 this week then we are rolling on from the previous episode where we were talking a little bit more what's the nice word like philosophically about how training impacts how we think about ourselves and our physics and what we're going to do is unpack a little bit more this week around how our own philosophies and evolution of our own trainings a little bit have molded changed and shaped over the years and a little bit about why and and and sort of where that looks like now and and hopefully that you'll come along for that journey as well. I think this is a useful conversation for people to sort of check in on and just every now and again go why am I doing what I'm doing so it's kind of like a bigger sort of subject but I just think yeah we'll get into detail of it but we've had had this conversation before and that's the thing about philosophy right it can change so we've spoken about this is where we were and then as things a life events unfold like philosophy needs to change so make sure that it's aligned with um what you're actually sort of like where what's bringing enjoyment and the type of training that you want to do the results that you want to get all that sort of stuff so we're going to dive into a little bit of that on today but before we do that we're going to say huge thank you to our podcast sponsors spartan race we're super excited to be able to be working with these guys and to be offering 50 free places to a sparta race of your choice now obviously some of those have already gone so it's 50 miles but there is still place available that's the most important thing and you can join any of the races for free but what we're trying to do is get a group of us together to take on the one in the midlands which is closest to us over the weekend of the 16th 17th of july we have signed up in the morning for the 21k b is it the beast run but something something big not through choice it was more that was the that was the one that the team was available for so we are yeah we're taking on the big one um and that i love this is it the complete audacity jack i mean i've never done one of these before we'll just do the biggest it's not gonna be fine take on the big one well the other option was like the european qualifier on the friday also it was like that everywhere that's so we are booked on for the 16th of july in the midlands in the morning um if you want to join us or join any of the events they start from like 5k 10k there's the 21k you can join any of them um and we've got the opportunity to for you to join that for free thank you to the podcast sponsors of tim said spartan now to get the free code you have to jump through a few little hoops as you could imagine you can't just give away free space is the worth about 100 odd quid um is to go on your instagram show that you are a little bit of social proof that you are actually serious about this thing and you are training for it and you got to take a photo or a video of you in your training post that tag the important tags are tag spartan so at spartan and then hashtag spartan race also obviously tag school cast so that we can see it and ideally you need to send that to us in a dm if you want to make sure that that gets in send your post to us in a dm we can check you've tagged the right things and then we will send you your free code that you can then go on to the website spartanrace.com and um get your free place sorted and signed up now i feel jacko that some people may have been put off by the prerequisites that you placed on the entry criteria during previous podcasts just because you like doing things in speedo everybody else does so if you want to come but you don't like the idea of having to take a photo if you're doing some spartan training in speedos just take a picture if you're going for a run doing some pull-ups chuck in a spear you know anything like spear anything that feels remotely likes a sort of form of training which is going to help you to get around the 21 kilometer beast i think what you do is when you when you're having your dinner if you like set your phone up right and have you like uh you further away and your fork closer to the camera your your fork will look like a massive spear and you could like pretend to throw that shout out to anyone who's seen four lions people who know martin he's got a toy gun anyway so but don't let the uh don't let the barriers to entry of speedos requirements stop you from getting signed up it's super easy just take a picture train send it to us tag it's in you get a free code come and see us at the midlands spartan race on the 16 we'll be there on the 16 but if you can't do that date we're just nice people just go and do one take take the opportunity to commit take the challenge have some fun right so with no further delay jacko let's get into a little bit of a philosophical conversation about training where we're at where we've been where we're going and any of the musings that come in who's coming but before you do that you've got to roll that jingle listen players you're listening to the movement strength and play podcast by the school of calisthenics here are your hosts tim and jacko rolling in there and off the back of that fantastic um introduction and obviously we're mentioning the the spartan race that we're doing and thank you to the sponsors for that um but interestingly those types of spartan races those types of training the ninja warriors of anything that like that is actually when we're talking about this um philosophy for between the two of us incorporates quite a lot of the stuff that we're starting or have been just sort of exploring and pushing into a little bit more recently in that you know the one that during the the spartan race you're running around like i've been doing a lot more running you're doing going through loads of obstacles which is going to require you to do a lot of upper body calisthenics based stuff which is going to use a lot of your shoulders which you've been pushing into and so i just think it's it's a nice opportunity for us to like push into some of those things and it's it's it's interesting for me what's really interesting about the philosophy and how things have gone is that right from the start of even just how we started doing calisthenics was organic and natural it was like this exploration of like oh like doing something a bit different and whatever those few different variations of that starting point was and then like the school calisthenics itself started because we were just doing some stuff that was quite looked quite fun to other people they knew we were coaches and it was like oh could you teach us to do this and and we put on a work machine literally that is genuinely this not it sounds like a nice story but that's just literally what happened right and i think the whole this whole process up until now and hopefully it continues to do so is literally just organic and authentic to just what we've been doing and experiencing yeah i think with particularly around philosophy that it's important that we and training is a great example is that we don't just become stuck or fixed or attached to doing something because that's kind of where our our identity is so i'm always like a fan of people who are evaluating these things and going well i was a bodybuilder and i now do something different i was a crossfitter and i'll do something different i think the important thing around that is to understand and to question like why are you doing those things and what is it that is coming to mind around how you see your body how you want to use your body the type of training you've got the time availability that you have access to equipment and and all these sorts of things like these can all be factors in shaping how we train and i think sometimes you see how you find people that are doing something because they've always done it even though it's not bringing them the the the dissatisfaction or fulfillment that it wants to when they first started doing it but don't want to change because they identify as a x like this type of person that does type this type of training and i really interesting one for me and that was when i first started was around um like i first started kind of things i was a bit worried that having spent quite a few years of just doing strength and condition type work and a certain amount of hypertrophy focused within that that i was going to lose like all my muscle mass because it was body weight training right and we get this loads over the years yeah people like i'm a bit worried i'm going to lose all my all my hard earned gains and i kind of looked at him was like well if i do i know enough about training to get them back if i just give it three months and that was a deal that i made myself it's three months to try something different and if i don't like it i can always go back to what i was doing before um and that was kind of that was a long time ago seven eight years ago maybe and i kind of never really went back to that exclusively that type of training but things have moved and changed over the the last kind of like five years in particular the last year and it may be jacker that a few eyebrows have been raised when people found out that i've actually joined a crossfit box and that was kind of the there's some reasons as to why which we can delve into in a little bit as to what i was looking for because of where i was at with my training and my lifestyle you've got anything to add on that oh sorry i thought i just i thought it was frozen yeah no there's i left a contemplative pause yeah no it it shocked me um there's there's something that i or that strikes a chord with air and one is that there's a guy interestingly i tried to get him on the podcast could be it'd be a good guest but he's quite a big cheese so i got a um thanks right now for applying to get peter crone on the podcast and he's a little busy writing his book at the moment um you know come come back in a few months maybe we'll see what we can do anyways a guy called prita crone and he'd probably reframe the wording of you know like that that identity is that like i used and i love what you're saying and it's like i used to be a so and so for me it was like i used to be a rugby player and it was like that then identity and that's a bit of a problem and you can't do that thing anymore or if you used to be a bodybuilder um and then you want to train a different way and you've put your identity in that then it's like ah that's there's a bit more challenging than rather than you're going i did bodybuilding style training but i'm just me and i'm now going to do a little bit of this other type of training and then it's less we're less attached and it's it's just a very subtle change in words and some people people like well it makes no difference what you say like whereas yeah he this guy peter crone um would say that the words that we say to ourselves are over selves are quite quite powerful and some people that will resonate with and others it won't certainly for me that identity of like saying i am this thing um yeah rather than just being like i played rugby i did this sport um that for me is quite important yeah i've got a question right now let's just put it out on the table would you say that you still train calisthenics in comparison to how you like what and what does that look like now yes compared to what it was before because that has changed definitely for me so for me do i do calisthenics yeah 100% because i use very if it depends like how how are we defining calisthenics if we're talking about body weight training the i still don't have like weights and a and a barbell or anything i use do i use some equipment yes do they use equipment before yeah so have i got a weighted vest and a sandbag yes have i got olympic rings is most of my training purely literally moving my own body weight yes uh is that what it was like when i moved into doing calisthenics for yeah um am i doing more running than i used to do yes but i only literally probably run like twice a week or something i think that probably if someone follows my personal account you might be like oh you know you just this perception of like you see what things are people doing you're like oh crikey that person must it's like well no it's just that you've only seen two posts that i did and they both happen to be running and the rest of the time i wasn't running it's not like i'm spending all my day doing that um and uh but the biggest change for me is like am i now um not just like aimlessly is the wrong word but am i just sort of um am i obsessed with doing harder and harder and cooler things no but was i before um yes and in a in a great way it was just a really good time for me in shifting mentally from a place around like why the hell am i doing this training once i'd finished rugby like i remember literally remember being in the gym looking at myself in the mirror going like what are you doing why are you doing it and calisthenics gave me this like new love of life for training again and at that point i was correct with a fair bit younger and like really motivated to like do some cooler stuff and some harder stuff um whereas my body is just yearning for something a little bit different now so now it's more sort of movement based rather than i'd call it like movement based than just sort of like strength calisthenics based i still like doing you know still doing pull-ups and some and some strength stuff but it's a little bit more it's a little bit more endure strength endurance based it's a little bit more like mobility based like i'm still um i get the overall ego the overriding thing for me is i'm learning about my body that's what i feel like i'm doing when i'm training i'm like what trying to fight like what is what is restricting what is weak what is tight what needs strength like and just why can't i move like that when i go into this pattern okay that feels different on this side to that side i'm far more aware of like what's going on and and that's just where it is now is it going to change the future well history says it will change because it's if you look back in history like it's changed over time um and i don't know where you i think is what from what you're saying i you know i can never remember it reminds me it reminds me you always like it reminds me now i'm doing it um of our best friend actually that we've only spoken to once Mike Fitch yes we are best friends though um but he was saying like he was he was um he was somebody who i who's videos i first watched when we started to get into calisthenics and when we had him on the podcast a while back he was like yeah my sessions kind of still kind of keep a few of these things spinning but not really kind of pushing on with like hardcore chasing new movements and stuff and and he'd also gone to that stage of like a significant amount of investment in that type of training and then as it also kind of changed evolved grown matured got older kind of just found that his natural the things that he wanted to do within a training week could just probably simplify down a little bit yeah and i i definitely resonate with that like for me personally so i now train a crossfit box and i'm doing crossfit sessions and interval based sessions and and kind of like mixing it back into that more of a i suppose i say of course strengthening conditioning environment i don't want to cause crossfit strengthening conditioning which might again raise a few eyebrows but um you're going to get yourself in trouble i know um let's put it look in crossfit you do strength work and you are doing conditioning work and it's these things are just like it's largely like for me one okay here's segway let's just go change lanes quickly um i'm going to get myself into strength and conditioning type training to me my interpretation of it is structured and planned and progressive and now the the thing with with crossfit and i'm speaking this is called supportive love because i'm really enjoying training there but it can be a little bit chaotic it can be a little bit of everything all over the place and doesn't necessarily always kind of like stick together so and that's partly because like i if you it's a gift the box is the benefit the doubt if i went every day and followed all the programs then i would probably there might be some patterns to it but what most people do is they drop it in and out different times the day different days the week so they just kind of like it's just hit with whatever it is that day um so that's kind of and the strengthening conditioning for me would be like what we do the next four to six weeks and then how does that block fit into the next block and there is some of that within crossfit but not as much anyway different conversation so uh i can't remember what i was talking about now but it just the the idea of going into my training now looks like a little bit more like that kind of like those barbells involved but my major kind of focus within crossfit is actually sort of how good can i get at the gymnastics elements and put that in inverted commas because it's not really gymnastics it's calisthenics and but the pull-up type work the muscle type work there's some handstand kind of elements and handstand push-ups and that sort of stuff so within that my training is now like if you ask me to go and do like a open gym just go and do a training session you're going to see that 90 percent of my upper body stuff is still body weight based but i'm also doing more lower body strength based work i might throw some olympic lifts in there but that's kind of it so i've just and i've always said like this is kind of what i said before like i've been critical of crossfit in the past and i'm still critical of some components of crossfit i'm look at myself as i go into that environment go i know enough about training in my body to manage that chaos i don't think that's the case for everybody who walks into a crossfit box potentially another conversation but there's things i love about crossfit and i can go down there and i do you do kind of it has pushed me back into a more complete approach to my training and i said for a long time even when we were like hard into calisthenics that i always thought that lower body training needed additional weight i was like you can only go so far from a lower body perspective with body weight alone and i stand by that so that now my training has now got that element back in and this is where crossfit and i plug this gap now has kind of fitted into where i'm at with my training is that it suits the needs of where i'm at right now so during lockdown i got really like tired of being in the same four walls and training at home i wanted to go somewhere so i could leave the house get a different environment see some different people be around other people have some sense of community which i was lacking from from training at home i was also aware that like going after the hardest skills i've got my calisthenics to a point where i kind of got the some decent things nailed down but to go after 90 degree handstand push-ups or some really kind of more difficult planche progressions for example it was taking up so much of my training time because it was just hard kind of skill based work but if i had an hour in a really busy day i could spend a lot of it on skill and therefore not to do a huge amount of just basic strength work and not to do any conditioning type work and i was and and not get the lower body stuff in so i felt that there was a lot of elements that i wanted to be able to include in my training week that i couldn't do whilst i was going hard after some skills and some people might have a better training balance like let's not get into the details of how many days a week and how long are you sessions like i am a time poor person at the moment so my my workouts need to be short effective and they need to be giving me a bit of a dose of everything that i want and then you can come back on this jacket but my final point is as i've moved and this is going to sound ridiculous so some people listen to it i'm going to put it out there as i've moved from 30 to now 41 let's say or 33 or 32 when we started calisthenics the things that i think are important are different to when i started when we started calisthenics it was like a rite of passage look at all this cool stuff i need to be able to do a human flag hands down muscle up and that was important because we were then showcasing it and teaching it and educating people now i've got to a certain level of competency i can still do those things but i don't feel the need to go and start continually chasing for new skills and i'm testing and pushing myself in other areas which i've honestly neglected for a while so around fitness around lower body strength around can i put some of this stuff together and the challenge that i've set myself within crossfit is can i do my gymnastics elements my calisthenics elements strict so i don't want to do kipping pull-ups that's difficult because when you're in a metabolic type session kipping pull-ups are way easier to get the volumes that are prescribed in the workout than it is to get them doing strict so i've now got to build a much bigger base so that i can do the strict volume when tired and it is an animal right like it doesn't work out before it was like hard out like i think it was like a 500 meter row like balls to the wall into like body weight squats into crunches into push-ups into pull-ups and the pull-ups was like five or ten at the end it wasn't even a lot but you've done it that amount of capacity like i just absolutely like broken i was like doing them in like singles and doubles so it's like how do i train that component so that's now the challenge of where i'm at so is it calisthenics yes and at the most amount of body training is still body weight based is it calisthenics because i'm not kind of pushing on towards harder and harder kind of skill progressions i still think so it's just i have to think about how i'm spending my training time to give me what i want and my philosophy is more about at 40 what does the next 10 20 30 years look like i think for me personally the life that i want to live being a more of a generalist is going to be more helpful for me than being a specialist now if i was 20 i could afford to invest 10 years in becoming a specialist in calisthenics that will put me now another 10 years of that will put me at 50 cool tricks no metabolic kind of conditioning what's that safety heart health all that sort of stuff yeah and this is why like i'm not training particularly for the spartan race i'm going to do no specific running like i don't know if i could run 21 kilometers on a spartan race it might be absolutely excruciating difficult but i know that if i'm going to put some metabolic stuff in there i've got some lower body strength and my gymnastics calisthenics started the crossfit workouts is on point then i've got a decent like it'll be all right i'll get around it i might not enjoy it but i'll get around it you'll enjoy it you'll enjoy the people also i'm being i'm being satirical um but yeah that's like i don't want people to think oh no they've turned coats they've changed they used to be so cool like this is honesty and this is you're still cool right yeah no i think it comes you made a great point right at the start about just going understanding for all of us i was sort of thinking about like takeaways for the for the podcast understanding why you're doing what you're doing and i think the other thing that comes out of it for me is like giving yourself permission to explore other things that's what i hope that people take from from this podcast as we just sort of sharing honestly how things have changed for us and as your your why and your reasons for doing it will change based on like the period of of life that you're in in life circumstances and and giving yourself to realizing for one you're not that your identity is not your identity is in who you are not in the training or sport that you play whatever and then and to give yourself that permission that to explore different things um and yeah that i think it's i think it's a natural progression of as we get older i've joined the 40 club and like what's important now is like yeah 100 it's it's around you know the the our pillars with the schoolcast it's in the name of the podcast like movement strength and play like moving well getting strong and having fun like those things are those things are at play in in what we're doing and there's an element for for for me and i know you've described as well as an element for you and i think there'll be an element for a lot of the people listening that we want to be able to keep moving being strong and having fun as we get older and as you get older you sort of appreciate more that like i still feel 20 but i do appreciate that i am getting older and that as i get older it's important that i can still do stuff you know i put it sort of thinking about this you whatever someone sort of thinks about in terms of like who you are and stuff and like uh people having a soul or a spirit or whatever you want to describe it like what makes you you is like inside of you it's not like there's stuff on the outside but your opportunity to explore and engage in the world happens through your body in that you like you've got to use it to get yourself around and when you can't use that thing boy it's not working that well for you anymore because you've sort of used and abused it then that's going to impact like your experience of interacting with this world and people around you and so looking after and taking care of that thing so that you can like that's the that's where my head's at in terms of in terms of my training and there's like uh it's weird it's like a big shift in mindset but it's it almost doesn't feel like that because it's happened over such a long period of time it's just like really gradually and then you're like hold on i could really think about training differently now to what i used to but it doesn't feel like you suddenly woke up one day and changed your thoughts yeah and i think one thing that's consistent within it for and this will probably be for a lot of people that are resonating with this it's like both of us have it's continually looking for some way to be a beginner or to find the challenge or something so for you to go and do what you're doing now like you would have like come out of ruby god you'd never run anywhere near the distances that you're really now would never want to but you've found enjoyment in the in the process of looking working towards something which you've now found enjoyment out of one thing i liked about crossfit was having been in a strength and conditioning environment and if i surround myself with people like me i move pretty well like and within calisthenics i'm okay that's it i'm going to crossfit and i'm like absolute toilet like compared to everybody else i get my backside handed to me on a regular basis um one by the workout and two by other people who are just older seemingly less well conditioned haven't got the training background that i've got but they've got more context and more experience of doing that thing so i kind of like that i like being in an environment like i'm not actually this good that good at this because it pushes me on to then go and find to chase that discomfort and to yeah so i think the progression within calisthenics was often around like kind of learn this really hard thing that i can't currently do from a skill perspective i'm now doing the same thing is like kind of learn this really hard thing by sticking all of these components together and and this is where kind of the strengthening conditioning background and the calisthenics comes in kind of do all of those whilst moving well which is not what you always see within crossfit yeah so i want to just let the point the takeaway point from me really is to think about your philosophy and i've got like a few clients that i'm working with now when they're they're in like a crossfit environment but it's they're not they know they're not moving well they've got some shoulder pain or whatever it might be uh just i want to encourage people to go just because you do that thing don't take the path of loose resistance like think about within that what is the limiting factor and it's okay for you to change your philosophy so you go i'm going to stop doing as much of this so that i can give myself the opportunity to do more of that because that's what's actually going to make me a better mover better like human improve my moving human system so that could be that your mobility it's like sucks all right but it's not going to get better by doing what you're currently doing because otherwise it would have done it by itself so you might need to shift some pieces around the board a little bit to create some more time to do more mobility for me it's like i could train at home and get quite good at the skills but we're now working at home and the lockdown environment we don't go to the office or train or whatever like i can literally quite easily go a day in my house and do 1500 paces like and and my skill session would have like barely elevated my heart rate so how good is that for me from a health perspective like not great so the path of the of the the path of these resistance might have been just going i was going to keep doing it because that's what i do the harder thing is to go let's go and accept that i'm not very good at this i'm not very people might not very mobile so go and expose those weaknesses and go and really have to confront it come on like one of the mobility courses that you and georgie have done and go gosh i'm awful at this that's a good thing like identifying what the weak links are in your kinetic chain or in your human movement system and shaping your training around those like that's a positive because you are then going to be upgrading the system the whole time and promise what happened is you'll peel back the layers and other things will get worse things will change you might lose some strength you might lose some fitness okay how do i bring those things back in we can't have like you can't be specialist in and very few people can be like awesome everything there's always going to be some compromise and i think from where i'm at in the stage of my life that i'm at with the young family and the pressures everything else working and that sort of thing i'm really enjoying this middle ground of kind of like i've still got a real kind of heart for body weight training i love it and it's even being a gym i'm not looking at the bench press girl really fancy bench like i don't i'd rather do planche push-ups um because i feel that better from a both physical mental perspective i just enjoy that that challenge of calisthenics but it's a simplified version of it where i've now got time for other things as well to stick into that so that i've got this more rounded approach to my training yeah nice haven't we come far tim bell yes some in some areas gone backwards i'm interested to know what this converse we need this come this conversation in 10 years time when we're 50 that that what does that what that looks like will be interesting if you'll be interested yeah i yeah i don't know i think probably more general i think it definitely for me is kind of going like what what does so one of the things like hitting turning 41 now 42 in november and my little girl is is just turned while she's just past one years old and like okay so when i'm when she's 40 when she's the same age as me i'm if i'm still here which i hope i am i'm gonna be 80 years old like what do i want to be able to do with her when i'm 80 and i once met a guy who was 80 when i was a squirke as a scuba diving instructor and he was like the best 80 year old i've ever met he was like loving life like just was the it was just amazing and i was like that's my role model because he like he rocked up for his 80th birthday present to come and do a scuba diving thing with me forgot his false teeth like his regulator fell out of his mouth he was like an ex kind of paratrooper in the world war two like was still trading in investments in southeast asia and like just this guy was like full of life rocked up like so i sent him off to get changed into his wetsuits or one-on-one sessions i just stand um so i'm gonna go and get you wetsuit underneath what do you mean to give you one he's like no no don't worry i've got one so i thought he was going to come back out with this like 1950s style i think like james bond like the nappy one that comes underneath he's got no legs on it it's just like long sleeves and like the the brace underneath the the uh between your legs came out with this like beautiful rip curl wetsuit and i was like this guy's just got like just got it um and i think that's it like how do you achieve those sorts of things where you can say yes more as you get older because you just have the capacity yes i want to go snowboarding yes i want to climb that mountain yes let's go swim in like there could be anything and i think you get that from being that that generous approach but you we've talked about before your physical pension what do you want to do then and what do you need now and there's got to be some kind of like trade off and balance between those two things is how you stretch your training and that philosophy if you maintain that philosophy if you resonate with what you're saying your training will naturally morph and evolve because your philosophy continues to change based on where you are in your stage of life and what you need at that point yeah yeah and i think that uh uh rightly named the movement strength and play podcast because i don't it's like those those three things i feel like will always be the movement strength and play um yeah you can you can i feel like i can hang my hat on those play for me the way that's kind of yeah if you call just doing burpees and running to no one cave fun then yeah of course it's play yeah hundred percent um so any thoughts on this one guys it's a big subject so it'd be really interesting to hear what you think so feel free to drop as a dm um on on instagram is our preferred platform or you can send us an email tim at school of calisthenics.com or david at school of calisthenics.com david and jack are the same person if you're new to the show um and yeah we'll just give us some ideas because i think it's just these can sometimes be contemplative reflective opportunities to share some thoughts and if you have to write it down and tell us what it is that means you've gone through the process of thinking about it and it's not just training it's an important part of our life because what we do from a physical perspective has such a big impact on everything else so why not think about the philosophy of it as we think about the philosophy of other things in life deep jacko deep deep no you gotta go deep what's the point in staying on the surface deep is where the gold is exactly um right let's sign off do you want to sign us off today i i would love to timber so thank you everyone for listening keep exploring your physical potential with movement strength and play class dismissed