I do some work with Red Bull. Sometimes I just find some random healthy ones, like the ones that taste like shit that have nothing in it. They just taste like La Croix. Celsius I love, but the crash from the sugar in those—or the fake sugar—they’re amazing for two hours and then I’m asleep.
Do you have any rules for yourself like, “In the morning, I try to avoid this,” or something you do right away when you wake up?
No. When I was competing, I was so strict on myself. I try to be as lenient with myself as I can now. There are things that I’d like to follow, like not looking at my phone before bed, not looking at it first thing when I wake up. I know those are all things that are healthy. But if I do it, I’m not going to punish myself. I do wear blue blockers. I love them to death. I also have on my phone, when you do the triple button, it turns everything to red light. I do that every night too.
Do you have the red light therapy mask? Are you doing any of that yet?
No, that’s my brother. He has all the gadgets. The one I have is called a Lumaflex. It’s a red light therapy panel and you wrap it on anything that’s banged up. I hurt my knee at the gym the other day, and I just wrapped that around my knee. It’s already starting to feel better.
What are your go-to weight room moves? Do you have specific circuits or things that you swear by?
Overall, I stay away from the Barry’s Bootcamp, HYROX, that kind of heavy weight and cardio mixed. I like to keep them very separate. I’ll have days that are fully cardio or days that are fully weightlifting, but I rarely will do those workouts where you’re doing burpees in between, and then pull-ups, and that stuff. I want to do everything at my best, I guess. So when I do those types of workouts, I feel like my running is crap and I’m working out with bad form, so I don’t like mixing those two worlds.
My training is probably cardio twice a week, like running or stationary biking. Then honestly, that mixed with lifting heavy weights—traditional bodybuilding moves, a push-pull day—or I’ll do back and hamstrings and then squats and push movements. I’ll try to just bounce around. I’d say it’s a mix of cardio and traditional bodybuilding. Then I work in these things called lazy workouts.
For me, going to the gym is all about consistency. Some days you just wake up and you feel like you don’t want to go to the gym at all. Those are my days for lazy workouts. I tell myself before I even leave for the gym, “I’m not even going to break a sweat.” I’m going to go and do face pulls and shoulder rotations, maybe even just machines. It’s just to get in the process of going to the gym for an hour even when I don’t want to.
Have you added anything to the rotation recently?
Yeah, Pilates is insane. I don’t do group workouts that often, but I’m a huge fan of Pilates. If I could do it more, I would do it more. I would say, the more unique side of what I do…I definitely do more core than most people: a lot of twists, a lot of leg lifts, a lot of stuff that’ll help me with rock climbing. I definitely do more back than most people do, again for rock climbing. Then just personally, I like doing shoulders, because I’ve had shoulder injuries. Since I am tall and skinny, shoulders help me broaden out. I do shoulders, back, and core probably the most of anything.
You’ve made it very clear that you don’t like hard rules. You kind of abide by whatever feels good. But I want to know what your relationship is with sugar, because a lot of people are terrified of sugar these days.
I have a big sweet tooth, so I am not hard on myself with sugar. But that said, I do try to limit sugar. I’m not going to have a protein bar that’s packed with sugar. I’m aware of the sucralose and all the fake sugars. When I drink coffee, it’s black coffee. I’m very aware of sugar. If I’m doing a lot of cardio, I care less. If I’m not doing a lot of cardio, I watch it a little bit more. But yeah, I don’t think sugar’s great for you.
