Ben Greenfield says most athletes overtrain and live toxic. He does three 30-minute strength sessions weekly, short intense rides, two tennis matches, one sprint session, and one easy run, totaling 6-8 hours per week. His diet is locked: morning greens shake, spinach salad with sardines at lunch, grass-fed beef or fish at dinner.
Hey, It's Ben from BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'm driving back from a tennis match right now and you know, I was thinking about something just because I have had so many inquiries right now from so many different athletes who are sending me the training schedules. And these are mostly triathletes, but also some crossfitters thrown into the mix and some weightlifters and nearly everybody. And I'm not exaggerating here, I would say about 95% of people train too much and they, they basically think that they're eating right and they are in fact really kind of toxifying their bodies. And the reason that I bring this up is because it's New Year's and sorry for the bouncy camera, by the way, it's New Year's and you know, a lot of people really want to start things off on the right foot. And I want to tell you what would my training and my diet look like right now? Because at the risk of sounding haughty or arrogant here, I don't train too much and I also keep my body body very, very detoxed. So aside from the occasional alcohol binge over the holidays, which is one of the reasons I'm focusing very much on living quite clean right now. So I want to tell you exactly what a week of workouts looks like for me, and I want to tell you exactly what a week of eating looks like for me. If you want constant access to information just like this, join the inner circle. Join the Ben Greenfield fitness inner circle. It's ten bucks a month to do that. All right, so that being said, that shameless commercial being said, let's jump three days a week. Right now I'm hitting the weights. My weight routine lasts about 30 minutes and it's typically a barbell complex, a body weight complex, or a mix of dumbbells, kettlebells, bells and medicine balls. For example, last night was deadlift, squat, clean and jerk, high pull, upright row, and then some barbell side to side chops using something called a, I forget the name of the thing. It's in the corner of the. You swing a barbell from side to side. So that is an example of my barbell workout. My dumbbell workout is typically something along the lines of full body dumbbell complex. And that one I do in kind of a super slow format so that I'm hitting some of those slow kind of cardio esque type of muscles. The last complex is like medicine ball slams, kettlebell swings, a lot of hops, a lot of Plyos and one of the main resources I'm using right now for those 30 minute, three times a week strength training workouts I've been doing is training for warriors. And you know, I've written books on strength training but I get bored with my own books so I like to do other people's programs. So the other thing is that I have been doing very, very short mountain bike rides, typically in extreme cold conditions, ice and snow. This is what my training territory looks like right now. But those are usually 30 minutes. They are very intense and they're over with quickly. I will not be touching a long ride or an indoor trainer. Even though I'm training for Ironman, I won't be touching any of that until this May. So I've got five months where I don't have to worry about riding a bike long or anything like that because all I'd be doing at this point is beating myself up and reducing the life of my knees and my joints. My runs right now are two tennis matches a week, one very, very short 10 by 30 second treadmill sprint session a week and then one very easy 20, 30 minute jaunt per week. Typically out with the kids or out hiking, something like that. And then I'm not swimming at all. I again won't start swimming for another couple of months or so. And when I swim it's very short. I'm in the pool for 20 to 30 minutes for my Ironman training routines. And it's just short, intense balls to the wall. But those are about, you know, that comes out to about anywhere from six to eight hours per week that I'm training right now. Now what am I eating? Every single morning I eat the same thing. I think that consistency is key for eating every morning, especially when I'm in this kind of detox mode. I have three scoops of Super Greens. That's a meal replacement drink made by Living Fuel. Very, very alkalinic. Anyways, I have three scoops of that and that is served with coconut milk and a couple tablespoons of chia seeds to give it some flavor or not some flavor, some texture. For lunch every single day. Spinach salad with olives, avocados and sardines. That's it. Dinner is roasted vegetables with some kind of a meat, typically grass fed beef or another serving of fish. If I am hungry during the day, I've been eating either a handful of spirulina. I've been using the energy bits for that because those do a really good job detoxing the body or else. I do some whole amino acids along with some kind of an antioxidant, typically like life shots or something like that. And that's it. Very simple, very clean. Same thing every day. I combine that with a little bit of foam rolling some of the recovery protocols I talked about in the recent video I shot over on YouTube with Wellness FX. And it's very simple, it's very clean. And that's pretty much it, really. For the next few weeks, that's all I'll be doing. So I hope that kind of helps. Outline I get a lot of questions about what my training routine looks like, what my diet looks like. It's a lot simpler and a lot shorter than what you might think. So that's it. I hope that was helpful. And I'm Ben Greenfield. Happy weekend. Happy New Year's.
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