Barbell Shrugged - [Heart Rate Recovery] How to Measure Recovery During Your Workout w/Bryan Boorstein, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #738

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged, Bryan Boorstein is back to discuss Heart Rate Recovery. Heart rate recovery refers to the rate at which a person's heart rate decreases after a period of exercise. It is a crucial indicator of cardiovascular fitness and overall health. After intense physical activity, a healthy individual's heart rate should gradually return to its resting rate within a certain timeframe. Slower heart rate recovery may signify poor cardiovascular conditioning and an increased risk of heart-related issues. Monitoring heart rate recovery provides valuable insights into an individual's fitness level and helps tailor effective exercise programs for improved cardiovascular health.   Get in touch with Bryan Boorstein IG: @bryanboorstein website: www.evolvedtrainingsystems.com Owner/Founder @evolvedtrainingsystems @paragontrainingmethods Podcast Eat Train Prosper @eat.train.prosper Bachelor of Science JMU, 2006 CrossFit Games Coach, CF-2, CF-Mobility 3X CrossFit Regional Athlete 24 Years Training; 13+ Years Coaching Featured on ESPN Radio + Numerous Podcasts Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram  

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, Brian Borstein back on the show. If you guys have been paying attention to the show, Brian, one, comes on the show all the time. Not only was he the best man at my wedding, but my roommate in college, we owned gyms together. Between Doug and Brian, I have not, those are the two people that I have talked about lifting weights with more than any other human beings on this planet, which is really cool to, uh, I always enjoy when Brian comes on because it feels like, it feels like we're back in college. It feels like we're back to, uh, doing the thing that originally was our like best friend thing to do, which is get in the gym, lift weights, eat food, get out of the gym, talk about lifting weights, maybe go back and lift weights again

because we were 20 years old. We could lift weights multiple times a day and had all the time in the world in college. And then just sitting in the gym, hanging out, talking about the best ways to do things. It's always cool having Brian on because since I have known him so long, I always know that he gets these little things in his brain

and he'll like shoot me a text and that text will have some sort of data in it that he's been tracking and is like geeked out on. And that's when I know we need to have it back on the show. And today we're going to be talking about heart rate recovery because he sent me a text and said, look at my heart rate. I just did a bunch of hack squats. And then a minute later, it's about 50% of that heart rate. That means I'm in really good shape right now. And I was like, dude, you need to come on the show and we need to talk about this so we dig into a heart rate recovery and then of course it just kind of uh really really starts to get into all the things that

we're all kind of geeking out on right now in our own training in our own lives and um this like constant pursuit of keeping strength conditioning like how are we reframing uh 45 pounds uh constantly in our lives to keep training exciting the things that we're doing the things that we're working on um for me really like getting back to a lot of the basics we talk about linear periodization and how i've been doing uh the same upper body workout basically for the last seven or eight months and i continue to improve and it's very funny because there's been so many conversations over the years of Brian and I wondering if like does linear periodization

still work if you've been training for nearly 30 years and it turns out it does no matter how much you want to think that you have surpassed the the most basic thing that you can do to improve in the gym it always comes back to adding a little bit more weight to the bar or adding an extra rep each time you do the same workout. And it turns out it works. But heart rate recovery is where we start this thing. And as always, friends,

you can head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galvin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. As always, friends, free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. As always, friends, that's over at rapidhealthreport.com. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Marble Shrugged. I'm Anders Marner, Doug Larson, Brian Borstein, Rose, Rose. Of all of the people that I have talked about straight, this is my Zoom hug to

all of you. I've talked about weight lifting weights with you guys and learn more with you and from you than anybody else in the entire world. That's pretty crazy. These shows are great to me. Dude, we're going to be talking about heart rate recovery today. And tell me when this started to become like a thing that you use in your own training. Um, I'd love to hear just like the thought pattern because last time we had you on, you were doing all the cardio going on, uh, mountain bike races.

And then you sent me a text bragging about how your heart rate dropped a hundred beats a minute, uh, and inside a minute after doing hack squats. And I was like, welcome to barbell shrug. Let's go talk about lifting weights. Yeah was like, welcome to barbell shrug. Let's go talk about lifting weights. Yeah. Um, heart rate recovery is pretty cool. I actually think I probably started paying attention to it as a fringe metric when I started doing cardio, like, uh, two years ago or something like that. Um, when I started doing cardio, well, when, when 10,000 steps a day wasn't enough to figure it out yeah well you know i mean i always

was so bad at cardio during crossfit right so crossfit was in a sense cardio but i was always so bad at it that i was like oh we don't need that like we'll just lift heavy things and yeah it was such a great thing because if you talk to a bodybuilder like i walked on a treadmill you're like yeah great good job it's pretty good for you. You made it to your car today. Good job. I'm excited. Yeah. So heart rate recovery, I guess, would be defined as the amount of beats that your heart drops from peak within either 60 seconds, 90 seconds, two minutes, three minutes, whatever time domain you decide you want to use to track it. And so I've been using 60 seconds. I think that how fast your heart rate goes down within the first minute tells most of the story. And what I've personally found is that after the first

minute, it doesn't really go down a ton more. It has like this really big drastic drop in 60 seconds. And then it just kind of trickles down from there, or even sometimes stays the same, depending on what you're doing, how high your heart rate got, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think the metric is widely applicable to many sports, almost every athletic endeavor that you can do, specifically relevant probably for sports that involve some sort of interval. So on the top of my head, I'm thinking like basketball, football, grappling, or MMA, something like that. Like if you're able to do a round of MMA, what are they like three minutes each? And then you have a minute or two break in between. Is that right? Am I making that up? No, it's three minutes for amateurs typically. Typically professionals do five minute rounds.

Okay. And then what's your break in between? Yeah. One minute. Yeah. So if you're able to be at 170 beats a minute, like say 90 plus percent of your max, and then you can get down to 50% of your max, and you're almost in this like parasympathetic zone within a minute, then you're going to be in a much better position to attack your opponent more quickly than somebody whose heart rate only gets down to 75% of max or whatever that is. So same thing applies in basketball. If you're shooting free throws, you can recover quicker between that period of time, football between plays. And then obviously to all cardiovascular sport, if you're biking,

you're running, you're rowing, you're doing any sort of start stop intervals or something like that, the faster their heart rate can decrease, the better off you're going to be to put in effort to the next interval. I think it's somewhat applicable to weightlifting. Um, Anders brought up my hack squat, but it's only partially applicable to weightlifting because heart rate is only one of the elements that goes into recovery between sets, especially if you're doing like a strength or hypertrophy style program, you of course have to have your heart rate down to a reasonable amount, but you also have local muscular recovery. And then you have psychological recovery and we all know what it's like to sit under 400 pound

back squat. And just cause your heart rate is back to normal. Doesn't mean that your head is ready to go get back under 400 pounds again. And so I think weightlifting has a number of kind of extenuating circumstances associated with it. But for me, I just think it's a great metric that is relevant for the cardio that I'm doing, but also a good metric to define heart health. And if your heart can decrease and get back to baseline sooner, then that's a sign that your heart is healthy and responsive to, you know, what you're giving, what you're giving it. I'm currently on an eight year long interval with 400 pounds on my back. And it may literally be like another 40 years. Uh, I'll just pick it back up later in life and see if it is be my last squat ever. Uh, yeah. If I can walk it out and then I just crumble.

I remember, uh, we had a conversation maybe at the end of the CrossFit days in like 2016, where you were like, I just want to try to be able to squat three 15 for reps for as long as humanly possible. And now I think we're all at a point where we're like, eh, like, yeah, that's cool. But I don't know how important that is. Yeah, it's interesting. 255 behind me is a very static barbell. And that's about the top and the bottom of where my body feels necessary. I could still get there if I needed to, but maybe later in the show. Back squatting by itself, I never ever thought that there would

be a day where I was like, yeah, I don't think I need that. I am a hundred percent there. Um, my body feels much better doing, um, more, uh, kind of like isolated single joint things, hip thrusters get me a long ways. Um, just maintaining the muscle mass is really all that matters for a very, very long time, but, um, we're getting off. I, um, I wanted to, when you were talking to it, so tracking for like the cardiovascular training that you're doing, um, intervals, or if you're going to go out for like a 15, 20 mile bike ride, are you tracking it for both? And then what is kind of like the speed or are there differences in the speed that your heart rate is dropping from? If you're going to go do say a minute all out on a bike, and then that

needs to drop probably like a hundred beats a minute. But if you're, if you're maintaining somewhere in like 140, 150 in your beats a minute, and you're on a 20 mile ride, um, do you see it dropping as fast as it would if you were doing higher intensity intervals? Yeah, the answer is no, but also a hundred beats a minute, I think is pretty unrealistic. I look at it more as the text you sent me. No, I said that it was, uh, it went from showing off one 60 from one 62 to 80. So it was 82 beats is what it went down. Not quite a hundred. I think the most you can really hope for reasonably in a minute is about 50%.

So that could be from one 80 to 90. It could be from a hundred to 50. It could be from one 20 to 60. Um, but what you're, what you see there is that, you know, the most you can expect is less when you're starting from a lower place. So if you're starting at 200, then yeah, you could get down to 100 in theory. My heart rate hasn't seen 200 in a decade. So I don't think that's, yeah, but, but yeah, to your, to answer your question, when I go

out for longer kind of like zone two-ish type rides, my heart rate might peak for that ride at 140 or 145. And usually it doesn't get nearly as an impressive of a decrease. And I think that that has something to do with the fact that it's been elevated for so long. Because when I do a hack squat set, or I do a 30 to 60 second interval on my bike, it was low, and then it was high. And then it just kind of wants to get low again. Um, but when it's been used to the norm is, Hey, you've been at one 40 for the last 75 minutes. Um, it just kind of likes to hang out a little bit higher. And so for me, it's usually like, if I can get 40 beat drop and go from one 40 to 100, that's pretty normal for me after a

zone two long ride. Um, so those numbers definitely look different depending on, you know, whether you're doing intervals or steady state, et cetera. Yeah. Have you noticed? Oh, go ahead, Doug. I'll just say to, to what extent do you do anything that's like specific in your training to help your heart rate decrease faster than just normal training? If you're just getting in quote unquote good shape, naturally as you get better shape, I'd imagine you recover faster, but is there anything special or unique that you do to specifically get your heart rate to recover faster than just normal training to get in better shape? So that's a good question. And I think one of the things that was the most helpful is, uh, when I was working with Mike T Nelson, who I know has worked

closely with you guys, coaching Anders. He had me doing one of the worst things that I've ever done on a rower, which I don't know if you've done a version of this on the bike. I told him I wouldn't get on the rower. So you could do it on the bike too. So it's called a Mjolnir interval,

M-J-O-L-N-I-R. And it has you start at an extremely high effort for 30 seconds. And then you rest 30 seconds. I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapid health report.com. When you get to rapid health report.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. And 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 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 it's 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. An extremely high effort for 30 seconds, and then you rest 30 seconds. And then you do a really hard effort that's slightly less than that

for a minute, and then you rest 30 seconds. And then you do a minute and a half, rest 30 seconds, two minutes, rest 30 seconds, two and a half minutes, rest 30 seconds. So you're doing these increasing length intervals, but because you're starting with a 30 second all out, your heart rate never actually calms down. Even when you're doing the two and a half minute interval, which is in theory, 50% of the actual effort that you should be putting into the first interval, like the, as far as Watts go, like the first interval is 450 watts. The last interval is 225 watts. So it's half of

the actual output. My heart rate is still jacked up as if I was still doing the first interval. So I think that adapting to shorter rest periods with increasing length output, uh, was absolutely awful, but I think extremely helpful in, in curating kind of this, this heart rate drop and getting your body prepared for the next interval. Now, if that was the purpose of what he was doing, I'm not really sure. Um, but I think the more stuff you do where you take your heart rate up and let it drop and take it up and let it drop and kind of have to keep repeating these performances over and over. I think that trains that heart rate recovery better than longer, more sustained intervals. Yeah. It sounds like a brutal session for the record.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, after you do the two and a half minutes, you get five minutes recovery and then you do it all over again. And then five minutes recovery, do it all over again. So you just kind of keep going, hoping like you get to that five minutes and survive, you know, are you focusing on the way that you are breathing? Like, is it, or is it, or have you seen differences between nasal breathing or breathing with your mouth? Yeah. So I, I purposefully don't breathe with my mouth until I get to a point where I have to breathe with my mouth or it feels like a rate limiter.

Um, and so I know you and I have talked about this off air and you've said that you've gotten up into like 170 beats and you're still nasal breathing. Um, so, so it actually, I've been able to do that running. I can get up to about 170 running and still running to be much easier, but I can't do it on bike or on rower. By the time I hit 160, 155 on those two, I pretty much have to resort to using mouth. So I can't say for sure whether there's been a huge difference

because in the modalities that I'm using, since I don't really run, I pretty much always reach a point in those high intensity intervals where I have to be breathing through my mouth by the end. Yeah, what are you using to track all this? Apple Watch? Well, I was using Apple Watch until a few weeks ago

and I didn't really like how the Apple Watch seemed to be giving me some data that was kind of all over the place. Like they would kind of jump and it would skip numbers and stuff like that. So I went out and I, uh, my bipolar H seven strap from a decade ago is no longer working trash. That thing, uh, bought a polar H 10 and this thing is like a Cadillac. It's so sweet. Um, so it's easy. It's it's the, the amount of accuracy that I get with it is way better. And so I've been using that for my cardio sessions as well as for like my morning HRV and stuff like that now. Yeah. I know you've been focusing on HRV or

at least kind of looking at it for a long time. Um, did you see any improvements in those numbers once you started focusing on this on cardio in general or on a heart rate recovery on the recovery side? I mean, it's, it's probably hard to tell because you've been doing so much cardio lately that it would have the largest impact to just have a better cardiovascular system. But I didn't know if it had gone from 80, like your, your score for us and aura. Um, but if it went from like 80 to 90 and was like consistently in those higher numbers. So what's your scale with aura? Does it, um, like I know it uses RMSSD as the calculation. So does it go up to like, is your peak like one 50, one 60, something like that? I've knocked out a few. If I see a hundred plus, I'm like, damn, this guy is just recovering very well today. Um, my numbers are typically in

the eighties and nineties. Um, when I, when I talk to people and I see them below 50, I, I typically just, I feel like that's like the easiest win where there's some sort of like stressor in their life that they're just not dealing with it. Their body just can't process. Um, but for me personally, the closer I can get to a hundred, the more, but I'm not, I talked to a pro soccer player that, uh, we work with and he is consistently one 50 plus, which would make sense because they're, they're running a marathon essentially, or maybe not a full marathon, but they're, they're running an interval sprint 12 to 15 miles a day. Um, so like, they're just,

they're able to recover their flood. They're moving blood all day at such a good rate. So by the time they put their head down, it's just lights out. Um, and he was like one 50 plus, he was like the first person that I, that I had heard that was consistently that high. Um, so I don't, I don't know what the cap is, but if you're pushing upper or like, if you're pushing it close to a hundred, but if you're pushing upper or like if you're pushing it close to 100, I think you're doing very, very well. Yeah. So I ask because I recently learned that my Apple Watch, which was giving me HRV readings

in the 200s pretty regularly. I would see those when you post that and be like, damn, this guy is just on a next level. So I learned that the Apple Watch is an outlier in the algorithm that it uses to calculate HRV. So almost every device out there uses RMSSD like Aura does, but Apple watch uses SDNN, which is the standard deviation of the norm. And so it takes your RMSSD score and then it eliminates, I don't know, the outliers or whatever it does with its standard deviation calculation. And then you get this number that's ballooned up and it's way bigger than what you get with RMSSD.

And so since I switched from Apple Watch to the Polar chest strap and started using the Elite HRV app on my phone, I've been doing this now for about three weeks. I get the RMSSD score and it's generally between 120 and 140, which is still pretty good. It's not quite like your soccer player, but it's also not up in the 200s like my SDNN scores were. So I really like that. I like that it's more consistent now with Aura and with a lot of the Garmins and the other ones that are used. And then the Elite HRV app also converts your RMSSD score into a one to a hundred. So I get

like a, like mine's now about 76 is kind of my average on the one to a hundred scale. Um, and that puts me in the like 85th or 90th percentile of people that use the app. Um, but I think RMSSD is probably like a good metric to use in general, just because that's what most of the devices use. Yeah, I've Googled to try to find what the cap is on Aura. And I've heard of them in the 200s. I've never even come close to that. I think I've probably had like three days that are in the triple digits. So my kind of goal is 80 plus.

If I can do that consistently, I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm recovering very well, especially for like, where are my trainings at right now? Yeah. Well, it's so much like genetic genetics play such a big role in HRV. And so you could have a low genetic limit on your HRV. And then you're really just, it's like golf. You're just playing against yourself, trying to improve your baseline. And so at some level, like it's tough to be like, Oh, you must be really stressed because your HRV is low. It's more like, where is it's tough to be like, Oh, you must be really stressed because your HRV is low. It's more like, where is it in relation to where it's been? You know? Yeah. I, I, I feel like I use the number 50 and if we're above 50, we probably get a thumbs up.

Even if your genetics are bad or are great, like we can obviously make it much better, but if you're under 50 and I don't have the exact science and papers on, on this, but if you're below 50, I feel like that's a, that's a, it's just a sign that your body's not processing some sort of stressor. It's not recovering well. Um, and I feel like we can, we can very easily, um, start to implement just like whether it's some like zone two stuff on a consistent basis, VO two max training, like just getting higher level intensity pieces in there. Um, and, and

you can start to improve that stuff. I think that there there's a, there it's not like a, on that, on that like genetic scale there, there is still numbers that I feel like we should probably be able to get to. 50 kind of seems like a decent number to guess off of. Yeah. There was a big study that I heard Peter Atiyah reference a while ago that was basically just like a cutoff point of, I think it was 14, which is obviously a really, really low. When I hear that, that's way low. I think that what he was saying is if you're below 14, you have like a 10 times increased

mortality risk than people above 14. So it was really this binary cutoff of either you're going to die or you're probably not going to die. And guess what? We all die. Exactly. At some point, your HRV is going to be below 14. Especially from like the longevity guy where it's like you're going to lose four extra days and we still all die right okay yeah i heard that i was like that sounds like saying you need to be able to bench press like a quarter of your body weight it sounds like an excessively low number or you're gonna die right right exactly yo uh on the practical side of this if somebody wants to test this out, like what's the, what's the easiest, like simple test retest that they

could do like on a monthly basis to see if they're making any progress here. Yeah. I really like the 30 to 60 second all out interval. I think that if you do that with full recovery, that gives your heart rate a chance to basically get back down to as low as it's going to go. So I would say at least three minutes of time recovery between intervals and probably being able to test that, um, see what your best one is across five intervals or something like that. It's likely that the more intervals you do, the worse your recovery is going to be just because your baseline heart rate is going to keep creeping up. Um, so like when I go into my hack squat set that I referenced with Anders, you know, I hadn't done anything prior I'd woken up,

I'd gone for a walk. Basically my heart rate was resting, uh, going into it, you know, high forties, mid forties, whatever. So when I do that hack squat set, after I've done my warmup sets and stuff, my heart rate hasn't been artificially elevated yet. So it's more likely to drop down super fast than say, if I were to test that on my sixth movement in my workout, that's like a sissy squat superset with lunges. And then my heart rate gets up to one 70. I might only see that go down to 90 or something. So I'm still getting 80 beat drop, but it's a smaller percentage of the total. If that makes sense. Yeah. So you're saying you do it five times and then you're, you're taking the best one or taking an average. I think I'd probably take the best one. Um,

because sometimes it's not always, I mean, play around with it, you know, mark them down and see which one it is. My guess would be that the first one is not the best one. It's probably the second or third one. That's the best one. Um, just cause your heart rate does need a little bit of kind of get up and go. Um, so yeah, I don't know. I, I, I think that the reason the first one wouldn't be the best is because it probably won't get as high. Like you kind of have to do something to get your heart rate to go. And then once it goes, then it's about which one is going to allow it to drop the most.

Um, practically like I, I think again, it's an N of one thing. It's you against you. Like how much does your heart rate recovery improve from where it was versus being like, Brian got 82 beats. Why aren't I getting 82 beats? It's like, Hey, you know, you're, you're just competing against yourself type thing. Yeah. Um, how are you using it with your clients? Like how do you program for this? And is it of interest to many of the people that you're working with? No, I don't really work with too many people that are into cardio. Like even though I've taken it. You wrote back to me that you're like, some of the people are at least doing it.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Cracking it. Yeah, yeah. So I have two guys that I coach right now and both of them are interested in health and longevity as a fringe benefit after hypertrophy and strength. And so, yeah, we're doing like some zone to work, some interval work. And then when they do their interval interval work, I asked them to note what their heart rate recovery is. And so it's, it's been, you know, a decent amount of data coming in so far, but this is something relatively new that I've been paying acute attention to.

And so I don't have a ton of data as far as this has worked really well to program to improve it or that has or whatever. It's a lot of, like what I just said, 30 to 60 second all out with full recovery on one spectrum and then zone two for an hour. And then how does it fall in that spectrum? And they tend to both follow the model that I laid out where zone two is giving you a bit less

and the intervals are giving you a bit more. Yeah. Are you using it, uh, in your own, uh, and Mike does this a lot with me is instead of saying like, you know, two to one rest to work ratio or three to one, whatever, kind of like, maybe call it like old terminology. Um, all of those things when I am actually at the track or when we're really trying to pace things out is all based off of how quick my heart rate comes down. Um, which is also a ridiculous metric, because if you even think about standing up and you're watching the polar, you literally like

you're like i think i'm good and your heart rate it's like yeah yeah 10 beats in a second yeah yeah no no no i'm sitting i was just thinking about working out and all of a sudden your body's like oh better start pumping some blood uh-huh saber tooth tiger yeah literally like i start getting up and like being like okay i have to do my next hack squat set and it goes from 80 to 100 like that you know yeah mike's like don't move until it's under 100 and then i'm like all right 99 and then all of a sudden it's like 110 yeah um if you actually look at emg of muscle fibers prior to say you're doing like plyometrics prior to like actually touching the ground your calf muscles will will fire and then it'll be detectable by emgs prior to actually touching the ground like

your muscles are like i'm about to go here i go and like you can see on the plot that they're that they're like prepping ahead of time by you know 30 milliseconds or whatever it is but that doesn't really happen yeah that's really cool i believe it it. Yeah. Are you using that at all just in your intervals to say instead of I ran a one or did a one minute effort. Now I rest three minutes, but instead going, how quick can I get below 90 or 100 before I and then that is the starting point. Yeah, I pretty much use that exclusively when I'm out biking. Yeah, when I'm rowing, because you set the monitor and it's like, you kind of write your work and rest in the interval before you even start. It's like, you're doing one on one off type things. Um, not as much, but anytime I'm out biking, I for sure do. So, uh, do you know over unders, you know what those

are? It's like a little context. So if you're, if you're running at your threshold, which say is, you know, your 12 minute pace or something like that um you would be you would do a minute slightly above that and then you would do like two minutes slightly below that yeah and so when i'm doing over unders i will let generally wait until i get back to zone two which would be somewhere in the one 30 ish range. And then I go again. So I don't have like a time limit. Um, when I'm doing the more intense intervals, like you're talking about where I'm going up really high, then yeah, the number is about a hundred. I find that when I can get that thing back down to about a hundred beats a minute, that's a point where I feel psychologically

and physically kind of ready to go and attack it again. And so, yeah, what range I set as the, the return point is going to be dependent upon, well, you know, what types of intervals I'm doing. Yeah. It's interesting. Cause I, even maybe this is like, just because we did CrossFit for so long, I feel recovered, but it never, it doesn't show up in your heart rate. It's a significantly longer process where like, say you top it out at 160, 170, something like that. And then the goal is to get it under a hundred. Even if that number comes down, it'll hang at like 110, 115. It takes like almost like a concentrated effort to really get it to somewhere below 190, 95, something like that consistently.

And it's always a much longer period because of my body's like eels ready. I think it's kind of like when, when we used to do like Olympic lifting training cycles and the guy we were working with be like, sit down, relax, do what Olympic weightlifters do. And then we would be just knocking out sets like every 45 seconds because we have this like engine built in over like program to like, just like go, go, go, go, go. It's like such a different methodology, but I feel like my body feels so much more recovered. And then when you put the heart rate monitor on, it takes probably double the time to consistently be below, um, the call it a hundred, a hundred

beats a minute threshold. Yeah. You can't take the CrossFitter CrossFitting out of the right. So we want to email them everything. Um, but yeah, I agree. And I also think that there is like a 10 to 15 second delay, even on the polar. So the watch is maybe more like a 20 second, 25 second delay on far as far as what I'm feeling to be manifested on the watch. The polar is maybe like 10 seconds. So to your point, you know, I feel that my heart rate's under 100 when it's at 110 or 115, but it doesn't actually show until another 10 seconds later or something like that. So, yeah, there's certainly a delayed mechanism built in there.

Yeah. Have you noticed a resting heart rate change at all? So this is interesting. It's for your low 40s to begin with, but have you noticed it? Well, it's more dependent on body weight. And that's the thing that I think is the variable that's tough to – What do you weigh now? Right now, I'm 190.

Imagine me asking other guests how much they weigh. Yeah, like a female guest. So what do you weigh these days? Uh, so I'm 194 right now. And, uh, that is about the point where I usually see my resting heart rate get up into like the mid to high forties. And I have been seeing it in the mid to high forties. And I have been seeing it in the low to mid forties. So I feel like it is improved. And then usually when I get

into the mid one eighties, it drops to like the 38, 37 ish range. Um, and so we'll see, I guess this year, cause I'm about to pick my biking back up again here in a month and, uh, going to put, do you feel good in like the mid one eighties? I feel good up until about one 85, um, below one 85. I kind of start to feel not, not quite as good. Um, but five feels hard. So he feels great. 190 is definitely the best. Like 194 feels flexible on the lifestyle. Yeah. 85 feels hard. This is the interesting thing is that like, I think I talked about this last time I was on here, but when I was doing all that biking this last year, I was biking eight to 11 hours a week on top of, you know, lifting and walking and being a dad and all that stuff. And so I couldn't keep weight on, I was eating the most food that you could imagine. I mean,

there were no restrictions on what I was eating. It was like pizza, cheese steaks, French fries, ice cream, brownies, like it didn't matter. And I still got down to one 80. Um, and so at that point it felt much more manageable because I wasn't being restricted. But in the prior diets where all I did was lift and walk and I didn't actually do cardio. Yeah, I had to cut food really low and it made a huge difference. So it's interesting to think that you can kind of fuck with the system a little bit by just doing more cardio and making your energy expenditure higher. And then you have to consume more and suddenly you don't feel as restricted. Did you, did it, did everything start to stabilize though? And kind of like level out where like a normal homeostasis would be around like 190. I had, I had a homeostasis. You're not eating pizza every day anymore.

No, no, no. Yeah. So, uh, well, um, maybe I, I don't know how much I should talk about this on the show, but I had a 33 day THC cessation. And so, uh, so during that period, I, my appetite went way down and I lost seven pounds. So I went back into the one eighties and then since reintroducing it back in, I've been, I'm back up to one 94 now. Um, but I would say that as far as homeostasis goes, when I was doing all the biking, I hit a homeostasis in the high 180s and it stuck there for almost the entire season, like throughout summer. And then as I really started ramping it up for my race in October, it just fell off. I went from 187 to 180 in a matter of weeks.

And then I was just like stuck at 180. And that's where I did my race. And 180 is like really small. As soon as the season ended and I started eating again, I was back up to 187 in like literally a matter of a week. Yeah. Wait, tell me more about the race. Like being, being that light for a mountain biking race, was that, was that beneficial to compete at that lighter weight though? Oh yeah. I think so for sure. Because my watts, my actual power output didn't decrease at all compared to where it was when

I was like 190 or 192. In fact, it might've even been better because my aerobic engine was stronger. And so, yeah, I mean, I way outperformed my expectations on that race. I had a realistic expectation of where I thought, best case scenario, this is what I could do. And I beat that by like 12 minutes. So, um, yeah, it was, it was pretty, pretty cool. I think that one 80 is a really great place for me to be if I'm going to be doing endurance sport. Yeah. And then do you have any more races coming up? Are you, are you using this heart rate recovery stuff to prep for your next race then so my next tentative race that i may or may not sign up for is a really long one with 5 000 feet of climbing like 60 miles 5 000

feet of climbing in september um and so that's a long ways off like i have a long time to prepare for september if i'm gonna do that i may sign up for another one on the in between um speaking of did you guys see that Froning did Leadville? Do you know what Leadville is? Yeah, did he do the bike or the run? He did the bike. Nice. And so he did it straight up.

So it starts at 10,000 feet of elevation, and it goes up to almost 13,000 feet of elevation. But there's a total of 12,000 feet of climbing in that 3,000 feet of elevation, but there's a total of 12,000 feet of climbing in that 3,000 feet of elevation accruement. And, um, it's 105 miles. So not only did he finish under the time cap, he did it in under nine hours, um, which is insane. So the best in the world, Keegan Swenson did it in five hours and 47 minutes, I think. But Froning doing it in eight and a half hours is literally like at the level of some lower level pro mountain bikers.

And so he just like trained for it and did it. There's a 30 minute video on the Mayhem channel that kind of documents his journey through it. But I think that 2025, I want to sign up. I want to train for and sign up for Leadville and see if I can do it. I have no visions of trying to do it like Froning did, but I think doing it in under 12 hours, which is the cutoff, would be a pretty cool goal. Yeah, I want to say we have one or two clients right now that are training for it, whether

they're doing the run or the bike. I know there's one planning on doing the run, but it sounds like a monster. Froning is an impressive human being. Like we all met him through CrossFit, but he may just be like, he's got to be what, like 35 years old now, 36? Yeah. Like maybe like, I mean, just one of the most all-around athletic gangsters. Like everything he does is just really high level.

And he still trains that hard. Like he still is in there three, four hours a day. He just doesn't know anything, anything else. It's really impressive. I actually just recently subscribed to his channel because of this Leadville video. And, uh, I've been just, yeah, I've been kind of cycling through it. He's very, very impressive. Very fun to watch.

Uh, just has a great, like hardworking attitude and, you know, good programming mind. So yeah, I'm in full agreement there. Yeah. It's really weird watching. It's like you, you kind of like in a way, like label people, you're like, oh, he's just very good at CrossFit. And then you watch him for 15 years, dominating lots of different things. I feel like he's, he's like, in a way, it's just like, he's just playing.

He just happens to be very athletic. He just goes out and plays every day. Whatever you throw at him, it's going to go crush it. And it's, it's super impressive. Yep. Yep. No, the Leadville thing in eight and a half hours was insane. Yeah.

Wait, how, how long out is your next bike race? The one I'm currently targeting is September, but I may sign up for another one before that sometime in, you know, midsummer or something like that. I'm not really sure. I'm trying to get my group of guys out here to do it with me, but they, what should I say? They're not quite in as good shape as I am.

Do they listen to Barbell Shrug? I don't know. They, what should I say? They're not quite in as good shape as I am. And- Do they listen to Barbell Frog? I don't know. We'll have to send this one to them. Do you have any friends now? You're dunking on your neighbors right now? They're also, yeah, exactly. They're much more into mountain biking,

like pure mountain biking than I am. And I'm more into gravel. I enjoy mountain biking as well, but I enjoy the, uh, the less technical nature of gravel, how it's more about your engine and your training and less about the technical side of it. Um, so I do mountain biking with them and they're much more into that, but our mountain biking rides are like eight to 15 miles. And this stuff I'm doing is like 30 plus 30, 40, 50 miles. So, uh, yeah, it's just, it's just a little different. I need to kind of find

a group of guys I think that are more into the endurance stuff and then I'll have a, a bit more of accountability. Yeah. Uh, tell me about the three months you did with Mike. How do you feel like you, uh, like, what do you feel like you accomplished? I think it was three months you worked with him, right? Yeah. It was a little bit less because I was, uh, the month that I took the CHC cessation, I had some, uh, some withdrawal symptoms that kind of impacted our training together. Uh, but, uh, but yeah, the, the main cycle we did, I think was eight weeks or something like that. And, uh, he had me do my 2k row test to start, uh, kind of untrained. And then we went through, uh, a progression that basically had me rowing only three days a week.

We had one day that was a 2K row at about an RPE eight. So pretty manageable compared to like a 2K row all out. And then I had a 5K row at a RPE seven. And so that was a fuck. A 5K row is never easy, no matter what it is. But RPE seven was at least pretty manageable and then i had one day that was those majolner intervals that i discussed and the majolner intervals started week one with two cycles so i would do the all the way through rest five minutes

and then do it all the way through again yeah by the end i did five cycles of that so it was like an hour of a rowing with you, each one has a five minute break after it. Um, and so that was, dude, I, I, I mentally, I think psychologically I about broke at that point. And, uh, so we did that and then I had a deload week and then I did my 2k row test and I smashed it by all considerations. Like I got a 703. Oh, savage. Yeah, it was pretty good. I really wanted to break seven, but I was, I was really happy with 703 and it was way better than I could have anticipated. So, you know, big props to Mike for facilitating that. But then, you know, he was like, you know, let's take a couple of weeks, you know, do some stuff you enjoy endurance stuff, whatever.

Don't put your head too deep into this. And then, you know, contact me when you're ready to get back after it. And, uh, and, and psychologically, I just didn't want to do it again, man. Like he and I, he and I joked about it and he was like, no, I get it. Like what you did there, like those major intervals, the 2k row all out, like these things, like it wasn't even physically I felt taxed. I just psychologically, it's like, I didn't want to get back under that barbell again. Yeah, I feel like having those numbers to hit makes it hard. If you were to describe my C2 rower in my garage right now,

it would not be a row. It's like a cobweb holder. Like it does not get used. That thing is so damn painful. It's strange that I like my Airdyne, like my air bike. I like it so much. I have no issues jumping on there and getting myself feeling awful. But something, there's like a mental block about the ERG too.

Like the more time you spend on it, it doesn't make it any better. No, it doesn't. But I will say the thing that i think i garnered the most from my time with mike was the way that he instituted a better rowing cadence into my natural propensity so like you and i from back in the crossfit days we always were that guy that would pull hard as shit wait like three seconds and then slide stroke back, pull hard as shit again. And so we were literally, I think at times I was looking at my monitor when we would row and it would be like 17 or 18 strokes a minute. And so Mike kept like harping on me, like, dude,

you got to get that stroke rate up. You got to get the stroke rate up. And it took a lot of diligence and practice for me to actually do that because no part of my natural being is somebody that has a higher stroke rate. I'm more of that rest and recover kind of guy. But once I was able to get my stroke rate up into the high twenties, it made everything easier because every stroke didn't actually feel that exhausting individually. You know what I mean? I totally agree with you. I think that that's a, that's just like a getting the reps, which we talked about in past shows that we've done. Like when we were doing like the, call it like cardio or CrossFit, even in those like

periods of the season where you're just like, I'm going to go do engine building. Cause it's what I'm supposed to do. It was always, and I do feel like this happens on the erg. If you don't know how to use it, me, um, is you're doing these very aggressive five second, tiny little intervals. Cause you're pulling as hard as you can. I it's that it turns into, it feels like this anaerobic thing and you're just not using the machine properly. And I think that that's why I've actually like, um, I've enjoyed using the bike, uh, the air bike more is because I've, I've learned how the machine kind of is supposed to work, which then I allows me to use it properly where I probably just haven't taken

the time and don't have the interest right now to just sit on the earth for that many reps to be able to get it into, Oh, this is like a cardio specific thing. And having the stroke rate that high where on the air bike, I was able to pick it up like relatively quickly working with him because I just, I told, I was like, this is the instrument I would like to use. I've been on a rower. I don't want to go back on it at all right now. Can I just use this, this piece? Um, but now I now I actually like as the summer comes around or as it starts to warm up, I actually really wanted to start putting in like more reps running, like running feels really good on my body right now.

I don't know why, like running sprints. Have you done any of that since you jacked your foot up? So I have gotten injured three times running in the last two years and I've only run maybe 10 times. So that's like 30% of the time I go running, I get injured. 30% injury rate. Yeah. So I do not go play pickup basketball now. You're right. I know. I jacked my foot up. So I tore my plantar fascia. Then that got better. And then I pulled my hamstring and then that took like six weeks to heal. So that got better. And then just the other day I went out and I was like, I'm feeling so good. It's a beautiful

day. I'm going to go running. And I was like, the sun's I'm feeling all the vitamin D in my body. So I was like, I'm going to just do some 30 thirties because that way I can run kind of slow. I can work on form. I can make sure that I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just perfect technique the whole time got through 20 intervals. So I was at 20 minutes. I was like, I'm just going to do one or two more. Right. And on the 21st one, my calf goes, and I was like, oh, fuck. All right. Okay. Oh, 40. Shit. I should have done those last two. Yeah. So each, and that one, like luckily only took three or four days to recover, but the hamstring was six weeks.

The plantar fascia was eight weeks. Yeah. So I don't know, dude, like I either need to get some running coaching and somebody to actually make sure I'm running properly. Cause I feel like I'm running properly based on what I've learned, but I'm probably not. You have plenty of hills around you. I feel like, I feel like you can mitigate. I can do hills.

All the risk by just having a little bit of an incline it just you don't ever hit top speed um the way that you just like uh whatever whatever changes in the form seems to mitigate all of it i actually it's one thing i i wish we had hills in the middle of north carolina but we just don't like anytime i ask somebody i'm like is there anywhere to run a hill around? They're like, yeah, go to this park. And I'm like, no, no, that's, that's not, that is not a hill. That's like a slight man-made incline. That is not a hill. It's like a kid sledding hill.

Yeah. Like the, the, my, the hill outside my house in San Diego was the greatest. That thing was like straight up. It was terrifying. Yeah. Um, I actually saw it, it. Justin Lee's house was like directly across the highway and you could see the hill. And I was like, oh my gosh, when you're standing at the bottom of it looks scary. But if you look from Pacific beach across

the highway, it is terrifying how straight up and down that thing was. I had never seen it from, from that, from that angle. Like tourmaline. Yeah. Right. Um, dude, what's your lifting program look like now with, uh, this kind of being the big focus. Yeah. Um, so currently I'm doing a bro split. I haven't done this since, you know, back in the day when we trained before CrossFit. So I was doing one body part a day type thing just to throw it back. And it's been really fun. But, uh, once I start getting back into biking again, which I'm planning to do starting in early April, uh, the plan is to switch to a two times a week, full body. And we actually did a dope episode on my podcast, eat, train, prosper in January. We did a 10 exercises for the rest of your life. So you only have 10 exercises.

You can pick these and these are the ones that, you know, gun to your head. You can only use these 10 exercises. So I decided that I'm going to build my two times a week, full body routine off of the 10 exercises for life podcasts that we did. Uh, and basically have five exercises one day, five exercises the other day, and then bike five or six days a week. So probably on the days I lift, maybe just walk and like kind of get cardio recovery in. And then the other five days do some like longer biking, interval biking, hill biking,

whatever it is. Um, that's the plan, you know, from April through September. I love it. I, the very,

um, the framework in which we have to attack all these, all these problems has to change. It's funny when you go back to the kind of the beginning. Dude, it was so fun though. It reminded me of the days at, uh, with me, you and Jimbo at 24 hour fitness in the mornings, you know? And I got so, uh, I mean, I did CrossFit for roughly 12 years and seriously. And that, and then coming out of that, you're going to like, there's like a whole process and whatever else. But I've been doing the exact same upper body workout for like eight straight months.

Every single Tuesday at Lifetime. And I am still getting better at it. That's awesome. What is it? Break it down. Superset, flat, dumbbell bench. Last week, I went hundreds, cold, no warm-ups. So funny that you do that.

Hundreds, eight, seven, six, and then 120-pound rows, or 110, sometimes I bump it up, but 110-pound rows, single arm, eights for three sets, super set. Um, and then I go do a machine press, uh, like a machine chest press bench press. Um, so, cause I don't like benching at all. Um, seated row, one of my alltime favorite exercises, um, some sort of shoulder press. Um, and then I do some, like just a two lower body. So glute, uh, glute raises, uh, that's hip thrusters. And then, uh, on the GHD machine, I do, um, hip extensions, Nordics, Nordics. Nice. Nothing for the quads. Uh, no real need.

Like they're just, I feel like it's just everything kind of, I don't know. Um, last I do want, I haven't squatted like specifically and just hasn't been important. Like I don't lose leg strength really. Um, just practice that enough, but I will throw in, um, more like kettlebell squats, just randomly, um, like double, double kettlebell squats. And I think that just gets it done. It's the full back squat with the barbell and all those things. They don't, don't feel that it's not that they're bad at all. They just, they don't feel that great anymore. You have to put so much weight on it. And I'd rather do things that are mechanically disadvantaged, like

a kettlebell squat, like double kettlebell squats, then where I can do significantly less weight and be relatively challenging still like a hundred, like you throw two 70 pound kettlebells and a front rack. It's pretty hard because you've got to breathe. There's significantly harder bracing that has to go on. Where if I'm going to squat and feel like it's heavy, you just have to start moving weights that I don't really want. It feels unnecessary. And that's kind of just like, I I'd rather do something that

mechanically is just more challenging, um, than the weight being the thing that I need to challenge myself with. Yeah. It's more of like a, I hate the word, but the functional approach to squatting or whatever, you got to clean the kettlebells up. You got to support them with your midline. It may or may not even be your legs that actually fail. Like it might be your midline or your ability to brace or whatever. Yeah. Like last week I did it. And, um, the next day I woke up and I had like sore abs. I could feel my legs, but like you wake up and like your upper abs are sore and you're like, what did I do? It's like, Oh, you actually like, can't just rest the barbell on your back and then just go, um, just different goals, different, different ways about going about it the things that i really really enjoy i love doing the nordics

um i love doing i also just haven't done upper body horizontal pressing anything in so long which is why i'm able to like progress in this single workout that I've been doing for eight straight months, because I just haven't done these things since me and you were in gold's gym and Arlington, like just being bros. Um, that was like, that was, that was after that we found CrossFit and it was Olympic lifting, squatting every single day and then conditioning. So you just, there was nobody who was ever challenging you into a, like a, like a bench After that, we found CrossFit and it was Olympic lifting, squatting every single day and then conditioning. So there was nobody who was ever challenging you into a bench pressing competition for a little over a decade.

So it's been good getting back to it. The fact that linear progression in my life still works, if I had been really honest with you before I started doing this, I would have been like, I am so far past linear progression of anything. Like I don't need to go 666 and then go 766 and do that for two weeks and then go 776. Like I would have, I would have never believed it. I would have never thought that that was a reality. And then eight months later, I'm still doing it and still improving. And it's awesome. It's super cool. Yeah, dude.

Linear progression is the goat. Turns out, turns out if you just do the basics, it's still get better. Yep. So where can people find you, man? Yeah. Brian Borstein on Instagram. Eat, Train, Prosper is my podcast. And I have some online training programs paragon training methods evolved training

systems it's pretty much it there you go doug larson right on i'm on instagram doug with c larson brian good to see you brother you too man i'm anders warner at anders barner and we are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com that's where dan garner and dr andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. And you can access that free report at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.