Barbell Shrugged - [Data Tracking] How to Interpret and Use Data from Wearables w/ Dr. Erik Korem, Anders Varner and Doug Larson #717

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Erik Korem is the founder and CEO of AIM7, a health and wellness content creator, and a former NFL sports scientist. His mission is centered around equipping people with the confidence and knowledge to live a healthy and fulfilled life. He is making advancements in wearable technology that will be the most personal device to date in order to create unique lifestyle changes and habits for each and every individual. For a free trial offer of AIM 7, use code “SHRUGGED” at https://www.aim7.com/get-started   Connect with Dr. Erik Korem, PhD:  Website  The Blueprint Podcast  LinkedIn  Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Eric Corum is coming into the show. It's a very cool episode today because all the episodes are cool, but especially today, right now, I look down, I didn't even say this at the beginning of the show, but I look down and I've got this awesome aura ring on to track my sleep and a Fitbit

to make sure I'm walking throughout the day, getting all my steps in. I have an eight-sleep mattress that tracks a bunch of stuff. I've got all these wearables and things that are spitting all this data at me, but none of them actually talk to each other. And Eric's background is in taking all of this, he actually brought wearables and data tracking

to college football way, way, way back in the day. He was one of the very first people to actually start putting all the pieces together on how athletes can use this stuff, make sure that they're doing the right training programs, getting enough sleep and using the data to make really informed decisions. And over time, he's gotten very, very good, especially with all the new technology that has emerged since he kind of brought this to the NCAA.

And all of this has really culminated in him creating and being the CEO of AIM7, which is an app that you can download. And it takes all of the wearables that you have and puts it into a database and a program so that it actually is like they're all connected together and giving you reliable information from a host of different sources instead of trying to piece it all together by yourself. And today we're talking a lot about data tracking, how people can actually use it, how to interpret it, and then really how he came to creating AIM7. And we are not on payroll by any means, but he was very gracious. So if you are interested in checking it out, enjoy the show. There's a free trial offer of aim seven. All you need to do is use code shrugged. You can head over to aim seven.com. Get in there, check it out, use the code shrugged. There's an offer for you waiting inside. So you can just check it all out, get

everything synced up, see what the results are of kind of where your sleep's at, depending upon which, which wearables you're actually using and get some really meaningful data out of it. So you can head over to aim seven.com to check that out. And as always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galvin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. That's over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson.

Eric Korn, welcome to the show. Thank you. Glad to be here. Yeah, man, this is great. I'm excited today. We're going to be talking a little bit about data. And look at me right now. I've got all the things on me.

When I lay down in bed, I have this Fitbit that I look at for how many steps I've taken, this Oura ring for a billion things that I hope they're telling me the truth about in my sleep. I have an eight-sleep mattress that sometimes works. And I don't even know what to do with all this data that I get. I assume it's usable in some way. But I'd love to dig into all this stuff today. And you have a bit of a history when it comes to working in the NFL, as well as in college football, and really bringing data science to larger organizations. Where do you kind of begin working with people? And how do we decide what's actually important when it comes to the amount of ways that people can track the way they're living these days? I think that's a

great question. I'll tell you a quick story about how, how I got to this place because it kind of will answer that question. First of all, you got to know where the target is. If you don't know what the target is, you might as well not track. Right. 2011 i was at florida state university and uh i was a strength coach up to that point i had also been working in international track and field with a lot of the jamaican sprinters which ones uh veronica campbell brown she was a three eight time olympic medalist three-time gold medalist uh aileen bailey um yeah there's a fun video on the internet of me trying to race this dude named johan blake and it didn't i mean it went fantastic didn't work out well for you did it i didn't win and to say it was even close would be just you know did you do it in jamaica yeah we did where uh usain bolt track

gotcha yeah down there we were down there doing uh with stronger experts um it's like my i literally talked smack to johan blake on the internet for like three months and he finally answered me and i was like oh you're totally done now we're hitting the gas pedal on this thing and i just kept telling him i was going to beat him in a in a foot race and turns out not even close wow yeah it turns out he's the fastest man in the world yeah probably 15 meters or 10 meters it was like you were way behind it was just done yeah uh he beat i gave me a 10 meter head start on the first 60 meters that we sprinted against each other and within like a step and i at the end of the first one was like look dude i'm

here for instagram not to actually beat you can we please slow down a little bit and he still smoked me but that's awesome at least you can say you got beat by johan blake in a one-on-one there you go um sorry about that that was just too good of a story no it's we have jamaica in common here absolutely so i i traveled the world for a number of years and kind of got to see how the rest of the world was developing athletes and saw how far behind the u.s was um primarily because we have a problem we have the most talent in the world and so when you have the most talented athlete population you're not exactly always looking for ways to develop it

does that make sense it's like if you have if you're in saudi arabia you got all this oil underneath your feet are you drill are you looking for green energy no you're just tapping the the floor below you so um yeah i brought this technology over nobody had been doing this we had these devices we're like duct taping these devices to the pads of our players it's connected to gps satellites pardon me i had to hire um uh the former nasa propulsion engineer uh to help organize the data and um and so up into that, like it was just millions of data points. And I remember our head football coach came to me and he's like, Eric, how are we going to use this? And I didn't know. And that didn't really work out well for me at that time. So

after about nine months of like, you know, looking at the data and we were able to quantify what was happening on the football field for the first time. And then we were able to say, okay, this is what actually happens in a game. For instance, like a receiver may sprint up to a thousand plus high speed yards, cover seven, 8,000 yards. A lineman may only sprint 50 yards in an entire game from the sideline to the field typically when they're going on and off. But why does everybody train the same? So like, these are these are like duh but like nobody had ever really quantified this

yeah we were able to turn those that data into actionable recommendations to improve performance reduce injuries and um we had an 88 reduction in injury the first year we leveraged this the nfl then flies in is like what the heck's going on here and um and so that that's what started all this and it opened up a multi-billion dollar market for sports wearables and data but the problem is is it's just still data not every team was able to actually turn it into something actionable so that's my purview on things like data without actionable recommendations is completely useless. Forget insights. Insights is a bad word to me. Yeah. That just means graph or dashboard. And that says nothing. It's like toilet paper. You're like, great. Okay. And so you really have to

understand like, what do you want to do with this? Do you want to feel better? Do you want to sleep better? Do you want to improve your fitness? And then you actually have to have a qualified group or expert create recommendations. And so, you know, and then you have to know, like, is this data actually something I can make a recommendation on? So, for instance, sleep, you know, these devices, like I'm wearing an Oura ring right now. It's saying deep and REM sleep. It's totally bogus. You know, they're trying.

It's actually built this site in months. It went to number one on Google. If you Google accuracy of smartwatches, I'll give this, guys, to you. Every month we update this with the latest scientific literature. We rack and stack all of these devices, Apple watch aura, like is it actually accurate? I think aura is like 79% accurate for sleep stages, but they're trying to measure something that requires EEG and measuring eye movement with actigraphy from the wrist and HRV.

And so it's not something you can, like you're indexing on the wrong thing. So like when it comes to sleep, like you should actually be just looking at duration, onset, and consistency. That's it. Those devices are excellent for that. The REM and deep sleep will take care of itself. Yeah, I was actually, while you're saying that, wondering that, because it's like, I would assume if we're going to really get precise on any protocol or actionable measures to take in someone's life, looking at a templated, you should have X number of

deep or X amount of deep sleep sleep REM sleep is variable between stress levels throughout the day, actual, um, like how much you need to be sleeping. Like all of those things need to be completely personalized. So it's, it's relatively, it's just the number in there that has no real value. If you're just going and getting going, going uh if you're chasing average if you're chasing the average of all the people wearing it then it's useless yeah and the other thing too is it wearable data is a lagging indicator okay the device doesn't know how you feel that's very important and so when you create program, like if you're a sports scientist, you want to know objective load. That means like, what did you do? So your steps, like you said, you track your workout and then internal load. How did your body respond to it? Things like HRV,

resting heart rate, there's other things, but important part of that is objective and subjective. How you feel is directly related to how your body is adapting to stress. So you've got an aura ring on. Has there ever been a day where you're like, hmm, the aura says I'm a 90, but I really feel like a 20. Oh, as soon as I see a 90, I just immediately go, I'm a gangster. Today is going to be amazing. Even if I feel like crap, i'm like right that's the

first a i've gotten in years that's perfect or it's uh it's flip i feel like it rarely tracks correctly actually it's like many many many times it says that i'm really low and i'm like oh i thought i felt great and then it says i'm really high and i'm like i don't really don't feel good i'm tired right now that's the problem i would agree i would agree with that. Yes. So research. So when I was a sports scientist, we would be like, huh, I wonder if, uh, our athletes are stressed. So we would literally take something called salivary cortisol, cortisol as a, as a stress hormone, or I wonder if they're sore. We would take something called creatine kinase. It's a biomarker for soreness. And then we realized that if you just ask them and you do the right math, like there's a way to do this, you could see if their response falls outside or inside of their normal range. And then it was

related to how their body was adapting to stress. So you need to combine objective data from your device with how you feel to then drive the action to take. And there's a behavior component to this as well. Shark 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 rapidealthreport.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 my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to 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 rapidealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. Specifically, when it comes to sleep, is there a way through any of these wearables to kind of, like, Aura's kind of telling us like, what happened in our sleep, but never digging into why or what mechanisms got us to that point. Is there anything emerging or are

there ways in which you can find out like why you're sleeping poorly, what you can do about it? Because really like if I just see a 70 or I see a 90, it's just telling me what happened yesterday, but it doesn't give me anything actionable of what I could do today to make it better. Yeah. This is the million dollar, billion dollar question. So one of my mentors, Dr. Gershon Tenenbaum, what a name, right? He used to say- You have to be a professor. He is a professor. He's one of the goats of sports psychology. Look this guy up. And he would say, everything everything is complex multi-dimensional and relative i hear this all the time well aura is like you know like why do you wear the aura

ring well because it made me realize when i drank alcohol i slept like crap golly if that's all that 300 bucks gets you like plus a monthly subscription i hope it's more now that you've said that that's actually one of the most consistent findings for any of these devices, whether it's Whoop or Aura. I usually wear both. Like if I have two or three beers, guaranteed all my numbers are going to be either depressed or elevated, whatever bad is. So do you need to pay $30 a month for that? Like once you learn that lesson, you've learned the lesson, right? Mm-hmm.

So the idea then is like what are the behavior – like you have to create the conditions for restful and fulfilling sleep? And I think oftentimes it's like you tell somebody just go to bed and sleep more. They're like, well, thanks, man. I really appreciate that. It's like, how do you create the conditions or the environment that lends itself to better sleep. And so the, like my doctoral work was studying how sleep impacts our ability to adapt to stress. And so you got to kind of got to look at a whole paradigm. You guys want to talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So the first thing would be like, okay, there's two things that drive the sleep wake cycle. There's a homeostatic drive, which means that when you wake up in the morning, you should be feeling good. And then as the day goes on, you get more and more tired. And that's biochemically driven. You have this buildup of something called adenosine. And if you drink caffeine, it blocks these adenosine receptors for a little while.

And then there's a circadian component to this. And circadian means about 24 hours. And there are certain what are called zeitgebers or anchor or time givers for their circadian rhythm, of which light is one of the most important ones, temperature, humidity, movement. And so, you know, 100 years ago or even sooner than that, you know, we weren't a knowledge working society, meaning we didn't make money by sitting there and pounding away at the keyboard. We were outside all the time. Now that our circadian rhythm has been completely disrupted and we're inside almost all the time, people are having all sorts of pathologies now. I mean, we got like certain cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, all these things. A lot of it can start coming back to just the daily behavior. So when you view sunlight in the morning,

I think a lot of people have heard this before, but if you haven't, sunlight, the intensity and the quality of light interacts with some cells in your eyes, and then it impacts a bundle of nerves that sits above the roof of your mouth called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the SCN or the circadian pacemaker. The SCN then sends a signal to the rest of your body or multiple signals. It's like creates this cascade of hormonal and neurological events, spikes cortisol, increases body temperature. And it's like the body, it's like, it's like, wake up. But then also it starts sending these signals like 12, 16 hours later, start increasing melatonin.

Okay. So by getting enough sunlight in the morning and then frequently throughout the day, your body is just going to want to do what it naturally needs to do. That is one thing. Movement is very critical. If we're just stagnant all the time, does the body really have a hunger for sleep? No. It's like one of the best ways that you can start getting yourself to sleep is get enough light and then move more. Like if you're walking 6,000 steps, increase that number.

And like, you have to create a need for sleep. The body is an adaptation machine. It is going to adapt to the stimulus that you give it. We have to like we didn't have to think about lifting weights and getting enough aerobic exercise and getting enough steps in the 1800s because we were an agrarian society or we were working outside lifting. And now we're just like hunched over tech necked hacking away and so we have to have the squat rack behind you anders like like those are the things that we need and so we got to create the conditions so you create the conditions through viewing sunlight through movement through eating at the appropriate times you don't want to be eating late at night and then so that's like kind of like behaviors that you can engage in. And then also, I think we all know this, that if light's an

alerting cue in the morning, it's an alerting cue in the evening. So you can't just be sitting there, just vegged out in front of your TV with lights on in the house or staring at your phone. It's emotionally stimulating. Like you're not going to want to sleep and so most people though don't know this stuff and so where these devices fail you is that there was a paper in the frontiers of physiology that demonstrates that where it was with aura rings actually that these devices do not change long term health behavior what you need is a goal real-time feedback in education, and then the device is useful because now you're tracking progress instead of just tracking. It's not changing behavior. It's just tracking what you're already doing.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Talk to me a little bit or add a little bit of color around the idea of real-time feedback. Is that how you feel or is that actual data that people should be checking on throughout the day? Yeah, this is really good. So real-time feedback, meaning like if you take an action, like, hey, you did a good job. There needs to be a loop that's closed for you. But so we do, like I have an app called aim seven. That's what we do. We pull all this data in and then we give people like the exact recommendations they need to do for exercise, sleep and mental fitness. But if you want to close a behavior loop for somebody, you know,

it's pretty simple. You need to know one of the things we assess is your motivation. I don't care. Like I love J jocko and all these people but like look the average person isn't going to wake up in the morning at 4 30 and it's go time you know like every day it's like if you're super motivated when some days you wake up and you're like i'm on fire those are the days that you need to just crush it right if your body's also ready, if your motivation is really low, maybe you had a really bad argument with your spouse and you, or you had a tough work project or your kids or whatever, right? You're just like, I am drained. You need to take the smallest action to get across the action line and to keep moving forward.

And so when you take that action, there needs to be feedback. It's like your kids, you got to give them, you got to like love them up. Hey, you did the right thing, right? That's a human need. And so these devices don't do that. And you know, like it rewards you for opening the app and getting your score. That's the hooked model, right? But it's not actually rewarding you for behaviors that are changing your health. Yeah.

Like when it tells me I just climbed Mount Kilimanjaro or whatever, and I get a badge and I'm like, okay, good job. You had no idea. You just hiked the Great Wall of China china but you got an email about it that sounds great it's so it's your digital high five and that's it yeah it's out of touch some of you know some people obviously they google has a bajillion dollars and they found that it does encourage some folks yeah but you also need to know what the target is so like of all the things in your life that you can improve and that's another thing i think that overwhelms people. It's like, it's, you know, consistency over intensity,

consistency always beats intensity, small little changes over time. So like, somebody's like, where do I start? Do I start with exercising more? Do I start with sleeping more? Do I start with eating better? You have to do a needs analysis and say, what's the one area we call it a limiting factor that if we, if we move the needle on that is going to have the biggest possible change for you right now. And then we focus on that one small area. And then we give you an action that's attainable based off of the things you like to do. And then you move somebody forward. That's what a great coach does. You know, when I worked in the NFL, I would probably see 20 things I could do to help an athlete.

And people that are like, oh man, working with lead athletes is the best. I'm like, well, they're the hardest people to get to make a change because they're so good at what they do. Yeah. But when that athlete would come to me like, Eric, can you help me with this one thing? And then I would help them with that one little thing and they saw progress. Then guess what? They're coming back again.

It's the same thing with coach people that you coach. Like, although there's this menu of things that you'd like to change, identify the one little thing that you can take action on and be consistent and get it to a specific threshold, maintain it, and then take the next step. Yeah.

Yeah. At Rapid, we call those performance anchors. It's the thing holding you down. Absolutely. For AIM7, is that an actual wearable product or is that something that just aggregates data from other wearables?

And then it then provides advice based on other data. Yeah. So we're hardware and data agnostic. So yeah, we're just an application. We pull all the data in and then we're like, here's the exact action you should take today for your mental fitness. So like aim seven notices that you're stressed. Here's the specific breath work tool. that you're stressed. Here's the specific

breath work tool. Your mood is down. Here's the specific gratitude intervention. This is exactly how long, how hard, and the type of exercise you should do today based off of how you're adapting to stress and the things that you like to do. So we developed this core IP about eight years ago. So like as an example, Anders just said he has has multiple devices on him he's got this fitbit and aura and whatnot like i have a whoop i just lost my aura i think it's in my think it's in my son's bed somewhere it fell out of my pocket i gotta find it but i got a whoop i got an aura i have an eight sleep i have a uh i got a sleep number mattress as well so like when i'm sleeping i have at least at least four things at least aggregating data i don't look at them all all the time um to to your point it's kind

of more interesting than it is like actionable yeah but i do like to be able to go look at my my 30-day average for time in bed and see is it like kind of where i want it to be so i i i definitely like having the data but uh as far as like aggregating all the data together and having any actionable advice, other than what I'll just say is kind of the obvious, if I'm sleeping six and a half hours and I probably should sleep more, you can take many different data sources with AIM7 and aggregate them together and then get a comprehensive view of that data and then actionable advice based on many different data sets. Yes, 100%. And then we in the back end say, well, this device is more accurate than this one. So

we're going to, we're going to, we're going to say we're going to take that information. Oh, they're wearing an Apple watch, and it doesn't take HRV at a consistent interval. So then we have people like put their finger over their camera lens upon waking up to get their HRV. But yeah, so we pull all the data in and then this is whole thing is built for busy people. They care about their health and fitness and wellness. And they're just like, just tell me what to do. Like, I don't have time to, to download all this stuff and run analysis. And so we, you know, we do that for exercise, sleep, mental fitness, and then for like recovery, we're pushing out this recovery tool here. And the month where it's like here's all the tools i have and then based off of how my body's adapting to stress so for instance if you're in like a sympathetic state your hrb is really really

low it wouldn't be ideal to put you in a more stimulating environment like a cold tub it's probably not ideal you would want something that would stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. So then we would say, based off of the tools you have, here's the one to choose based off of how you're adapting to stress and in your preferences. And I think what's really cool is we've, this is all built on something called decision intelligence. This is the future of decision making. Actually, the inventor of DI, Dr. Lorian Pratt, is on our board and she's helping us build these systems. But it's, how do you deliver customization at scale without a human in the loop? You have to create decision

architectures that layer human expertise, evidence-based practice, and machine learning. And so we've been building this for two and a half years. And because we have a very precise recommendation engine, we're building our own AI, our own large language model called Amy that we'll be deploying in December. And so this is like an AI coach, but it's not off the rails. Like I wear a whoop sometimes. I know they just partner with chat GPT, but like my first recommendation was 29 hours of functional strength training. A buddy of mine was like, Hey, give me a resistance plan. And it said, go play pickleball. It's a long CrossFit AMRAP there. Yeah. That's called Rabdo. It's because it's, this isn't, you have to have a fundamental recommendation engine to actually responsibly deploy an AI or it's going this isn't, you have to have a fundamental recommendation engine to actually responsibly

deploy an AI or it's going to go completely off the rails. So people are talking about AI, like it's going to be the future. If you go on chat GPT right now and ask for a program, it's going to give you something good enough, but it could also give you something very harmful. That's why having guys like yourself are very important because you are experts, right? And you know how to respond to different variables and the human factor. So when it comes to AI, I just really caution people to be very careful about what the information it's giving back to you, because it could do more harm than good. It actually leads into another thought that I have a lot, like we coach remotely. We've all coached in person before. And there's really something that happens in person that's nearly impossible online. And so

many people are coaching remotely now. When your athlete walks in the door, there's something that happens when you look at them, where you go, Oh, today's not the day or wow, you look good. Let's go. Let's go hit the gas pedal today. Like there's, there's something that just happens when you see somebody that you've been working with for a while and you just know their mannerisms, their energy. And if it really is a high performing athlete and you ask them, they're always going to say, I feel great. Let's go. It doesn't matter unless there's like a real relationship where there's that trust, which is phenomenal when you have it. But is there a is there anything that is being created or has been created or being worked on that is able to kind of understand the softer side with all

of the data that we have, we should be able to find a way through these, through all this information to actually uncover the truth. So yes, I feel great. And you can go, eh, maybe not. You know, so there's two things. There's like facial recognition softwares. Now when I was working in the league where like we were looking at where people could just look and it could look at different components of how you look that day to pick up on emotional cues that stuff exists but i would say just these

i would call them old school but they're really not old school these the way like we do a calibration where we ask you how you feel and then we do it on a kind of on a one to ten but then there's all sorts if you're if it's sensitive enough so i'll give you an example like we would have like an elite athlete that would fill this out and they would just like every day five five five five five five five five five right and then the day that it's a four that is a major alarm signal i had an athlete i, I cannot say the name, but this athlete was very well known. Always like everything's great. Then they indicated on their wellness questionnaire, Hey, I'm fatigued. And they made a comment. What can I do about this next day? ACL tear.

And so if you give somebody the outlet and then you know how to measure these things mathematically and they're sensitive enough, and then the models can, can wait this stuff, you can get pretty close because we would use this as the first sign, because sometimes people will tell a technology, but they won't tell the coach. So in sports, it was like, when people would fill this out, we would have like a red alert when something dinged off that would go to the athletic trainer, the trainer could grab them like, Hey, and they're like, yeah, you know, like, um, and people respond to this. And I've actually found in the consumer population that most people never get asked how they feel. And so it's almost, we found that it was like a mental health check-in.

People like found it to be a luxury to take one minute to actually sit down and assess themselves and to really start developing, as you know, the skill of interoception. That's powerful. And so if you're a coach listening to this, I would say you can, you can set these up with Google sheets or whatever. We do it in a little bit more sophisticated way with a bunch more math going on. But there's some questions you need to be assessing either inside your head or actually get your athletes to fill out if you can. And it could take 20 seconds. Yeah. So is this something that you would have this new this new amy project be doing where they're

checking in she will call her she she's checking in uh with athletes um from like a psycho-emotional perspective like how are you doing today how are you feeling are you stressed are you tired um i know like in the the psychotherapy ish ai world there's been talk of people being more comfortable telling ai generated bots, we'll call them, how they're actually doing and how they're feeling. Cause they're not fearing judgment. They know that their secrets aren't going to get out. They're not going to tell anybody,

et cetera. And so they're, they're more likely to be honest, which is, you know, you mentioned something about this just moments ago. Like do you see that being a part of the Amy project? Yeah,

it's already in there. The delivery is a contextualized experience. So personalization, I don't even know what personalization means anymore. It's such a screwed up term. People just use it and it doesn't really exist. But contextualized is what you want. Meaning like in my situation where I am right now. So Anders, you're in your garage, you have a gym, you have all this stuff. Let's say you go on the road and now you have to do the same exercise program. And it's like, but now I've only got this stuff. I'm two time zones away. It's now you need to contextualize recommendation for where you are and what you need and how you're adapting. Yeah. That's where everything's going towards.

And you can start thinking about like, what do we get from a, from a, from a phone regarding like time, time zone, location, temperature. You can start understanding like circadian disruption. You can, you see where I'm going with all this. You understand how they feel. You understand their preferences. And now you have a highly contextualized experience. And that is what everybody wants. That you actually kind of like know me like, hey went across two time zones you on vacation now or do you want us to

like you want me to leave you alone for a couple days your device doesn't know that it's just still pinging you stand up stand up you know what i'm saying you're like shut up yeah you. Doing a podcast. When you look at these things and I'm always interested in understanding like the total stress load that is actually going on. I'll just call it my life. That's the one I'm most interested in. The physical side of things. I feel like I'm in good shape. I can train. I can work hard. I know how to do those things. But if you were to look at the actual total stress load, I would love to see a way in which I can actually understand maybe I don't need the physical side because work is stressful or family is stressful

or kids are stressful or whatever else is going on in life is adding to all these things. And really my only, because I'll look at my HRV and it looks great. My training feels fine, but I'm really good at pushing through things like that. But sometimes I'll just be really quick with my kids and I go, Ooh, maybe Anders needs to go for a little walk or something and get out in nature and not be staring at a screen. But by then it's a little too late. Is there, are there ways that we can start to track like the, the total stress load that is going on in our lives? Yeah. I mean, look, it's a compilation of a lot of factors that need to go into something like this. And that is exactly. So there's this concept of adaptability. Okay.

So like stress is not our enemy. It's the only way that we grow. If you want to get more fit, what do you do? You exercise. It's a stress. So what you want to do is build the capacity to adapt to more stress with less cost. Why? If you have a bigger tank for stress, when you have something happen that was going to drain, every day you're sucking from what are called adaptive reserves. That same amount of like decrement isn't going to overload you. Does that make sense? Yeah. If the tank is bigger, you can handle more and you don't have the same response.

Or if the tank is really small, when you suck that out, it's like you're already depleted. And now you're acting in a way that's totally not aligned with your values, which you just mentioned. You're responding, you're reacting and not responding. And so that's what we do. Like what I'm seven is we assess the physical, we look at like how much physical inputs have been going in. Uh, we look at all the factors that add to your recovery and then how you feel. And you can go, this is how adaptable I am today. So now I know where I need to put my energy. And you're like, to your point, you point you know the you've heard of the term minimal effective dose yeah it's so true if you give the body the dose that it needs it's going to adapt

if you if you try to fit a square peg in a round hole you're going to maladapt and you're going to either get sick or have mental health breakdown, physical breakdowns, et cetera. And so yes, some days winning isn't going and crushing yourself in the gym. Winning is walking some more, investing a little bit in your mental health or mental fitness, like say, and getting your arms around your kids, right? That is going to fill that tank back up and then tomorrow go crush it. Does that make sense from a physical perspective? Yeah. But a lot of us, especially probably folks who are listening to this,

we over-index on the physical side and then we're not showing up mentally how we want to for our friends and those that we love because we're just constantly draining it here we're never filling it back in with other things yeah i um it's it's when it comes to like those those interventions and we don't have these like exact tools that like to like go for a one mile walk um are there simple techniques that people can kind of find themselves in outside of like, maybe like the general, just like disconnect, get away from everything. Cause that's really not going to be possible in many people's lives. But are there simple tools

of just to kind of create the mindfulness around that, to be able to slow down just a little bit before that burnout comes. Yeah. So the point of mindfulness training is developing awareness. That's what it is. My good friend, Dr. Peter Haberle, who would be a great, a great guest on your show, says that attention is the currency of performance. It's what every great person, every great performer wants, right? You want to have control of your attention. And so, you know, I've got three children. I live in a suburb outside

of Houston. I can't just get away. Like, I don't know the last time I just went away by myself. Like it's not going to happen, right? Yeah. That's not like a vacation. Now they're all family trips. Yeah, exactly. There needs to be a rhythm in your life though, of some stillness and quiet. And these can be like micro-dosed moments. So like, you know, we talk about micro-dosing exercise throughout the day,

a little exercise snacks, or just brief times of movement. If you can train, you can train mindfulness or awareness through walking just like, okay, I'll do this a couple times a day, I'm just gonna go one trip around the block. And I'm just gonna focus on my feet walking on the ground for five minutes. And what happens is I'm now training my mind to be aware of that singular moment. Or like when I've been training this for a while, when I start to feel myself ramping up, I'm just immediately go back to feel the air passing through my nostrils so I can come back to this moment. And then I can take an action anchored in who I am and what I value. Faith, family, excellence,

health, right? So am I responding to my wife in a way that is caring and loving and nurturing? If I'm reacting because I'm so stressed, I'm probably not going to do that. And I'm going to regret it later, right? Like I, because I hurt her or I reacted in a way to my kids that I hurt them. But you need to create micro moments throughout the day, whether it's little five minute time periods where you can train this so that when the moment happens, you're, you're responding in the appropriate way, but it doesn't happen on accident. So for me, it's first thing in the morning. I do not have a 4am routine. I'm not, you know, I don't have these crazy deals. I go on a 30 minute walk in the morning because, and I put a weighted vest on and I listened to something,

uh, for my faith. I typically pray. And then I finished with some type of like mindfulness session. And before my kids get up, it's not crazy early in the morning. It's like around 545, six o'clock. So by the time they wake up, I have centered myself and I've already spent some time anchoring my mind. Does that make sense? And then I try to revisit it one more time each day. I can get 10 to 15 minutes of quality mental fitness training in a day. I'm going to be a much better person, a much better human being. Yeah. So you find that it's easier for you to do that while you're going for a walk versus sitting quietly in a room or any other method?

I do a little bit of both. But walking, when you walk, you get into optic flow. And what happens is, is you, you know, EMDR, that light board therapy that goes back and forth that came out of some researchers at Stanford. They found that when people walk, their eyes do this because they're in optic flow and they were able to better process traumatic experiences. So when you walk, it helps you process information and helps you process traumatic experiences. So when you walk, it helps you process information and helps you process difficult things. And that's a lot of time in the morning where I'm like, okay,

where are you, Eric? You know what I'm saying? And it does help me. It's quiet. It's dark outside. There's nobody really there to distract me. And then sometimes I do come home and spend a few minutes by myself in a closet or something like that. Nothing weird, but you know what I'm saying? Like that's the only way you're going to get away from everybody. Yeah. But I try to do it so it's not robbing my family. Yeah. I would love to kind of with the remaining time we have here, as far as we've talked about many things that people can be wearing your specific product that kind of brings all of these things together.

What is like a, an actionable actionable as far as entry point? And then how do we kind of build on what wearables or data is a great place to start? And then as people start to integrate these things into their life, like what additional layers start to make the most sense as, as they learn more about their body? Yeah. So I would, as far as picking a wearable, I would start with what do you want to know? Right. So if you want to know more about your sleep the first of all, I would say the Apple watch or Fitbit or,

or they're all going to tell you the basic three, first of all, I would say the Apple watch or Fitbit or, or they're all going to tell you the basic three things, you know, when I went to bed, how long I slept. And then you can kind of look at consistency. The only downside to like an aura ring is it doesn't track exercise very well. So the three, there's really three things you need to be looking at movement. Like how much am I walking each day? That's really important. Exercise, am I getting at least, you know, 150 minutes of heart rate elevated exercise per week and then two strengthening sessions? You can track that.

And then you want to look at like sleep, right? Then there's other things you can look at like heart rate variability or resting heart rate in the morning. Now that lets you know, like how am I responding to these things that I did? If you can check those boxes, now you've got a little bit of a data set, right? What I did, how I responded to it. And then the next question is, is where do I want to begin? And if you don't know where to start, like that's why we built aim seven, or you want to know what

to do. But like, if you have that data, you can give it to a qualified person, right? And they can take a look at this and be like, okay, what are your goals? And then let's see how your body's responding to these things. Because then you can go, okay, we're going to pull this lever and we're going to see how this responds over here. We're going to pull this lever and see how it responds. But you need to capture movement, exercise, sleep, and how you're responding to stress. Outside.

Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. and how you're responding to stress. Outside, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, sorry. No, outside of that, like, you know, Fitbit versus Apple Watch versus a Garmin. I personally like the Apple Watch because it integrates with everything else I have. And then from a heart rate capturing perspective, it's the most accurate from a wrist-worn wearable perspective.

I don't want to wear a chest strap. But man, there's so many great devices out there. Hardware isn't the perspective. Yeah. I don't want to wear a chest strap. But man, there's so many great devices out there. Hardware isn't the issue. Yeah. You when you're talking about the down regulation, getting out having like a little bit of just the time for you and the mindset that that brings just centering you throughout your like beginning your day. Is there anything as far as mindset goes that can aid in this? I know there's tons of like the call map and headspace and things like that. But I don't know if anything's really like gotten into brain health or anything on the neurological side. Man, that's a deeper question right there.

First of all, you have to be able to assess the right things as to what you need to change. But you know, mindfulness in and of itself does help improve resilience. It helps prevent, it helps with preventing task switching. It helps with emotional regulation. So I mean, the question is, is what tool when? So breath work is great. It's a category. What tool when for how do I feel? Mindfulness is a great tool, but when? Journaling is a great tool, but when? And so all of these things improve brain health.

We're starting to learn like the brain is a very complex structure. Like sleep. If you ever read sleep research, it's always like sleep is a complex biological process that is yet to be fully elucidated that's okay every single thing so all this stuff is still kind of like we're still learning we're still growing in the in the in the body of literature but we know from a general perspective that these things are improving brain health exercise improves you know through things like bdNF and Irison is helping with our brain health. But I kind of look at like, you can't be perfect.

Let's just hit the big buckets, exercise, sleep, mental fitness, nutrition. And guess what? We're going to be pretty freaking good. Like it's like our golf game. You keep the goal. The ball is going to be on the fairway, right. Instead of like over in the other fairway or hooking it left or right yeah um this has been great man thank you all the questions i have around all these things that i put on my body i don't even i only know what some of it means um if people want to learn more where can they find you yeah uh at eric coram e-r-i-k-k-o-r-e-m and if they want to try aim seven i've got a code for you guys it's shrugged all capital letters you can get aim seven for one dollar for your first

month try it out for free uh do it on our website though because apple's really weird they love taking their cut yeah well it's hard to use coupons on there they make it really difficult to so you go through our site we can help you out. But I just considered a privilege to be on here today. You guys are world-class at what you do. You bring on the best folks. And so thank you for the opportunity to come on and get to know you and spend some time with your audience. Very cool. Doug Larson. Right on. Eric, appreciate you coming on the show. Aim7 is new to me, but I'm definitely going to check that out. Sounds very cool, man. You're doing good stuff in the world Eric appreciate you coming on the show uh aim seven is new to me but I'm definitely

gonna check that out sounds very cool man uh you're doing good stuff in the world thanks for coming on thank you sir I appreciate it

you bet are you gonna tell people where to find you oh me yeah you forgot see how selfless that was yeah

put out your I'm on Instagram Douglas Douglas E. Larson on Instagram you bet I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner.

We are Barbell Shrugged, Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. 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. That is at RapidHealthReport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.