Our good friend Kenny Kane taught me something, he's shaking his head, the best. He's a wonderful guy. You're not going to find him on social media because a few years ago he just decided to take his gym and himself off social media. He's a very, very talented trainer. So we're going to give you his phone number.

We're going to have you call him because you can't DM him. Very talented athlete and wonderful person. He taught me something, I would say about eight years ago, that I've found oh so useful for my training longevity, my enjoyment of training, and it was this. Very simple. 80% of your workouts, Andrew, he said, are going to be at 80% of what you could do that day.

Okay, that involves some humility. I like to sweat hard. I associate intensity with hard work, et cetera. He said 10% are going to be at 90% intensity, meaning 100% is the most you could give, possibly in whatever time is allotted on that day, given the sleep, given the nutrition, given the life circumstances on that day.

The readiness for that day. Right. And then here's where it breaks down a little bit more, 5% are going to be at 95% and 5% across the year are going to be maximum 100% everything you can give, do or die workouts that day. One thing for me last year, I believe it was, was that was the rock carry, Cam Hands' podcast.

I gave everything I had. Of course, had the mountain been a little bit higher, I'd like to think I would've gone a little bit further, but I gave everything I could because that rock was slippery and it was muddy and my hamstring was out the day when we started, you know, I was in pain when we started, anyway.

I think that advice that Kenny gave me was some of the best advice I've ever heard because my tendency would have been and had been to come in and go at 90, 95 or a hundred percent every single workout. Sure. It got you a long way. Caffeine, pre-workout, et cetera.

That got you a long way. Yep. And it also brought me to this place where after eight or 10 weeks of training, I would get a cold or I'd get some nagging thing, a little thing, not, you know, it wouldn't put me under, but then, or I need to take a week off.

Normal accident theory. Right. So I think I'd love your thoughts on, on Kenny's recommendation. For me, it's one of the things that I pass along anytime, says, "How about some fitness advice?" I say, "Well, listen, I'm a neuroscientist, not a fitness guy, but I know a thing or two based on the mistakes I've made.

Here's a great piece of advice that's really helped me. 80% of your workouts, 80% intensity, another 10% at 90%, then the 95, you know, 5% at 95 and 5% across the year are the all out, everything you can give, leave it all on the mat type workouts." We could start with a simple idea.

We say, let's be consistent before we're heroic. Right. If your intensity causes you to not be able to show up for the gym for three days, I'm like, "Sweet. That was sweet." And our adaptation response to that is sucky, right? I much rather you be getting more consistent and not blowing yourself out.

Remember that there was a phase where we're like, "You shouldn't be sore when you leave the gym." Remember that? Like there were people would talk about, "Hey, leave some reps in reserve, like show up the next day, grease the groove. That's old Pavel Tsatsalin stuff." I think that's really good advice, especially since most people are not 20.

Most people, and when you're 20, you need to go find out what the limits are. Touch the fence, the electric fence once in a while, right? Lick all the doorknobs. Let's just call it that way. But what ends up happening is there's a lot of things have to be in place for you to be able to go to the well that many times.

And what we know now, because we have all of this data, is that we can make better progress not burning it to the ground every single time. And it's difficult for us because if I'm just fitnessing, how do I quantify that, right? It's easy for us to quantify another kilo or another watt.

That's makes it a lot easier. And what you'll see is the best practices of these athletes, we do spend a lot of 70-80% heart rate. That's what we call recovery. In Joel Jameson language, 80 to 90, we're calling that conditioning, 90 and above, overload. But what I think is nice is that that gives me a lot of – there are some days where I touch 78 or 80% and it's hard because I'm sleep deprived, stressed out, my nutrition hasn't been great, I'm sleeping in a strange bed, you know, traveling, whatever.

So I think what you're seeing is something that one of my early coaches talked about, Mike Bergner. He says, "When the frying pan's hot, let's cook." And that means I need to know myself and as a coach, I need to know you. And I'm like, "Andrew, you look great today.

How do you feel?" "Great. Let's go. Let's go chase something." Right? And when the frying pan's hot, we cook. But the frying pan is not always hot. And if you pour in bang energy and jack 3D, you can't even hear inputs and outputs. So I think that's such solid, reasonable advice.

And really what we're looking at is how can we get you to train much more consistently longer and longer and longer. You can only go to the well a few times. And what I'll tell you is that as I still love to power clean, it's my favorite thing. And that 100 kilo power clean is heavier than it was when I was 40, you know?

And I want to pretend like that 100 kilo power clean is not a problem, but I actually have to progress and get myself there. And there are days where I'm like, "Oh, 80 kilos is my jam today." So I think that's really good advice. And difficult for us to say, "How are we measuring success in our training?" Positive experience?

"Oh, no problem. Let me give you a baby, keep this newborn alive, and then let's go see how hard your training is the next day. You're going to be terrible. You haven't slept all night, you're stressed," right? So I think what's nice is having some objective measurements around, maybe body composition is one of them, if that's important to you, but are you getting faster over the course of a week?

What are your testing? How do we know inputs and outputs? And right now we're just doing, we're baking a lot, we're making a lot of suicides, right? The old fountain drink where you just mix all the things, they always taste the same at the end like crap, but that suicide where you mix all the fountain drinks is a little bit of what we're seeing in that.

And one way of protecting ourselves is saying, "Hey, let's make sure you can train tomorrow." Suicides. I was reflecting on that the other day for some reason, why at a wedding or a party, typically it's a Y-chromosome-associated disorder to feel like you had to mix a bunch of stuff and then get someone to drink it.

You're not wrong. I've never done alcoholic drinks for young kids, by the way, but mixing all the sodas, putting M&M's in, just something like, "Oh, my male friends are wicked." And I think that's what we see a little bit. And if you, I am a deep coach nerd, I love fitness, I love fitnessing, I'll jump into any class, any time like, "Sure, let's go, let's see." It's so fun, but I need to see, I do get to watch trends come and go.

Things get very hot, they get very popular. And again, fitness has become a hobby. It's an amuse. And that's okay. It's totally okay that gym is a hobby, but that doesn't hint about what's the best way to develop capacity, elite capacity, long-term longevity capacity. Those things almost don't go together.