Fitness Notes: Squats, Deadlifts, or Both?

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

We need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What is going on everybody? Welcome to the Warrior Soul Podcast. And this is going to be something we haven't done in a while. It's gonna be a pure q and a session. And I don't have a lot of questions here, but a few that are related to fitness.

We had somebody asking us whether they should be doing squats or deadlifts. They want to see if they can choose between the two. There was also somebody who asked if they could do one exercise in a workout and if that could constitute a workout. I'm gonna be covering both of these issues and a little bit more than that. But first, I want to let you guys know who I am and what we do here on the Warrior Soul podcast.

First off, my name is Chris Albert. This is the Warrior Soul podcast. What do we do here? Well, this podcast was created a couple of years ago in order to help veterans to live their best lives. Now, why do we do that?

Well, it's because over the past decade and a half of war, we faced a lot of different issues here in the veteran community. We faced high rates of suicide, high rates of veteran homelessness and high rates of chronic disease. And there's a lot of people out there talking about these issues, but there's not a lot of people out there actually delivering real solutions. And while I think awareness is great, we need to be talking about solutions. And so the whole purpose of this is that you'll get something that can help you on your journey through fitness, through life, through your career, through your job, through your business, things that can help you to live your best life and to become the best person that you can possibly be in your post military career.

If you're not a veteran, please stick around. You're welcome to listen in, and all of the things we go through here could help you on your way to becoming stronger, to becoming better, and becoming a better and stronger version of yourself. So with that, I just want to say that this podcast would not be possible without our amazing sponsors, F Bomb Nutrition. They make awesome delicious packets of fats. They make macadamia nut butters, and they mix them up with chocolate.

They mix them up with sea salt. They mix them up with pecan butter. They're absolutely delicious, and, you can get yours over at www.dropanfbomb.com. And when you use the code Warrior Soul at checkout, you get 20% off your first order. In addition to that, guys, I want to say that this is it is a pleasure of mine to be doing this podcast, to be bringing me you these episodes each week.

All I really ask from you in return is that you spread the word about the show, that you let people know that we exist, that you share these episodes out with people who can use them, and that you write us a review up on iTunes. It it doesn't cost you anything. You just write a simple review letting people know how this podcast helps you, and it really helps to get the word out about the show. With that, let's get into the questions for today. This is a Wednesday q and a episode that I'm not releasing on Wednesday.

I'm releasing on Thursday because we actually had a special edition issue that came out on Tuesday. So I'm gonna be getting into these questions right now. So the first question is this, and that comes from Aman. And he said, can I can a workout be just one movement? Alright.

Let's say squats only or dead lifts only. And he said, he's asking because sometimes after a ten hour workday and he's feeling quite tired, and it's a workout day too. He just wants to do the hardest part of the workout instead of nothing at all. Yeah, I think that you can definitely make a workout out of doing just one movement. Right?

So you could do a five by five on deadlifts, you could do a five by five on squats, and that could be a great movement. But here's what I'll also say, right? I think that those movements are the most important movements you could do, those compound strength movements, those multi joint movements, those are what's going to make you stronger. Those are what's going to help you to become stronger to build bone density to build that muscle mass. At the same time, you also do need those assistance exercises.

So if it's it's just one workout where you're doing your your squats, well, here's what I'd say. The best protocol I'd probably go with would be like a 10 by three, doing 10 sets of three reps of squats. I'd also say that you really want to warm up, right? That's why I'm recommending the 10 sets. So through the 10 sets at the very beginning, can go very light, just work on your form.

Toward the middle, you can start to raise raise the weight, and then toward the end, you can work on being explosive. You can get a great workout that way. But I would say that you know, you might also want to include a little bit of an assistance exercise. So if you're doing a quad dominant movement like squats, you also might as well throw a few sets of Romanian deadlifts in there to hit the hamstrings. And in addition to that, I would say, you know, with being very busy at work, yeah, every one of us has that responsibility.

Every one of us has lives we have to live. At the same time, you do want to make sure that you are taking care of your fitness. So if it means just doing one exercise that day, yeah, absolutely, go with that one exercise. If you're just tired, and you know, you you're getting out of work, try doing the full workout if you can. And the reason I say that is because it's going to make you feel better.

It's going to make you feel like you've accomplished more. It's going to help you to overcome that stress you went through at work. It's going to really pay you benefits. Nobody's ever regretted getting a workout in. And that's what I'll say.

So yeah, if if you're gonna make that one exercise workout into a really intense workout, awesome. Awesome. And if you feel like you've been accomplished by the end of that, awesome. Great. But if you're just doing the one exercise and and you're kind of just going through the motions and not really putting the work into it, then push yourself to actually put some work in and push yourself to get a full workout done.

I would say that for your mental mindset. Now, I also want to say that, of course, and I've said this before on the podcast, going to the gym and and working with weights is only one way to exercise. If you're somebody out there who absolutely can't get to the gym, don't use that as an excuse for not being able to work out. Getting body weight exercises can be just as beneficial to you. It might not make you stronger, it might make you into Mr.

Olympia or anything like that, but it can be just as beneficial in making healthier and making you happier if you need to work out in your living room, or if you need to work out in your garage and all you've got is your body weight, or maybe a kettlebell. You can get great workouts that way. So don't undersell yourself on that if you absolutely can't get to the gym. And and this is something I've discussed in numerous other podcasts before. You can go back and check out some of our our Wednesday fitness notes episodes.

So I hope that helps, Aman. Like I said, you could definitely do just one movement, but make sure it's an intense workout and make sure you're not just going through the motions. The next question I got was from Stuart, and he said, know, what's the functional difference between an outcome between muscle utilization between the deadlift and the squat? And he also said, if you had to choose one to include in your workout, which would it be? And here's the thing, on the deadlift and the squat, the loading patterns are completely different.

Yes, you're still pushing with your legs. Yes, there's a bit of a hinge involved, a hip hinge involved in both. But the deadlift is almost entirely posterior chain. That means that you're using the muscles behind you more than the muscles in front of you. The squat is a quad dominant movement.

That depends, the extent of quad dominance depends on the amount of moment arm that you're using in your femurs. That means the angle you're coming down. So if you're doing a high bar closed stance squat, you're going get more quad movement. If you're doing one of those like power lifter style squats where you're sitting back, you're going to get more hamstring involvement. Right?

But both the squat and the deadlift are very different exercises that do very different things. The deadlift is really beneficial in building up bone density, building up posterior chain strength, building up your glutes, building up your back. The squat is really great for building up the glutes, the quads, a little bit of the hamstrings, and it's also a great total body movement. But both do very different things. They work very different patterns.

What I would say is that I wouldn't choose between one or the other. And I would try to include both in your workout regimen. Now, there's variations on both, right? You do front squats, do overhead squats, you do Olympic style squats, you do powerlifter style squats, you do goblet squats, you could do kettlebell squats, all kinds of different things that you could do as far as the squat goes. Same thing for the deadlift.

You could do snatch grip deadlifts, you could do Romanian deadlifts, you could do deadlifts off of a block, sumo style deadlifts. There's a whole host of those that you can do. What I would try to do is I would try to use different variations of these exercises to try to become stronger, you know, maybe work them in three week cycles and then change to a different variation. But if you need to do them in different workouts, if it's a matter of time, yeah, you could do them in different workouts. If you if you need to alternate them, maybe you're focusing on squats one week and then deadlifts the next week, you you could do that.

But I would make sure that you're working both, because both are extremely important in building up the body and becoming stronger and building up muscle density. And they're also both really beneficial. I mean, because they're so beneficial, I really don't see why you would choose one over the other. So that's, that's an answer to that question. Another thing that people are asking me about a lot now is fasting, right?

So what should your macro strategy be on a fast? What should, what should your eating window look like? Now, there's a lot of different answers to this question, and they all depend on the person. So I'm not going to give you a specific macro strategy on this. And the reason why I'm not going give you a specific macro strategy is because in my experience as a trainer, everybody responds to different macronutrient strategies, right?

Some people do better on high carb, some people do better on low carb. What I will say is this, fasting does not mean starvation. So you still need to make sure that you're getting a good enough amount of calories from the food you're eating. So you need to make sure that you're getting a good enough amount of calories and that you're eating enough. If not, you experience hormonal problems, energy problems, headaches, fatigue, weakness in the gym, all that stuff.

Number two, you also need to make sure you're staying hydrated. It's very important to stay hydrated while you're fasting because you're burning off glycogen, and with every gram of glycogen you're burning off, you're also losing three grams of water. So that can lead to hydration, that can lead to mineral deficiency, and you really need to make sure that you are doing a very good hydration protocol that includes not only water, but including Himalayan pink salt. I like to stick, pinch of Himalayan pink salt into every, liter of water I drink, and I try to drink at least half my body weight in fluid ounces plus an additional 10 ounces for activity. So make sure you're getting that done.

Now beyond all of that, right, with your eating window, there's a few different ways of doing it. Right? So some people are doing these long seventy two hour fasts. I've never done a seventy two hour fast. I don't know how that feels.

I've done twenty four and forty eight hour fasts. And, you know, I can say that they've made me feel really good. I've actually gotten a high degree of focus on them, but dehydration was definitely an issue, right? So I needed to drink lots and lots of water. I needed to make sure I was getting salt in.

I tend to fast a few times a week, and when I do a fast, I tend to do an eight hour eating window. So that means that I eat all of my food between 12PM and 8PM at night. Right? So I'm still eating the same amount of calories, but I'm eating that food between 12PM and 8PM at night. And then what I'm doing is basically a twelve hour fast, right, or a fourteen hour fast.

No, it's a sixteen hour sorry, my math is all crazy. It's a sixteen hour fast. So, you know, I'm not eating for sixteen hours, of course, eight of those hours I'm sleeping. And so that's the way I go about things and that's kind of the fasting strategy that's worked for me. Different windows work for different people, but I'll also say that different windows also have different goals.

So if your goal is to lose weight, it could be just a ten hour fast. If you're looking for more autophagic benefits, meaning you're looking to kill off diseased cells, the fourteen hour or the sixteen hour fast would probably be best. Alright, so that's my take on fasting. Now, other than that guys, I don't have any other questions. If you've got questions you've got for me, you can head over to our private Facebook group, the Warrior Soul Fitness Academy, and you join.

And each week, I'm looking for questions from the private group, and I'm looking to help people out with this stuff. And that's all I got for this week guys. Stay tuned this Friday. We are going to be putting out our Warrior Notes episode, and that's where I go into a discussion on mental strength. And then on Monday, I'm releasing an awesome interview with Dave Bray, musician, storyteller, really awesome guy, and a Navy FMF corpsman.

So really good guy, and I'm looking forward to that one. Talk to you guys soon. Peace.