you would strongly be able to 15 you would strongly benefit from just flipping the script Just let's go five sets of three today, and just focus on getting strong You'd be shocked dude if I did if I did such a three that much weight you think my freak attendant would rip off My bone we definitely got to make sure you're warmed up, but physically and strength-wise you would reap a lot of benefit from that I'm not telling you to stay in it forever But if we just go through a short little mesocycle of like three weeks of that And then we go back to that hypertrophy again on the other end of the scale Those doing things like that will really really benefit you in the long run What do you say to about all those guys and experts research whatever it is that says people my age past 50 I'm 60 right now shouldn't do Insert your exercise shouldn't do High weight low reps. That's where I'm going off of there's there's Maybe I wouldn't throw you right into that, but I'm taking you as a guy that probably has pretty good form right now Yeah, and instead of hopping right from 15 to 2 maybe one week So we slightly increase that weight over time prepare your joints for that movement, and if you don't respond well to it You don't respond well to it

I'm not the kind of guy to just force something that's not working But there's a lot of people that I think you see that work for 60 year olds absolutely Oh, yeah, yeah, like right now in the faster way. We just went through a strength phase The one thing is Brian though if you're at home and you only have dumbbells a lot of people don't have several weight options to Where they can push those boundaries So sometimes we'll work into like the four to set or four to six rep range and things like that but yeah, we definitely have clients in our Community that have benefited from that and just feel good get stronger. Then you go back to that 10 to 12 reps Let's say you were using 30s for that chest press. Well now or something like wow, I can use 40s You know, that's that's just how strength gains are made. Yeah, a lot of times It's like you said you're doing the same thing over and over I'd probably be willing to say you've probably been doing the same weight over and over for years or in that really true Yes, pretty true mild mild increase. But yes, I want to make those hunts easier on you I'm gonna encourage you instead of doing 40s Like let's get up to 50s like we just got a progressive overload some way somehow to get you a little bit stronger And you know think about lifting up that that deer or that giant whatever you just killed Okay, one rep, right? That's right. That's right. So that's what I'm preparing you for things like that Interesting. So you're this is good. So you're you're saying I Think what you're saying is hey, you're fuddy-duddy workout meaning you can do it. It doesn't freak you out. It's fine Yeah, but try doing try changing what the fuddy-duddy is. Yeah, absolutely. It's full body every time Yeah, you can do two to three days full body workouts, you know, you're just doing one waiting a day in between absolutely I spread it out. We're a Monday Wednesday Friday So if I've got I would have to do Monday Wednesday Friday not you knew what Monday Tuesday Wednesday You can do whatever works for you as long as there's at least a day in between maybe two days We're gonna be a little bit better doesn't work for me. Yeah, I think another thing of mine like the biggest knock that I see on the fitness industry is the studies themselves Because a lot of people see the studies But then they don't analyze the studies and I don't blame people like we're catchy things to catch our eyes A lot of these studies are done for six to eight weeks

Not over time, right you got like for example, you know, if you tell somebody hey, let's do We did three sets of 20 this caused a spark and growth and you know, it's a big hypertrophy phase We've seen a lot of muscle growth Well, a lot of people will see that and then the study was only done for six weeks and they're just like I'm gonna do That forever and they they plateau and then they start seeing diminishing returns. They start losing strength They start losing muscle. So the studies you got to be careful with it and it's just like online social media I'm guilty of this. You see a guy that you know, he looks cool. He sounds cool He's got a body type maybe that I want I'm gonna do what he does and really that guy is on Performance enhancing drugs. Yeah, he's uh got great genetics He's doing all these things and he's selling a program making millions that a lot of these people are never gonna obtain Anywhere near what he has done or she has done. Yeah how about Nutrition what's the basic rules of nutrition? Protein is key I always start out by saying that especially for like a new client Somebody that's just coming to me that you know has never really got into work on that I don't like to throw new too many new things at clients I like people to take things like just one step at a time. I think that's why failure rates are so high It's just so overwhelming. It's like you said at the beginning, right? You see this you see that but protein is king I mean, that's what's gonna help you gain the strength. It's gonna help you gain muscle, but also it's a very Satiating macronutrient it keeps you full. So like simple goals that I've done with people in the past. I'll just tell them two things I'll say do this for a month and it'll change a lot of things Just take your goal body weight try to meet that in grams Every day, so let's say you're 180 pounds. Your goal is 150 pounds Try to meet 150 grams of protein every single day Oh, you're 180 you're 180 pounds. Your goal is 150 you said well, yeah Yeah, you're trying to look I say you're trying to lose weight trying to get down to 150 pounds or vice versa if you're trying to gain you add but you just try to meet that goal weight in grams of protein and then Carbohydrates every time you eat that protein. Let's focus on having a palm-sized serving of carbohydrates whether that's like a sweet potato Listen, I'm gonna throw this out here. My wife's probably gonna punch me for this one, too. Sweet potato fries

That's my tell you She's awesome, I gotta bring you home with me just for an hour Brian Just for an hour. No, but um, you know meet those goals or meet those grams and protein for your goal body weight Carbohydrates, let's focus on a palm-sized serving and fats I encourage people to get fats from things like avocados or just eat meat Everybody's scared to eat beef these days eat beef It doesn't have to be the leanest cut but the leaner probably a little bit better But eat meat and get your fats from your meat and then on top of that So the main thing their main takeaway is meet your body weight Goal body weight and protein and then drink half of your body weight an ounce ounces of water a day. Half an ounces of water. Yeah, so half your body weight in ounces of water every single day. A lot of people can go beyond that without a problem. But what's gonna happen is that protein, people are gonna struggle to do that. That's ridiculous. I'm about 200 pounds on a good day. 100 ounces, you're saying eight Coke's worth of water. Eight 12 ounce things of water. You're on crack. That would be my goal for it. You're telling people, people don't have a life and all they wanna do is piss all day. That's ridiculous. People can obtain it. Come on, you're part of the water cult.

People can obtain that. What, your wife tell you to do that? You can do it. Oh, you have to get your water by just opening up to the sky and having it drop out of the sky or else it's tainted. That's great. Right? Brian, that's gonna help you get to those goals that people want to achieve. You could do it for sure. Really? Yeah, absolutely. I know I could do it, but I wanna do things other than pee all day too. Pee and drink all day. You get used to it. You'd get used to it in no time. You would definitely be peeing a little bit more up front. You want me to carry around a gallon of water like all the other dorks? No, you don't have to do that. You know all the other dorks that carries around a gallon of water. Just a little cup. That's all I got right there. Okay, that's not bad. And then we can add onto those things, but those two simple things are really gonna help people out.

That protein is very satiating. A lot of times people get these things for hunger and really they just need some water. And I tell them this too, at the end of the day, if you still want that dessert, eat that dessert. And a lot of times, just like I said, over years and years of working with people, they just don't have room for that dessert. They're just like, I'm really full. I don't want that right now. So those are just a couple small things that you can do just starting out. If you feel like this whole process is overwhelming, that might make things a little bit easier on you, for sure. Yeah, just one step up. Not doing the ultimate or everything, but just where you're at right now. Just one step up. That's how I started. When I was, I looked at a picture. Oh gosh, and probably from 2000, I started the church in 1996. 2000, I would go and I would work out.

My workout was playing basketball. Okay. Which was fine. It was doing something, right? Absolutely. But I noticed I just kept gaining weight and just a little chunky monkey. And I decided I'm just going to take one notch up. And what that looked like for me was I'm going to, instead of having a regular Coke, I'm going to have a diet Coke, which wasn't a lot, but I'm going to do that. It was one notch up, which of course your wife already thinks I'm satanic having a diet Coke. I drink diet soda every day. That's one thing she's not broke me of. And you know, I keep it real. I drink diet soda. And then the other one was, I'm never going to take an elevator or an escalator. If I'm going to take an escalator, it's going to be me walking it. I'm just going to walk. And it was amazing. I felt like better. And then I just kept notching it up. Like do a simple thing,

just one notch. Yeah. I do a lot of cheesy things that people probably give me a hard time for, but they're along the lines of that. Like when I pulled up today, I chose the last parking spot. Like I'm just going to walk a little extra steps, man. That's great. You know, just small things like that. There's nothing that annoys me more than standing on an escalator. You know, the guy who invented the escalator, he was shocked when he put it in and went to see what it looked like. He was shocked that people stood on it to go up. Cause he always says, well, you're just going to walk steps. It's going to be, it's going to be longer. The other day I was at the airport and they've got those flat moving sidewalks. Yeah. I like to get on there and fly. People are standing on them. I walk. Right. That's what you're supposed to. I like just passing people. Standing on them.

Just standing there. Now I have to say, excuse me. Excuse me. I got to get by people. That's right. The level of sedentary nature that we have is really tough stuff. It's creeping into our youth pretty bad. Okay. How about, you're giving us some good stuff. So half my body weight in water. Dirk, you plan on doing any of this stuff by the way? Are you? Yeah. I would be peeing all the time too. Yeah. I'm pretty good at water. You need half your body weight in water. Cleaning your body. That's what you need. Yeah. Half my body weight in soup. Yeah, right. Right. It's good for people just to get a grip, like a general understanding of what they're putting in their body on a daily basis. And right now I'm not even talking about process and ultra process. Right.

I'm just talking about actual food intake, carbs, fats, and proteins, your macros. And you know, there's a lot of technology out there that makes things really easy for our lazy culture. Yeah. You can just take pictures of your food now. Right. And the guy will literally tell you, there's this much in here. There's this much protein, this much fat. We actually have that feature in our Faster Way to Fat Loss app. And that's a pretty cool little feature, but like that helps you track your protein, your carbs and fats, and really see what you're putting into your body. What's the difference between processed and ultra processed? It's frozen. It's got a lot of preservatives in it to keep it fresher, longer. Pretty much anything that's packaged plastic doesn't come from the ground. You know, that's- That's processed or ultra processed? Processed. Processed foods, they're like, let's just say Skyline Chili 3-Way, you know? That's processed. Yeah, it's processed food. And ultra processed is?

Hot Pockets are- Hot Pockets. Processed. Well, Hot Pockets are processed or Hot Pockets are ultra- They're processed foods, yeah, for sure. They're in the freezer. If you've got to microwave it, like the things I grew up with when I was a kid, that's what we're in my house. So what's ultra-processed then? That's a good question. That's a really good question. There's not a bit much, I'm not too sure on the differential on that. There might be pretty much similarities on ultra-process and process, but either way, avoid both of those things the most that you can, for sure. Okay, so you're helping us out with rules in terms of diet, water, workout. How about sleep? Sleep is huge, absolutely huge. Again, for a lot of our clients, when they come, if they were to come to me and I'd be like, first thing we're gonna do is talk about your sleep, that's not the first thing you wanna hear. So I'm not saying this to discourage you from going to the gym in the New Year's

or focusing on your nutrition, but getting your sleep under control, it's just gonna maximize the results that you're wanting to achieve as far as your physical fitness, your physique, any goals that you have in that realm, your performance while you're hunting a deer, a performance while you're going on a jog, sleep is huge. It is absolutely huge. So how much should we get? At least seven hours a night. That's what I think the goal should be. And I always like to keep things as 100% as possible. That's probably my worst quality is sleep. And just things that I do that try to really help me out is put the screen down, put the phone down maybe a couple hours before bed. They even have like the TV glasses now and stuff like that. Is it the blue light or yeah, to help you get some of that stimulation off of you. I don't use those, but just try to calm down a little bit. You maybe dim the lights in the room and just have a regimen. Like, hey, I'm gonna go to bed at this time. And you're probably gonna struggle the first few times you go to do that to get to sleep, but your body will kind of pick up that rhythm

and help you get to sleep a little bit easier. Going to bed on a full stomach makes things a little bit more difficult. Your body's still working and digesting food. So I always like to say, say your bedtime's 10 o'clock, maybe stop eating around six o'clock. Go ahead and start that fasting window. Let your body get all that food fully digest before you go to rest. And do something during the day. That'll help you sleep a little bit. If I did seven hours, I could survive one day in seven hours. If I did seven hours, the next day I'd be falling asleep in meetings. You require a lot more than that? I think I do. And yet, again, back to reading things. I've been reading things recently that say, if you're getting over eight hours, you're sleeping too much. I definitely feel that way. And this is the thing. You feel that way? If I'm going over eight, I'm doing too much? I don't wanna say you. And that's my thing with clients. Every client's always different. Certain people handle things differently.

Some people require more sleep. So if you require more sleep, I would certainly, as your trainer, not discourage you from getting more sleep. The more sleep, the better. But I'm saying at least seven hours for sure. Any other things that the average person is getting in trouble with that's keeping them from their fitness goals? I don't wanna necessarily give people, here's your workout plan, but I just wanna have a level of encouragement and easy next steps that probably go across the board. One of them would be this. It's probably easy next step. Make sure you're getting seven hours. Everyone should be able to go, okay, I could probably make that adjustment. What else? I think a good word is expectations. Knowing what to expect on this path. I know we kinda touched on it before, but not having this expectation that you're gonna be where you wanna be in a month. And understand there's leaps and bounds in this journey. You're gonna have your mountains, you're gonna have your valleys. Not everything's always gonna be perfect, but take pride in just showing up. And I say that to my clients all the time.

I just try to resonate with people. Sometimes it's just being here today and waking up this morning and getting that workout in was a win. People go through things in life. You're gonna have these seasons, but let this be that one constant through the seasons because what I've realized is it helps people. It helps people with stress. It helps people with anxiety. It helps people get through difficult times, but it also helps you get to where you wanna be physically. It's gonna help you live longer for your kids and your grandkids. It's gonna help you play with them when you get older. It's gonna help you do that adventure that is calling you to go out and do something. If you do these things, that's really gonna help you. So patience, just another good word as well. Just be patient throughout this process, but have a plan. Have a plan. Don't go into it something new every single day. Like this first month, I'm just gonna have a goal of getting to the gym four times, two, eight times this month. That's all, and I'm gonna try to do cardio maybe six times this month. Like just things that you know you can achieve and not setting the bar so high

that you're just gonna fail. What happens if you're gonna do that full body thing, but you do the same full body thing two days in a row? You're not having the, quote, unquote, Recovery you hurt yourself. What's going on? Yeah, you're definitely not probably gonna recover optimally from that So, you know, you definitely every is when you get stronger. Yeah, absolutely You're just tearing those muscles down you're pushing nutrients back into them with the Fuji So, you know, it usually takes about 48 hours to do that So having that day in between that's gonna help you out for sure, especially as when we're talking about just optimal, right? Yeah Or let's just do some little quick hitters We kind of call the lightning round. We just want like I want to quit like boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom answers Is there a superfood that everybody should learn to love? meat meat in general, yes Your favorite set of muscles to work out legs Legs interesting. Why I love just me personally the mental Fortitude of getting through Some of those tough sets of squats. Yeah on the opposite end of what I recommended everybody. I trained pretty hard I can recover from it though With just my experience and the level that I'm at and I just like pushing myself on things like that, right? And I like getting strong in legs. Yeah, cool. Yeah barbells dumbbells kettlebells or machines barbells Barbells barbells. Okay, why that versus dumbbells you can do so many things and you can load them much heavier Especially like when you talk about things like a squat or a bench press or overhead press Okay. Yeah Is the ultimate working at a gym or working at home? I'm gonna say for the average consumer Home with the options that you have these days And that dumbbells though if you're at home, not a lot of people have barbells at home

But you can achieve anything with a barbell or with a dumbbell and a bench at home, right? Yeah, so the next question if I want to if I want to create a home gym advantages for that would be The drive time commute time this time I could be putting into stuff at home if I want to do a home gym What are the absolute essentials dumbbells and a bench? Yeah, I'd say adjustable dumbbells. Ideally. There's some really good ones on the market Adjust blocks. Yeah power blocks. They've even got those now like a power box have the cage on them, correct? Like where you put your hand through a moment. Yes, they make them now without the cage in between I saw like that was a lot of times the feedback on the power blocks was like just having to get your hand in there And stuff like that. They make them now without that But I would also say at home the most probably thing that's not talked about is your kids if you have them We're gonna be right there Hopefully and you can get them in on that and see the mom and dad getting healthy Working out and that's just normal for the kid. Yeah. Yeah, there's a modeling to it. That's good Your least favorite set of muscles to work out abs Yeah, I don't do anything on abs. Yeah, I'm not a big ab guy. You said hinge earlier. I thought Yeah, I'm talking good old sit-ups hanging leg raises yeah, I do a lot of front squats So I incorporate my core a lot and I do train it here and there but that's probably my least favorite I I am I am committed. I am never going to do Another squat in my life. Never. It's just too much compression on my spine. I've got I've got too few discs I don't care if you put the bar in front of my face behind the face There's a few discs if you if you had your back up. Yeah, I haven't had it operated on but I've had the x-rays I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, very little disc matter. It just makes sense. It's compression. You're freaking loading up that spine I underwent back surgery here. Did you really? Yeah back. You're still doing squat squats. That's when my story changed Honestly was when I went under back surgery that was in 2019 and things just took a wild ride up for me from there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely So you had the surgery and then what happened? Man, that's a long one, but I was on unemployment at that time. I'd hurt my back And I remember going into that surgery and I at that point time I said a prayer before I went in I said God I just want you to help me utilize all the skills that you've blessed me with

On a scale where I can help as many people as possible Like that was the prayer I played my wife because when I had hurt my back Unemployment wouldn't pay me what I made so I was bouncing at bars I was doing all these little things on the side just to make ends meet Things weren't good for me and it was about three months later I was in my recovery process and I found the faster way and it's when things took just a dramatic turn for me in my Life. Yeah, that's but yeah I still squat I still do all those things I didn't get hurt working out But you know for me, I think it's if you do it the right way, it's therapeutical But if your spine has so many injuries and you have like degenerative disc disease to a certain extreme You probably want to stay away from lowering your spine. Maybe you can do a goblet squat in the front with the dumbbell That'd be all right. That'd be fine. That'd be fun. Or you just we can we can do lunges I hate lunges. I do do lunges. See, that's why I like legs, because every time you talk about them, that's like the general response from people, it's like, boy, but man, on the other side of that, it's just... No, I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my squat thing, I would get in the seated leg press with a machine. I mean, that's something. You talk about making those hunts easier as well, man, strengthen those legs up. I know the squat. I know the... I'm convinced the best exercise for me, if I really want to strengthen the legs, it's the lunges. I'm just convinced that they are, yeah. So let's just close with this. Give us the pitch again for the service you offer and the app and just tell us what it is. Yeah. I work for the Faster Way to Fat Loss. It's an online digital company, physical fitness online. I think it's leading in the world right now, actually. The owner is Amanda Tress, but you can go to fasterwaytofatloss.com to find out more, but you'll get an app. In your app every day, there's a live workout. Mondays and Tuesdays, there's an option to do HIIT training, and there's also three days of strength training available, custom meal

guides in there. Yeah, you get a coach when you sign up as well to help you along with this journey. You get a macro tracker, a water tracker. You get all those things inside of that app to kind of help you out, mobility, anything. And what's being told? What if I don't want to lose fat? Maybe that's not my thing. Got a lot of clients that come in wanting to build muscle, a lot of clients that just want to come in and get stronger. Maybe they don't even want to focus on building muscle, just get stronger. So inside of that macro calculator, you just type in your goals. My goal is to gain muscle. My goal is to maintain where I'm at, just gain strength. Or my goal is to burn body fat. You just click that button. You put in your height, your weight, then your macros will be calculated, and your coach might customize those a little bit more. But yeah, so everything's customized to you and your goals in that app. Pretty cool. That's good. Man, is there anything else you want to talk about that we haven't talked about? No, man. I'm just thankful for having you on or having me on, man. I really appreciate it. Hopefully it helps somebody. You popped a lot of wisdom our way. It shouldn't surprise me. Sean Zitpopper. That's right. That's just surprising. You'll never forget that one. That's why people remember my name so well, I feel like. I'm glad you roll with it. Some people just get so offended at a catchy nickname. They're just, oh, stop taking yourself so seriously. Absolutely. Yeah, can't change my name. Well, I'm motivated, Sean. I'm motivated to just figure out how to work out today and do some other things. It's just good for me to have conversations with people who are beyond me and who know more than me. I hope everyone who's with us today isn't necessarily feeling pressure to do your app or to do the workouts that you talked about, but to go to the next place. It's a new year. We all want to be more capable. And to do that, we've got to be more physically capable. So thanks for helping us have some really good stuff. And my final challenge to all of our folks is, hey, come on, don't let another year pass you by without you taking some steps to have the life that you want. Not the life that I think you should have or Sean thinks you should have or name whatever fitness guru says you know that you would. What kind of life do you

want and how does your physicality tie into that? It doesn't matter if you made a goal this year and you've already broke. It doesn't matter if you've not even made a goal. You just start like today. I'm going to do whatever. Go do that. Make the aggressive move. We'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes, and more at bryantome.com. My new book, A 60 Day Devotional called The 5 Marks for Man, 60 Days to a Powerful Life, along with all the other books in the 5 Marks Library are open right now on Amazon. Be sure to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Then send an email to DIRT, that's DIRT, at bryantome.com to get a free Aggressive Life sticker. Find more on Instagram at bryantome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.