Zack Arnold

Let's create things that matter. Together.

Becoming Weekend Warriors

About Episode

In this episode I chat with Monica Daniel and Natalie Baker, two members of my initial Fitness In Post test group, and more importantly, two members of my Fitness In Post Spartan Race team. We discuss our reasons for participating in obstacle course racing, how anyone can train for these types of events, the mental and physical benefits of training, and other tips and tricks to becoming weekend warriors.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: So we’re just going to go ahead and jump right in today, and I’m going to say hello to my returning test group members, Monica, Daniel, and Natalie Baker. How are you both?

Natalie Baker: Hi, hello.

Zack Arnold: So our topic of conversation today is going to be obstacle course racing. For those that follow this podcast, or follow the blog, or just have followed anything that I’ve talked about in the past. I’m a bit of a junkie for obstacle course racing. It’s something that I got into about two or three years ago, and at this point, it’s kind of gotten into the popular culture now, where people have at least heard of it. So if you’ve heard of the rugged maniac or the Spartan race or the tough mudder, or I mean, there’s all kinds of different variations now, but the general idea is that it’s just it’s a bunch of crazy adults that are going out and running through mud and climbing under barbed wire and jumping in cold water and just doing all of these things that are kind of a shock to the system, and they’re doing it for fun and they’re paying good money for it. There are several questions that I want to answer today. The first question is why the heck do people do this? And I can only answer for myself and for the two people on this show. But I think there’s a really good reason why it’s becoming such a phenomenon. Number two, how can anybody get ready for this? So if you’re listening to this and you’re an editor and you’re sitting behind a desk and you’re saying, “Well, I could never run a Spartan race, well, the simple answer to that is yes, you can. You just kind of need to know where to start. And then the other thing that we’re going to try and answer is where do you go to learn more and get ready for something like this, or if you even wanted to join the fitness in post Spartan team that we are assembling. So right now we’re talking to my entire Spartan team, which is Monica and Natalie. Natalie will be running with me at the Sacramento Super, the Spartan Super, which is in at the end of October, and then both of you will be running the Spartan Sprint in Malibu at the beginning of December. So that’s kind of what we’re going to talk about today. What I want to start with first is the why. Why is it that people in general do this craziness, and more importantly, why do the three of us do it? There’s one resource that I want to send people to that are listening to. It’s a book that I read, and it’s not a book that I read before I started. It’s something that came out recently, but I think really explains the phenomenon of this really well from a psychological perspective, and that’s a book called Spartan Up by Joe Desenna, and he’s the creator and founder of the Spartan Race series, and it really talks about why he founded it, who he is as a person, and more importantly, why he created these obstacle course races and what people get out of them. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But since I have you guys on here, rather than talking about the book, I want to talk about why you guys are signing up for a Spartan race. So we’ll go ahead and start with Monica.

Monica Daniel: Okay. Well, the the quick and easy answer is you like triple dog dared me on Facebook, and finally I caved in and signed up. And then there’s there’s a couple different facets to my reasoning. Anyone who knows me knows I am just like a giant child. I I wear literally sneakers with glitter all over them. I love going to Comic Con. I am just a huge goofball child, and I’m still trying to break my cookie habit. By the way, it’s really hard, especially when all the producers keep feeding me cookies. So, and if you think about it, what was as a child? What was your favorite time of day? It was when you got to play on the playground. It was recess, and it was so easy as a kid to be able to just like go across those monkey bars. And Natalie, did you ever do the egg beaters?

Natalie Baker: The egg beaters. Do you know what egg beaters

Monica Daniel: Are? You would hang off the bars, and then you would kick your legs around in a circular motion as fast as you can, and it actually really worked your core. But as a kid, you didn’t realize it. It was just kind of fun because then once you let go, you kind of spun around and fell. And as a kid, that like that was our fun was climbing on these big contraptions that they no longer have in playgrounds anymore because people kept breaking their arms and just basically being a huge monkey. And you know, as I got older, like I, I just you know, I stopped doing that stuff, and then to the point where I couldn’t do it at all. I’m still working up to doing more than just hanging off of a bar for 20 seconds, and I used to be able to flip upside down and hang upside down by my legs. So I want to be able to have that kind of fun again. To me, it’s it’s takes me back to when I was a kid, and that was like the best part of the day was recess. And then, kind of the other reasoning is I’ve always loved to challenge myself. I do it in every aspect of my life, whether it’s editing or just some sort of goal I set. I always want to challenge myself, and I’ve always wanted to do some sort of obstacle course because of that challenge, because of that mental focus that is required just to try to get through the obstacles, just to prove that I can do it. And you know, you could kind of pretend to be a little a superhero a little bit because you’re able to do these things that you. So most people are like, “Why are you doing that to yourself? And it’s it’s a good excuse to play in the mud, and and no one can yell at you for getting all dirty. I mean, come on, that’s the fun part. And for me, it’s just that kind of focus I get when I’m trying to do the physical challenges, and I’m basically just a huge kid.

Zack Arnold: Well, it’s it’s funny that you use the term physical challenge because what do you immediately think of in our generation when you hear the term physical challenge?

Monica Daniel: Double dare,

Zack Arnold: Double dare. Of course, I grew up watching Double Dare and and Spartan races and Tough Mudders are basically double dare for adults,

Natalie Baker: But no sliming.

Zack Arnold: Well, that yeah, there’s no slimy, but there’s plenty of mud. There’s mud. There’s fire hoses. There’s climbing up slippery things. There’s sliding down big slip and slides. So it basically is double dare for adults. So if you’re if you have no idea what we’re talking about, but you know double dare, just picture it out in the hills and in the woods for anywhere between three and 15 miles-that’s what these obstacle course races are. So, Natalie, give me an idea other than the fact that I have completely browbeaten you into it. Why you are deciding to do a Spartan race?

Natalie Baker: Well, calling it like double dares-the most fun you’ve made it sound since I signed up for it. So, so that’s good. I well because I I do a lot of. I mean, I like to race. I like to do races. That’s my thing. I wanted to do something that was just a little bit more, more than just running a certain distance and going for a time. Is I wanted to do something a little bit more fun, a little bit more challenging, and it wasn’t. I’m just also curious, you know. I just I have to know. Everybody does the tough mudders and the Spartans and all of these obstacle courses. Like I have to know if I can do it. I need to know how hard this is and where I’m at because I do like I do a lot of running. I know like where I’m at when it comes to running, but when it comes to strength and all of that, I have no idea where I’m at. I have no idea what I can actually do. So it’ll be fun to see how high on a rope can I climb, and how many buckets of water can I carry, and so when do I collapse? Like it’ll be, it’ll be a lot of fun. And to Monica’s point about the monkey bars, it’s funny. Like if you ever go on monkey bars as an adult, and you try to hang there, and you try to do all of the things that you did as a kid. You’re like, oh my god, this is so ridiculous. I mean, other than not having the calluses, but also like making it across the monkey bars is so much harder than I remember it. Yeah, I mean,

Zack Arnold: I remember going across the monkey bars. You needed even think twice about it when you were in elementary school, and then you try it when you’re an adult, and you’re like, “Oh my God, am I fat? Like, how can I not get across the monkey bars? It was so easy. The picture in my mind, it’s so easy. And then you try to do it, and it’s impossible.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it that makes me sad. Makes me sad because you just you run around and like the monkey bars is just like a thing. You just kind of do it and you move on with your recess time, and the rest is you know the rest is recess, and nope, not anymore. Now it’s like a thing. Like if I get across those rings and whatever, it’s like a thing.

Zack Arnold: Exactly.

Monica Daniel: And you know what I used to do on the swings too is I would swing as high as I can, and then grip the chain with my hands and literally flip myself completely upside down with my feet over my head, and I was just holding the chain with my hands.

Natalie Baker: That sounds so. And I thought,

Monica Daniel: And I would swing back and forth completely upside down, and I thought it was the funnest thing ever. I try to do that now. I like. I don’t even get my butt above my chest. It’s just like dunk.

Natalie Baker: Yeah. Well, I’m getting-I can’t agree on that swing. That’s why

Monica Daniel: I know. I was like, “Damn it, that’s hard now.

Natalie Baker: Oh, I can’t even go on swings anymore. I get motion sickness now.

Zack Arnold: Yep. Me too. I hate going on the swings. I have the same problem. Yeah. But one thing that you said, Natalie, that I really want to point out is you said I want to know if I can do it right, and that’s kind of where I started. Is I had never heard of anything like this, and then my sister, who’s 13 years older than I am, who’s kind of been a fitness fiend for a while, she was the one that originally introduced me to P 90x series and all that other stuff, she said. Oh, I just ran one of these things. It’s this brand new thing, and I absolutely loved it. And she started talking about it. And we were in the car with my parents, and my parents were like, “You’re crazy! And all I remember thinking was, “That sounds awesome, and I want to do that. So I started looking into it, and I realized that I hadn’t exercised in seven or eight years. I’d been doing nothing but working. I just had my first son, who was maybe a year old, and I said, “This is the perfect opportunity for me to have a reason to move forwards because I want to know if it’s something that I’m capable of. Because I grew up doing martial arts and playing football and playing baseball, and I was very athletic and stuff like that was second nature. Because I grew up on a farm, so I thought this will be like you said. It’ll be interesting to see where I am, and what I found is that the accountability factor that comes with signing up for one of these is what gets you to stick to a workout and stick to a fitness regimen. Because I failed for years and years trying to start exercise programs and diet programs because I had no accountability, and as soon as I signed up and I paid for it, it was just that gut feeling of fear where you’re thinking, if I don’t do something, I am going to get my ass kicked on the day that I do this event, and that’s going to be embarrassing because number one, I’ll be with my sister who’s older than me, but number two, it’ll just be embarrassing to myself. So that’s what got me to finish P 90x the very first time because I had the accountability of having signed up for something that I didn’t want to back out of. So that’s one of the main reasons that I got into it. The reason that I continue to do it now is number one, it gives me a new reason to stick with a new workout routine because I’ve been sticking with exercise routines pretty consistently for the last two years now, and the reason is because I keep signing up for more races because I love them. And once I finish, it used to be I just want to finish a race. Now it’s I want to do better than the last time. I want to be faster. I want to do less burpees because burpees are the penalty for not making it through an obstacle. So I want to do the obstacles faster, do less burpees, and there’s always a new goal. But the idea is just continuing to have that accountability factor. But the other thing that for me is a huge factor in doing this, and it’s a big thing that Joe Desenna talks about in the book Spartan Up that I mentioned earlier. Something called obstacle immunity. I also wrote a blog post on the Fitness in Post website that I’ll link to as well, but the idea behind obstacle immunity is it’s no different than a vaccine. If you take a vaccine for chickenpox, you’re literally giving yourself a little bit of chickenpox, and you’re teaching your antibodies and your immune system to fight off the chickenpox, develop those antibodies so you don’t get the virus when it hits you for real. It’s the same thing with doing a Spartan race and obstacles.

Zack Arnold: If you’re going to go to your job and you don’t do any type of physical activity, and all of a sudden your computer crashes, or somebody sends you a you know insulting email, or something’s late, you respond with a you know cortisol response, and you get really stressed out, and you can’t handle it, and you become anxious. If you go through something like a Spartan race, and you’re going through and doing obstacles where you’re climbing through rocky ground, and it’s all muddy, and somebody’s spraying you with a fire hose that’s ice cold, and you’re doing that for 50 yards, you go to work the next day, and your computer crashes, and you don’t care because it’s so much easier than what you just did the day before, so you’re developing obstacle immunity, and that’s what I love about it. Is that I remember when I used to think that going to work was really exhausting and really stressful, and now after doing things like this several times, work kind of becomes like a vacation. It’s like, well, this is nothing compared to what I went through two weeks ago. So that for me is the reason that I keep doing it because it just it keeps me fresh. It removes all the stress, and most importantly, it just introduces perspective into my life where I’m thinking, yeah, I used to think this was hard, but trying to climb a rope that’s 25 feet with it being ice cold and being all wet, and knowing I’m going to fall into a pit of ice water if I don’t make it to the top, an export not working, not so bad, right? That’s what keeps me going back to these events. Is just that that sense of obstacle immunity.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, well, you’re not the one doing the exports, Zack. Late at night. That is true. When you get your, I was at one point

Zack Arnold: Though. Don’t worry, I was at one point. It’s not that I’ve never gone through it. Like ten o’clock. I’m just glad. I’m blessed

Zack Arnold: To have a really good assistant that takes care of that for me now. Disclaimer: Natalie is my assistant editor.

Natalie Baker: Yes.

Zack Arnold: So that that’s the reason that I do it, and it sounds like everybody else’s reasons are somewhat similar. The difference between me and you guys is that I’ve experienced several of these, and I know what to expect for the most part. Sometimes they’ll throw in weird curveballs that nobody expects, but you guys have never done an event like this before. I know that Monica, you’ve done some zombie runs, but the Spartan race is very different.

Monica Daniel: Oh no, the zombie runs were nothing. It was yeah, there was there was no real challenge in those fronts. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: So so these are going to be very very different. So what I want to talk about next is the idea that this can be done by just about anybody, but at the same time, it takes a little bit of work to get into it. When I decided that I was going to train for this, I really had no business doing it as far as the physical shape that I was in or the lifestyle that I had. Like my work hours were insane. I had a one and a half or two year old son at home. Like I really had no business getting into something like this. But like I said, once I signed up, I was going to do it, and I just stuck to it. And I barely finished my first tough mudder. That was the first event. That I did. It was about 12 miles, but I did it, and that’s kind of when I started to get the bug and became addicted to this. And I knew that I would. I know my personality, and I knew as soon as I was challenged with something like this, I would become addicted. And here I am, two years later, now doing a podcast about it. But what I want to talk about is kind of what these races look like and what to expect, and then that way you guys can answer any questions you have, and I can talk about some training tactics and kind of ways for anybody to get started. Because there are different levels of people in these races. If you’re talking about a tough mudder, it’s mostly just going to be weekend warriors and weekend warriors, people like us that go to work during the week and have regular jobs and sit behind desks and have kids, and then on the weekends decide that they want to jump in the mud and they want to get dirty and you know jump over stuff. If you look at a race like the Spartan race, there are different tiers, and they actually have an elite tier, and those are professional athletes that all they do is train for races like this and have sponsors, and those people are like crazy, crazy athletic. That’s not the type of training that I’m going to talk about, and there are other places to learn about that. The two resources that I want to send anybody to, if you want real gritty, down and dirty tips for doing a Spartan race right, the first place that you should go is a place called obstacledominator.com which is a website and podcast that’s run by Ben Greenfield, who’s one of the foremost fitness and nutrition experts in the nation, and he’s also my number one top resource to learn about fitness and nutrition and biohacking and learning about how to hack your office and your environment. Like the guy’s just an absolute rain man of this stuff. He’s actually going to be on an upcoming podcast, but either go to obstacledominator.com or bengreenfieldfitness.com. That’s not what this podcast is. This is more about how do people like us prepare for something like this, not how do I become a professional athlete. So the first thing I want to talk about is where the heck do you start? I personally started with P90X. That was a little bit ambitious, but that’s where I started, and I made it through. Where are you starting, Monica? How are you training for your Spartan race?

Monica Daniel: Well, I’m from the challenge group. I’m. I started. I never completely got through P 90 x3 because after the challenge group, I just I had actually had run my body ragged trying to compete for those prizes, and so I took a little bit of a break, and I was like, you know what? I’m not strong enough to really take full advantage of like the third block of P90X3, so I kicked myself back and started over to just keep working on that base strength of trying to build it up, so I could get more out of the phase three of P90X3 blocks, and so I’m doing P90X3. But in addition to that, I also do a lot of little things. So I bought one-pound weighted gloves now. That whenever I run or do the hikes, I’m I’m wearing those. I bought a hand gripper to because one of my biggest weaknesses is my my upper body strength and especially my grip strength. So, and I know with those those rope climbs, and I’ve seen pictures where they have those. I don’t know what it’s called, but you’re like it’s like a rope at an angle, and you’re trying to climb up

Zack Arnold: It. Yeah, the one of the obstacles that they have is they’ll have a you know it’s basically like a piece of several pieces of plywood that are angled up at a very steep incline, and you have to climb up it using a rope that has knots every three or four feet. So that’s that’s one of the common obstacles that they have.

Monica Daniel: So I have this adjustable hand gripper that ranges from 20 to 90 pounds of resistance, and I’ll use it in the car. I’ll use it when I’m rendering. I’ll use it when I’m playing back something, and just you know keep working on that grip strength because it’s so poor. And also just tonight, actually, so I stopped doing my treadmill workouts for a while because I needed to rest my knees a little bit because I have IT band issues that emerged after I discovered I was so out of shape, and so what I did tonight is at my gym. That’s where I use the treadmills. They have these special treadmills that they go to really, really steep elevation, and they also have like really steep like descent. So I was flopping it back and forth to kind of mimic terrain in a hill, because walking up hills is is pretty hard for me, because I start feeling it in my back, and you know I I don’t have time to always just go find a hiking trail at 9o’clock at night. So that’s what I do is I I’ll go to you know the gym for like an hour hour and a half, and I’ll go on the treadmill, and so now I’ve started. Now that I feel comfortable enough running flat, which it took me a while to get comfortable doing that, because I just I’m not a runner. I now I’m playing with the elevation, and I think I’m not going to be running flat at all anymore. Now I’m just I’m always going to be elevated in some way to really work those muscles, and because. Know everything is-it’s like everything’s going to be on a hill, and in Malibu, it’s a mountain, and we’re going to have to be carrying a whole bunch of stuff. I’m kind of dreading it, so I know I have to really work those muscles that support you when you’re you’re going up mountains.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, those are all all good things to be focusing on, and I realize that I should probably step back just a little bit and kind of explain what some of the different tiers are to the Spartan race because there’s more than one version. There’s a Spartan Sprint, there’s a Spartan Super, and there’s a Spartan Beast. And the one that we are going to be doing as a fitness in post team in December is the Spartan Sprint, and that’s going to be in the hills in Malibu, and that’s going to be a three-mile version. The Spartan sprints are three miles. The Spartan supers are roughly eight to 10 miles. They never actually tell you the exact distance until you get there that day. And then the Spartan Beast is anywhere between 12, and they usually say 13 miles. But they just had the World Championships last week, and that was a Spartan Beast, and that was over 16 miles. But that’s a little bit unusual because it was the World Championships. So the one that Natalie and I will be doing at the end of October is going to be a Spartan Super, which is somewhere between eight and 10 miles. The one that you’re talking about, Monica, is the Spartan Sprint, and the most important thing to really focus on. There’s always more than one thing to focus on, but what you’re focusing on now is getting used to doing hills, and that’s really, really important. Because one of the reasons that I like this as a sport, as opposed to a marathon runner or just doing strength training or just doing some other form of exercise like cycling or spinning, is that this involves everything. This is about endurance. This is about speed. This is about strength, balance, agility. It really kind of tests everything for being an overall athlete. And dealing with a lot of hills is going to be a core component of training for something like this because it is just nonstop uphill and downhill, uphill and downhill. Like there are almost no straightaways, and when you get them, you’re just saying thank you, Lord, because they are so few and far between, and you don’t really realize until you’re doing an uphill how many different muscle groups that works that you’re not used to working. And as a regular member of my hiking groups, that’s something that you’ve experienced with me firsthand, because I will kind of run you guys ragged, going up and down different hills, and carrying things, and doing burpees and all that. Because I know that it’s going to help you get ready for a Spartan race.

Monica Daniel: Yeah, and I’m still working on that. And I’ve noticed how the drastic improvement just attending the hikes every couple weeks when I can make it. It’s I’ve improved so much just from you know attending the hikes and just working in between on like you doing P90X three, I’m noticing the difference.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it’s a tremendous difference. When when I look at where you started at the beginning of the test group, and anybody that hasn’t heard the story already, there are several podcasts before this one that will tell you all about it. But when I look at your progress from where you started until now, you’re literally a completely different human being, and I know that we’re going on the hikes and you’re still struggling, but you’re doing five and six mile hikes and you’re doing burpees and you’re carrying concrete blocks up hills. Like, I mean, that’s insane compared to where you started four or five months ago. So, you know, it’s it never gets less challenging. It’s still hard for me. It’s just about doing better than you did the time before, and that’s something that you’re doing in spades.

Monica Daniel: I actually thought that last hike, when I carried that rock up that really steep hill, that usually involves a lot of swearing as I’m walking up it. I really thought I was going to be sick, but it was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be for me to do. Because the first time you took me up that steep hill, I almost threw up, and that was with no rock and no weighted gloves.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I mean, it’s it’s really just all about the repetition and doing it, and realizing that it’s maybe not as bad as you thought. Because one of the I would say the largest challenge that you face in these obstacle course races has nothing to do with the physical obstacles. It’s about the mental idea that you can or can’t do something, and one of the things that the tough mudder did for me is it got me over my fear of water. Nobody knows to this day in my family why, but I had an absolute deathly fear of being in the water until I was over 30 years old. Like I literally could not go in the deep end of a pool as a 30-year-old man because I was deathly afraid of water and I could never pinpoint why there’s never a specific instance where I was a kid and I almost drowned. There’s nothing like that, but signing up for the Tough Mudder, I had no choice because one of the obstacles in the Tough Mudder is called walk the plank, where you climb up to the top of a you know you basically climb up two by fours, and you’re up on top of this like a diving board that’s about 20 foot, 20 feet over ice cold water, and you have to jump in, and then you have to swim to the other edge where you grab cargo nets and you climb out. And that was my number one obstacle. That was one that I said I’m going to conquer this. And after I did it, and I got out, I’m like, holy crap! I did this, and I haven’t been afraid of water ever since. So I conquered a lifelong fear because there was an obstacle that I just said I need to figure out how to get through this. Because once you sign up, you’re in it. That’s one of the big things that can come from this is just getting over some type of fear. It’s that whole idea of obstacle immunity, and that’s one of the reasons that I like to do these hiking groups. Is it really kind of helps people realize that they can do more than they think they can? Because I remember looking at the videos for the Tough Mudder and thinking, “There’s no way that I can do this. This stuff is crazy. And I know that you guys are thinking the same things right now, looking at these videos. So it’s really more about overcoming the mental obstacle of thinking I can’t do something, and once you do it, that’s gone. And there are so many more things in your life that you now say, “Hey, I can do that. So that’s really a much bigger reason why we’re doing this than just the the get dirty part. But that’s also fun.

Natalie Baker: I actually haven’t looked at so many videos. I don’t. I don’t really want to know. Well, I don’t want to know what I’m in for.

Zack Arnold: You may change your. I’m just

Natalie Baker: Gonna jump right in. I’m just gonna jump right in.

Zack Arnold: You you may 2 guess that strategy about four miles into our Spartan Super this month.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, I know, I know. So it’s gonna be that’ll be fun because I have not been doing. I have just been doing the DV the T25 DVDs and running a whole lot, and so we’ll see. I do some uphill. I do some uphill running. I do my strength training almost every day. So we’ll see. I’m I’m I’m going. I’m just going with the naive thing. So I don’t even worry about it. I’m just gonna like just gonna go and do it. I don’t want to think about it. Just gonna say it’s fun.

Zack Arnold: The good news for you, Natalie, is that you’re really small, which means that you’re not going to be terribly heavy for me

Natalie Baker: To carry you when I pass out.

Zack Arnold: Exactly. So, so, so when mile six comes and you’re just like, I am done with this, and you pass out, I can fireman carry you for the last couple of miles. That’s probably an obstacle. Actually, they’re usually they have an obstacle at most of these races where you have to carry a partner and do wheelbarrow carries and fireman carries, and you’d be the perfect partner for that. You’re going to be screwed. I’m not

Natalie Baker: Carrying you,

Zack Arnold: But I mean, trust me, I’ve had to carry people much bigger than me. But that that’s usually a fairly common thing.

Monica Daniel: I’m really sure both you guys are both going to have to throw my ass over those tall walls. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: Those are fun. So as long as we’re we’re on the subject of all these different things, let me kind of walk people through what some of the obstacles are that you might expect at one of these races. One of the most common ones are the walls, and that’s the kind of wall that you’ve seen in every army obstacle course video, where basically it’s just a set of two by 10s that are a certain height, and you just have to jump up to the top and lift yourself over and jump to the other side. It’s really, really simple, but it’s not easy. Those are actually some of the tougher obstacles that get a lot of people stuck. And the tough mudder they make them so high that you have to have somebody else help you unless you’re super super tall. So they kind of have this camaraderie aspect of you know helping your fellow man get over the wall or fellow woman as it may be, it’s a little bit different in Spartan Race where they make it just high enough that it’s really hard, but it’s more of an individual kind of thing. So there’s climbing over walls, there’s climbing through underground trenches, there’s a lot of climbing under low barbed wire, which is another obstacle everybody in the world has seen. And army basic training videos or war movies or whatever it is, but it’s basically if you’re not flat on your belly and doing the elbow crawl, you’re gonna lift up and you’re gonna you know go against barbed wire. And the new thing that they threw into it the last Barton race I did is they sprayed you with ice cold water from a fire hose, so that was fun. There’s a lot of jumping over like mud pits and stuff, some of which are basically too wide for you to actually make the jump. So most likely you’re going to fall on a pit of mud to get over it. There’s always hanging obstacles that you have to get across, like monkey bars, or there’s one that’s kind of like monkey bars, but it’s more like a cargo net that’s hanging horizontally. So it’s you know you you have to lift a lot higher because you’re dropping because it’s you know the the ropes are letting you down further than just like regular monkey bars. There’s the bucket carry that’s always one that kills people where you basically take a five gallon bucket and you have to fill it up with gravel and then you have to carry it up a steep hill and down a steep hill. There are sandbag carries, and luckily for the women, they do lighter buckets and lighter sandbags, so it’s not going to be quite as bad. You usually have to drag stuff, like you’ll have to take, you know, these large tires, and they’ll have them, you know, tied up to a rope, and you have to drag them through the sand in a couple of directions. There’s a spear throw. That’s one of the that’s like one of the quintessential Spartan race things is the idea of a Spartan with a spear. So you have the spear throw where you have to hit a set of hay bales that are like 20 or 30 feet away, and just so everybody knows, in a Spartan race, if you don’t make it through an obstacle successfully, you have to do 30 burpees. And for those that are like, “What the heck is a burpee? I’ll. A link to a video explaining it, but that’s that’s the penalty if you don’t make it. If you’re in a tough mudder, it’s kind of the honor system. They’re not timing your race. You just kind of do it and you make it what you want it to be. But if you want to finish a Spartan race and you want to get a medal, you have a timing chip, and they have people at every obstacle. And if you don’t make it through the obstacle and you don’t do 30 burpees, you’re disqualified. So if you want that medal, you have to earn it in Spartan Race, whereas in Tough Mudder, it’s just kind of the honor system.

Monica Daniel: And I’ve basically come to accept the fact that I’m going to be doing a ton of burpees.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, the the last one that I did, I think my count was 130. I believe it might have been more than that. No, it was 130 because I did four sets of 30, and then one of the obstacles was that you had to do 10 burpees. So even if you succeeded in every single one, you at least had to do 10 burpees at one of the obstacles. So I did 130 which actually wasn’t too bad. I’ve heard of people that have done much worse, but for me, what I found was that my weakest link was my grip strength, like you said. That’s something that you lose really quickly when you spend all day basically in an atrophied position at a keyboard, is your fingers are just moving, but you’re not developing any of the strength in your forearms or your grip. So anything that had to do with grip strength, I failed at miserably. Which was the climbing up the rope, which I’ve done plenty of times, but it was slippery and it was thin and it was really cold. So I failed on that one. There’s another one where you lift weights like on a fulcrum where you’re pulling on the rope and it’s lifting up a sandbag that’s like 100 pounds. I couldn’t hold onto the rope, so I failed on that one. The cargo net one where it’s horizontally above you, so it’s like the monkey bars, but it’s a cargo net. I failed on that one, and the fourth one, which was really random, and I’m still angry about. Is you basically they have a bunch of posts that are about waist high and about three feet apart, and you just have to jump across them. It’s a really simple balancing one. If you stand and watch it, like 80% of the people make it through really easily, and I totally miffed it. I was so angry because I had to do 30 burpees at a really really easy obstacle. So those are the four that I missed last time, and my goal is to succeed at those this time. So I’ve really been focusing a lot on grip strength for the last couple of months, and focusing on upper body strength, and doing more chin ups and pull ups and stuff like that to you know focus on on those strengths. I’ve already been doing a lot of hill running, uphill and downhill, doing the hikes and stuff. And as Monica knows, I like to carry a lot of random heavy objects, just because if if you’re just gonna like, for example, I wear a 40 pound weighted vest when we go hiking, but that’s well balanced. But if you take a sandbag or you take like a concrete block, I’m kind of known in our group, for just randomly picking up large rocks or blocks,

Monica Daniel: Or several of them, exactly,

Zack Arnold: And those are really awkward. And in order to be able to carry that on a hike when you’re going up and down rocky terrain, that forces you to use all kinds of random balancing muscles and connective muscles that you’re not going to get if you’re just doing bicep curls and military presses and bench presses and squats like those are really well controlled exercises that you do in a gym. That’s called like the improving your beach muscles, getting yourself a beach body, right? And the idea with these is trying to create functional fitness and creating balance in the real world. And it’s funny because I actually think a lot of the Beachbody workouts. When I say Beachbody, like P90X and T25 and all these other things, they do all kinds of functional fitness workouts that aren’t about just your beach muscles. I just think it’s unfortunate that they have the name that they do because it’s really kind of misleading unless you understand what the programs are. But they’re all about functional fitness. So I think that for you, Natalie, T 25 is a really good place to start because that what that’s going to do for you is you’re probably going to have no problem with your cardio level as far as getting really exhausted on a high intensity obstacle because you’re doing plenty of high intensity. Where I think if there’s any concern that I would have for you, it’s just it’s the strength components, and I don’t think endurance is going to be a big issue with you because you’ve done marathons. But at the same time, it’s a different kind of endurance, especially with all the hills. You know, because because you you you know you’ve done half marathons and marathons, but that’s endurance doing the exact same thing to your body for 234, hours at a time with not a whole lot of variation, and this is a lot of do something for you know two minutes and it’s really hard. Then run up a hill for a mile. Then do a little bit of a jog. Then carry something. So it’s it’s just a whole lot of different stuff that’s getting thrown at you that you don’t really expect.

Natalie Baker: Right. Yeah, I’m worried about having to do all those burpees.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, the burpees are tough. Let’s not let’s not beat around the bush. The burpees are not easy because

Natalie Baker: I get to that I get to that T 25 section where they make me do push ups for like seven minutes straight, and I just I just die. I can. That would be the total

Zack Arnold: Body circuit if anybody’s listening. Yeah, that’s the that workout is hard.

Natalie Baker: Yeah. Yeah, I decided once I can make it through those seven minutes, that’s when I’m moving on to the beta DVDs. It’s like that’s when I’ve made it.

Zack Arnold: Right,

Natalie Baker: Getting through those seven minutes without just lying on the floor for 30 seconds. So yeah, it’ll be fun. It’ll be an experience. I’m excited to climb up the wall and do the rope climb and stuff. That’ll be fun. Throw spears at a barrel of hay.

Zack Arnold: I don’t remember if I told you this, Natalie, but I told this to Monica. I said that during the process, you’re probably gonna hate me more than once, and then once you get across the finish line, you’re just gonna give me a big hug, and you’re gonna be like, “Thank you, because you’re gonna realize that once you’re done with it, you kind of are a different person because now you’ve finished it and you’ve completed it, so it’s kind of a it’s a big thing. And I really I want people that are listening to this to not be intimidated because anybody can do these. And if you’re saying, well, I can because of my schedule and I have kids and blah blah blah blah blah, I see people doing these that don’t have legs. Literally, they do not have legs. So if there’s a reason that you think you can’t do it, you can do it. Trust me. And they’re really, really, really fun. The

Monica Daniel: Way I’m approaching it, because I have to work on my strength. Plus, I’m a little on the heavier side, so I’m worried about that. Just having to make up for the extra weight I’m going to have to carry around on myself. And you know, I’ve never been a runner, so I don’t have that going for me. You know, I I started from a pretty bad place back in May, and I’m still, you know, working on getting my fitness level up. And so going into this, I know I’m not gonna do great, but I’m gonna do the best I can. And the only thing I expect of myself is I’m gonna try, and if I fail an obstacle and they make me do the burpees, I’m like, “Well, I know I can do burpees at least. But I’m gonna try, and I I don’t know how not to try. Maybe that’s a thing. It’s like I’m gonna try at least. You could always try, but I know I’m I’m gonna have a hard time with with the obstacles. I just I I try to be realistic about my strengths and weaknesses, and that’s why I’m I’m just pushing myself to see how far I can push myself. I can do a burpee. I’ll do 30 of them if I have to. You might be dragging me to the next obstacle, Zack, but I’ll do them.

Zack Arnold: Well, the one the one benefit that you’re going to have working for you, Monica, is that you don’t need to worry about the endurance component because they call it a Spartan sprint for a reason, and that’s because that’s really fast. Most people get through it in less than an hour, and you’ve been doing hikes with me for up to three hours. So for you, you don’t need to worry about endurance. The main component that you need to focus on is high intensity interval training or HIT training, and that’s exactly what something like P90X three is: is HIT training because you’re only doing it for 30 minutes, but it’s really, really intense for those 30 minutes. And studies have been coming out left and right over the last several years showing that high intensity training is actually much better for burning fat and getting in better shape because it jacks up your metabolism, but your metabolism continues to stay up for up to 20-four hours after that activity, as opposed to let’s say that you just go on the treadmill and you jog for 30 minutes. Whatever the amount of calories are that you burn during those 30 minutes, you burn those, but then as soon as you step off the treadmill, you’re done. With high intensity interval training, you’re burning extra calories for up to a day afterwards, and you’re increasing your metabolic function, and you’re getting in better shape quicker, and you’re getting stronger, and you’re getting more agile. So for anybody that’s out there that’s kind of chronically on the elliptical or on the bike, or on the treadmill, those things are not going to help you with a race like this. Like you may do 10 miles a day on a treadmill, you’re going to get shredded on something like a Spartan race course because it’s not just about being able to do the same thing over and over and over. There are so many different physical and mental challenges that you have to endure, and that’s something that I just kind of advocate in general. Is I’m just not a big fan of doing general cardio and doing maintenance cardio. Like I’m a big fan of doing things that are intense, even if it’s for really really short bursts. Like for example, there’s an article that I’ve shared in the past that basically says that you can replace the effects of a cup of coffee by doing 60 seconds of high intensity exercise, just pushing yourself as hard as you can, doing push-ups or burpees or jumping jacks or whatever the exercise might be. You can do that in an office. If you find that it’s 3o’clock and you’re starting to get a little, you know, just woozy and you’re getting a little tired, do 60 seconds of intense exercise, and bam, your cognitive function is now the same as if you just had a cup of coffee, except you’re not going to have that huge crash two hours later, which is going to force you to need more coffee.

Natalie Baker: Sounds like better times than a cup of coffee. Although I’m loving having, I know this is off topic. I’ve been having Shakeology at like 530 which has been awesome. But having Shakeology like 530 or six when you have late days is amazing.

Zack Arnold: I know that that. That’s something that I’ve been learning too because I usually have it in the morning, but I’ve now just been trying to do the bulletproof coffee in the morning, and then I’ve been doing the Shakeology at like 430 or five, and then I don’t need to really eat that much dinner, but I have plenty of energy, and then I feel so much better when I wake up in the morning.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, I just feel better going home. I don’t feel like I’m dragging myself. So combine one shakeology with 60 seconds of push-ups and other high-intensity push-ups, pull-ups, whatever. I bet you’d be a beast for the rest of the night if you have to work till midnight that night. Some push-ups, shakeology, you’re good to go.

Zack Arnold: Well, one thing that I experimented with a few weeks ago during one of our Shakeology groups, was I created Bulletproof Shakeology, and I combined Bulletproof Coffee and Shakeology, and did like a there’s a a recipe on the Beachbody website for something called Tiramisu Shakeology, which is basically like a coffee type recipe that tastes just like you’re drinking tiramisu, except I modified it to make it bulletproof coffee meets Shakeology, and it was amazing. And I probably could have lifted my car for like two hours. It was

Zack Arnold: It was it was a it was a bit much for me. I will admit it was it was a bit much, but holy man, if I had if I knew for a fact that I had a really tight deadline, and it’s just one of those nights where, like, you know what? I just have to suck it up, but I know I’m going to be up until 4o’clock in the morning. It’s not healthy to be up until 4o’clock in the morning, no matter what. But if I wanted to function optimally and I wanted to be really productive and really good and efficient, I guarantee that I would do that bulletproof shakeology. Because man, was I spot on point when I took that, so that was a good lesson to learn. But for any regular normal day where I want to go to sleep at a decent time, bulletproof shakeology is a bit much.

Natalie Baker: And then Zack didn’t sleep for four days. You know what’s crazy is like whenever you get that note that you’re like at 7o’clock like you’re gonna be here all night doing X, Y, or Z, and you just have that whole like, oh God, like just that that just it just brings everything down, and you kind of like hit your life for a second. I feel like knowing that I’ve got the Shakeology or the brain octane oil or all these sort of supplements that’ll like perk me back up. It gives me hope. Like it bees me like if when someone tells me I’ve got to do a three-hour network output at 7o’clock I was like well I have my Shakeology I’m gonna have maybe I’ll add some brain octane oil to it I’m just gonna do it

Zack Arnold: And isn’t it great to know that you don’t have to go to the Red Bill or to the coffee or to the Coke like that to me is the best part is that I know I don’t have to eat or drink a bunch of garbage to stay awake for a long day or a long night. That’s the best part for me is that I have healthy, nutritious options.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, that you can get through it,

Zack Arnold: Right? Which is actually taking me to my next topic, which is beyond just the physical training. It’s what do you do about the basics of nutrition or supplementation to get through something like this. Now, this is not something that’s going to apply so much to the Spartan Sprint. I mean, nutrition is going to apply to everything. When it comes to doing a shorter race like a Spartan sprint for 40-five minutes or an hour, you really don’t need to do anything during the race other than just drink water, and they have water stations. But there’s always the question of what do you want to eat beforehand, and that’s again something that I would highly, highly recommend if you want to learn about nutrition before, after, during a race. Bengreenfieldfitness.com is by far the best place to go. But when it comes to doing something that’s like eight or 10 miles, where you’re going to be out in the hills doing really intense exercise for you know minimum of two to three hours, you need to be replenishing things in your body that you’re going to lose. So I’m going to walk through my training regimen, which is really, really, really basic. Natalie, I have no idea what you’re doing, so we can talk about if you have any plans or what you’ve done for like marathons. What I used to do during a race is I would have these things that are called gel packets or goo packets, which are basically just highly concentrated sugars, like cliff gel, for example. Have they they basically taste like cake batter, and they’re just made of maltodextrin and organic cane syrup and all these fancy words for sugar, and basically they give you enough glucose to replenish your glycogen stores and give you the energy to burn off to continue moving forwards. In short term, that’s not a bad thing, and it’s going to give you energy. But long term, those are actually really bad for you as far as how they spike your blood sugar and what they can do for your digestion. And I just decided that I wanted to do this the healthy way. So what I do now to replenish electrolytes and continue to have energy is I just use two things, and it’s a mixture of 100% coconut water, which you can get anywhere, and a supplement called Vital Fuel, which is something made by the Akasha Center and Akasha Naturals, and I’ll have links to those. It’s something I’ve talked. About on the show before, and I will also link to the podcast that I have with Dr. Edison de Mello, who formulated it. But basically, I just mix a tablespoon of vital fuel with 10 to 12 ounces of coconut water, put it in a little bottle, have it around a belt. Sometimes I’ll throw in a little bit of honey and maybe some chia seeds, just so I have some extra calories, and that’s it. I do one of those every 40-five minutes to an hour. I did that on the Spartan Beast, which took me-I’m embarrassed to say-it took me over five hours to complete that.

Natalie Baker: Whoa!

Zack Arnold: But I-I never had any nutritional deficit whatsoever. I never cramped up. I never bonked. Which, for those that are not athletes, bonking is basically when you run out of any form of energy whatsoever to burn, and you just you have no focus, you have no energy to do anything. You just completely crash. I never had that experience at all. I was exhausted because I really wasn’t properly trained for it. I hadn’t trained hard enough, but I never bonked, never never got brain fog, never got dizzy, lightheaded, was never hungry, never got dehydrated, and I wasn’t using any sugar or any type of you know any of these these sugary gels at all, which is what most people are pounding. You see these empty packets everywhere, all over the trails, which kind of makes me mad because people don’t throw them away. First of all, but volunteers

Natalie Baker: Are for

Zack Arnold: Exactly, but people are fueling themselves with nothing but sugar, and that’s just not very good for you. So there are other ways to do it. There are other things you can do. They’re like amino acid packs. There are like fat packs. Like there are almond butter packs. And like I said, there’s a couple of really good articles that Ben Greenfield has about specific things that you can use. But these are really more for the longer ones. You don’t need anything for a Spartan sprint except to eat well beforehand. So for me, what I do before is I will just make. Well, it depends on the kind of race that I’m doing. If I were doing a sprint, I would probably just make Shakeology have some MC2 oil in there, which would be the brain octane oil, and I’ll add some sweet potatoes because that’s going to give me some starches and give me some a healthy form of carbohydrates that isn’t sugar. And then I have some fat in there, have maybe a scoop or two of protein, and that’s it. I don’t really eat a whole lot, and I just make sure that I’m hydrating. And every hour or so, I’m just having that drink that I talked about, and that’s it. That got me through five hours at my last race.

Monica Daniel: Zack, I think you should treat me and Natalie to dinner at your house the night before the Spartan sprint pasta party. Because then you can make sure that we’re eating healthy. Because I don’t know what you just said.

Natalie Baker: Pasta party. That’s what you said.

Monica Daniel: For crap,

Natalie Baker: Before cross country races, the day before. Every someone hosted a. I’m not saying we should actually have pasta, but we all hosted a pasta party the day before. Yeah, and and

Zack Arnold: That’s that’s very common until a few years ago. That’s what everybody did in the endurance community. Whether you’re a triathlete or you run marathons or cross country, whatever it is, is called carb loading. For three days before a race, you just eat spaghetti and pasta and bread and sugar, and you just load up and maximize your glycogen stores, so you have plenty of energy to burn during the race. Except most of that stuff just isn’t good for you, right? So what what I’ve done is I’ve adapted my diet to the point where I’m pretty low carb, and I’m now considered, and I’m not, I’m kind of borderline because I’m not as good as I probably should be. But you learn to burn ketones for energy instead of glycogen, so you become what’s called a fat burner. So you’re teaching your body how to use its own body fat to produce energy, which number one makes you thinner, and number two, you just have more natural energy where you’re not completely addicted to the sugars, and you’re not getting these horrible cravings for food every two or three hours. And once you kind of become adapted to do that, you don’t need food as much as you needed it before, and you have more sustained energy. So I don’t really need a bunch of sugar and carbs before a race. I just like I’ll have a small steak, and I’ll maybe have, like I said, sweet potatoes or some whole grain pasta and some vegetables, and I’m fine. I don’t really need any of the extra like carb loading that a lot of people would do.

Natalie Baker: We can do quinoa.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, quinoa. That’s a good option.

Natalie Baker: Quinoa, sweet potatoes, turkey or steak. I’m getting hungry. I haven’t had dinner yet. And and just to throw

Zack Arnold: Out the disclaimer one more time, I am a weekend warrior. I am not a fitness professional. I am not a nutritionist. This is just a guy that spends 14 hours a day in front of a computer that likes to do Spartan races. There are people that know way more about this stuff than me. So this is just the very very limited knowledge that I have from learning from these other people that I’ve mentioned. So, if you’re somebody that just found this podcast and wants to know how to train, I’m probably not the best person to do it. So, I’m just throwing that out there now.

Natalie Baker: But you can find it on the website at feminismpost.com. Thank

Zack Arnold: You for that wonderful plug, Natalie. You get a gold star tomorrow.

Natalie Baker: Yes, good. I say

Monica Daniel: It again. Dinner at Zack’s house before the Spartan spray. Yeah,

Natalie Baker: You know the funny thing is about that vital fuel you just mentioned. So I always do oatmeal before a race. I have like this this organic multigrain oatmeal that I got at Trader Joe’s that I really like. So I have that, and then what did I? What else did I do? I did coffee with butter and MCT oil and some cinnamon. Oh, you hate coffee. I I started the I started having this sort of like orchada type coffee because I use rice milk. So it’s rice milk, cinnamon, butter, and the MCT oil, and it’s actually really good. So there’s that. And then I had right. And then I had I had a bunch of water, and then right before the race, I drank the coconut water vital fuel mix that Zack was talking about. And I literally the whole race did not need. I mean, my stomach was kind of full, but I didn’t take water the whole race. 13.1 miles. I didn’t take any water, and the one time I took Gatorade, I was like, I can’t put anything in my stomach. Like I was totally hydrated the entire time and was totally fine, which was kind of insane to not have any water over 13 miles, and it was really hot and no shade.

Zack Arnold: I am really glad that you brought up the G word because you’ll notice that I did not say the word Gatorade once. I know that’s because Gatorade is horrible for you. So anybody that doesn’t believe me, just go to Google and put “Why is Gatorade bad? and you’re gonna find out about 100 reasons why Gatorade is horrible for you. And if you don’t feel like doing it, I’m gonna put a link in the show notes for you because Gatorade is just nothing but high fructose corn syrup and a bunch of chemicals. Don’t believe me? Go online; it’s all there, but Gatorade is not good stuff. So if if if you want the quick pick me up, great, use the Gatorade. If you have any interest in being healthy whatsoever, don’t drink that stuff because it’s awful for you. So Gatorade is something I don’t touch with a 20 foot pole.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, yeah. Now the reason I grabbed it was because I was like, I’ve only had oatmeal and the vital fuel as any sort of nutrition in my body, I should have like some other chemicals besides water. So I grab a Gatorade and I was like, “Oh God, I can’t even do this. But yeah, I don’t even I don’t know why that happened. But I always do oatmeal before a race. It sticks with you. I think I find it to be kind of tasty. But yeah, I need to start integrating some protein in before I race, though, that’s the one thing. The

Zack Arnold: One thing you want to be careful with is right before you have a race. You number one don’t want to have a lot of protein, but number two, you don’t really want to eat a lot of solids. So if you’re thinking, “Oh, well, I need to have a lot of protein, so I’m going to have steak and eggs for breakfast, you are going to be miserable because that requires a tremendous amount of energy to break down, and it’s going to be digested slowly. So I don’t even eat solid foods before I do one of these races. I just have a liquid meal, and if it’s going to be protein, it’s going to be in the form of either whey protein or collagen protein, and it’s not going to be a lot of it. I will mostly use calorically dense fats, and I will use some form of carbohydrate, and like I said, in the form of like a coconut water, because that’s going to give me plenty of electrolytes, which is going to be good for preventing cramping and having plenty of energy. Another good thing that’s really really good is bananas. They always hand out bananas at these races because that’s going to give you the electrolytes and the potassium that you need to have more energy and to prevent cramping as well. So that that’s the first thing that I would recommend if you’re if you want something very easily digestible, either before, during, or after the race, is just have a banana or something. But again, if you’re doing less than an hour, you really don’t need much other than you know one of the things I mentioned before the race, and then water during, and a banana after. That’s it. So, like, if you’re gonna do a 45 minute race, you don’t need to have 10 gel packs because all you’re gonna be doing is pounding sugar for no reason.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, my rule of thumb is I usually after. Well, I guess with an obstacle course, it’s different. But I, I don’t bring food or anything like that on a run with me unless I’m going over 10 miles. Over 10 miles, it starts to get tough to survive.

Zack Arnold: From a biological standpoint, if you’re going at a fairly high intensity, usually after about an hour, that’s when you’re going to start to crash, and your your body is going to need to replenish electrolytes and amino acids and glucose, and that that’s kind of when your body’s because you can only store so much. It’s not like you can eat 10 plates of pasta the night before and have those 10 plates of pasta available. Basically, once you have that amount met, you’re just going to start storing the rest of it as fat, which you don’t want. So usually, after about an hour, you’re going to need to start replenishing with something if you want to keep going. So I just say, how long do I think this is going to take? And then that’s how many mini water bottles that I have around my belt that has whatever the concoction is that I make up. So I think I had four or five of them for the Beast, and I’m going to have three of them with me for the Super and for the Spartan Sprint. I’m just going to have you know Shakeology and you know coffee or something and just. Banana beforehand, like I don’t need much of anything before something that’s less than an hour.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna try. I’m gonna do oatmeal, banana, coffee, vital fuel, and some water. I can’t fill my stomach up with anymore because when I did that race, I cannot believe how full my stomach was.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and there’s nothing worse than exerting yourself on a full stomach. Like so, so don’t think I need lots of protein, and I’m gonna jam a steak down my throat because you will be miserable.

Natalie Baker: No, not like that. I know that it’s not my first rodeo, Zack. Oh no, I

Zack Arnold: Know that. I was, I wasn’t, I wasn’t talking so much to you, Natalie. I was talking to because trust me, that’s not that uncommon. I’ve been to these these races because you go to hotels like that. I’ve never, other than the one in Malibu, I have to stay in a hotel for all of them. And you go to the little breakfast area in the hotel the the morning before, and people have these giant plates of eggs, and they you know have ham and turkey and all this other stuff. And I’m like, you guys are going to be puking the first hour into this race, and then you sit down and talk to some of them, and like I remember having a conversation with one guy, and I’m like, “Hey, you know, have you done this race before? He’s like, “No, I’ve never done one of these races before. I’m like, “Oh, yeah, cool. Well, what kind of training have you been doing? “Oh, I haven’t really trained at all. I just kind of wanted to see what it was about. I’m like, “Do you have any idea how miserable you’re going to be about 30 minutes into this if you haven’t done any training, and you don’t know what you’re eating. He was having a bowl of Froot Loops.

Monica Daniel: Oops, yummy. And he’s

Zack Arnold: Never done a Spartan race, and he was getting ready to do. No, this is at a Tough Mudder. He’s getting ready to do a 12 mile tough mudder. He had just bought a brand new pair of running shoes that he had never worn before. He was having Froot Loops for breakfast, and he didn’t do any training? Good luck.

Natalie Baker: Oops. Oh God, milk. Yeah, don’t have any dairy. No heavy dairy.

Zack Arnold: No, you don’t. You don’t want milk or anything else like that. You want very easily digestible things in your system, and you don’t want a full stomach because you. Most people think, oh well, as soon as I get hungry, I’m going to run out of energy, and I’m not going to be able to do. I was like, trust me, your body can go a long time without food. You can go weeks without food.

Natalie Baker: Yeah, you know what the big factor is that you can’t really control or anything is the sun. Like the thing that killed me on my last race was the sun. Like I got to the 10 mile mark, and it was terrible. And then there was no shade for like a mile and a half, and I was literally running and be like, “I just want to be in the shade. I just don’t want any more sun on me. Like that is the one sort of thing that I’m like worried about. Is like I need like at some point it’s like, please don’t suck any more energy out of me. Just get me to the shade. So that’s the only. I don’t know how to combat that.

Zack Arnold: Well, my my number one tip for that is that you have to get used to doing that before the race. So, like for me, most of my training during the week is done inside in a small room in front of a screen that’s playing a DVD. Right, like that’s I’m doing right for me right now. My training has been mostly P90X three, and I sprinkle in some T25. My last Spartan race that I did, I used P90X2. The one before that, I used P90X and Les Mills Combat. All of that’s done inside with a DVD player in front of a TV. But every weekend, or almost every weekend, I went out in the hills, and I was in the sun, and I was in the dirt and I was doing as close to a practical run of what the race was going to be like as possible, and just getting that exposure to the real world and being in the sun and like that’s what makes a huge huge difference is just going out and actually doing it. So if you think that you can just be inside and do home workouts or go to the gym and get ready for a race like this. You really have to replicate what the the conditions are like at least a couple of times before you do

Natalie Baker: It. Yeah, the sun is killer. That is an unexpected, especially in California. You’re doing this in California. The sun is it’s hot. Yeah, exactly.

Zack Arnold: And another. This isn’t something that you, Natalie, will have to worry about probably in October, but one thing that all of us are going to have to be ready for in December is the cold, because when you’re thinking, well, wait a second, we’re doing it in Malibu. Well, when I did the Malibu Hurricane Heat, which is the same location except the hurricane heat is off course and it’s basically run by drill instructors, so instead of having to do the obstacle course, it’s just a bunch of guys running you through random parts in the woods, making you do crazy stuff for like four hours. And it started at I think 530 or six in the morning and went until about 10 o’clock. And it was 36 degrees and it was snowing. And I was out there with just one layer of compression clothing, and I basically was borderline hypothermia for over half of it, and that completely changes the way that you grip something. It changes the way that your legs work going up hills. So you have to find ways to acclimate to whatever the conditions are. And it may be 80 degrees the day that we go to Malibu, but it might be 30. So there’s a lot more that you have to think. Than just like if you’re training for a marathon, all you’re doing is you’re you know doing a specific training regimen that says, all right, it’s this Tuesday, it’s this many days before the race. So my calendar says I’m supposed to run this many miles today. Right? There’s nothing quite like that for a Spartan race because the conditions are always going to be different. Every race is different. Every race has a different design to it. The weather is going to be just based on whatever the weather is that day. So I’ve done them in 80-five degree heat, and I’ve done it 30-five degree cold, and it’s a whole different skill set to be able to to make it through. So you know, one of the things that we’ll all have to do for the Malibu one is learn how to acclimate to the cold,

Natalie Baker: Yeah.

Zack Arnold: So there’s that.

Natalie Baker: I did cross country for years in the in November in the Midwest. I have run through snow, but I have not gotten sprayed with a hose in snow.

Zack Arnold: What you haven’t done in the cold is been submerged in water and had to lift heavy things or climb up a rope. That’s probably one of the most miserable experiences I’ve ever been through is in the hurricane heat. We were about three hours into it. It was snowing, and we were all already at the point where we were involuntarily shaking the whole group of us. And we got to the obstacle where you have to climb the rope and hit the cowbell at the top. And the idea was that out. I think our group was like 15 people, and only four of them in our group had to climb to the top and hit the bell. But they make everybody stand in the water until four people climb to the top and hit the bell. And most people couldn’t make it to the top because their legs were too frozen and their arms were too frozen. So you just sit there in waist high freezing water for like five minutes, waiting for them to climb to the top. It’s easily one of the most miserable experiences I’ve ever had in my entire life. And and then as soon as you get out, because they had to dig a hole to make the place where they put the water right. So they have a whole bunch of dirt and gravel, like a big pile of it that you have to climb over to get out, and you have to roll through that. You can’t walk through it or climb through it. They make you basically roll where you’re like lay down, you know, completely flat, and you have to roll over it so you’re completely covered in wet sand, and it’s like 35 degrees.

Natalie Baker: That sounds terrible, but

Zack Arnold: It’s when you’re doing the sprint, it’s not going to be quite that bad because they don’t make you do those types of challenges. But that’s what the hurricane heat was like, and that was the one that I did to raise money for Go Far last year. So that’s that’s how crazy I am. And there are so many more crazy things to do other than this. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, there are like there’s the Go Rock Challenge, which is about you know doing these overnight backpacking expeditions where you’re carrying 60 pound packs on your back. There’s the Navy SEAL fit training down in San Diego. There’s Kokoro Camp, which is basically like Navy SEALs Hell Week. So this stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s American Ninja Warrior, which everybody in Fitness in Post is trying to get me to do, and I’m not sure that day is quite here yet. But let’s just say that I I haven’t completely discounted it yet because I am kind of nuts. Because when they

Monica Daniel: Do the the open trials in Santa Monica, like they do every year, you just show up,

Zack Arnold: Right? Yeah, don’t think that I haven’t thought about it. But anyway, we’re at the point now we’re probably doing the exact opposite of what I want to do, which is encourage people in our industry to. You’re the one

Monica Daniel: Who started talking about the hurricane.

Zack Arnold: I know, I know.

Natalie Baker: Okay, well, don’t throw it in December.

Monica Daniel: Maybe this will encourage people because I like to point out my weaknesses to people because if I don’t recognize them, someone else is going to point it out to me, and then I’m going to feel dumb. So, with my my knees are still pretty tender, so I try to be really aware of them. So one thing I was thinking of doing is just train them as best I can, and then maybe a couple weeks before the sprint, start training with you know those kind of kind of flexible sports braces for extra support. Because I know once I’m in the sprint, it’s not like I’m gonna really be able to rest. Like I’m gonna be. I’m not gonna have the best form and technique on everything because I’m gonna be so tired, and I just want to prevent injury in my knees. So I was thinking about doing that just to kind of help support them because I know they’re kind of they’re not in the best conditions right now.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that’s just a good idea all around. Number one, if you have weak knee support, but number two, it just it’s covering your knees. There’s a an article that Ben Greenfield wrote. I’ve actually had in front of me this whole time, and I haven’t even gotten to, but he just ran the Spartan World Championships, and he has 10 his top 10 tips to race a Spartan beast. But really, this will apply to any obstacle course race. And one of the recommendations that he has is to protect your knees and ankles, which I wholeheartedly agree with, because you do a lot of climbing over things, climbing under things, using your elbows to get traction. So yes, covering your knees with compression gear is a huge, huge benefit. I would recommend also possibly doing it for your elbows as well. There’s a couple of times that I haven’t done that, and like I’ll just come back on my knees, and my shins will just be like rubbed raw. So yeah, there there are multiple reasons why I would say that’s a good idea.

Monica Daniel: Well, and actually, I tend to roll my ankles like randomly sometimes when I’m walking. my My ankle will just start hurting. I’m like, I didn’t even do anything, and so yeah, I was thinking of doing that for my ankles too, since we’re going to be, you know, going on rough terrain, and I don’t want to, I want to minimize any possible spraining I might do to myself. But also, because I, I did listen to a podcast that Ben Greedfield had where someone said that you know, just they like completely covering themselves. So I planned on wearing like just complete long sleeves and long pants, but you know, making sure it’s tight, but just so my skin’s covered.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and if you’re going to be doing the one in December, you’re going to want everything long sleeve anyway. Most likely, it’s going to be cool. I mean, Malibu never gets that hot to begin with, but if we’re doing December and it’s in the morning, it’s not going to be hot. Another thing for anybody that’s listening: do not wear cotton for the love of God. Don’t wear cotton. Wear something that is made for athletics. It’s called performance gear, whether it’s Under Armor or Nike, whatever it is. It’s like performance apparel, whatever you want to call it. Just don’t wear cotton because the second it gets wet, you’re going to get cold and it’s going to weigh you down. So I don’t wear any cotton, anything, anywhere. It’s all compression gear. It helps, you know, with muscle performance. It helps keep you warmer. It helps wick away any moisture, and it’s just going to make you less miserable. So that that’s another thing that I kind of took for granted that I hadn’t even thought about. But yes, just for the love of God, no cotton.

Monica Daniel: I actually don’t. I make sure anytime I buy like new sports clothing because I seem to go through it a lot now. I I don’t buy anything with any cotton in it anymore.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, if I could just wear compression gear all the time, like it’s so much more comfortable. Like when I’m when I work from home, I’m basically just in my compression gear and my gym clothes all day, every day, and I’m just kind of upset that now I’m going back to a real office, and I like have to wear real clothes because it kind of sucks.

Monica Daniel: I get away with wearing my tight pants because you know I’ll put like a shirt over, like kind of a long dress shirt sort of deal. So it looks like I’m just wearing work pants.

Zack Arnold: Right,

Monica Daniel: They’re my workout clothes.

Zack Arnold: Well, we are running crazy, crazy long, but this has been a really good topic to get into, and I really want to encourage people. And I know that I’ve maybe scared half of you to death, but those that are still listening, I really want to encourage you to think about doing something like this. If you want to find some form of accountability and you want to challenge yourself, but you want to do it in a fun way and you want to do it with people? Come join our team. Just go to the website. Go to fitnessinpost.com/contact. Just send me a message and say, “Hey, I want to join your team and I want to be a part of it. If you’re already in shape, come join us for the Spartan Super in Sacramento, which is October 25th. If there’s still registration available, but I know that there’s still room open for the Malibu Sprint in December. I don’t remember the exact date, but just go to Spartan.com, and I’m going to have links to everything we talked about in the show notes. But we are trying to build a team of like-minded people in our industry that are equally crazy and know that there’s an actual real benefit to this. Because at the end of the day, I always say that all of the recommendations on the website and on the show are about making us better at what we do, and I am a better editor because I do Spartan races. It just it makes me push further. It makes me have more confidence in what I’m able to get done in a day because I’ve done these Spartan races and I have this idea of obstacle immunity. So if you’re interested in that, just go to our website, send me a message and let’s build a team together. So again, I want to thank my guinea pigs that are already jumping in with me into this full force. So thank you, Monica and Natalie, for being a part of this, and I cannot wait to see both of you run your first Spartan race.

Monica Daniel: Oh, that’s going to be interesting. Yes, it’s going to consist of me swearing a lot, but it’ll be fun. That’s how I relieve tension. It’ll be fun a lot. That’s

Zack Arnold: Right. The other thing that I’ll do for people is I have a couple of Facebook albums because I’m a bit of a shutter bug when I run these, which means that my times suck, but I get good pictures. So I will put up an album for a Tough Mudder that I did, and for a Spartan race that I did, and I will also link to the video that I made of myself doing the hurricane heat, just so they can get a firsthand idea of what these are like. So if you you want to see what it looks like for me to punish myself doing these, just go to the show notes, which are going to be at fitnessinpost.com/nineteen for episode 19. Thank you both for being on the show. I appreciate it.

Natalie Baker: Night, guys.

Zack Arnold: Talk to you later.

Zack Arnold

Learn

Connect

Becoming Weekend Warriors

About Episode

Episode Highlights

Transcript

Episode Credits