Barbell Shrugged - [Cardio] Energy Systems, Cardiovascular Health and Why Meatheads Need Better Breathing w/ Bryan Boorstein, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #714

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Bryan Boorstein is the coach that created Evolved Training Systems and Paragon Training. In today’s episode we discuss the importance of improving cardiovascular health, energy systems, and why meatheads need to get better at breathing.   Bryan Boorstein Bio: 25 Years Training; 14+ Years Coaching     •    3X CrossFit Regional Athlete     •    CrossFit Games Coach     •    Owner of CrossFit Pacific Beach     •    Former Physique Competitor     •    CrossFit L-1, CrossFit-2, CrossFit Mobility     •    Bachelor of Science     •    OPEX, N1 Training Biomechanics & Programming     •    Featured on ESPN Radio + Numerous Podcasts     •    Training & Nutrition Podcast Host: Eat Train Prosper (http://eattrainprosper.com/)   Bryan Boorstein on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug Family this week on Barbell Shrug. We're hanging out with Brian Borstein. For those of you that have been paying attention to the show for a very long time, you've heard this man's voice a lot on Barbell Shrug. And that's because Brian's one of my best friends of my entire adult. Well, I don't even know if college is considered an adult, but all the way from college until now, he was the best man at my wedding. We owned gyms together. We've talked training together. I've lifted more weights with this human being than anyone else. And recently flew out from Boulder with his son out to Raleigh to come hang out with myself, my kids, family, all this stuff, kind of like a big, not even big, like a

small reunion of sorts. But everybody that has kids knows that when you go to have that reunion and you have kids, you end up not actually having the reunion part and you're just chasing kids around. As we were kind of hanging out, talking about our training and things that we like to talk about, we weren't able to go into the full deep dive and how Ryan and I both over the past year have taken a really big turn into kind of the energy systems, cardiovascular health, and kind of like understanding how that plays into, into this just world of health and fitness, how we feel, how we're doing it, different modalities, energy systems, training, ways of thinking about it, frameworks for understanding it. It's a, it's a very cool conversation.

And Brian is like the perfect person to come on the show. Cause I can talk to him for hours about training. We've literally talked for thousands of hours about training, whether we're sitting in the gym, actually doing it on the podcast. So he's the perfect person to come on. And a lot of times we're not, these shows don't actually feel like we're just throwing questions at somebody. But this is kind of just how we hang out and things we talk about, even when the microphones aren't on. So very cool having him on. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health

Optimization receives. You can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, Brian Borstein. Dude, I was just telling all the guys before the show, you were at my house about a month ago. Dude, Bear, Bear Mash showed up. There's Rock, the whole crew, the whole Mash crew. There's a 50-year-old man and six and a seven-year-old and about 3,000 pounds of deadlift in one room there. Dude, say something on the show so they actually know you're here

now that we just introduced kids before you. What's up, everyone? Yeah. No, I'm talking to Brian. That's the worst intro ever. We're going to be talking about conditioning today. Everybody has heard you on the show many, many times talking about hypertrophy and all the intricacies of building muscle, but we're going to talk about breathing today.

And you've been on, what you're saying is 12, 14-ish months of cardio being the biggest piece of your training, how much you're enjoying it. But what I'd really like to start out with is why did you feel that bringing more cardio into your hypertrophy training really was like kind of the next step that you needed to take? Yeah. Hey, everybody. I'm here again. That was the longest intro ever. Bash, next time have your kids come mid-show so we can get hung up seeing cute, jacked kids. They were leaving their wrestling class and so they just stopped in. I was going to ask about them in school. No school, man. But yeah, it's been about 14 months since I actually started doing cardio.

Before that, it was mostly just lifting and walking, uh, getting the steps in and doing all that. And I feel like, you know, up until the late 2000 teens, uh, maybe even like 2020, the perspective on concurrent training was pretty down, at least as far as how it would relate to strength and hypertrophy goals. Uh, research seemed to indicate up until that point that doing structured cardiovascular activity would at least have some mitigating effects on the pursuit of strength and hypertrophy. And then it seems like in the last three to five years, there's been a lot more coming out

that has demonstrated that when done intelligently, um, programmed properly, that the two can actually work congruently together and enhance each other. Um, of course, there's a lot of nuance and context to that, but, uh, as far as what got me into it, it really was last summer, uh, approaching my 40th birthday. And I don't know what it was about 40. Cause if you would have asked me at 39 and three quarters, if I thought that 40 was going to have a big impact on me, I would have laughed and said, no, it's just a number. It's nothing like it's just, it's just a place in life. You know, you keep going, whatever it's what it is. And then I went up to Breckenridge, did some hiking by myself on my 40th birthday and had a weird, like introspective,

kind of depressive state for about 24 hours, you know, stuck by myself on my 40th birthday. And you were like, no, I just have no friends, no family. I mean, I wanted to be alone. That was my purpose, but it really like something about it hit me of this whole idea of, you know, I don't really think I'm going to die at 80, but this notion of you've been climbing this hill of life and then you get to the top and then you have this like descent of life kind of, and it's the first half of life and the second half of life and, and all the things that go into that. And, uh, add to that, that I'd been getting into a lot of, uh, Peter Atiyah and Huberman kind of content, at least absorbing

it specifically Atiyah and Atiyah is big on, you know, zone two cardio and that sort of stuff. And so strictly from a health perspective, I started doing two or three zone two sessions back last summer. And I didn't want to go crazy with it because I didn't, my, my most important thing was the lifting. I wanted to be pursuing hypertrophy. That was my, was my goal. And I didn't want anything to come in the way of optimizing that. Well, over the course of the next few months, some buddies around here convinced me to sign up for a 50 mile, uh, bike race, which is off road. It's mostly gravel with a little bit of, uh, like single track, double track mountain

biking type stuff. But, um, that lit a fire under my ass because I had already started doing cardio for health and I had seen these drastic improvements, which after 25 years of lifting, you just don't see improvements very often. And when you do, some of it feels like a facade. You're like, did I really improve or am I just five pounds heavier? You know? Um, and so, yeah, there was something about the cardio and seeing improvements on a, if not session to

session basis, like week to week, and then later on month to month, but seeing consistent improvements and, um, that was really motivating. And so this bike race is coming up in October. Uh, and that has been my main pursuit now for the last four or six months. I've made cardio my one, a pursuit I've designed six days a week of cardio training with a majority. It's a polarized model. So basically four of the six sessions are zone two or like recovery rides, long type endurance stuff, and then two higher intensity interval style training, um, in the zone five for heart rate. And, uh, And yeah, that's been the approach really for the last four to six months going hard on that. And yeah, I'll let you jump in with

whatever you have to ask then. Yeah. So you, as I said, kind of in my very long intro, every time I've had you on, we always talk about hypertrophy. Where does hypertrophy land in the realm of goals? Is it still like a pursuit or is it really like a model to like an assistance program for better breathing? Yeah, it's more than an assistance program for better breathing, because I think if it were that it would, it would change significantly. I would probably only lift two times a week. It would probably be significantly lower, uh, less lower body volume, given all of the cardiovascular work that I'm doing. And, um, it would really be like almost, I would almost expect muscle loss because having less muscle or body weight would probably make me better at utilizing oxygen, having less

mass to fuel. So I wouldn't say that I've reached a point where I've put it that low on the totem pole. I would say cardio is definitely my priority and hypertrophy is definitely my one B or my number two. Um, but I'm still, I'm still training full body, uh, three times a week. So I'm still getting a decent amount of volume in, I would say on the lower end, but, uh, I'm hitting, you know, three to five sets per muscle group to failure each week. And so that's been, uh, sufficient for me. And it's actually been pretty cool in the last few weeks. I've lost a lot of body weight, uh, as you know, you'd expect with this type of cardiovascular load and, uh, strength hasn't really plummeted too much like a

rep here, a rep there, but, uh, I'm not dropping like a plate off anything or anything along those lines. So, um, yeah, it'm like, I quit, I'm done. Yeah, but overall it's been great, man. I think it's tough to say how I'll feel about all this after October 7th when we do the bike race because there does tend to be this hyper-focus on an event where everything goes into that experience and then it's over and you're kind of left

with this reassessment period, you know? Yeah. So you feel like you'll fall into a cycle of, instead of like, like bulking and cutting, you'll be like, you know, strength training and cardio will be like, you know, the two halves of your, of your year just to keep it fresh every six months. Yeah. I think that's very likely. I will get into this. I'm likely going to be coached by your guy's buddy, Mike T. Nelson on just my cardio. He's going to take over my cardio programming after my bike race. I love that. We have the same coach again. Yeah, I know. Isn't that wild? So he suggested I buy a rower. So about a month ago, I went out

and bought a rower. And so to answer Doug's question, I think that that's really the way I'm going to approach it is in the cold months here when I can't get out on my bike and be outside, I'll probably focus a little bit more on lifting and, you know, maybe three to four cardio sessions a week. I'll talk to Mike and see what, you know, he thinks is reasonable with my lifting load. Um, but he's going to program my cardio for the winter. And then I feel like once the nice weather comes back around in the spring, I'm probably going to get right back on the biking thing, uh, deprioritize lifting again, and potentially try and do the same race or another race and see how I compare year to year. Yeah. I have been, uh, so cause many of the questions I'm going to ask you are also angled at my experience over the past, uh, like five, six months, um, trying to run a sub six minute mile at

40 years old, which is I think going to be hard, but possible. Um, do you feel like, um, overall you lifted weights so long that you can't suck at it but then you enter into this new arena where like you have an enormous even when we were doing crossfit and doing conditioning it was so different than these a very structured plan of sustaining high heart rate and kind of having like a different mentality of like, how do I improve my cardiovascular system versus how do I run myself into the ground every day? Because that's what we're supposed to do in CrossFit. Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health

Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program.

And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rap rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com and let's get back to the show. Yeah, 100% man. It's amazing how much better I feel on a day-to-day

basis from doing cardio. It's it's like, uh, Mike, Mike is retell has the, the SFR, right? Stimulus to fatigue ratio. And it feels like everything in life has a better stimulus to fatigue ratio because it's less exhausting to do it because I have better cardiovascular conditioning. Um, so a six minute mile, that's dope. How close are you right now? Uh, well, when I started out with Mike, I ran the Cooper test, which is 12 minutes max distance. And I ran almost two miles. I ran like one and three quarter miles essentially, um, in the 12 minutes, but I knew that I had to go 12 minutes. So I ran the first one in like seven Oh five, knowing I had five minutes left and Mike loves the 2k test, the 2k row test as his like baseline thing.

But I can't like walk around and be like, do you know what my 2k row is? Like everybody knows what their mile time is. So when I ran like essentially a seven minute mile, knowing I had five minutes left, I was like, I bet during COVID, when they wanted you to social distance from everybody, the track was the safest place you could be. Cause well, no, you have to work hard if you go to a track and nobody wants to do that. So you're away from all the humans. And I ran a six 30, just doing my own conditioning. Um, but it was purely like,

just kind of like throwing track workouts together versus like building the energy systems around running a mile. And then now what we're about to go get into is really specific to like the skill of pacing out a mile to run it at five 59. Sick. Oh, that was going to be my next question. I like that. That's awesome. Um, yeah, it's been, it's been very cool. Like I actually just pulled a hip flexor last week, which made me feel like I was going to die. Um, but next week I'm going to start all the, all the interval things, but one, one thing that's been very cool. And you mentioned this a lot. Um, and we'll talk a little bit about kind of like how you're doing the energy system side, um, in, in focusing on how long I can maintain a very high heart rate, um, with, um, focusing on like controlled breathing has been a very interesting thing in that I never really

thought about these things when like conditioning was a big piece of, um, like CrossFit. And now he has me, um, kind of like, how long can you maintain like 170 beats a big piece of like CrossFit. And now he has me kind of like, how long can you maintain like 170 beats a minute, like breathing through your nose. And that's like a really, really hard thing. But the fact that I could go five minutes straight at that level really makes you like believe that it's possible to go run a six minute mile, five 59 mile, because wind isn't the problem. Now you just have to deal with the pain and go run.

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm, I'm sure you're going to be able to get to it. I mean, six 30, you know, a couple of years ago, and then seven as part of a 12 minute test, you're not like super far off from that. So I think with a little bit of diligent programming and some hard work, you can, you'll get there in the next few months or a year. Yeah. I feel like it's, it's really, um, it's, it's a capacity that I had not, um, I've never like fully dug into, like we didn't do, we just turned on a clock and tried to kill each other. Yeah. Um, there was no, there was no real systematic, um, way of going and increasing this stuff. And my body just feels great. It's reacting phenomenally well to it.

Yeah. It's interesting that you brought up the CrossFit stuff. Cause I felt like throughout all those years of CrossFit, despite all of the knowledge I gained from OPEX on writing the different energy systems and programming it into our gym programming, it felt like doing multimodal cardio didn't ever quite make me better at doing cardio. It has to be monostructural. There just has to be that, that repeating repetition of the same kind of movement over and over doing five toes to bar 10 wall balls and 15 calorie row on repeat. It's just not going to give you the same adaptation. No, I feel like all that stuff really is a, um, it's like a tempered anaerobic. It's like hitting you with these anaerobic intervals. They're just shorter, but you still are having the big spike. And that's one of the things why I hired Mike was because I wasn't, I wasn't feeling, I was feeling that again,

by following a template of somebody from the CrossFit space, which was great. It was just a template. So it's not going to like be personalized to you, but that was like the big reason why I hired, I was like, this isn't right still. And then once I started doing the things that Mike was putting together and I was like, this is exactly how I wanted to feel. Um, because it was able to like really the ability to maintain really high heart rates and continue to go and stay calm throughout that as has been, um, something like a, it's like a capacity that I didn't know that you could train. I mean, I knew you could train it, but I didn't know how to train it until now I've been like doing it. Yeah. Very cool. The nasal breathing

stuff has been great as well. I don't think I'm quite at the point where I'm doing 170 beats a minute in nasal breathing, but, um, but that is definitely a cool goal. That was a big test. He said, he said, go. So I went, uh, I can maintain like mid one fifties, even up to one 60 with nasal breathing for quite a long time, but getting into 170 is like my zone five. It's, you know, 93% of that's one of the things that I really, cause you're not doing this in like the, um, like I'm doing it in a very structured way. And that somebody is saying, stay in this range, heart rate monitors on, I'm not moving anywhere else. I don't have any external things to deal with. You're doing it like going mountain biking.

No, I'm not really mountain biking. Most of my stuff is very consistent and manageable. So during my four like zone two sessions each week, those are like, I'm within 130 to 142 beats of heart rate the entire time. I never dropped below it. I never go above it. I just sit in that like 12 range or heartbeat range the entire time. And I've gotten really, really good at being able to do that. Even when there's like little hills or declines and, you know, peddling through them or, or whatever. Um, and so those are my zone two rides and all of that is, is like very controlled, very deliberate, all nasal breathing, you know, as defined by zone two procedure, like I could say a 15 word sentence and it wouldn't impact me too much. It just kind of keep going par for the course. Um, and then the other two days,

those are ones that are a little bit more variable. Uh, usually I'll pick like a massive hill that takes me between 20 and 45 minutes to climb. And I'll just go do that as fast as I can. Uh, in which case my heart rate is sitting basically in zone four zone five for the entire duration of it. Um, or I'll do something where I'll find a path that has more like kind of rolling hills. And when there's an uphill, I'll attack it, but it'll be like 30 to 60 seconds. And then I'll kind of chill for a couple of minutes and then attack another one for 30 to 60 seconds. And so there's a few different ways I'll go about that, but yeah, I'm definitely like the only consistent heart rate I'm doing is the zone two stuff.

And then the high intensity interval stuff is variable based on terrain for the most part. So I'm sure once I have Mike start programming for me and I'm doing more erg indoor, I'll probably be told similar things and, you know, sit in these really uncomfortable States for longer periods of time. Yeah. Have any of you guys ever heard of Alex? The guy who like he like squatted 700 pounds, they're looking 700 and then ran a 50 mile ultra marathon. Yeah. I follow him. He's he's great. He actually coaches one of my buddies, Jordan lips. Yeah. I would just, yeah. His, I read his book a lot years ago, the hybrid athlete, how the concurrent training.

Yeah. So I'm curious, like how close to you, you feel that, you know, the way you're placing your training with your cardio, is it similar or you take a different approach? As far as like how I'm arranging the hypertrophy training with the cardio or whatever he's all about zone two for the most yeah yeah yeah maybe a day yeah yeah so uh the zone two stuff is really from what i understand from my last year of diving really really deep into research on this stuff is uh like, like the, the polarized model, uh, popularized by Dr. Steven Seiler out of Norway, um, basically states that 80 plus percent of your time should be spent

in a zone zone two commonly, uh, Steven Seiler actually uses a three zone model, which makes much more sense physiologically because it's everything below the first lactate turn point. And then zone three is everything above the first lactate turn point. And then zone three is everything above the second lactate turn point. And then everything in the middle is zone two. And so it gets confusing when you're using a three zone model versus like the commonly held five zone model. But in the polarized model, you spend all of your time either under the first lactate threshold or over the second lactate threshold. And you try to spend no time in the middle. It's basically

like this dead zone where you're getting the same adaptations that you would being under the first lactate threshold. Um, and yet you're causing a ton more fatigue. Um, so it would be like if, yeah, it'd be like if, you know, training to failure and three RIR, we're giving you the exact same benefit. And you're like a guy that's like, man, I'm fucking going to failure every time, you know, and this other guy's like, well, I'm going to get the same results doing three RIR. So kind of similar idea. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You can do it more and you can accumulate more volume, which for aerobic, like volume for hypertrophy now seems to be on the hot seat. I don't know where you guys all stand on that, but I, to me, it feels like volume has kind of taken a backseat to intensity as far as

strength and hypertrophy go um and i would even say maybe maybe even deeper than that i would say um monitor what do you call volume it would be like um was it chris beersley talks about instead of monitoring intensity or total volume monitor the number of reps that are at or near failure and that be your volume. And only, yeah. So then all the rest is like useless probably. Yeah. It's just getting you to the stuff that matters. But it seems like in aerobic training, volume really, really, really, really matters. And there's just no way around that. And so the more volume you can accumulate, the better. And, by necessity, you have to spend more time below that first lactate turn point. And so, uh, for me, that's going to be like under 140 beats per minute. So I just try to accumulate

loads and loads of volume under 140 BPM. And then a little bit of volume in the like high intensity range. And I try to stay out of that middle range as much as possible. For the guy that said that 80% of your volume should be zone two. What is he optimizing for in that case? Is that like a longevity cardiovascular health or fat loss or performance? No, this is, this is a high, high Olympic level athletes in cycling, Nordic skiing, rowing, and running. So pretty much any of the major aerobic sports. If you just Google polarized training, it's basically the way, like most people at this point are,

if you're a high level endurance athlete, you're spending 80% of your time below the first lactate turn point, just accumulating hours and hours and hours of easy training. And then you're going really hard sometimes. And that just seems to be kind of the mostly accepted approach at this point. Are you trying, when you're doing the high intensity, are you trying to push the lactic threshold a little bit higher? So when the time comes, you can kick it a little harder, a little longer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So essentially what you want to do on the high

intensity days is you want to accumulate 30 to 40 minutes of time in zone. So that would be either middle to high zone four or zone five. And the way that you accumulate those 30 to 40 minutes of time in zone, there's a number of protocols you could use. Like you could go 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off for 90 minutes or something like that and accumulate it that way. Um, you could do four by 10 at, you know, a threshold pace or something along those lines. Um, I tend to like two by twenties and four by tens. I use those a lot. Uh, sometimes three by twelves, but I, I like, I like those kind of higher end work because I'm really, really bad at it. Like I can do 30 thirties all day. If you give me a little bit of recovery, I'm right back on it. I'm good. Um, but 10 to 20 minutes of sustained effort, Anders knows that was always the thing that

crushed me in the open or in CrossFit every year was 10 to 20 minute efforts. And so that's where I've been spending a lot of my time. A lot of guys used to do that with CrossFit where they're at, they would have kind of off season a lot of you know longer low intensity cardio sessions and then they would do a lot of like strength speed sprint type work but then as competition would come closer they would they would progress both of those ends toward the middle where they're doing just what you were just saying like um you know 10 minute amraps 20 minute amraps and they do less longer endurance and less like high intensity sprints and they do less longer endurance and less

like high intensity sprints. And they would kind of meet in the middle of pre-competition. Correct. Yeah. That's the model. We always used it CrossFit PB as well. Yeah. You know, as far as kind of coaching other people, because I know that you put your training, I assume you kind of still do in some capacity. How do you feel like, I mean, your, your main focus is being kind of right now on the conditioning side of things. As it relates to your program or just call it like coaching others. If, if they're trying to find, or you're some, many people still probably come to you specifically for hypertrophy training. How has it changed the way that you're writing your programs for other people, um, kind of going through the process and like learning curve that you've been

going down for the last year? Yeah, it, it honestly hasn't changed a whole ton as far as programs that I write with, with individuals in mind or group programming. Um, because I it's, I'm still writing a hypertrophy program. The only real changes I've made to individual and group programming has been that I encourage two to three zone two sessions a week now. And so zone two is obviously very individually dependent. Somebody very out of shape can be in zone two from going for a brisk walk, whereas somebody that's not or that is in great shape may need to to fuck. I don't know, run it an eight minute mile to, to hit zone two. So it is very variable. Um, but I've found such benefit in mental state and energy throughout the

day, uh, and sleep. And I mean, really everything else from, from doing the zone two stuff specifically that that has become pretty ubiquitous among most of my programs. I do have a program called Brian's program, which had always been marketed as optimized hypertrophy training. And so that has been my biggest, my biggest struggle actually with, with embarking on all of this cardio is what do I do with Brian's program? Because it's supposed to be my program. It's what I'm doing.

And people come to my program for optimized hypertrophy. So I struggled with that for a while. And I was trying to do both back this winter, early spring. I was trying to still train on like a bodybuilding split routine five days a week and also do cardio five days a week. And I was programming that into my program and being like, this is what I'm doing. Like, Hey, if you guys can't fit all the cardio in, you know, it is what it is. Uh, when I switched to this full body program about a month ago, it really has been a revelation as far as how I feel,

uh, during my training, because hitting three full body sessions a week is much easier than five split body sessions, especially when it's just, you know, one top set per movement per session. And then as far as Brian's program goes, I put a note in that if you're not doing the level of cardio that I'm doing, then you should probably do two top sets of each movement. And I actually think that when you look at the total volume and effective reps, as mash mentioned, um, across a training week, when you double that volume from one top set to two top sets of each of those movements in my program, it actually gets you right into that range of like eight to 12 or 15, um, sets per week per muscle group. And, uh, I think it, it really is as optimized

for hypertrophy as you would get for a three times a week, full body program. Uh, but eventually that's going to change again after the bike race, it's going to go back to some sort of, uh, moderate, moderate split style routine as well. So it's, it's been a battle, but, uh, just trying to be true to what I'm doing and putting that out there and people will either, you know, follow it and align with it or they won't. Um, have you gotten your VO2 max retested? No. So, um, we talked about this just for the listeners, right? We talked about this at your house and, um, I took this VO2 max test in July. So I had been training for about a year on cardio at that point. And I'd seen all these drastic improvements. And my VO2 max score came back at 34.6.

According to this, this lab test that I did, I was hooked up to the metabolic cart with the, with the mask on and everything. So 34.6 is really bad. Y'all like 34.6. When you, when you Google, when you Google what people with a 34.6 VO2 max should be able to do, I'm doing way more than what they're doing. It's like, I should be struggling to walk upstairs with like hands full of groceries, you know? So I started talking to Mike T. Nelson and when he convinced me to get the rower, he was all up in my ear about this, this 2k row test and how it has, you know, some correlation to actual VO2 max numbers. If you go to concept2.com and you can enter your body weight and your time and on the 2k test and

get a number. So the first thing I did when I got my rower, of course, was go down to the basement and do a 2k test. And, uh, I hit a 723, which is 10 seconds worse than my best ever 2K, which was done trying to qualify for the NCI in 2011, or was it NLI? NLI. NLI. So in qualifying for the NLI in 2011, I wrote a 7.13 2K. And now 10 years later, 12 years later, I wrote a 723 2K. And so I put that into my VO2 max calculator at Concept2. And it said I was a 47 and a half VO2 max. So obviously there's a little bit of disparity between 34.6 and 47.5.

So I don't know, man. Honestly, I'm just not putting a whole lot of value into that 34.6 number and i'm just doing what i'm doing you know yeah you're you're doing all this at elevation out in correct colorado um from doing this at absolute sea level in san diego uh i know it was a long time ago but do you notice any like real changes or when you get back to sea level to go do things? I know you get out to San Diego like once a year. How has that like played into this or have you even noticed it?

Do you think you're just acclimated? Yeah, I think I'm acclimated. The one caveat or contextually dependent piece about that VO2 max test I took is that it was taken the day after I got back from 12 days in Wisconsin. So I was at sea level for 12 days, came back, took a VO two max test at elevation. And so I think there's probably a little bit, uh, variability in there from that. But as far as what, you know, your question, I think it takes about five to 10 days of consistent aerobic work to adapt at elevation, uh, at least at this elevation, it would be way different if I was going up to like Leadville at 10,000 feet or something like that. But where I am at about 5,000 feet, yeah maybe noticed a little bit of improvement. Like I remember going for a bike ride and being surprised at how fast I could go at a lower heart rate. But within a couple of days, it all kind of reverted back to the way it was. So I don't know, man, I'm really

not sure what to make of this elevation thing overall. Yeah. Yo, Mash, what are you doing? Last time I saw you, you lost all the weight, weight man i saw you a couple weeks ago um and you you're on this train a little bit too what's uh how are you bringing all this stuff into your strongest man in the world to best breather in the world i'm definitely not the best breather in the world by any means but like but yeah i went 203 so it's like the lightest i've been since college and um i just you know the i don't really have a totally structured endurance program which i didn't need one because i just needed to do something it's so but i mean you know we walk every single day but now i've been running so like with my hip i was so afraid to take that first step running but then just one day i'm like

heck with it and i started running and it didn't hurt and so um so now i've been like going a little bit more and a little bit more and like and all of a sudden with the drop in body weight i can jump again i can like do things i mean i'm 50 so like you know being able to do these things are more exciting to me than than lifting heavy weights i mean like how much more weight am i gonna lift like but yeah being able to run and jump i mean that's way more fun and so when we were at the beach last week i did cardio every day i did strength training once so that's crazy but yeah and mash and i both have that cardio life man i know have you um outside of just the weight loss have you found it carry over to any any other aspects of fitness just general ability oh yeah everything man you know what let me tell you what really happened

when i went with you guys to arkansas and i was in such bad shape riding the bike that's the moment i was like oh yeah you you you met us you met us. You met us. Yeah. Walk out with a separated shoulder. So maybe you did win. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I did. But you didn't have to FaceTime Emily and go, hey, I'm not going to go into the family. Sorry.

No, no. But I still felt bad. And like, literally, it was just I couldn't breathe, man. Like, I don't know if it's because COVID or what. But like, I do know this. COVID caused some major damage in my lungs and it started freaking me out. At nighttime, I would wake up gasping and I'm like, but now I don't have any of that. And like, it's crazy the things that have changed.

It's not just that I can walk, play with my kids as long as I want. It's like less anxiety. Like it's been a good change. I feel more like I used to when I was young now so I don't want to go overboard I'm not trying to run a 50 mile marathon like Alex Vieta but you know I want to be you know I would like to do a 10k that might be my biggest goal I'm not trying to run a marathon yeah you know 10k I could do that yeah I, I'd love to hear kind of both you guys' thoughts on, uh, it's something that I think about in that, um, muscle mass isn't something I think that anybody on this podcast is going to have to worry about where that really is

like a massive concern for many people. So when you hear this, like, uh, longevity advice or health advice, and you're like, you got to go build lean tissue. They're right. Because most people need to go build more lean tissue and be stronger and be able to have the leg strength and all those, those pieces to it. If you've been training and lifting weights for mass in your case, like 35, 40 years, you got enough. You got to go fill in the rest of the pieces that you didn't do. And that really becomes learning that you have this enormous system that's ready to go. And you just got to go turn it on. And I feel like there has, I've never really been able to focus on it. And

then the health and kind of like the feeling, feeling light side of things really starts to kick in because now you've got tons of muscle and the wind to be able to go along with it. And I think that that's been one of the coolest parts about the process is just realizing the muscle mass really isn't going to go anywhere. You don't have to do that much to keep it for a long time, but you're able to work on something new that actually adds an enormous amount of value to life because it's really like the part that allows you to do things. Agreed. I agree. You know, two things I would say for the people 45 and above that. So I wrote this silly article for Jim O'Hare. I thought it was, I did this one by 20 program and it hurt me to write it because I'm like, this is so silly. And then I tried the

program. And so I love it. It's like, I can do it in 45 minutes. And here's the thing. It helps me keep my muscle mass. It helps my hips and my joints feel better because you're going through a full range of motion at least three times a week in all these different ranges of motion. doing the cardio and then also this if you have like a joint like um who was it i had dinner with in vegas um the bodybuilder huge it doesn't matter anyway so like i was uh sitting with him you didn't know that it's me it's the it's the big strong one elite fds i'm so blanking out oh he's not no no no this dude's a big power lifter and a bodybuilder. Huge. Anyway, so he said he was about to get hip surgery. He was about to get his hip replaced, like I did.

And so what he did is he met with a swimming condition coach, and he said, why don't you try just putting that joint through high reps, body weight only. So he would do abduction, adduction, flexion, extension, external, internal rotation on his hip every single day from 50 to 100 reps, just body weight. And all of a sudden, he didn't have to have his hip surgery. So then I'm like, well, let me try that. So I started doing that. And lo and behold, now my left hip, I don't think at least it's going to be a long time before I have to get hip surgery. And number

two, I don't have to take Kratom or anything to like, for it to feel better. So that was anyone who knows me, like not having to take Kratom. Number one, my wife now says we can buy a brand new hot tub because I've saved so much money so so i would recommend those things one by 20 new range of motion at your hips yeah and then get a new hot tub i feel like this whole this whole uh dynamic is very common where guys get into the 30s and kind of somewhere in your mid-30s you stop competing at a high level in whatever sport you are in whether it's crossfit or or MMA or what have you. And then to stay in shape,

you just lift weights because lifting weights is fun and it's easy, like, you know, relatively easy compared to killing yourself, trying to be a professional CrossFitter. You know, you go back to doing some, you know,

some fun functional bodybuilding. And then after a while you start going, man, I'm not doing any cardio at all anymore. I probably should do some cardio. That's, it's probably good for me to do at least some cardio i am getting older you hit 40 like brian's talking about where you know me and me and andrews also just turned 40 travis is 75 fully fully gray over

here uh yeah travis is 50 so he knows what's up and uh and then a lot of people just go man i really gotta start adding some cardio back in because kind of like Brian said, like you get to the top of the mountain, you go, man, am I halfway? Am I heading down the mountain now? I probably should extend the down the mountain portion of my life here. And I feel like I've fallen into that as well. It's like I still do jujitsu. And, you know, if you ever have wrestled, you know, full effort against another human being, you know that there's a massive cardio component to that. But at the same time, I can't do that five, six days a week anymore like I used to without just destroying my body.

I have plenty of joint pain. I got to moderate, you know, how often I do 100% full effort at jujitsu. So I've added in some cardio myself myself very conservatively just like rucking has been something that i've added in lately like i used to go for for jogs but now it's like i can i can i can jog and run sprints but you know andrews pulled a hip flexor running sprints same deal it's like i'm trying to find like conservative ways to add cardio back in so it's like it's air dynamite garage or you know salt bike in my garage rather and uh rucking riding bikes with my kids like it's it's all very much more conservative than it used to be.

Yeah. Running has not been friendly to me over time. I, uh, I've had two injuries in the last two or three years and both of them came from running. So I tore my plantar fascia in the bottom of my foot and I, uh, I pulled my hamstring really bad. Like I felt a minor pop back there and both of those were from running. And so I, I find it interesting that Anders and mash are both on the running train. Um, because I feel like, especially as we get older, you do have that impact aspect of running and you have the eccentric contraction. So you're, you're loading some muscle damage into the equation as well. Uh, whereas I feel like at least for me, you know, focusing on rowing and biking being concentric only type movements or concentric dominant.

Um, I feel like you can just accumulate so much more volume without having any, uh, any kind of mitigating effects on your joints and stuff like that. Yeah. I think rowing, I really enjoy doing rowing too, but I like walking in nature and then let me be like my running. You're talking about at most a mile, like, and it's probably not near as fast as you guys. So like, yeah, it's not what you're thinking. Probably neither, neither is my deadlift, but we still talk about deadlifting together. Totally. That's true. That's true.

Yeah. That Doug, when you, when you say that nothing, nothing will ever change the time that I tried to convince Mike Boyle and a chat room that CrossFit could be done healthy. And then as soon as I quit CrossFit and we interviewed him and I was like, I just want to let you know, you were totally right. You definitely going to get hurt one day.

And it's definitely for 28 year olds. Uh, me being 35 and having two kids now or whatever it was when we interviewed him, we were up in Boston and I was like, I lost that one because he specifically wrote in there and he was like, uh, what you're saying is correct for you at 29 years old or whatever i was in their like mbsc chat room or functional strength coach chat boards or whatever it was um but yeah you start to you have to like go there just needs to be a new game to play like i think that that part really is just like been the coolest thing is how do I keep playing the game? And I, I feel like in, in playing this, this game of really working on cardiovascular, like the capacity that you can operate at, um, I've gotten more benefit out of it than I was

expecting. And I think it was because the framework that I was always operating through was like CrossFit equals conditioning plus lifting weights fast. That like is the conditioning piece. It's not really like a, and I'm sure the guys that are doing it now are doing what we're talking about and in a very structured way and period, like they've got all the time in the world. But that's not how we did it. Yeah. And that's not, um, that's, and I'm, I'm getting significantly more benefit, um, and more ways than just being able to breathe. Well, um, it's, it's adding a lot more, um, energy and excitement to training and to just life in general. I feel like it's, it's, it's carried over into way more aspects than I, that I anticipated.

Yeah, I agree. And, uh, it's interesting that the, um, oh man, did I just lose my train of thought? Um, it is, uh, it's interesting that the, I don't know, take it from there. I'll come back to it. Yeah. I, um, I, the, the interest I'd love to ask when you, um, does the mountain biking aspect of it really add a lot? Like, do you feel like you're going to get on the rower and just be chasing this clock that totally sucks versus the fact that you're going to be out in the, like you're, you're out in the mountains, you're out in gravel road right now seeing like the most beautiful part of the country on a daily basis. And then you're going to go sit in your basement and stare at a clock that just ticks by 10 meters per pole. I feel like there, like there's, there's a lifestyle part of it that you're, you're experiencing that is very valuable. I a hundred percent agree. And it, it goes back to Doug's statement about periodizing the year.

And so when you look at the seasons here in Colorado, there just is going to be time between November and sometime in March where it's just, it's going to be hard. And there's going to be a very few days where I'm able to get out and actually bike in nature, because even if the day is warm enough, which we do get these kinds of whiplash days where it'll be like 65 in January or something, but there's still going to be snow all over the bike trails. Yeah. And so, uh, it does make a difference, man. Like I actually really wake up every morning excited about whatever bike ride I have planned. Like I go on Strava and I map my route the night before and I like know what I'm going to do and I'm amped about it. Right. And then I go out and I experience it and it's great. Fucking a man trying to get excited to sit on a trainer

is it's, it literally makes you want to pull your eyelashes out. I get 10 minutes in and I'm like, this is the worst thing I've ever done. I hate this so much. And you get hot and you're sweaty and there's no wind. Um, and so it is similar on the rower. I actually just finished rowing before we hopped on this episode because my bike is in the shop and I needed to do some cardio. So I wrote a 5k at, uh, at my zone two pace. So I kept my heart rate under one 40 and just wanted to see what I could do. Um, and it was, it was okay. I mean, I think it's more interesting than biking because you have more going on when you're rowing, whereas biking is just half your body working and then the other

half just trying to find comfort. Um, so yeah, I, I'm not super excited about that, but I think that's exactly why I'm now training six days a week on cardio. And then once October comes, I'm probably going to drop to three or four and I can manufacture the motivation to do three to four sessions. I don't think I could do six in a trainer downstairs. No way. No chance. There's not enough air down there to breathe either. Stan Everdeen.

I can't believe I couldn't. We got to edit that out, please. I was at his house. He's awesome. Doug, do you remember the picture you took of him when you guys interviewed him? His back carrying the farmers to like 400 in each hand or something like that, farmers carrying. There is a slab of lat that is like the most impressive looking back you've ever seen in your life coming off that man. Big dude.

He's literally the nicest guy ever too. Yeah. Sounds great. Never get back on the show. It's been too long. No. So tell me about this race, dude. I want to hear, we, we didn't dig into any of this rate.

I didn't even know you were training for an actual race. When you came to the house and we were interrupted by our kids every eight seconds. Yeah. They, they were kind of annoying. So as kids are. But yeah, so the race is a 50 mile, mostly gravel, a little bit of off road, a little bit of pavement. I was up until two months ago just riding my mountain bike around. And then in August, I went and I bought myself a proper gravel bike. And so it's my first time ever using a bike that kind of looks like a racing bike where

it has drop bars, you know, that kind of curve under and you change the gears on the very end, instead of as you do on a mountain bike on the handlebars, um, took a little bit of getting used to, but I am a way bigger fan of that gravel bike now than, than the mountain bike. And it saves me a decent amount of time too. Um, I go about one mile per hour faster, which is about three to four minutes per hour. So over the course of this 50 mile race, it'll probably save me somewhere around 10 minutes, like nothing that's going to change the world or whatever, but it's much more comfortable and I really enjoy riding it. And so, yeah, it's, um, I'm going with four of my buddies. Uh, I have one buddy out here who actually, he just moved away to state college, but I, uh, I biked with him a lot out here when

he lived in Boulder and, uh, he's like a semi-pro gravel racer. He does the really long endurance events that are like 150, 200 miles and stuff like that. So he's been a cool resource to kind of bounce things off of and kind of help me with, you know, getting my bike set up and fit properly and all that. And then I've just been accumulating a ton of mileage. Um, I remember when I first talked to him six or eight months ago about this race, he was like, dude, just try to get 50 to 60 miles a week and make sure that you hit one, like 30 or 35 mile ride, you know, a few weeks before the race, just so you know, you can do 50. And I was like, yeah, that seems reasonable. Like 50 to 60 miles should take me four hours a week of biking or whatever.

Well, the last couple of months I've been upwards of 150 miles a week. So I'm biking between eight, eight and 11 hours a week in preparation for this. And at this point, the 50 mile race is really just like another day of riding. Um, I've done two 40 plus mile out mile rides now, and a number of 30 plus mile rides. And I feel like 50 at this point, isn't going to feel like much. It's just kind of a hard day of going out and working out, you know? Yeah. Um, killer man. Where can people find you? At Brian Boorstein on Instagram. Uh, I got two group training programs,

evolved training systems and Paragon training methods. And I got a podcast eat train prosper with my cohost, Aaron Straker. We talk about hypertrophy and cardio and all sorts of fun stuff. So yeah, thanks for having me on. This is always fun. Yeah, dude. Travis Mash. Mashlead.com or you can go to Mashlead Performance on Instagram.

You can check out all my articles now are mainly on GymAware. I just can't. They kill me with these articles. So that's where my articles are. I like to just see you writing again sir yeah Doug Larson Brian good to see you brother good to have you on yeah you too man always good to connect

I am on Instagram Douglas E. Larson I'm Anders Warner at Anders Warner and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. You can access that for free over at rapidealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.