How I Train Around Elbow & Wrist Pain Without Skipping Progressive Overload

Hello and welcome back to Tobi on Fitness Tech. It's been quite a while since I've done a video, but I had a question come in like 3 weeks ago and I finally got a chance to respond to them directly. Just been very very busy, but it was on my last video that I had Arya help me with. So, my last video was about consistency in the gym and then someone had actually posted a question that was pretty interesting to me because they're doing everything what right. They have all the right equipment. They have pretty much everything you could ever want in terms of fitness equipment, adjustable dumbbells, um and they have they have pretty much everything, but what they're what they're dealing with is is they're dealing with elbow pain. So, real quickly I and I realized that I didn't say it to them in the response uh because they're probably already know this, but I figured I would explain it here. I used to get elbow pain, too. One of the biggest changes for me was switching from uh barbells or yeah, from barbells to dumbbells. That seemed to help quite a bit with elbow pain in particular and then changing the way I lift with the dumbbells. Uh and so, I'll walk you through that a little bit uh because they're using dumbbells, they're not using one of these digital cable machines. They were asking specifically if the cable machine would help. And yes and no, right? If you're still doing the same exercise exercises and if you're lifting the same way, then no. And in fact, it's it's going to be the same thing. Uh the eccentric mode, I think would help a little bit, but it depends on if you're already lifting in this manner because if you're lifting in this manner and you turn on the eccentric mode, then yes, the elbow pain should be less using eccentric mode. That's why I use it for all of my lifts. That's where the resistance on the way. So, that's where whenever I pull down, right? Oh, sorry. I have to actually turn it on. Um but that's where whenever I pull down and then as I'm coming up, it comes up with a higher amount of resistance if the move was a downward move. And so I have more resistance so and I'm resisting it on the way down up and I'm doing a three count. So in that fashion, you should have a little less elbow problems, but it's not guaranteed. But I'll show you I have my adjustable dumbbells here and let me move them. Okay, this one I already have set to something that I can lift. Let's see what I have it set to. All right, so what I have here is the power blocks are up here. So this power block is set to purple, which is 35 lb. That should be fine for this. So uh let me set the other power block. And so these are kind of handy. A lot of people don't like the cage. Uh I wish I had the new bells up here, but I don't have them up here, but they don't have the cage design. Uh I like these cages for certain lifts and in fact this lift in particular is one where I really, really like the cage design for, which is which is the bench press, right? So if you're bench pressing, I actually like the cage. Um for further a couple other moves, anything where you're grabbing a hold of an overhead like this, that's really awkward with the cage. I don't know how to grip it properly. There are grips on the bottom, but it just it's it's a super awkward way to lift whenever you're used to lifting a barbell with like a or a dumbbell with a with a flat head on it. Uh but anyways, let me put this one to the same 35 lb. Right? So now I have both of these at the same weight. And what I wanted to show you is I'm assuming they're probably already doing this, but I didn't explain it to them cuz it's really hard to explain in words. But when I lift these, first of all, I'm bringing my elbows right back. Right? So, when I'm bringing my elbows in, I'm kind of tucking them down below. That Before I was out here. Okay? You see the difference? If I'm pressing from out here, I'm actually putting a lot of strain on my elbows for whatever reason. I found that the angle that works best for me is here. And then whenever I'm coming up, I'm rotating them over. And that seems to put less torque on my elbows, and rotating them back on the way down. So, I'm rotating out and rotating back. Now, I don't know if everyone's anatomy is this way, but mine is, where this feels better on my elbow. And if it feels worse on your elbows, then you can feel free to go this way. But I find coming this way really puts a lot of elbow torque. And at 35 lb, I can do either way pretty comfortably. But once this weight gets to be, you know, 75, 80 lb, I have to come this way, and I have to come up this way and then up. Otherwi- Otherwise, I will definitely hurt my elbows. Um That That's the only issue I've ever had with elbow pain, luckily. But this person has chronic elbow pain. And I wanted to talk about chronic pain in general. Uh because I actually have uh quite a bit of chronic wrist pain. And so, this person's losing consistency because of this issue. Right? So, and that that's kind of uh That's a That's a big problem, right? Whenever you're dealing with an injury or you're dealing with a reoccurring issue, and it's impeding your workouts. And they're trying to progressively overload. So, in in two of Araya's videos, one was about consistency itself, and the other was about progressive overload. And those two things in combination, I think, make up 95% of your gains, right? In terms of what you can do in the gym, right? Like I was very critical and and I recorded this once before and then I threw away the video cuz I didn't like the audio quality. So, this is the second rehashing of this, but I was very critical of Mike Israetel in one of his specific commentaries where he said, "Plan a 1-month deload." And that to me is absolute nonsense. Like I have had a 1-month deload and I had it recently because 3 weeks of the 4 weeks I was traveling. And my opinion is you should plan your training around your life. And if your life is going to involve 3 weeks of travel and 1 week of kind of recovery between travels, you're not going to work out much. You're not going to be doing a lot of lifting that, right? This machine wasn't with me, obviously, whenever I was whenever I was uh traveling, so I didn't have my machine. I did do a small amount of workouts. Oh, I broke my ankle before the first set of travel, so even getting to the gym whenever we were on the cruise was a problem cuz it was up on the ninth floor. So, it was like it was just a lot. Um and I was kind of letting my body rest and heal. So, yes, I took a 1-month deload, but I don't plan it into my cycle. That's insane. Like plan your training around your life and you'll have a month where you don't get to train. So, I was hugely critical of Mike Israetel for that. And I don't think that that's a great approach, obviously, based upon the consistency uh video. If If you're home, if you have time, I think you should do something, right? And and that's mostly what I was getting at. Uh for this person in particular, I think if that's not the problem, then they have to do something very complicated, which is what I had to do with my wrist. And so, I'll go over what I do with my wrist, and maybe this will give people insight into what you need to do to be able to continue to train with injuries. So, what happened is this wrist is actually been broken multiple times. The bone's actually in the wrong place. You can see if I go to move them backwards, one goes the whole way, and one only goes Like now, I've got it almost. But, whenever I'm at this amount of extension, I can feel pain shooting the whole way through the the wrist. And so, it's still not 100% and it'll never be 100% until I break it enough times that they have to do surgery. And they don't want to do the surgery cuz it's extremely invasive and I'll lose wrist flexion. So, it's kind of one of those things where I could rehab it to get further and further and further. And in fact, I I have. But, I'll I'll you know, it's it's not It's not going to be perfect cuz the bone's in the wrong place. But, the moral of this story is everyone has injuries. Everyone has nagging pains. And so, what do I do about it, right? Because it's uh It's multi-tiered for me. So, I have three big things. And in fact, one of them might help them with their elbow pain. Uh and and it sounds dumb, but the the the most simple fix, right, is these Versa Grips. So, I can show you them. I got to take off the the watches. But, I can show you the Versa Grips real quick and show you the difference that it makes when you're lifting. It does make a difference. Um I also have the cheap knockoffs of these, by the way. So, just realize that uh I'm one of those people that, you know, don't believe the hype to begin with. I know Mark Isertell was selling these things. That's not why I have them. Uh what happened was I had the cheap Chinese knockoffs. They just This hide on the Chinese knock-offs is just not as good. Or at least I couldn't find a pair where this hide is as good. And what happened is a guy at the jujitsu gym actually had real Versa Grips. And he let me try these. And uh because he doesn't use them at all. Uh he's also 15 years younger than me. So, he doesn't use them at all. Uh but a family member had bought them for him. And after trying them, I just offered to buy them from him. Because honestly it And I And I gave him almost full retail because you know, he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he So, he's headed away away to college. But here's the Versa Grips. And then what you're doing with the Versa Grips is you're doing that same thing. Right? You're picking up the weight the same way. But now you have a little bit of a kind of clearance. And I've never tried this with with the dumbbells. Usually I'm using a barbell. But now you have the Versa Grips grabbing on. Hold of the thing. You have a little bit of a better grip. You've also got a little bit of locking of the wrist. And as long as you're pointed down like like I do with my elbows, everything feels a little bit better to be honest with you. And then I'm lifting up and down. And that same idea, right? So, and if I go out like this, I can tell you I feel a lot more stretch. And it's not a bad thing at this weight to be honest with you. The stretch is probably helpful. But at max weight, that's going to put a lot of tension on my elbows. So, I like to come down and up, right? And the Versa Grips help. I mean, they do help. But that's not the only thing that I do, right? So, the Versa Grips is one, right? And by the way, you don't have to use Versa Grips. I mean, if someone can find a cheap Chinese pair that work as well, I'm all ears. You know, I just couldn't find one. Uh so, that that's step one. Right? And then sometimes that's not enough. And that's where I have all of these. Right? What are all these? These are all different uh kind of wrist uh guards, right? So, this is one of the more elaborate ones. It goes lightest easiest, medium, and maximum pain. Right? And I will decide that based upon kind of how I feel. At the Arnold at the Arnold last year, pretty sure I was wearing this one the whole time. But uh this one's the easiest one to use. Your your hand just slides in like this, and you can tighten it, and this will lock my wrist into place. I will use this in this person for the elbow, it's going to be the same thing where you need like an elbow sleeve. Right? That will lock your elbows into place. And that will provide a little bit of stability here. That's what I'm doing is I'm providing stability. Realize I don't use any of this unless it's already bothering me. But this is the quickest go-to, and then I escalate up from there. And then what happens if the thing really really hurts, right? Because uh there's times where I'll get caught in a wrist lock, and because people don't realize that my wrist doesn't go as far as a normal wrist would go, they, you know, first of all, I have to scream and tap, which is pretty embarrassing. Like I'm screaming tap instead of, you know, to be tapping because I don't have time uh because my wrist won't go the whole way back. So, and then the next part of this thing is I will usually have pain the next day. And that's where I have this thing. Right? And I'm not saying this is the best brand, but this is like Alljoy, but basically it's a wrist massager. And I thought I would never use a thing when I bought it, to be honest with you. I buy so much weird stuff. But this thing helps a lot. So, what happens is I turn it on and then it has all of these different settings on it. And it has a heated mode. And And then it has this vibration mode. Right, where it's actually vibrating. And what it's doing inside here is massaging my wrist for me. And you'll leave this thing on for I think 30 minutes usually is where I leave it. So, it's an extended amount of time. And I will leave my wrist in here while I'm you know, on my lunch or whatever. And And it'll actually feel a lot better the next day. So, this person's going to have to find something similar for their elbows. Right, where they can get in there and work on the the fashion, the tissue. And kind of decompress it. I think if you do a combination of What I'm getting at is for for things like this, obviously, the wrist and the elbow are two different you know, joints, right? But, the concepts are the same. So, first one is getting something First of all, getting your getting your arms into a position where it's the least painful point possible, right? So, make sure you're at whatever is the angle that causes the least pain. Second is mobilize the thing. So, immobilize and lock it into position. And you see a lot of Actually, I was at the Arnold this year and you see a lot of wraps being sold. Right, arm wraps and and sleeves that go over your elbows. And And obviously, sleeves that go over your wrist, but also a lot of elbow related stuff. Get something like that if you don't already have it. And then the other thing is some sort of a massaging system. And I like automatic ones. I have And where did I put them? So, I have like these roller balls. Just trying to find where I put them. But, I have these roller balls. They help, but that requires you to stand here and do this, right? Or Or you know what I mean? And that's not fun. You know, that takes a bunch of time. It's handy for your back and I actually have an automatic one for my back now that I can do basically what this does, but for the back, but it was a lot more expensive to find one that can do your back. Uh because I've had so many injuries and sometimes my back is just as messed up as my wrist, unfortunately. Uh from trying to get inverted jujitsu. So, that's the general gist of how I think about this and you know, what I think about uh pains in general and dealing with them. Right? I don't think you should stop training or even lower the intensity if you can get away with not lowering the intensity uh for uh a nagging injury. Uh if the thing's super bad, then go do the PT, alter training plan altogether, and get it fixed that way. But it sounded like it was just a chronic aching thing, and I think a three-stage approach is the best way to go where you have something like the Versa Grips or something like simple, and then you have a lock-in mechanism for the actual joint itself, and then you have a massaging system to to fix it. So, that's that's where I was getting at with that question. And then someone had uh question around the devices because we have So, Auki uh the last major video that I made uh myself was showing off the Auki K1, and now there's an Auki I think it's S1 Pro, whatever the Pro model is, uh that has the Tonal style arms, and then FitHub Titan also has a Tonal style arm one with the weight of the uh with the weight of the Tonal and the speed. It's 264 lb. Of course, they had to make it, you know, 4 more pounds than this thing, right? Cuz this thing's 260. Uh the Tonal 2 was 250, right? You see what they did. The Tonal 2 was 250, this thing became 264. Uh or 260, and then the FitHub Titan Titan Pro, oh boy, that thing's a mouthful, and they're renaming it is 264. And I don't know because they're going through this re- rebrand. I don't know if I would be comfortable Well, first of all, I'm not buying anything new now because I'm actually pretty happy with this. Uh there was a couple complaints that I had around I still don't like the retraction issue, right? It does retract slower than when I first bought it. I'm not a huge fan of that. Like the retraction is slower, but it seems to have improved. So, that's much better than it was before. Like that's much better. And And also the software bug that I showed live has never happened since these new updates. So, where uh it complains about bar tilt when it clearly shouldn't have, and then flips my uh flips my values on my workout, and I have to back out and go back in. That hasn't happened at all since these latest updates, which is funny cuz I was back and forth with support, and they're trying to get me to like re- like I have the I have it on video from a YouTube video of it doing it, and they're like, "Oh, it doesn't do that." And it's like I have it on video, right? But then they put out, you know, several updates since then, and it does not do that now. Like it was definitely that specific version of the software that had that problem, and that's uh what the person I had on last time they they're biggest complaint was speediance, and I tend to agree with them, is the frequency of the software updates and the propensity to break things in them. Right? So, things are broken, things are fixed. Uh it looks like a ton of things are fixed now that were not fixed when I first got the device. So, a lot of things around uh like uh progressive overload in particular and one armed movements not setting the weights correctly for each arm even though you have it set so that it would set the weights to be the same for both arms. It would not do that. Uh so, that stuff seems to be all fixed up. Uh so, it's definitely coming along. My biggest complaint is not having in custom workouts. So, in custom workouts, my biggest complaint is you don't have the ability to at this point in time uh do them with a partner. So, that's been one of the things that I've been complaining about pretty hard because they're working on all of these features that uh came to Tonal years later. Uh like the AI form coach and all that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, they don't have a basic feature that Tonal would have for years and years and years and and and obviously I use. Right. So, and it's not something that I would expect to be missing this long. Is that partner workout uh functionality inside of custom. It's just shocking that it's still not there. Uh And you got to remember that something like the Tonal has way more guided workouts. Right? Because you're paying 60 something dollars a month. You would expect it to have way more guided workouts. And so, they don't have the guided workouts, which is fine for someone like me who builds all their own custom ones, but I would love to be able to do the custom ones I built with my wife directly going back and forth. One of us lifting, then the other one lifting, then one of us lifting cuz I need that amount of time to uh reset anyways between sets. So, it would be hugely beneficial to have that and it's just not here yet. And in fact, it's coming to like Akey has a road map and they have things on there and they have a whole bunch of stuff on the road map around that kind of you know, feature set. So, it's just pretty cool to see the difference in the different machines. Uh I will say that I'm waiting for a machine to come over 300 lb at this point in time and then this might get replaced with whatever that machine is. Just because it doesn't make any sense to move from 260 lb to 264 lb. Even though I did like the tonal style arms a little bit better than this and I realized why I like the tonal arms better than this and it has nothing to do with the arms. Right? This this cable system is actually perfectly fine. It's just as good as the tonal arms. But, I can tell you what's missing and it was a complaint when they did V3 of the software. So, if I go into uh I can go into any of them, but I'll go into one of my custom ones and I'll go into one since I already have this row pulled up. I'll go into the rope based workout and hit start on here. And this would be so easy to fix, which blows my mind that they redid You can tell when they redid the software, they didn't have not to be mean, but they didn't have someone who uses the device daily actually review uh the new version of software. And I'll tell you why. Because the biggest thing that people who use this daily end up having to do, this one's simple, right? Because in this workout in particular, in this exercise, it's up at the top of the like this is actually the correct position. The position it was already in is the you know, the L L0 R0 position. That's where it is. But, if I go to Let me find one. Here. There we go. Sorry, I had to click down little bit further for it to actually switch to the move. So, if I go down to this move, uh first of all, he's not even showing. So, you can't even see uh from this one, and hopefully this isn't one of the one camera shoots. So, yes, I think this is one of the one camera shoots. So, that No, it's got Okay, good. It's at least a two camera shoot. So, what position is that, right? And uh and you can see he rotated now this is the third camera angle. So, from camera angle zero and camera angle three, you can't see the position of this arm at all. And for me to see the position of the arm, you're not going to be able to see it from where you're at. You're probably not able to see him very well at all. But, uh this this arm position is somewhere down here. And I think you think that Yes, and I can see it. It's It's right here at L3. But, that is only even visible on one of the three views and not visible for the first 15 seconds of his movement. So, what I have to do is it pops up on the screen in between moves, and I'll show you that in a second. But, I have to go down here and go to move analysis, which is the second thing down. And by the way, the first one is screen rotation. So, you hit the wrong button, and all of a sudden your screen flips around, right? So, they buried a button that's basically essential to hit because you can't figure out where it is. Uh in a menu where the first option, if you accidentally click it, rotates your screen. You see where like like this is a It's It's one of the things where a user had a really simple fix. Because down here it says L3 R3, right? It would be really really easy for them to have put right here what arm position it's at, right? Put L3 up here. You know, or even over here, L3, right? Any anywhere at the top of the screen, they could have put the arm position, and that would have made the V3 software infinitely better. You know what I mean? And it was actually a suggestion that I saw in their Facebook group, and it's like, why did they not do this? And what I'm getting at with Tonal is every time you move the arms, the arms actually have batter- By the way, the arms have batteries in them, and those will go dead in the total, and you don't get a warning when they die. Things just start not working. Maybe maybe they fix that now, but that's the way it was when I had the Tonal or whenever I had it up on my wall, which now it's sitting in the corner, but uh not on any wall, and I still have to get it to my buddy to repair the thing. Um to repair the cable. The cable's not broken, but it's frayed, and I don't want to sell it or even put it back up on my wall till we fix the cable. It's been all winter like that, and I just haven't gotten to it yet. Uh cuz it requires ripping the thing apart, putting the new cable in. I have the cable, but you know, it's not at the top of my priority list. But this thing uh you know, like to to not have that functionality at all, right? Realize if the batteries go dead, you don't have that functionality on the Tonal, either. Uh and you have a lot of other things that start going wrong. But the There's batteries in those arms, and when those arms go up and down, it actually the machine senses where they're at in space and tells you whether you're in the correct position or not. So, that makes it really easy to put everything in the correct position. And I thought about it, and Speediance could do that, too, right? They could just put it on the screen. That would be good enough for someone like me, but they probably should have the ability to sense where these are at, and I think they could based on cable lengths. I just don't know if they have a sensor in there. You know, I'm assuming they have sensors in there to determine cable length because that's how they're measuring force and everything. And I'm assuming they could do these calculations to figure out if you're in the right position or not and show the indicator red or green. Um because there's some people who want to do less The reason why you would let it be red or green and let the person still lift is sometimes someone wants this specifically at a different arm length because they're a different height. So like say I was like he's 6-ft tall, I would assume. Let me see. Uh he might be 6'3. He might be 6'2 6'3. He might be a little taller than me. But and he has this at you know, R R3. Right? If you're 5-ft 0, you're probably going to want this at R4 for your chest. Right? So there's a reason to actually modify and not do what he's doing. Now of course the machine could use your height that it has to recalculate everything and show you the correct one or you know what I mean, or you just let it be red and let the person do their lifts even if it's not at the correct setting. Uh which is what happens right now. If I move this to whatever setting I want, I can do this lift and it's not going to care at all. It only cares about making sure that I'm actually doing the lift, pulling the rope. Uh what I was getting at here is each of these machines are fundamentally different in the way that they work. Uh I do think that the criticisms of the Speediance from from my last video are pretty accurate, you know what I mean, that the software is a little bit buggy or a little bit flightier and uh than thing Anki. But realize when I was first buying them, I remember why I specifically like vetoed the K1 altogether and it was because I really want lat pull downs in their traditional sense, the way they the way they work. And he pointed out that I could use a carabiner approach and use this uh which would get me exactly what I need and it would actually give me a better lat pull down than what I'm doing, but you know, it would add friction. So my my other goal is always to have as little friction as possible to using the machine. So, that's that's the other intentional thing. That's why I switched from the adjustable dumbbells to the machine is just so that I can hit the start button and not have to think about it. And be able to do my workouts that way. So, it's one less thing to worry about whenever I'm going to work out. By the way, on the weight front, I've gone from 240 down to 210 this morning. So, uh drastically cutting the weight off. I get pretty heavy over the winter. And I've decided to periodize that, right? So, each winter I'm going to get progressively heavier. And then each summer I'm going to cut to about the same weight. Or cut to hopefully 5 lb heavier with 5 lb more muscle, but it looks like this year I probably only put on a couple pounds of muscle, maybe one, two, three. Uh well, through that whole bulk and the the whole cut period, I'll be probably 3 lb more muscle than I had last year, which is pretty good. Uh you know, it wasn't a perfect training year. We had a lot of vacations. We had a lot of family stuff to do. So, uh you know, I'm I'm happy with the progress, right? It's it's one of those things where progress is not linear. And at this point in time, any progress is you know, especially because I'm going to be turning 40 next year. So, you know, any any progress I make is you know, I'm pretty happy with, I guess. You know, I especially because I'm still doing jujitsu and I'm I'm back to running now that it's getting warmer out. So, our last vacation I was I was running quite a bit and then I came back and then it got freezing cold here in Pennsylvania and now it's finally looking nice again. So, I've been doing my runs over lunch instead of my lifts. So, unfortunately, my lifting has taken a backseat uh to the jujitsu and running for right now just because it's summer and it's starting to get nice out. So, I would prefer to do the things that involve being outside. And And we've just had a bunch of stuff. I'm learning how to set up aquariums and ponds. I mean, I have this pond forever and it's been driving me insane. Uh but the aquarium is something new, so learning more about aquatics. And everyone's like at the gym, they're like, "Oh, yeah. So, I guess you want to learn about them." I'm like, "Not really." My daughter wants uh wants an axolotl, and they are a pretty high-maintenance animal. I mean, not the most high high-maintenance, but you know, for a fish, they're more complicated than goldfish, which is what I have in my pond. And I killed the goldfish once, so I'm really scared about killing this axolotl. And I killed them trying to clean the uh 2 years ago, I tried to I had goldfish. They lasted almost a whole year, and then I poured way too much uh cleaning solution in, and it I I didn't read it. Like, this stuff is supposedly safe like when I looked it up on Amazon, it said it's safe for fish. What it What it says on the bottle is completely different than what it says when you type it into Amazon, and it says not safe at quantities over X amount, and sure enough, it just killed them all. They couldn't breathe, and they all died, so uh now I'm way more careful about cleaning uh cleaning the the pond. And unfortunately, I have to drain it, and then pull pull the fish out, and then, you know, refill it, so And kind of the same thing with this the tank that we bought. So, I'm just learning a bunch of stuff. I'm still working on Project Arya, uh the AI fitness stuff that I've been building, so uh that project is pretty much where I need it to be. You know, one person's criticism was, "This is more than what a 10-year lifter would need." And I totally agree with them. You know, I couldn't I couldn't post and say, "Oh, you're wrong." You know, I don't I don't think anyone needs that level of depth in terms of just the strength training portion with uh strength curves and all of the graphs of the progressive overload and all of the things that I had Arya do. Like, you don't really need that. There's There's no reason to need that. Uh the the thing that I did need and the the reason why that project got started is because I needed to see my running overlaid with my strength training overlaid with my jiu-jitsu in a way that I could comprehend is this too much for my body before I get into a training deficit and my body feels extremely beat up. So, luckily, since having Arya I've been in a more stable state with not feeling extremely beat up except a couple days where I just felt under the weather. And I was talking about my co- talking to my coach about it and apparently it's like there's there's bugs and flus and stuff flying around and everyone's felt it where they're just down for a couple days uh and just don't feel 100%. So, unfortunately, we're getting a lot of those, it seems like in the past couple years. But uh and it does impact my training. I guess that's what I'm getting at. When that happens, there's entire days where I get none of the things that I wanted to get done. Uh I'm really trying to make sure that I get my steps in because the steps really dictate whether I lose the weight that I want to lose. So, not getting 10,000 steps in a day and Arya actually gives me step goals now, which is pretty cool. Uh daily step goals based upon my training of the the prior day because some days I'm not going to hit 10,000 steps because I feel like absolute trash cuz I trained really hard at jiu-jitsu. Now, Arya can say can back it off or say, "Hey, no, you have to do 12,000 steps today cuz you didn't train hard at all yesterday and your body feels very recovered based upon the body battery from the Garmin, based upon the eight sleep sleep data, based upon the Whoop sleep data. I mean, I have all of these things already, so I might as well utilize them uh in a way that makes sense to me, right? And that's the other argument. I already have all the tracking devices. So, why not put that data to good use and have something that actually correlates it together? But, that's what I had for you today. So, in summary, uh when you've got pain, uh I would recommend first of all, if the pain is acute and intense, go to a doctor, right? Uh and even if it's How do I say it? Like like with my with the last time uh my wrist really flared up, I actually went into OIP. And uh which is our Orthopedics Institute. And just because I wanted to get it really checked out to figure out because I never knew that the bone was in the wrong position. I wanted to get it checked out just to make sure that I was cleared to train and wasn't going to make it any worse. Uh and make sure that, you know what I mean, that that put that my strategy in particular of bracing it, you know, the strategy of bracing it and especially using uh actually I ended up using this brace, right? Which I actually got from them. I'm pretty sure that day. So, I ended up using this brace, right? Where it's isolating the thumb itself. So, it's actually locking the whole thing in place. Right? So, the thumb is actually in place so that the wrist can't move at all, like nothing can move. And this makes it really hard to grip, so you lose uh top end strength too with this thing. But, I ended up getting this that day, and they really wanted this thing isolated for about a week. But, otherwise, it's just the bone's in the wrong position. So, I knew I was safe to immediately start lifting with this thing on. I just they didn't want me to aggravate everything any more than I already had, and that's why they gave me this, right? It wasn't even a They pretty much reassured me that I could continue training almost immediately, but I can't train, you know, I couldn't have trained using the dumbbells and not using that. I can't even use the Versa Grips, right? Because my thumbs are mobilized, so I can't grip the Versa Grips correctly, and I had to use this thing. And I had to back down the weights a little bit because every now and then some things would bother us, especially things where you're pulling from the machine. So, anything where you're pulling like this, that would really, really bother the wrist just because your wrist has a tendency to go like that even with that on it. So, I had to dial back the weight and only do warm-up sets for about a week. And And then I was able to, you know, do full sets, switch my brace to one where I don't use my thumb. So, switch from that brace to this brace, right? The second one of these. I have another one of these somewhere. And then go from there. And the other big thing I should say, I've also had my knee reconstructed. And you can see I'll pull all the knee stuff over here. So, I have a ton of different Oh, so here's the other wrist one. So, but Uh and here's actually another thing that I have. And I forgot that was in there. So, I do have this, which is even lighter, that I wear in Jiu-Jitsu sometimes. So, this is the only one I'll wear in Jiu-Jitsu. I won't wear any of those, but I would wear this, right? So, this I'll wear in Jiu-Jitsu. It's been a long time since I wore it. I need to wash the thing now. But, um you know, thankfully I haven't had to wear it for like 9 months. But, I would wear this just to indicate, "Hey, that wrist is messed up. If you go to wrist lock, then I'm going to tap immediately, right?" Like, I don't tell people not to go for it, but I just know that I'm going to tap immediately. Like, you don't have to apply any pressure. You go for it and I'm going to tap because I can't have any pressure applied to it. And I'm fine with tapping. It doesn't It doesn't matter to me. That's not a big deal. But on the knees thing, I have I have all kinds of different knee braces. So, uh to support the knees because this knee is also surgically repaired. So, every now and then I'll be running and it'll flare up pretty bad. And there's other ones somewhere else around the house. But there's you know, but that that's kind of the approach. Brace it first. Um then massage it out. You know, it's it's a multi-stage process with these injuries. Uh when you start getting older, you start accumulating them. And I beat up my body really bad and I beat it up really bad doing jiu-jitsu. So, unfortunately, I'm going to have more injuries than the average bear at my age. Right? That's why I was talking to two people who are in their 50s uh in line to get my daughter. And uh well, one's almost 50 and one's actually mid-50s. And both of them don't have the kind of injuries I have and actually feel younger and spryer than me and it's like uh some days I can barely get out of bed. You know, and that's just the nature of the training that I do. And you accept that risk when you're trying to run, do jiu-jitsu, and lift. And none of them I'm doing at a majorly competitive level anymore, either. But I enjoy doing all of them. And that's the important point also also is enjoying doing what you're doing. If you don't enjoy the workouts, uh then it's going to be a slog to get the consistency you want. So, you really have to figure out That's why I designed these specific workouts. Like that's why there's rope-based workouts here, just to add variety. Like this rope workout is not going to you know, it's not going to it's not going to impact my uh it'll impact It's more of a stretching workout than it is a high-intensity workout for most of the moves. It It's not going to impact my actual training that much in terms of uh progressive overload, but it's here because it's something that I enjoy, right? A lot of these moves I enjoy. Uh the face pulls, uh the crunches, you know, everything that's in here, uh the pull-downs, right? I actually enjoy these movements. So, that's why it's here, right? It's because I enjoy those movements. And uh other ones are of course mainly about progressive overload and are a little bit more intense, but I pick movements that I somewhat enjoy for the most part. Uh I very rarely bench press. You know, I I don't squat at all uh because of the the knee issues. I just And I don't really need that power right now. So, I don't need the added power of squatting. I'd rather just go out and run, which I know they're totally different mechanics, but it's one of those things where I don't need that added up-down power, and I don't think it adds that much to your jiu-jitsu game except in the exchanges from down to up, which you know, in the way we train, we're mostly either down Well, I I'm always down. So, I always pretty much pull guard at this point in time. Uh unless unless whenever I was doing a tournament, right? That's the only time I don't pull guard, which is tough because I don't train the way I would do a tournament, but you know, that's my last tournament last year is probably the last tournament I'll do for quite a while. So, uh yeah, I I in general, I think you should have fun with your training, and even the running, right? Sometimes I hate running, but lately I've been enjoying it a lot more, and that's because I'm not progressing at the level I used to try to progress, and I'm not especially progressing. And some days I just don't do the like it scheduled me for 43 minutes on a Sunday and I wanted to spend the Sunday with my family, so I just didn't do it. You know, and before that would have haunted me not doing what I was supposed to do for the day, but now I accept that you know, sometimes, especially cuz we went to Hershey Park and stuff like that, and sometimes it's just not that important to get a particular workout in. If you're getting none of your workouts in, you're not going to make progress. You know, you know, if you're not lifting, if you're not doing some form of cardio, you're going to have problems in terms of making any progress, but I I think having that balance of family time, training time is extremely important and right now, you know, with two little girls, it's more important to have that family time, right? Except right now where my wife's at kickboxing class with the little ones and they're running around playing with other kids there. So, that's why I was able to shoot the video. I finally got some time to myself to be able to sit down and actually synthesize my thoughts on training, on uh the difference between the consistency and progressive overload pieces and how essential they are to to lifting progress and also just in general doing both a cardio form and a strength training form. If you want a great physique, you can do it with just a strength training. I've seen it. You know, strength training in steps, that's how I built the physique to begin with, but I can tell you I need the cardio. And in fact, I need the cardio more than the strength training at this point in time uh because I want my jiu-jitsu to improve uh to another level and I think in order to do that, unfortunately, I have to get the cardio back. And so, even if that takes a hit to my overall muscle mass this year, uh it's worth it. You know, it's worth it to have my VO2 max back where it was whenever I used to be a runner, which it's not there at all right now. And uh you know, it'll take a lot of time. It's going to take all summer for me to build that base back up. And I'm going to go a lot slower than I ever have in the past with bringing the cardio back to where it used to be uh because I want to spend more time with my family. And uh before I would go for over an hour on runs on weekends. They'd be like 2-hour training sessions of just running. And one, I'm a lot older and that beats up my body for a lot more. And two, I don't want to take that time away. So, I think it's important to be intentional, I guess what I get is what I'm getting at. Intentional with your training, intentional with your family time, intentional with everything that you do in life. You know, I'm intentional with Project Ari and the things that I'm building there. Uh intentionality, I think it is a big measure of success. Anyways, thank you for your time. Those are my thoughts on this kind of stuff. I really appreciate it. This has been Toby from Toby on Fitness Tech. Uh like and subscribe. It's it's it's a huge help to me. Uh if you have any questions, if you have anything in particular you want me to talk about, uh I can do that. You know, leave leave comments. It's taken me a long time to produce this video. I apologize, but these are based on comments from people, you know, based on comments about uh injuries and and specifically the Fit Hub uh that's coming out. And you know, I'm not ready to make a switch, but I can tell you I'm concerned about the naming of the new Fit uh Fit Hub Titan max uh just because they're calling it InBody and there is a company called InBody and I thought they were one of the same and then I looked it up and they are not the same company. And they are not owned or anything like that by InBody. And then the spelling is one letter off. Uh they're going to be renaming that again. Cuz I don't think they can keep that name for very long. Uh they should probably stay with Fit Hub. You know, Fitbit Titan, they they should not they should not be doing that rebrand because if they do a complete rebrand to embody uh, they're going to have uh, trouble with the company Enbody who who already makes smart scales and all kinds of fitness tech. So, I would be a little concerned with that one in particular just because uh, one I don't see a lot of users of the thing of of their of their pieces like you see more with other pieces. Like even Anki has more you know, has more user base than them. And two, um, you know, it's definitely a pretty cool device. I mean, uh, both of these devices with the tonal style arms, I would imagine we see a Speadiance this year with the tonal style arms or radically redesigned cable cable system. Uh, maybe next year. It just depends. They've got two other devices that they're launching this year to have a whole ecosystem of devices. And uh, the nanos and the the Whoop competitor, uh, which I'll actually have I'll I'll be buying the Whoop competitor the day it comes out. So, I guess that's the question. Would you still buy stuff from Speadiance? I will absolutely be buying their Whoop competitor and testing it out the day it comes out. As long as they don't lock out there were rumors that they were going to lock out my ability to grab my data from my Speadiance. Uh, but it sounds like those rumors were unfounded and maybe they're doing like maybe they'll be doing actual APIs for us to use. Uh, but either way like what I'm doing now still works. So, where I'm using someone's GitHub repo and then we've kind of modified it to someone else's stuff and we've got everything connected and working and I can still get all my workouts uh, on Arya. I will be very disappointed if they lock that down to where I can't get them and you'll see me make a video immediately complaining. But, it sounds like they're either going to give us API access, which would be infinitely phenomenal. Like, that'd be way better than what we're doing today, where we're scraping. And every time, by the way, Aria connects, it logs out my phone. So, when Aria connects and grabs my data, it logs my phone out of the Speediance app, because you can only be logged in from one of these devices at a time, and I'm basically simulating being on my phone. Uh and there's no web app, so it'll become wildly complicated if they lock it down tremendously to where, you know, and I'll be very disappointed, right? If they're locking it down in a way that's just intentionally breaking people who want to grab their data. I don't think they're going to do that, just based upon the initial responses to the last set of API changes that caused I mean, Aria broke for a brief second until we kind of figured it all out. Someone else had already figured out for me. Um and I just re-pointed Aria at what they had already done, and everything's still working. But, yes. Long story short, uh I'll I'll be buying their Whoop competitor. I probably will not be buying the Nanos, uh just because I decided not to buy what they're based on, and I have the Speediance instead of that, right? Uh so, the the Nanos are So, they're they're like, they're making basically a Whoop clone, and they're also making a Now, I forget the name, but there there's a there's a pre-existing device that's pretty similar to what their Nanos are going to be. And I talked about it in a previous video where I was reviewing a whole bunch of different devices, or like saying my reason for buying this one over those devices. And so, I already chose not to buy that device. Now, what would be cool is if their next version of the Speediance connect with the Nanos and give you 600 lb of resistance, right? So, because I think each Nano will be 200 lbs, maybe 100 lbs. I'm hoping they're 200 lbs. I can't remember. But, whatever their Nanos are plus the combined uh ability of the unit, that would be pretty cool. So, you can connect them in, uh connect them into the base or something like that and and basically double your resistance capabilities. That would be awesome. Uh and I imagine that would require a new Speediance plus plus require the Nanos. Uh but, if they build that with their next generation, that would uh I think really serve a niche of like one-off lifts where I want really like specifically I'm thinking about dead lifts where I can max this machine. Uh where I can max this one consistently pretty effortless. Well, not effortlessly, but uh I can do it. I can do it for quite a few reps. Um so, to have my full capabilities of deadlifting would be pretty cool, but it would be a niche thing. I'd probably use it twice a year, you know? But, having the Nanos and having them portable and being able to take them outside and use them at all the other places where I use the gym, it would not be a waste of money to buy those if if I could connect them into this machine. But, otherwise, it is a waste of money cuz I just uh most I would say 90% of my lifting is done on this machine still and 10% is done on all of the other training centers that I have at the house and the the jujitsu gym. So, I will do some lifts. Uh week or two ago, I was doing some really light lifts and then I ended up uh playing games with the kids. And that's where like I was benching, I was I actually used someone else's weights where they had it all set up for themselves and then they weren't there. So, I just used their weights, which is awesome because I'm way stronger than them. So, whoever was there was like was not as strong as me, which is really fun to go in and be able to lift everything in the gym, right? Whenever it's already set up for weights and you just don't have to think about it. You can throw it around like it's nothing. Uh but unfortunately, I was bench pressing, uh which is one of the times where I was barbell bench pressing, which is really rare, but it was like 135 is what they had on it, which it is pretty trivial, but I was I was benching their weight, and you know, my littlest one wanted wanted me to play with them, and they were playing some 99 nights game that they had came up with. And and I ended up playing that instead, right? Where I'm trying to chase them around. Basically, most of their games involve you trying to chase them around in some way in imaginary play. Uh which is fun, you know. Anyways, uh long rant short, I guess, or long rant long, but the moral of the story is make sure you balance family life, training, everything else, and try to come up with a balance that works for you. Everyone's balance is going to be different. Uh I'm not David Goggins. You know, I mean, he's he's one of them where uh I was pretty harsh on some David Goggins stuff, and uh you know, I don't usually commentary I don't have a lot of negative commentary on public public figures. Like, Mike Israetel, I went to bat for his jiu-jitsu. I thought the commentary on that was a little unfair and a little uh overly critical. Uh and some of his training content is great, some of it's not my favorite, right? But I will I will crap on uh David Goggins in particular because uh he's destroyed a lot of relationships with uh with his training style. So, you can go hard like that, but uh be careful what it does with the relationships of the people around you, you know? And uh you know, it's all his business, it's none of my business, right? But uh in listening to his book, the failed marriages, that kind of stuff, when you train that hard and when you go that hard, uh you make sacrifices, you know? And uh I don't think he would even not admit that, you know, that he made sacrifices that maybe he doesn't regret them. Um but I don't want to be in that situation where you know, my training has has a whole bunch of regrets around not being with my family when I should have been. Right, you know, and and you have to take some kind of a balance because I also want my family to see uh that I work out, right? And see that I train. So uh I do quite a bit of training with them and in fact my sister started doing it with her boys. And I think it's so exciting. Like to just get them involved. Don't worry about the weight. Don't worry about the progressive overload. Don't worry. Just get them to throw around some weight and have fun and not get injured. Right? I mean that's that's when you're a kid you got to make it fun, right? So that's what I try to do with mine is just have them have fun in the gym and make it exciting for them. I'm more critical of my wife which I probably should take the tact that I take with my kids, right? And not have that tact of you need to be progressively overloading. You need to you know, have the expectations I have on myself on her. Um but with the kids I have a lot not lowered expectations but uh just I want them to have fun with it right now. And not think of it as a chore, right? I try to make that in fact with everything. With cleaning, with all the things I do. I try to not make them chores and I try to make it fun time with daddy because like I need help with small tasks and stuff like that. Like you know, me and Maggie were cleaning the basement one day and I'm like I'm really curious how this will go cuz Maggie can be more temperamental of the two of my children in terms of helping with things. But she was in a good mood and she wanted to help and honestly it got the job done in a third the time if I'd been doing it my self just having someone else there uh bounce ideas off of and ask, "Hey, where do you think we should put this?" or that kind of thing. It helps to involve the rest of your family, and that's what I try to do with my lifting, too. So, thank you for your time. This has been Tobey and Fitness Tech. Like, subscribe. I really appreciate it. Leave comments if you have questions. And I'll talk to you next time.