Miscellaneous questions/comments

Hey Jordan/Austin,

I have been happily training and living with the help of your content and guiding principles but have compiled a few questions/comments if you have the time to address:

1 - I am aware of the RPE scale for cardio that uses speaking during activity as a gauge for exertion, which I understand isn’t set in stone, however I have been playing around with using different breathing methods instead. When on my echo bike, I consider only nose breathing (inhaling and exhaling) as an RPE 6, but when I’m running I usually breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, which always feels more like an RPE 7, with full mouth breathing an 8+. I’m just wondering if there are any downsides or concerns with this method or if I’m in the clear to proceed? Note, I don’t do this for any high reaching health claims regarding nose breathing over mouth breathing, it’s just easier for me to comply with/adhere to.

2 - I am a volunteer firefighter and have an on-call week and weekend every 4th week (obligated to attend all calls between 6pm-7am Mon-Thurs and 6pm Fri to 7am Mon). I’ve been doing it for about a year and a half now and have come to the conclusion that my lifts consistently suffer during these weeks. I am not sure if this can be attributed solely to being woken up in the middle of the night for calls, as it seems to happen even on slow weeks or where my sleep isn’t directly affected, but I do notice I have a higher base level of anxiety and an somewhat hypervigilant about always being prepared to run out the door. I have been contemplating running a deload/pivot week every 4th week to coincide with my on call, and I was wondering if you think this is worth a shot, or if I’m better off continuing my programming as written and just lowering the weights to match RPE.

3 - Not to sound like a shill, but I bought a Pioneer belt before they were advertising on the podcast, and I just want to mention that I friggin love it. I haven’t heard you mention the Pioneer Cut belt in the ads, but having 1/2" increments on a single prong belt is so convenient and it works great. Huge fan of their stuff

4 - Last question is regarding merch. I was wondering if some of the older T-shirt styles will ever be restocked? I’m specifically interested in the Skull Barbell T, but wasn’t sure if it was worth checking stock every so often or if I’m out of luck.

Thanks for everything, and much love from Canada.

Unc,

Thanks for the kind words. To your questions:

  1. I don’t know that this particular set of criteria “travels well” across different conditioning modes and/or reliably correlates to different intensity levels. I’d look at something more like the CR10 breathlessness scale: https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/67/5/404/3975235

  2. I would lean towards lowering the weights to match the RPE you may have IF the following weeks’ training are going well. If not, I might have a different answer.

  3. Awesome, happy to hear it!

  4. Definitely planning on re-popping some of the old merchandise. I’d guess the skull t shirt will come back before the end of the year!

-Jordan

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