Build Your Best Training Split: Arnold Blueprint (PPL), Full Body, or Bro Split?

Hello and welcome back to Toby on Fitness Tech. So, I'd gotten a question before I went on vacation uh about training and specifically splits and what splits do I do? I didn't get a chance to answer it before I uh went and did some traveling uh over the holidays, but now I'm back and I figured I'd finally answer that question. And the reason why I didn't just answer the person uh with a very quick answer like because it's just what training split do you do? You'd think that'd be you know oh you know pushpull legs bro split like you know what I mean or full body workout right? You'd think it it'd be one of the three and I could just answer that question. But the answer is actually it depends. And that's why I wanted to make it into a little bit of a more long form video and explain that the training that I did to get the physique that I have today is actually not the training that I do today. If that makes any sense. So in 2023 when I was actually building this physique whenever I was going from uh morbidly obese to fit, right? And I did it in a six-month period. I had a whole video where I kind of highlight and break down that and that's where this question came up is on that video where I highlight and break down uh the things that I did all of the parameters that were put in place to make that possible in that time frame uh with of course a doctor's supervision but like it it was rigorous to do it that quickly. Um and and then so during that though I mentioned about training but I didn't go into great depth right and I figured here I'll go into great depth on that training first and then explain what I do today. So that training back in 2023 was actually the Arnold blueprint workouts that were modified for the tonal. So, right now I have the Spedience behind me, but back then it was the tonal and it was put on my wall. And uh thankfully my login for Tonal still works and I can go and actually pull up those old workouts. So realize I have no ability to actually do workouts on the Tonal even though I still have the device. It's sitting in my hallway still uh yet to get its cable repaired and put back up on the wall somewhere else where I can just use it as a dumb cable machine. But you have to click around a million times. Realistically, it's probably not going to get used very often. Uh, in fact, it's if it gets used, it'll be by my wife or something like that. Um, I doubt I'm going to even use a thing, but my wife might end up using it for just basic cable stuff every now and then, especially to work on her shoulder. Um, she's doing jiu-jitsu now, and of course, white belt, you get shoulder issues. So, back then I used the Arnold blueprint workouts and what they look like is a split workout and they're push pull legs and they're they're broken down into days and then you do the same workout on a couple of the days and then there's like one where you have a specific workout. Um, I could go through them right now so that I have them pulled up. That's why I have my phone in front of me so I can actually look down at the phone, go through and go to my custom workouts. And um by the way, these workouts are not recreated on the speeds. Um or at least I didn't recreate them on the speeds. They would be capable. It'd be easy to recreate them on the speeds, but I did not. And that's because I don't plan on ever doing them again. Um they were phenomenal for building this physique. Uh you know, initially like they were what I needed to do because I was driving such a calorie deficit to maintain the muscle mass I had then. I mean, they were phenomenal for that. And so they um I had renamed them to um to TP Blue and the the original because the original blueprint workouts that someone else had someone else had done this work for me. They took those blueprint workouts, they put them onto the tonal, but the problem with the way they put them onto the tonal is they were split over multiple workouts. They included the off tonal components. So, there's a whole bunch of exercises that Arnold did that you can't do on the tonal. Like the tonal's uh amount of exercises is like minuscule in comparison to what you can do on the speed dance in terms of number of uh number of different exercises. The speeds has it trumped by a massive percent. Uh and that's just something important to realize. Uh but anyways, so the so like Monday, Thursday, it was skull crushers, it was bench press, it was pullovers, you know, it was all these pushing exercises, incline press, uh calf raises in there apparently. Um so there's all of these different there's all of these different things that are in there. And the way they worked is you had you had all of these um so you had like let me see if Tuesday shows it. So yeah so you had all of these so Tuesday is a better example of it. Um Tuesday you have these blocks where you have 6 12 15 and then 25 rep sets. So you're doing a warm-up set and then you're doing you're doing 6 12 15 25. So the weight goes down and the tonal handles all this automatically. Uh, and so would the the speedians if you were doing this, you'd have to set it all up. But what happens is you do six reps and then you're doing it at, you know, and I don't remember what the percentages were, but basically you're doing six reps, you know, at at x% of your one rep max and then and then 12, 15, 25. You can't customize any of this on the tonal. So you get what you get. You can't in the speediance you can give it your uh RA like what you actually want it to be speed tonal made it and simplified all that uh and they just give you a value which is like your warm-up set and then you're going to PR if you do an extra rep on any of those sets. So it's it's kind of like one R is where all of their stuff is. Um, and it's all calculated and tuned. But yeah, it's 6, 12, 15, 25. So, seated overhead press, bicep curls, and they're all uh in training blocks. And that's the other thing that I did uh whenever I So, the reason why they're not the original blueprints and I put my name in front of them is because is because I actually adapted them so that all of the exercises would be in blocks. not the original blocks, but blocks based upon where they were heightwise on the on the tonal. And I do the same thing with a speed dance. So I do all exercises at the L0 through L3 height. And then I move down and do the exercises that are at the bottom of it. So L6 through L9. And then I do the ones that are from the frame. So I uh I do that with everything. Like I've been doing that since the the tonal days. Like I do think it's much preferred to have everything kind of structured that way. It's just faster. It's just less time consuming taking things on and off and moving things. Um and so that that's what these workouts look like. So it was a push pull legs. It was grueling. I mean you're talking about 25 rep sets. Um for the first four months that's what I did. I think it was around four months. I mean, it's been two years, but I'm I'm pretty sure I did four months of that. And I hit almost every workout except I'm pretty sure whatever workout was the leg workout, that one was the most often missed. And I'm trying to figure out what it was because the the Monday, Thursday, I almost always hit. Um because I love that workout. The uh the the Tuesday workout I always hit. Uh, let me see. Is it Friday, Sunday? No, Friday, Sunday I would always hit. It's Wednesday, Saturday. Yeah, Wednesday, Saturday is the one that is most like, especially because Wednesday is in the middle of my training week. So, I would train uh Monday morning, Monday night jiu-jitsu, right? And then I'd be off Tuesday, which makes it really easy to hit that workout. But Monday is the beginning of my week, so I'm the freshest for that. Um, so usually I could get some kind of a workout in liftwise. Uh, but Wednesday is especially brutal because I've trained then I've trained hard lifting on Tuesday. The Tuesday lift workout was grueling. I mean, that's the that's the most grueling of all of these workouts is the one that they have for Tuesday. Um, and then and then the Wednesday Saturdays would would be the most most likely missed ones. Um, and especially because Saturday was uh, you know, Sat, so I'd be fatigued. I'd be very fatigued by Saturday. Um, but yeah, that that was that was the general consensus of that. So, it was four months of that and then I took off the 25 rep sets. So, I did the same workouts for two more months, knocked off those 25 uh rep sets. And after I built that physique, it's kind of like where do you go from here? Right? And where I decided to go from there is to switch my workout paradigm from that type of a workout to a fullbody all-encompassing single workout that I could do kind of over and over again and build a couple different variants of that from the movements from from the Arnold workouts that I like the best. So I took all of the work all of the lifts that were my favorites, which there was a lot of them in there. So, there's a lot of different lifts and the ones that were my favorite. Plus, I added some stuff that I wanted to that I'd been, you know, kind of experimenting with and I wanted to put them into a workout. So, I did a full body minus legs because I realized that if I add the legs to the workout, I'm probably not going to do it. So, uh that that's the approach that I took. And so, I have these full body minus legs workouts. And that's pretty much what I've been doing ever since except there was one challenge on Speedance. So I was talking about these Spedience challenges and there was one month where they did this lunar challenge and the lunar challenge was you had to work out every day. And it was the first time where these pushpull legs from Arnold, those wouldn't work for it because they're too grueling, too taxing for where I'm at right now and the amount of time I'm going to dedicate to training. And uh and my workouts, I thought, oh, I'll just be able to do my workouts. And what I'll do is I'll do my full workout, which by the way, this Sunday I did a full workout. And to give you an idea, the full workout is 41.5K pounds is what I did on Sunday on that workout. And that's and these workouts are full body minus legs and all kinds of different exercises. And they're one warm-up set, one set to failure of each exercise. So, I go through I have a list of warm-ups and then I have a list of of uh of of exercises. And unlike the tonal exercises that I had back in the day where the blocks were three or four exercises, my block, which is not really a block in here, they're just all sequenced. My block is actually more like eight, nine exercises. So, it's eight or nine exercises in a row where I'm doing all the warm-ups for it and then I'm hitting the the real sets of those. And the thought process of that is if you have nine of them ahead of time, that gives you a lot of time to make the decision of am I going to do the hard sets or not? And so, what I thought I was going to do for that lunar challenge is that's fine. I'll do Sunday I'll do a full workout. Monday I'll do a warm-up set only. Tuesday, I'll do a warm-up set only. Wednesday, I'll hit a full workout. And if I do just warm-up sets, you're looking at about 10,000 pounds lifted roughly, right? Just doing the warm-up sets. Uh so it's it's not insignificant. And that's and the reason why it's not more than that, you'd think, oh well, that it should be half about half, a little under half. But what happens is there's eight or nine workouts, then the lift, then the hard lifts, and then there's going to be another set of four or five workouts of warm-ups, and then another set of four or five, you know, hard exercises or or some some variant thereof depending on I have different I have four different of these workouts that I've built. And the workouts are built in a way that's designed to maximize the efficiency on the machine. So more thought is put into how to maximize the efficiency of the machine than anything else. But it is a a basically full body workout minus, you know, actually one of my workouts has deadlifts, which is the only leg exercise and calf raises. So I should say almost all of them have calf raises. Um because I have a lot of ankle issues and actually that's what I blew right before vacation. I blew my left ankle again uh kickboxing. So my my first vacation I had a boot on my foot and uh it's the same injury I had in 2018. I actually injured the same thing running. So I injured it running in 2018. uh ended up at the orthopedics place then and then came back and they're like ah this is the same foot almost the same injury you know uh a little bit worse this time actually I tore the tendon off the bone so same basic injury but uh calf raises are in and I can now do them at pretty much full strength which is good that means everything's kind of healing up after a month and a half uh from from from the injury. But yeah, they are full body and they uh they they you know I thought they were going to work for the Lunar Challenge perfectly and I got into it and I tried it and after three days I realized I was going to fail miserably because the third day of just doing warm-up sets I was so fatigued I couldn't do them. So, I had to skip the day and then I could do the full workout again, but this is not going to work. I have to redesign my program. And that was the first time where I built individual day exercises of individual muscles and did the bros split. And I did that for the rest of the lunar challenge. So, uh for the lunar challenge in particular, I switched over to a brosplit. Uh, but that was because of and then by the end of it, I was tired of doing that and I wanted to go back to my because it's a lot of days. I don't like working out. I don't like lifting every day. I work out every day, but I don't like lifting every day anymore. I did that to build this physique. I don't want to have to do it now. I want to be able to get in, hit the speeds up a couple days a week, three days, four days a week maximum, you know? So, two days at a minimum and four days at a maximum. and hit the machine up, hit it hard while I'm working on it, and then not have to worry about it. And having to do a workout every day just doesn't fit into my schedule right now with two little ones. So, uh, we're we're going all over the place most of the days of the week. And even like today normally would be kickboxing for me, but with that injury, I'm still not 100% ready to go back and throw kicks with that foot yet. So that's that's how I got the time to actually record the video that I've been wanting to make for quite a while. What I'm getting at though is my opinion on training splits are do whatever will work for you in the situation you're in today. And if you're trying to build a phenomenal physique, I think you could build it on PPL. I mean, for sure, because that's what I built mine on, you know, Arnold's Arnold's blueprint modified onto one of these devices. That's a phenomenal approach. And I think the other one that would really work based upon the lunar challenge is that bro split. I saw huge gains, especially in my biceps, from having a specific targeted arms day workout. You know, before I had a full body workout and there was some arm work in there, but there wasn't 10 arm exercises in a row in there. You know, it was a lot of back work with a little bit of arm work. in my full body workouts, it's mostly back. Uh it's mostly upper back, too. Uh to try to make sure that I don't tear her shoulder again. So, it's a lot of that kind of work. And I have had no shoulder injuries for all of these for all of the years post switching over to the tonal originally. And uh for someone who does jiu-jitsu, that's rare. And in fact, I was having injuries to my shoulders all the time whenever I was freelifting. It's why I'm pretty passionate about using these devices instead of using free weights. Even though I have free weights, I still love free weights in a in in a way, you know, it's not like I think they're useless and terrible. I just think everything has an application. And if you're doing crossport stuff, the these are far safer. You know, I had an argument with someone and I talk about it. I talked about on the channel before where they said free weights are safer and then they told me I need two spotters because they realized, oh, he's strong, you know, and I'm big. I'm right now I'm 225 pounds, right? So I'm 225 pounds and I'm relatively strong and uh so not even one spotter is going to work for certain lifts for me. you know, it just So now they're like, "You need two spotters and I I have this machine. That's all I need. I could I could work out right now. I don't need anyone else here." So that is what I'm getting at with the safety of these machines. Are they, you know, are they as good as two spotters? Probably not. Uh to be honest with you, that's probably not realistic that they they can replace two spotters. But uh are they better than no spotter? Which is what I was doing before by the way. I was lifting with absolutely no spotter. So realize that in my basement lifting by myself with no spotter because I prefer to train alone. And so in that in that preference of training alone, I you know I gave up the ability to have a spotter. And I I did I did drop a weight once and uh so you know that's pretty dangerous whenever you drop it, bend the bar because I had I had a lot of weight on it. Bent the bar and thankfully I got my head out of the way and it caught on one of the safety catches but when it caught it bent the bar almost, you know, in half. So just realized that you know you can have some seriously dangerous stuff happen with free weights. I mean, you see it on the all the time online. If you look at the people who uh go to bench and then have it roll up on their neck and you know that that can kill you and has killed people. Uh and that's all because of no spotter. Like that could that couldn't have happened to me because of the placement of where I bench. It'd land on my stomach and then like I had that happen once where I couldn't pick it back up and I had it on my stomach and I forget what I did. I think I tilted it to the side and threw it off whenever I got strong enough. Like whenever I repaired, you know, whenever I got enough energy back in my left arm, I threw it off to the side. But that also happened to me where I couldn't pick it back up and put it on the catches because I I went to failure. This machine, I can actually go to failure and just and just uh you know, it handles it that way. But in general, my stance on what you should be doing is whatever you have time for. I would really not recommend because the bros split immediately became uh a really terrible idea for me the second that competition was over and I noticed it immediately. I'm like, "Wow, I can't do this kind of workout because I'm going to just miss days." Uh I I left the arm workout in and I will do that every now and then between major workouts. So I will do that as its own thing uh between major workouts and I'll do pieces of it, right? I'll just do the the warm-up sets from the arm workout as its own kind of pseudo workout. Uh like tomorrow I might end up doing that because today I I did most of a workout. That's the other big thing that I would say even on the speedians I wouldn't worry about completionism around your workout. Uh and what I mean by that is there are days where I don't get the whole work like today I got uh so Monday so Sunday I did the massive full workout and then uh I can't remember and I have it on the other phone what what all workouts I did this week but I know I skipped a day and today I went to work out uh or no I I did it sat Saturday or Sunday I did the full lifts and then today I went to work out because today's Monday. Um, today I went to work out and I definitely didn't have the strength I had on the other workout and I got through all my warm-ups. I actually did the majority I did h I got halfway through the working sets and then finally I was like enough is enough. I'm losing too much strength. I don't feel strong enough to continue. and I called it there. It's like you don't have to you can just end the workout when you feel the workout's over. It's not the end of the world to say, "Nope, I'm going to call this here." And uh so that that's what I ended up doing today. But this is all after I built that initial physique. I I wasn't ending workouts early at all whenever I was going from 250 pounds down to 185 pounds. So realize then I was not ending workouts early. I was following the plan and executing it to perfection, right? Everything had to be perfect during that time. However, now I I give myself a lot more grace on this, especially because right now I'm I'm starting the preparation for uh the Lucky Charm race here locally, which is like uh it's a four mile race, which is not far, but for the deconditioning, for the ankle injury, uh for the fact that I haven't really run seriously in years, um to get back into it and start training for for that is actually my primary objective. So I always set up a structured list of what are my primary objectives. So sometimes it's jiu-jitsu is at the top of the list. Sometimes obviously lifting and losing weight in 2023 was the top of the lift list and I didn't do any running and I didn't do almost any jiu-jitsu. In fact, I almost took the entire winter off. Like I was gone. I may have showed up once every two weeks and I and honestly I did terribly when I showed up so I might as well have not been there like it was that bad of performances in 2023 over you know when when I was doing this when I was losing all that weight. Uh now the priority is uh is the running is number one e even over the jiu-jitsu. So, like it's going to be running and then it's going to be uh probably lifting and then jiu-jitsu comes in at number third, but it's a close third to the lifting. And what I've realized some of my jiu-jitsu training sessions, I came back last Friday to jiu-jitsu and I wear a Whoop and it shows me the uh heart rate strain of the jiu-jitsu sessions because I wear it in my underwear. And that actually registered as one of my hardest runs and it thrashed me to be able to do my run for that day. So I have to be cognizant of jiu-jitsu does not really interfere with my strength training very often. Every now and then it will. I'll have a particularly strengthbased jiu-jitsu training day and you'll know like you know because you can barely move your arms after it. That was a strength-based jiu-jitsu training day. And they happen every now and then, but they're pretty rare. Um, you know, I would say one in 10 training sessions are like that. Uh, it's more likely to get the cardiovascular strain that I got on Friday than the strengthbased train. And there's no measurements for that, by the way. The WO can't measure it. uh nothing really does a very good job from what I've seen of measuring uh strain strengthbased strain and um at least not for jiu-jitsu. So it'll measure your heart rate but it will not measure actually the garment believe it or not the Garmin body battery will actually take it into account. So if I have a purely strength-based training session and then I look at this Garmin. So, right now it shows my body battery. Oh, I'm at 5%. Okay, so apparently that strength training session today was brutal. Whoops. So, yeah. Uh, my body battery is at five. So, that's about as low as it goes. I didn't realize it. You know, I'm assuming it can go the whole way to zero, but uh yeah. So, that strength training exercise was brutal, and I called it when I should have. So, I wear both of these devices, by the way. And maybe I uh discuss it now. Yeah, because I have time to discuss it now. So, I wear a Whoop and a Garmin. And my wife wears an Amazefitit and a BIP, which is another Amaze Fit. So, she wears two Amaze Fit devices. And uh the Whoop is invaluable for things like jiu-jitsu. Like if you do jiu-jitsu, uh you have to either get the Amaze Fit or the Whoop. Like those are pretty much your only options. I think there's a couple other ones coming out now, but those are the two kind of big ones, you know, and Amazefitit's new, right? But that also works for jiu-jitsu. Uh you can wear it on your wrist or on your bicep for the Amaze Fit. But my problem is I wear the Whoop in my underwear. And actually, the Amazefitit will fit in my underwear, but I don't know if it will work, right? I've never tested it. Uh, which is probably a test I should run just to be able to let you guys know if the Amaze Fit works in the underwear. But like, who's going to go out and buy last generation's Whoop underwear to put it in the underwear? Because this generation's Whoop underwear is terrible, by the way. Uh, I'm so disappointed in the Whoop 5. And what's funny is I just renewed my membership for 18 months. So I took their Black Friday deal. They give a Black Friday deal every year. And I did renew my membership. This is the Whoop MG. I would not recommend. So I wanted the WhoopMG sensor because according to the quantified scientist is actually a better sensor than the the Whoop 5. So, if you look up his stuff, he he goes into detailed breakdowns of all of these sensors and how good are they. Uh, and he actually said the MG sensor was better. But I'm downgrading from Whoop Life to Whoop Peak with my renewal whenever that happens later this year because honestly the the the detailed blood pressure metrics and ECG are one-time kind of things. they're utterly useless outside of like checking them once or twice. Um, and the blood pressure stuff is not useful at all for me. Uh, I haven't found any value in it to be honest with you. I take blood pressure medications. My blood pressure is controlled through that. So, I take I take 20 milligrams of Toma Sartan. Uh, that happened during the long flu. So, I had never been on blood pressure medicine until uh my hospitalization incident had occurred after getting uh that vaccine. So, uh yeah. So, I'm now on blood pressure medicine. So, that's fun. But uh but long story short, my my blood pressure is perfectly in range and I test it with a cuff. And you do have to test it with a cuff to get the Whoop MG to work. Uh, in fact, some of my blood pressure met metrics are skewed, but I was drinking a pot of coffee and they actually think I've fixed the underlying like whatever was causing my blood pressure to be high during that period is fixed, but my coffee intake is now remaining keeping it high. And the blood pressure medicine is putting it in range, but it's self-induced. and they want me to get off the coffee which might actually hap it is actually happening for this year. So it it I am actually reducing the coffee for the first time ever. Not just because I switched to decaf for my pot of coffee. So, I drink a couple glasses of coffee and then I switch to decaf for the pot of coffee that I drink. And during vacation, I massively lowered my caffeine intake. Uh, and was able to do that. So, long story short, I am actually working on that piece. But yes, these devices, uh, the What do I think of the Whoop? Uh, first of all, Whoop strength training. So, the Whoop Strength Trainer is awful. It's terrible. Like, it is it's downright dreadful. Uh, it can't bring in data from anything else. So, it can't bring in data from Speedance. It can't bring in data from Tonal. It can't bring in data from other apps. It uh it's a walled garden and it's bad. So, it didn't have progressive overload. It didn't have it. It basically required you to double enter everything. There's no progressive overload. I it's a nightmare to deal with. Um, you know, because I have to do the double entry, it did show it then shows you muscular strain. So, even though it can't show you muscular strain for jiu-jitsu exercises, right? And and now logs all of them as I guess strength training by the way in its algorithm. So, it has an algorithm for the reason why I kept it for 18 months is it has this feature uh called like the health I don't know what they call it now, but it's basically gives you an age. Gives you a score, which is an age. And some people were complaining, oh, it shouldn't be an age. And it's like, well, that's just an easy representation of how well are you doing. And by the way, right now I'm older, which I had gotten it to where I was younger last year and uh younger than my actual age, but now I'm older than my actual age because of all these vacations. It turns out if you do no training for an entire month, uh you will definitely age yourself. Oh, and then you travel, you spend over 24 hours in planes and uh you know, a ton of time on a ship, right? So, it turns out if you spend all of that time on planes and ships and that kind of stuff, you're going to age yourself real quick. So, uh, and then on the plane, of course, there's no sleep. So, yeah, the Whoop was not happy about the entire sleepless day where I had a, you know, where I had a I didn't get a 1% sleep score. It actually didn't even register any sleep. So, it's probably the first time where it didn't register sleep where I didn't like forget to charge it or something like that. There's been a couple days where I forgot to charge it. One day, I had it off. Uh, the Gorman, by the way, I used to not wear when I slept. I'm only wearing it when I sleep now because of this run coming up because, uh, they have a daily suggested run and I found that to be horrible, but also motivational. And what do I mean by that? So, their daily suggested run, one, my max heart rate was set to 202 on this device. Couldn't find it in Garmin Connect at all. I had the comet browser, the Perplexity Comet browser, try to actually find the setting in Garmin Connect, and it actually figured out that it's not there anymore. Um, and it's moved to on device, and it's set wrong on this device because I'm guessing it picked up the settings from my prior devices. And this has the max heart rate from when I was actively running 170 pounds eight years ago at 202, which there's no way my max heart rate is that high anymore, you know? It's probably well, it should be 180 something, right? It should be like 180. And uh so it was skewing all my workouts, telling me I'm not training as hard as I actually am. And so I fixed that today, which should fix a lot of my issues with the daily suggested workouts. But even then, the daily suggested workouts are skewed to not take into account strength training or jiu-jitsu or anything like that. So, the biggest problem with a daily suggested workout is if I do jiu-jitsu in the morning, that daily suggested workout needs to move from being um needs to move from being extremely difficult, like if I get a 133 strain to really easy, and it doesn't do that. It doesn't recalculate it based on what's already happened in the day. It sets them at the morning. you have the ability to do more like there's an option in Garmin to go through and pick a different exercise and not the one they suggested. So, it's not the end of the world. You can do that. But I'm just warning you with Garmin system, it doesn't take into account cross trainining in any way, cross trainining, strength training wise, cross trainining, anything. And actually, the Garmin doesn't even know about my uh jiu-jitsu workouts at all. So, I don't there's no way to really easily import the data into Garmin from Whoop. So, and I do not want to wear a chest strap during jiu-jitsu. People have tried it. They always fail. I've never seen someone consistently wear a chest strap for a long period of time. People will do it. I know a lot of people who have had the idea of doing it, but then you have to go start your workout on your phone. Usually, it's a huge pain in the butt. and uh and just not practical, right? The Whoop is probably the only practical uh thing for jiu-jitsu, especially because if it doesn't register a workout for me, I don't go in and enter it. So, if it hasn't because the Whoop's algorithm is it's like 10 minutes, 10 or 15 minutes, something like that, of elevated heart rate, that's when it logs a workout. So, it's a pretty uh specific, you know, thing that you have to do. And uh then it starts then it automatically picks up a workout, guesses what it was, and it guesses jiu-jitsu, right? It either guesses it jiu-jitsu or wrestling. That's all it's ever guessed. So, it it does it pretty well. Uh what's funny is my kickboxing workouts sometimes it it logs them as running. And I always I always was messaging the coach when that happened and be like, "Dude, too much running in this class." If it's logging at us running, that meant you made us run way too much. You know, that was not not enough punching and kicking or way too much running. Uh but uh the Whoop actually is phenomenal at exercise detection if you understand that it takes it uh like sometimes I'll run to to pick up my my my child at school and it's about a 10-minute run and that won't get picked up. So that run isn't going to get picked up by Whoop. But because I started on the Garmin, it automatically actually gets picked up on the Whoop. So, because when I'm running to the school, I actually log it in the Garmin because I want to see uh how fast I did it. And so, I will log it in the Garmin and that will actually automatically translate pick it'll go in Apple Health and then pick it up on the Whoop and auto log it. So, anything that's in Apple Health, it will automatically import into the Whoop and go that direction. So, I actually think these devices are phenomenal. Uh, I wish I had one device, one brand that I could use for everything. And I actually think Amazefitit's eventually going to be there. I just wasn't comfortable that they're going to be there in the next uh 12 months. And and speaking of Whoop, the the Whoop Health where they had the age thing, that is hugely valuable because it it really emphasizes cardio in a way that I think is meaningful and important. So although I built this body only strength training and walking and doing but realize that's 10 to 20,000 steps a day of walking. It's not like a small amount of walking but it was strength training and walking exclusively to maintain muscle mass while driving the weight down. I am a big proponent of hard cardio. You know I'm a former runner. Like I don't think it's useless. And I see some people online where they say that strength training is analogous to um to something that has long-term gains and cardio is something that has no long-term gains, right? They they go through all these an analogies, but basically that's what they're getting at with these analogies that strength training has long-term gains uh and cardio doesn't. And they are correct in the fact of calorie burn, which is what they're talking about, but they don't mention that they're specifically talking about calorie burn. And there is so much value to cardio outside of the calorie burn. You know, the fact that I I'm 99% sure that the fact that when I was hospitalized that I didn't die or have to have emergency surgery was because of all of those years of running that I had built a stronger heart over all of those years, right? And I'm very thankful for all the running I did. And I don't think it's I don't think I think it's equally as important as strength training except let's be realistic. You can do no cardio and have an amazing physique, right? If physique goals are what you're trying to attain, you can just walk, you know. But I do think that and there's actually this guy that I listen to and I'm blanking on his name now, but he talks about just walking to maintain his physique and he's he's a little bit older gentleman now. Paul, what's Paul's last name? But anyways, um, pretty sure his first name is Paul, but yeah, he he talks about walking, but he's doing it on an incline, and I'm pretty sure he's getting his heart rate actually up into zone two um, when he's doing this. So, it's not it's a pretty intense walk from what I gather. You know, if you can get yourself the whole way to zone two, you've got a decent incline. And, uh, it's not a it's not a leisurely walk at that point in time. It is still technically walking, but if you're walking on an incline or walking with a weighted vest and driving your heart rate up into zone two, you're really getting a lot of the benefits. Uh you still don't have that hard cardio that's especially important for something like jiu-jitsu because our workouts are not zone two. In fact, if you look at my jiu-jitsu workouts, they're no zone and then max zone, you know. In fact, you know what happened on Friday when I returned is uh there was at one point during one of my roles where the person's actually so strong, right? So I I tie my pants pretty thoroughly so that they don't get pulled down because I hate that, right? And I don't ever want to have to stop a rule to tie my pants, like call a timeout. Like that's annoying, right? I'm I'm not wasting my time doing that. Um, but what happened is they were so strong that they yanked on them and actually popped the like because I I didn't not I didn't when I tied them that morning uh cuz it's been you know probably a month or whatever. I didn't double knot them and lock the double knot in place. I just tied them once and uh and so when they pulled they actually popped the knot and like undid my pants, you know, and so and it only pulled them down a little bit. So I knew I could uh so I pulled them back up and as they're going 100% I'm still trying to tie my pants and they and the problem with it is I'm trying to tie my pants in a way that they won't pop again. So, like I'm really concentrating on this tying my pants and my feet are just moving how they need to move to cop stop them from passing my guard. So, they're standing they're doing a scan standing guard break and trying to pass my guard. And meanwhile, my focus is actually with with my like with my eyes and with my hands, right? I'm focused on trying to retie these pants in a way that like it looks like I'm casually retying my pants, but what I'm really doing is trying to think about how to knot these pants to where that won't happen again. Right? So, like there's thought going into it and my feet are just moving the way they need to move to stop the guard break. They look down and they're like, "I cannot believe that you are just tying your pants while I'm going 100%." Like, that is so embarrassing. And uh it's just one of those it's one of those things where you realize there's levels to this, right? And I'm a brown belt now and they're a white belt, right? So like the there's there's levels and like I went to a competition and people mopped the floor with me so there's you know black belts that are way higher level than me but like to to someone you know who's relatively new you realize you know it was one of those kind of eye opening moments where it's like oh yeah I've been doing this a long time to where I get the opportunity to to retie my pants during matches. But I I'm a big believer, actually I'm a big believer that the Amazefitit will eventually uh have all of the features of the Whoop with no subscription cost. So Whoop has a subscription. It's pretty expensive. Uh if you're a grappler and you crossrain and you care about these like the the age stuff where it's really taking it's triple counting cardio. So, it's counting steps. It counts in its algorithm. It counts uh zone two cardio separately. And then it counts your highintensity cardio, which I can get with jiu-jitsu or with with running, but the zone 2 stuff I can really only get uh well, you can get it other ways, right? You could get it with exercise bikes, but realize you're not getting the double counting because the steps from running count plus the plus the zone two. So you're getting like double counting for running. So it's actually really encouraging running as the way to build your to build your you know to build your to build to build your health um the way the whoop counts it. And I don't think that's wrong because steps are very important. So, it it just and I'm thankful that it doesn't subtract out your running steps because that would be rough because some days my steps would be close to zero uh still, you know, which it was there for a while like which explains the, you know, age going up by a year. And I'll get that back down. I'll get it back down by my run in March. So, by my run in March, my age will be back down below my chronological age, which makes the Whoop pretty cool to me, but I don't know if it's going to be a useful device to you. And then the Garmin, I just for me, it's the best of breed. And by the way, I've had all these things, right? So, um not all of the different running based things, but I've had pretty much all of the smart watches, right? And I have all the smartwatch features turned off on the Garmin. So realized I I realized I don't like smartwatches. Um and and so and I don't use any of its sleep tracking stuff. Uh I do use it I don't use its body battery other than to other than to its body battery is only ever used if it suggests some ridiculous run and I look down and the body battery says almost zero and then it's like you're you're not doing that run Toby. In fact, you're not running it all today because you know what is this Garmin thinking, right? Uh so their algorithms for all of this stuff like in comparison to Whoop's strain, they are infinitely worse, but they log and track in such great detail and they have such detailed tracking, especially on your runs. Like you can look up all kinds of information on your running like it has everything in there. It has how warm it was that day. It has uh are you acclimated to the heat with that run. It it recalculates lactic thresholds on the fly. Um it it does recalculate, by the way, your max heart rate. The problem is I think it only recalculates max heart rate up. It never drives it down. Uh so that's a problem, right? It thinks your max heart rate from eight years ago is still your max heart rate today. like it recalculated my lactic threshold lower than it used to be, you know, getting back into running now, but it didn't drop down the the max heart rate whenever it did that. So, uh, clearly, you know, there there's problems with every device. Uh, but this device in particular, in comparison to Strain, I just think strain's a way better metric to try to hit than their daily suggested workout. But their daily suggested workout is valuable if you're not crossraining. So it's it's like kind of one of those things where and like one day it suggested a pretty hard daily suggested workout and I had I had done my lift the day before and it's like you're not going to you're not going to be able to hit that. Uh you have to pick a different one. So I picked a different one for that day, right? I picked a different workout from their list of ones that are available. They're customized to you. So they are actually the daily suggested workouts are customized to you and it gives you multiple options. Uh and and so they're I think they're they're meaningful and valuable for running training and that's why I keep the Garmin. But definitely all the Garmin's premium service from what I can see is still junk. So I also have been tracking my uh calories now that I'm back. So, I'm tracking my calories and at first I tracked the calories because I thought I was going to go back to 200 pounds, but I came back to jiu-jitsu and I'm pushing 225 right now. And I'm just I'm not bringing the weight back off. I'm staying up here and I'm just going to rebuild my physique bigger. So, I'm I'm going to be uh you know, just a bigger version of me coming into this year. And it'll be the first time ever running at 220 lbs plus. So it'll be my first race ever at this weight. And uh and so I'm pretty excited about attempting it. And I think I will do much better than last year where I was actually two 200 lb and I failed at the run. So it took me like an hour to do this thing. It's four miles and it took me an hour. I expect to do it in under 40 minutes this year. So, I'm not guaranteeing that it's going to be a blazingly fast pace like what I used to run, you know, like used to be able to run seven minute miles, which is still not that fast for someone who runs, but it's definitely some fast for someone who doesn't run very often and does quite a bit more jiu-jitsu than running. Um, it's just all perspective, right? A runner would laugh at any of these paces, a real runner. So, I I am excited to try it though. And I came back to jiu-jitsu on Friday and I just felt bigger, stronger, uh, you know, better than ever. So, I'm going to continue at this weight because I was expecting to feel slow and sluggish and, uh, you know, all of those kind of attributes, but no, I felt good up here. So, we'll continue, you know, and I'll let you guys know my progress on that. Uh, I'll show I'll show you guys like what I actually look like physique-wise in one of the upcoming videos. It's It's coming back together. I'll show you actually uh the physique of my post cruise photo because that's the worst because I actually captured it. So, I captured my post cruise photo of 238 pounds after this cruise. Now realize that's also post cruise with a broken ankle and a boot on the ankle and then a brace on the ankle and I was on a cruise. So you can imagine I was eating garbage food 247 and I couldn't walk. So I had to take the elevator everywhere which I don't like elevators. So it was uh thankfully it was with a bunch of you know family friends and family and so it was great but uh without them it would have not been not been for me that's for sure. Uh but yeah so I I have that picture of me at 238 and I will show you guys me at probably 220 225 uh probably in the next video. So we might go back to some more speed and stuff and I'll probably be shirtless when I'm showing it. There's been a massive set of updates to the speeds. Didn't want to go over that here, but I do think that they've uh made some significant changes that are worth discussing in its own video, but I'm kind of waiting to see, you know, just waiting to see all of the updates with the V3 of the software. And I want to get it actually loaded onto my device before I comment on it. But they are making some substantial changes and uh we'll see what I think of them whenever I actually get them on my device. I I couldn't sign up for the beta like other people. So a lot of people signed up for the beta, but I was worried about signing up for the beta because it asks you which device you have and I have both. And I would obviously want it loaded onto the one up here. But the 2S, right? Oh, and the 2S wasn't even one of the options on the thing. So, I'm assuming I would have selected two, but there was no way to specify, hey, I want it specifically only on the 2S device upstairs. And they were doing it accountbased. So, I'm like, eh, let's not try to sign up for this and make their lives even harder while they're trying to build new software for these things. Like, let's not give them a complicated case to try to work on now if they haven't already worked on that case. Let's let them actually get this software ready to go and then and then we'll test it. But yeah, that's that's what I have on training splits. That's what I have on these devices. I you know, I had a Oh, I forgot to say I had an Apple Watch. Uh I had the Microsoft band actually before that. So, I've had these fitness trackers for forever. Fitness, health, whatever you call them, trackers. I absolutely despised the Apple Watch. It had crashing issues. Now, remember, this is gen one and gen two of the Apple Watch. So, I got both of those and then decided I'm binning this thing and never using it again. And that's when I switched over I think I switched over to Garmin from that. Uh, no, I switched over to some random Android thing that took pictures, which was really cool, but huge. So, oh, that's another note on the Whoop. So all of the Whoop reviewers who say that the Whoop who spout the company narrative that the Whoop 5 is smaller, let me make it crystal clear. This device is not smaller than the Whoop. Let me see if you can actually let me bring it up up. So this device is not smaller than the Whoop 4. Let me make it clear. It is not smaller than the last generation device. And you're thinking, what do you mean? They say it's smaller. Yes, they do say it's smaller. And you know what they do to say it's smaller? They have made it. So, if you look at this device, I wish I had the the four to show you, but there are some people who put them next to each other. And the one thing that they any reviewer who does it right will will tell you immediately is if they put the device next to each other this way, this device is thicker, right? So it has massively improved battery life from the Woot 4. And but what they did is they made it narrower and a little bit like thinner this way, right? both metrics that don't matter. Like the the length actually matters for people with small wrists, but I don't have like I don't have big wrists, but I don't have small wrists. So, like you could have gone out an extra inch on this like, you know, across my wrist and it would have still been fine. And I think the Whoop 4 was like slightly big. Like you're talking about like just enough that the bands don't work. That's the other thing. They made it so that none of the previous bands work from the last generation and it feels intentional. There was no need. They could have made it the exact same form factor with the new thickness, which would have been thicker, but then they couldn't say it's smaller. So, I think their trade-off was actually not as malicious as it feels as a Whoop customer. Like that none of their stuff works. I have to put a spacer in the underwear to make it match the size because like this thing is not as wide like or not as like long this way. So you put a little spacer in there and it fits perfectly in there. Um I just took like tape, wrapped it up a little bit and stuck it, you know, up against the edge of it. I'm like that's dumb that I have to do that. And they made it they made it smaller in ways that are not meaningful and larger in the only way that's meaningful, right? The only way that's meaningful is the height off your wrist. That's the only thing that matters. And if you look at these next to each other, this thing is as high as the Garmin with a screen. So if you look at the height off the wrist, their wrist, they're actually the same height. meaning in terms of comfortability of wear, they are equal com. Now realize this is the 265S, right? So I have the smaller one and you're thinking why would he get the smaller one he's got? So I before I had the Phoenix brand and and the bigger Phoenix's, right? And I bought this because of the lightness and the ability to sleep with it on because I knew I would want to use those daily workouts which require you to sleep with the device on. And I knew if I'm going to be sleeping with the device on, I want it to be the lightest, most comfortable one. So instead of going with the most features, I went with the one that I could get, the smallest, lightest one. That's why I have the 265S. You might be thinking like that's, you know what I mean, but that's a very specific niche reason. And also, it's pretty cheap, too, for for a Garmin device. like it it was relatively cheap, has a massive feature set, and I don't use any of the maps stuff. So, I should say I, you know, I just don't use the hiking trail stuff. If I'm going to do that, I'm going to load it onto my phone. I'm never going to use the device for that. I'm never going to be device free hiking. Uh, so just realize that's not a thing. I'll just load maps onto my phone. And and so it's really used for running for me. And uh so that that was the whole reason I wanted the lightest device possible. And the Phoenix's are heavy. I have a I have an old I have two I have a old Phoenix and the bigger 4Runner from the last from a from the 45 series maybe. But uh I have a bigger Phoenix which obviously that thing's really really heavy. By the way, all of these garments still work. So, you want to talk about device uh longevity. If you want the longest lasting devices out out there, there is no substitute for garments. My original Phoenix still works. Like, I could put that on tomorrow and run with the thing. I'm never going to because it's heavy and old, but you could do that. and and the the last generation that I replaced this with, I only replaced this because I wanted a much lighter device. So, and and I know it's like not that. And I wanted some of the features that came in this. I forget which feature was not in the previous generation, but there was one or two that came with this device that I actually downgraded because that was the the highest end foreigner and this is the lower-end one. And the lower-end one actually had more features than the higherend one from the 245. So I have the two I have the 945 and now I have the 265S. Oh my gosh, these naming structures are are brutal. But in the in the Garmin world, but that's where with Whoop, you you only have your choice of one one well, two devices, the MG or the five, and they're basically the same device. Uh just, you know, a couple extra sensors thrown on the MG. And with Garmin, there's like a massive array of devices. I do prefer these. I don't like the Apple Watch. I don't like anything that's going to send notifications to me. So, I really don't want notifications. I'm uh really not a fan of having things notify me. Uh so, like that's kind of out. So, the settings and then what would happen is you'd update your Apple Watch and then it would lose some of those settings that you turned off. My buddy's like, "Oh, just turn off the settings." And it's like, I swear every time you update these devices, it resets those settings to be on because it doesn't want you to not get a million notifications. And I don't think that's actually the case. And maybe they fixed it in newer generations, but it seemed to be nagwear to me. Uh, and even like the stand notifications and all the other dumb stuff that they had, uh, you know, I just didn't like any of it to be honest with you. I I I don't want, you know, a whole bunch of nagging of me by my device. So, this thing I leave it on and I only check the body battery if it's relevant because I'm about to do their daily suggested workout. And uh and I I have to wear it to sleep because I want the daily suggested workouts. So, and I and I actually think there's a whole bunch of data that eventually I'll have they have like this health uh they have all the health tracking of the Whoop now, but mine still says calibrating inside of Garmin Connect. I was checking that today to see if I could give you guys some kind of a reading of how that works, but it still says calibrating. So, once that is done calibrating, maybe I'll give an update to say, is this thing even close to what Woop can do? I know Garmin has to come out with something that can be worn on your bicep if they're going to actually compete with it because a chest strap during jiu-jitsu sucks. You know, I've tried it, too. It It's just bad before I decided to go with the Whoop. And uh yeah, so that's that's kind of this video. It's a little bit about devices and a little bit about uh training. You know, if you have any questions about how I train, how I used to train, that kind of stuff, uh, you can leave them in a comment down below. Thank you for your time. This is Toby on Fitness Tech. I'll catch you guys later.