147: Top 5 Most Valuable Fitness Tips to Thrive

30:17and pre-workout and the Arnold Fitness Expo. And then when I went to college, that's when I went just all in. I just, I became obsessed. It's funny because the first pre-workout I ever used, which if you're roughly around my age, mid thirties, and you started lifting weights and going to the gym around the same time as me, you probably have experienced no explode or NO explode. This was a pre-workout back in the day. I'm not sure if it's still a pre-workout by BSN supplements. It was in this red, like loosely transparent bottle.

31:06Nick Bare:It might've been like one of the first pre-workouts on the market, but it had a very specific taste and smell. And I was somewhere this past weekend, I can't remember exactly where, and I got a whiff of no explode, NO explode. And it took me back to my bedroom in my parents' house growing up, mixing up my pre-workout in my room, getting ready to go to the gym. and I just say it transformed or transported me back there so quickly. And that was the timeframe of when I fell in love with that part of the sport and the lifestyle and bodybuilding. And I share that to say that I learned about nutrition around performance, around body composition, from a bodybuilding perspective.

32:08This was eating clean

32:13Nick Bare:and it was eating every three hours because the thought process then was if you don't eat every three hours, you go catabolic and you start burning your muscle up. And it was chicken, rice, and broccoli prepped and stored in Tupperware containers in the fridge. I mean, I had like dozens of Tupperware containers of chicken, rice, and broccoli weighed out. And like sodium was viewed as this horrible thing. So we were all using low to no sodium seasonings. There was a seasoning called Mrs. Dash. And it was just a bodybuilding mindset around nutrition. It was high protein. it was lower fat, moderate carb, but protein was the king.

33:08And then when I started exploring more of the endurance space,

33:15Nick Bare:training for marathons and then triathlons, that was actually a really hard pivot to make. Taking this bodybuilding, body composition, aesthetic focused nutrition model and then trying to apply it to a performance focused model. And to be honest, I found that it didn't work. Certain aspects did, but it didn't fuel the training that I was doing.

33:53as I was kind of preparing these notes I was thinking back to a race I was at a few years ago it was the last man standing race in Pineland Farms Maine

34:09Nick Bare:and at this point this was 2023 I had a grasp and understanding of how to fuel how to properly fuel endurance training and endurance events. How to maximize carbohydrate intake and utilize electrolytes to fuel performance. But that took a lot of time and experience and learning and failing and making mistakes. Then I ran into this guy at the last man standing race in Pineland Farms, Maine, and he brought all of his food that he was prepared to consume during the race. And it was Tupperware containers of chicken, rice, and broccoli. He was going to eat chicken, rice, and broccoli throughout this entire race.

35:00And I don't share that to say he was wrong, but I'm assuming he came from a bodybuilding, body composition, aesthetic focused background. And that's all he knew because I was once there too. If when I was into bodybuilding and lifting weights and that lifestyle,

35:26Nick Bare:and then I just got thrown into an endurance race, Well, if all I know is nutrition for that specific type of sport or activity, I would just apply it to this new sport or activity, chicken, rice, and broccoli. And I had the conversation with him, I'm like, hey, that's gonna absolutely wreck you. Throughout this next couple hours and days, if you go that far, there's no way you're gonna be able to eat chicken, rice, and broccoli. or are you going to want to eat chicken and rice and broccoli the deeper you get into this race? You got to get creative. So here's these gels, here's these bars, here's these powders, peanut butter and jellies.

36:11When it comes to the ultra space, the diet approach and strategies is so different from what you would assume is health in sport and performance. but I think a lot of us come from I'm just assuming a lot of people start their fitness journey not all but many in the gym and it's to look better it's to feel better to build confidence get stronger so for many of us we learn about nutrition through the lens of bodybuilding and body composition and aesthetics. And fueling for that type of sport and lifestyle is very different than fueling for performance.

37:08I was recently listening to a podcast. It was the Mayhem Athlete podcast and it was titled

37:17Nick Bare:Why Bodybuilding Nutrition Kills CrossFit Performance. and honestly, after listening to that episode, that's what sparked the want to make this one of the lessons I learned in the last five years around fitness and one of the great points they brought up in this podcast was that the traditional bodybuilding diet or bodybuilding nutrition, it consists of over-consuming protein and under consuming carbohydrates and fat. Because that's just what is needed for the results and dire desires that you want to get out of bodybuilding. It's more protein. Protein is going to help recover and build lean tissue.

38:08Nick Bare:There is a thermic effect from protein. So your body, it utilizes more energy to break protein down. And you want to be leaner and there's less energy demands with bodybuilding than say endurance training. So you don't need as many calories. You don't need as many carbohydrates. You don't need as much fat. You don't need as much energy and fuel based off the energy demands of that training. But you can apply that to performance, whether that's CrossFit, High Rocks, or endurance training because as athletes who require more energy, who are expending more energy or more calories, we need more carbohydrates, which are the most easily utilized source of energy that we can consume.

39:02Nick Bare:We need more fat just to get more calories in and for hormonal and metabolic health. And if you apply a bodybuilding, nutrition, dieting approach to a lifestyle, a sport, a type of training that requires more energy, you're going to fail. You're going to experience being under-fueled and under-nourished, which equates to under-performing. you know the way that I look at food I think when when you've been training for so many years and you're signing up for races and competitions and you're trying to find ways to to get faster to get stronger to get better you start looking at food as fuel you start looking at food as feeling.

40:04Like I know if I eat this, I'm going to feel this way. Versus if I eat that, I might feel another way. If I eat something that is, for lunch, for example, my lunch every day

40:20Nick Bare:is 300 grams of jasmine rice, eight ounces of either a lean ground beef, venison, bison, chicken sometimes, throwing some buffalo sauce in there. When I eat that, it digests very well. I feel really good. It provides me energy. I know I can train one to two hours after. Versus if I go to some random restaurant on the side of the road and I pick up a cheeseburger and french fries, I know I'm going to feel like trash after that. I'm going to be tired, lethargic. My stomach's probably going to hurt. I'm not going to have a good workout or even be able to train in one to two hours. So I look at food, I look at it now through the lens of this is fuel.

41:17Nick Bare:This is how I'm going to feel. I know I'm going to feel after eating this type of food. I look at food and naturally just think of macronutrients. Well, there's roughly this much fat probably, this many carbs, this much protein, and this is how it fits into my diet and my nutrition protocol for the day. I look at food and I think of how is this going to digest, going back to how am I going to feel, and how will this contribute to my performance, whether that's for a workout coming up or the energy I need for a meeting or work or even how is this going to affect my sleep and recovery? So I look at food now through the lens of all of those things.

42:08Nick Bare:And that's why when I think of my training, if I'm focused on performance, if I'm training for an Ironman and if I think of bodybuilding nutrition, moderate carb, lower fat, high protein, I'm looking at that thinking, well, this isn't the fuel. This isn't going to equate to the feeling that I want. This isn't going to equate to performance that I need, the energy, the calories that I need. So there's a big difference between fueling for aesthetics versus fueling and eating for performance. They can be similar, but they are oftentimes and most likely very different. The third thing that I learned in my last five years of fitness is that we need to balance hard seasons and sustainable or building seasons.

43:12What does that mean? So when I say sustainable or durable seasons, this does not mean easy seasons. So there aren't seasons of, and when I say seasons, I'm talking about training. How are we approaching our health, our nutrition, our workouts, our training? There are hard seasons where we might be in this very specific focused prep or build,

43:54Nick Bare:chasing down a race or a competition. And then there's the building, sustainable seasons. I'm about to go into a building and sustainable season after this Ironman prep. I also would like us to look through this lens. this is not necessarily just talking to competitive athletes. You don't have to be someone who does race after race after race or even a professional or amateur athlete for this to be applicable. I think this lesson right here is applicable to the everyday individual. And here's why. Training, health, fitness, performance, and nutrition it is not exclusively reserved for the professional athlete.

44:45This is a personal responsibility we all have. We all have the personal responsibility of stewarding our health and our bodies. This is focusing on training. This is working out. This is moving our bodies. this is prioritizing our health this is prioritizing what we consume our nutrition our diet not eating like a slob taking accountability and responsibility of that to be able to perform maybe not to toe the line and and run a fast race but it's to perform for

45:26Nick Bare:ourselves every single day, our jobs, our work, our family, our relationships, everything. It is a personal responsibility to be able to show up and perform. This is not reserved, what I'm talking about, for competitive athletes. There are going to be hard seasons in life where you're challenged and then there's more sustainable seasons of life. Not necessarily easy seasons of life because I don't like that word or term. And I don't know if there's ever easy seasons of life.

46:08Now for the last two years, 2024, 2025, I've only put one race or competition on the calendar, each one of those years. 2024, it was High Rocks Dallas,

46:26Nick Bare:2025 is Ironman Arizona. I know a lot of people who will send me their race schedule for the year and they're not pro athletes. They're everyday individuals who work full-time jobs, who are married, who have kids and their race schedule is like six to 10 races per year to each their own. But I don't know how you're doing that in showing up for your other responsibilities. I just don't. But if you can find a way to make it work, that's good on you, truly. For me, it is one race or competition a year. And I like to go all in on that thing. Because when I'm prepping, it's anywhere for four to six months for a specific race or competition.

47:22Nick Bare:I go all in. I focus and then once that racer competition is done I then go into a sustainable durability building season this is right I pull back on my volume I pull back on intensity I have less of a tight grip on my life and trying to control every little variable for a performance focused outcome and I go back to like I mentioned in the first lesson I learned what works the best When do I feel my best? When do I perform my best? And when do I look my best in my opinion? And this is a balanced approach of strength and conditioning, strength and endurance training. So this is the way that I have approached, you know, going into hard seasons, performance-focused seasons, the last two years.

48:21and this is probably an approach that i'll take for the foreseeable future like me and some of

48:29Nick Bare:the guys were already talking about 2026 a race that we would like to put on the calendar and go throw down on and that'd be the one race that i prepare for for 2026 and i go all in on it and i put a big prep in and i'm focused and disciplined and then when that race is done, I go back into a sustainable base building, durability, get healthy season or approach. Why sustainable seasons? Well, during a sustainable season, a base building durability season, this is in my opinion where you promote more of a health focused lifestyle as opposed to a performance-focused lifestyle, which we'll get into.

49:21But in these sustainable seasons, you can prioritize, or I, at least in this case, can prioritize all the other aspects of my life.

49:34Marriage, family, kids, vacations, work. Like I've previously mentioned, when I'm going to prep, when I'm going to build, I try not to become all consumed, but I'd be lying if I said that that just doesn't happen. I'm an all-in type guy. And when I commit to something, I go all in. And at some point, it does start to all consume me

50:02Nick Bare:where I want to control every variable from nutrition to sleep and recovery and training. And it starts taking over parts of my life. at a detriment sometimes. So I'm in these hard seasons, I can be all in, I can be focused. And then when I go back to the sustainable season, it's more of a balanced approach to life. And it allows me to really reset, recover. So when I go back in another hard season of training or chasing down a fitness goal, of race, a competition, I'm then ready for it. I'm mentally, physically, emotionally prepared. But if you just go from race to race to race to race and you're always in the hard season and you never take these sustainable durability base building seasons, which trust me, I've taken this approach in the past, you end up just burning yourself into the ground and you show up for the next race season or the next prep or the next build, not excited, not recovered, not energized to put in the amount of work that's required to lead into that race or competition.

51:17Nick Bare:Now there is a difference between health optimization and performance optimization. Are they mutually exclusive? I think they can and cannot be.

51:33you know like for example in this iron man prep right now i am eating sleeping training living to optimize performance and i know that

51:51Nick Bare:if i got blood work done right now a lot of my biomarkers would be off or out of range because my health is not the focus right now. My performance is the focus right now. Same thing going back to a bodybuilding prep. I've said specific goals require training and nutrition specificity. In my bodybuilding prep, at the end, I looked my best. But if you got my blood work taken, probably all of my biomarkers would be on a range because you're pushing it to the extremes. health and performance can be synchronized but a lot of times I think you you end up choosing one over the other especially for those of us who are not professional athletes for those of us who don't get paid to train and eat and sleep and recover as it's our job because like in my case, I'm sure many other people's cases, we are trying to fit this training for a performance focused goal around our already busy, crazy lifestyle.

53:07So we are sacrificing things like sleep to go train.

53:14Nick Bare:You know, right now I'm waking up at 4 a.m. every morning to make sure that my run is done before my family wakes up. And then I train my second or third time later in the afternoon. And by the time the day is over, I'm pretty tanked, I'm pretty exhausted. So sleep is not being prioritized right now, which means recovery is ultimately not being prioritized right now, which means I don't feel my best right now, but it's what has to be done because this goal does matter to me and I have committed to it. So I'm going to do what I have to do to make sure it gets done. But I can promise you once this Ironman prep is over, I'm going to be prioritizing my health again over performance, which means I'm going to be sleeping more to feel better, to ultimately perform better because my routine and my schedule allows for it and has more flexibility and open space.

54:19Nick Bare:So does health and performance optimization have to be mutually exclusive? Absolutely not. But for many of us who also live busy, full lives with other responsibilities and things and people we have to show up for, something has to be sacrificed. And in many cases, our health ends up being sacrificed. I would say primarily because sleep ends up being sacrificed. So that, in my opinion, is the reason, the necessity of balancing hard seasons. And when I say hard seasons, again, this is a season where you might have a training specific a goal, a race, a competition, something you're trying to achieve.

55:09Balancing those seasons with sustainable seasons, base building seasons, strength seasons, off seasons, not easy seasons, but seasons that promote health, longevity, quality of life. the fourth lesson to share more is not always better and more being volume and intensity of training you know my tagline my life mission bpn's motto it's go on more and when a lot of people hear this and this is one of the reasons i wrote my book called Go One More. When people hear this, they think that we are and I am just promoting do more, do more, do more. And that's not the case. Go One More is all about doing more of the right things at the right time, in the right place, for the right reasons.

56:16It's being intentional with what we do more of. It's not just do more, do more, do more. Go on more is an outcome. Part of go on more is an action. Sometimes to achieve the outcome of go on more, you're actually going to have to do less. You're going to have to be aware, have honest conversations with yourself, and maybe do more recovery and do less of the work so that you can experience the growth and the outcomes of go on more. But some people just look at go on more and think we and I are just saying, do more, do more, do more. That's not the case. There is a critical component of intentionality behind those three words, go on more.

57:15Because there is a point of diminishing return when you try to do more and more and more. This can be applied to all aspects and areas of life, not just training. I would argue that the restraint

57:31Nick Bare:and discipline required to do less, especially for type A driven individuals, is actually harder than doing more.

57:44In the way that I used to train, more was always better and i would i would even know it you know like it'd be i remember

58:002017 2018 just getting out of the army you know i didn't meet steph at this point yet wasn't in a relationship no kids

58:13Nick Bare:fresh out of the army building BPN and I would do a big workout in the morning or a run and a second workout in the afternoon and sometimes it'd be late at night and me, Joe and Preston wouldn't have anything else that we had to do. My body would hurt and I knew that I shouldn't train and that if I trained, it would actually probably hurt me more than help me. But there was something in my head that was saying, just go train again, just go train again, just go train again. So I'd go train for a third time and be a horrible training experience and workout. I'd feel horrible the next day. But as driven individuals, and if you're listening to this podcast and if you follow my content, chances are you're a very driven, disciplined type A individual.

59:07You want to achieve, you want to perform.

59:13Nick Bare:sometimes we are the people who have a harder time restraining and being disciplined to do less. And that's actually easy for us or easier for us to do more. And it's been a problem for much of my life when it comes to fitness

59:37is learning how to restrain myself and do less because there is a point of diminishing returns.

59:44Nick Bare:You can't just keep adding on more volume and intensity to your training and expecting greater returns over and over and over again. You get to a point where you actually start experiencing declines in performance. There have been many fitness preps that I've done in the past. especially ones where I haven't used coaches. This Ironman prep is different. I think I'm at a different time and experience in my fitness journey and understanding proper programming. But in the past, when I haven't been working with a coach, which is one of the reasons that you can and should work with a coach, is that when I haven't worked with a coach in the past, I haven't been disciplined or restrained.

1:00:34Nick Bare:with the amount of training that I should be doing. So I'd add more on top of. And I've been in preps before where I've seen the deeper I get into a prep or a build, performance decline. I'd get slower. I'd get weaker. I would watch my endurance just become softer over time. So I would do more and more and more because I'm seeing my performance decline. And I'm thinking, well, the only way to get past this and dig out of this plateau and this decline is to add more volume, add more intensity on top. And as you add more on top and more on top and more on top, you see more decline. Point of diminishing return because the truth is more is not always better.

1:01:25There's a really thin red line that you have to teeter

1:01:30Nick Bare:when it comes to pushing the limits of performance. and then going too far, doing too much and seeing a decline as opposed to a growth. I think back to a marathon prep that I did where I started before this Ironman prep and we slowly increased running mileage. So I had my daily run at nine miles a day and I felt very strong, felt very strong and then we went from 9 miles a day to 11 miles a day because we're trying to get running mileage up to a certain point to build a certain level of fitness and from going from 9 miles a day to 11 miles a day everything fell apart overuse injuries flared up I wasn't recovering properly just 2 additional miles a day that's how thin that red line is that you're teetering to maximize performance and ultimately go over the red line and experience a crash a burnout overtraining under recovering injuries

1:02:54more is sometimes required to progressively overload a stimulus to facilitate an adaptation of growth and fitness. However, when it's done too quickly, at not the right time, it can result in catastrophic destruction of your performance, the outcomes, and your ability to recover.

1:03:31This is why, like I said, it's important or can be important to hire a coach. Because having a coach, having a third party, unbiased opinion to come in and structure your

1:03:49Nick Bare:training that has the experience, an experienced coach, and then follow your progress and make sure that you're progressing at the appropriate rates in times, not doing too much. And that third party individual being able to say, hey, let's pull back. Let's stay disciplined. Let's restrain. Because as athletes and as they have said, type A driven individuals, we want to do more. Even when we know we're not supposed to. Give me a few extra miles. Give me a few extra reps of 800s on the speed workout. Give me a few extra hours of training this week. Now you're not ready. It's not the time. Let's build into this.

1:04:41That's the importance of having a coach.

1:04:44Nick Bare:Because many of us, myself included, fall into the comparison pandemic. I have fallen for this many times. When, for example, I'm training for a racer competition, and I see someone online who's training for the same race or competition, and they're running more than me weekly. They're running faster than me. They're running their long runs earlier in the prep than I'm running mine. And it's really easy to see this and compare where you're at, what you're doing to what they're doing, and adjust your training program or protocols to catch up to them. and that's often when everything falls apart because more is not always better.

1:05:33Again, this is the importance of having a coach but if you don't have a coach, staying disciplined and restraining yourself

1:05:44Nick Bare:from thinking that more is better in terms of volume and intensity which can eventually end up to burnout, injury, overtraining, under-recovering. Sometimes less is actually the more optimized way to train, not just for performance, but for health and quality of life outcomes as well. All right, so the fifth and final lesson learned in the last five years of my fitness journey, that is that progress is not determined, not only determined by PRs. Progress is not only determined by PRs.

1:06:36I used to argue against this, that you were only progressing based off the number of races or competitions you had on the calendar for that year. and you're only progressing as if those times got faster, if the place in which you placed got better, if you're becoming more impressive. And I'm speaking to the performance-focused individual who is and was me,

1:07:12Nick Bare:but my mindset has shifted around progress over these last five years. I think PRs or personal records is part of the story of progress. It's a critical data point in measuring progress, but it doesn't tell the whole story. It's just part of the story. I used to always need a race, event, or competition on the calendar to be training for. And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to have a race, event, or competition on the calendar to always be training for. This is not a bad thing by any means. I'm a huge proponent of it. But right now, I don't have a race every month on the calendar. It's one race or one competition a year that I can focus on before going into a sustainable base building durability season.

1:08:15part of that mindset shift for me has been how do I keep making progress in my health fitness and performance goals in a way so that it doesn't take away from my other life responsibilities and priorities how do I keep making progress in my fitness, in my health, in my performance goals so that it doesn't affect my job, my work, my marriage, my family, how I show up for my kids.

1:08:55Nick Bare:And I'll be very honest and I'm extremely aware of this. I've learned this in this Ironman prep as I'm deep into the prep right now. I'm 16 weeks into this prep at the time of this recording

1:09:12when I get home at night after training

1:09:14Nick Bare:and working a full day and as I mentioned one of the things I've had to sacrifice to make sure that I'm getting everything done is sleep I'm exhausted when I get home and at this point in the prep I'm not happy with the way that I'm showing up in terms of physical, mental, and emotional energy for my wife and my kids. I'm very aware of that, which is one of the reasons I'm excited for this prep to be done and the race to be done in two weeks because I've learned in this prep, in the season of life that I'm in right now, running and leading a business, married, kids, leading a family, an Ironman prep is and was probably the most time and energy demanding preparation I could have done.

1:10:09And I learned a lot in this prep, truly a transformational prep, not necessarily in terms of fitness and performance, but mindset. may not have been the smartest or best time to do this prep, but I learned that very strongly.

1:10:34Nick Bare:The mindset shift is, how do I keep making progress in my health, fitness, and performance so that it doesn't take away from my other life priorities and responsibilities? Learning that the hard way in this prep, that's progress. I'm sure I'm going to hit a big PR, this Ironman, and I'm planning on it. But that's not the win for me that I experienced in this prep. The win for me is realizing

1:11:06how hard it is to balance all these different goals. And that's the progress that I've made. I think one of the reasons that we typically prioritize

1:11:25Nick Bare:that PR as the main data point for progress is because it's easy to measure progress through PRs. And if we really want to see progress, we do have to track it. We have to measure it. Ways that we can easily track and measure progress. So there's objective and there's subjective data points. We can track and measure nutrition. We can track and measure training. We can track and measure quality of life. We can track and measure biomarkers. Like a biomarker is an objectively measured data point. Quality of life is more subjective. Training has objective and subjective data points and nutrition is primarily objective data points.

1:12:13Very clear, like this is how we ate.

1:12:17Nick Bare:This is what we ate and this is what happened. This is how we trained. This is when we trained and this is what happened. But I do think it's important to track our progress if we want to see progress. It should be tracking our nutrition. It should be tracking our training. It should be maybe journaling or just making notes of what we're experiencing in life, the quality of life, how training and nutrition and these goals and fitness and health, It's impacting and influencing other parts of our life, our family, our relationships, our work.

1:12:56But something that I'm really confident in saying and I stand firm in is that everything doesn't have to be optimized. When we're chasing down PRs and that is the only way to measure progress, personal records. I'm at fault of it myself, but when I go all in on a goal, I'm chasing down a personal record,

1:13:28Nick Bare:I will white knuckle and try to control every variable in my life to make that PR happen. I will optimize everything possible. We live in a world right now, especially in the health and fitness space, where we're being told how to optimize training, how to optimize sleep, how to optimize diet, what we should eat, what we shouldn't eat, how we should train, how we shouldn't train, what's the best way, what's good, what's not good. And to be honest, it's a lot of information to take in. sometimes when I'm enjoying training and nutrition in this lifestyle, this fitness health lifestyle the most, it's not following what's most optimized.

1:14:21It's just following what I love the most, what I love doing the most. And if you're doing what you love, it's going to be enjoyable. It's going to be sustainable. You're going to make progress. objectively and subjectively, regardless if you hit a PR or not. The PR just tells part of the story, but it's not the entire story. And honestly, it ties back to the first lesson I learned. And this is very specific to me individually. what I've learned these last five years of my fitness journey is that I love, I love the balance of strength

1:15:14Nick Bare:and endurance training. A pretty even 50-50 split. Occasionally I go in after a performance focused goal, a race or a competition, and that's fun. And I experience breakthrough and I learn a lot through those preps. I really do. but where I'm really enjoying training and I'm enjoying life, I'm having fun and I'm making progress that I can measure but then some that I can't measure. It's just, it's a way that I feel. When it comes to fitness and the way that I'm training, it is a split between throwing weights around in the gym and logging miles. that for me, that's the perfect balance. And it's taken me a lot of years, many years to figure that out.

1:16:14And I've only been able to figure that out by dipping my toes in all these different things. And I think that's what we're called to do is try different things, see what you enjoy being applicable to diet and nutrition and training.

1:16:33Nick Bare:in health, figure out what works for you, what you love and do more of it. And if you can find that thing, find that way, find that structure, that's progress. It might not be a PR. Maybe it is, but that's progress. So those are five lessons that I've learned in the last five years of my fitness journey that I wanted to share with you guys. Hope you enjoyed it. And as always, go on more.