This blog is not exactly what you call “niche”.
I don’t speak directly and exclusively to Dungeons and Dragons Masters who are looking to add more trap mass so they are more intimidating when they lore over, well, whatever it is they lore over.
I don’t create custom programs for pickleball or taxidermy or whatever other perverse things people are into.
No. This is general fitness content perfectly wrapped up in childhood trauma, pop culture references, nostalgia and Dad jokes in an effort to get you to think a bit differently about fitness.
This week, however, I’m taking a slight left turn. Kind of like when Snoop Dogg decided to do a reggae album and call himself Snoop Lion, I’m both spreading my wings and drilling down. Hopefully this experiment goes better than his did.
Actually, I’m making more of it than it really is. This is still fitness advice and actually has practical application to everyone.
Dammit, I already blew my entire set up here.
In any case, your patience is likely already thin so let me get to the point.
I am once again doing Hyrox this year. It will be more 4th time participating in the same division with the same partner.
In the past, I hadn’t taken Hyrox very seriously.
Sure, I’ve added in some running so I didn’t die 45 minutes in (man, my wife would be so pissed if I died during Hyrox) but I never really had a goal or even worried about my finish time. In fact, when I showed up to my first Hyrox I don’t think I had done even one burpee broad jump prior to the race.
Now, I am about to break the laws of blogging, which were probably set by Hemmingway or Hormozi or someone else of equal importance, in two ways.
The first is that I am about to discuss something that I am actually in the middle of doing. This is considered verboten. You only write about that which you have already and finished and survived in order to not come across as overly emotional.
The second is that I am about to make a prediction. And you never commit to a prediction that can then be waved in your face by your haters - of which I have many - when you fail to predict correctly.
But this year, for Hyrox, I have a goal. I’m planning on finishing in less than one hour and twenty minutes. Which, honestly, isn’t going to win me any flags. But when your running resembles that of The Thing (you know, that one guy in the Fantastic Four who is made entirely out of rocks) finishing in that time is a challenge.
And, sure, I’m being a bit more tactical and, dare I say, more dedicated to my training this time around. But I wanted to share my secret strategy that I believe is actually going to make this achievable for me.
And that has been improving my body composition. Or, more directly, losing weight.
Over the past 8 months or so I have slowly and steadily dropped about 22 pounds. Going from 238 to my current 216. If things continue to go to plan I should hit the starting tunnel at Hyrox at around 208 to 210.
The reason the decrease in body weight has been a game changer for me is its effect on my running.
When you decrease the amount of tissue you need to oxygenate you essentially build a more efficient engine before you ever even start training your heart and lungs. Do that in conjunction with getting in targeted cardio and you have now attacked the problem from both sides. You’ve improved the ability of your muscles and organs and you’ve decreased the amount of load they need to carry.
As Alice from accounting says as she concludes her rousing presentation on why limiting your paper towel usage in the company kitchen is both good for the organization and the environment, this is a win-win.
But maybe you don’t care about Hyrox. Or running at all for that matter. Fair enough. With that in mind, let me give you some insight into other aspects of your fitness, health and what I will categorize as “other” that are affected by your body weight.
We’ve already established that a lighter body weight is going to be better for cardiovascular performance but it is also likely better for cardiovascular health in general. In fact, there is actually a fairly direct correlation between bodyweight (regardless of body composition) and life span. With lighter people typically living longer.
Conversely, people with more muscle mass tend to be more resistant to the types of injuries that can lead to a higher mortality rate in older people. Most notably death from accidents and falls.
Being lighter will be advantageous on nearly every body weight exercise, most notably pull-ups and their variations. In fact, if you’ve been struggling to improve your pull-ups or to get your first one, a lighter body weight is often the biggest lever you can utilize for improvement.
Conversely, a lighter body weight will typically limit your strength when it comes to loaded movements such as deadlifts, squats and bench presses. We have a saying in strength training: mass moves mass. The heavier people are, the more strength they can usually express. This is the reason that all strength sports have different divisions for different body weight categories.
And when it comes to your perceived body composition, you will almost always look more jacked in clothing at a higher body weight and look more jacked in little to no clothing when you are lighter and leaner. So if you want people to know you work out regardless of what you are wearing, consider a bit more size in the colder months where the layers of clothes will make you even more muscular and save the dieting down from when you are walking around the city in a bikini on a weekday because, goddammit, the world needs to see these abs I dieted down for whether it’s appropriate or not.
Here is the big takeaway from all this. Body weight is one of the most powerful but misunderstood levers in fitness because it improves some things while hurting others. You just have to figure out what trade-offs work best for you at any given moment.
When I first told all our head coaches that I was aiming for an hour and twenty minute Hyrox time this season I was met with a combination of eye rolls and some very, very hollow “that’s so sweet that you think you can do that” platitudes.
But just like Rocky in the first movie (and perhaps every Rocky movie that has followed) I am prepared to shock the world and prove everyone wrong.
But just in case I don’t, please just delete this blog right after you finish reading it.