Barbell Shrugged - How to Choose a High Quality, Clean Protein Powder w/ Sara Hendershot — Barbell Shrugged #426

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

Sara Hendershot, Momentous’ Director of Marketing, is an Olympic rower, successful entrepreneur and living proof that athletes can continue to train and perform at a high level after their athletic peaks. After competing in London in 2012, Sara has transferred her competitive fire from the water into her career and the gym, where she’s now an avid Crossfitter and weightlifter.   Momentous empowers the relentless pursuit of progress in athlete health and wellness, with a mission of creating no-compromise products. The team leverages a one-of-a-kind network in professional sports to create products with performance experts from the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB, starting with a line of NSF-Certified protein powders released in 2018. These products are now purchased by more than 75 professionals and collegiate teams. Learn more at www.livemomentous.com/shrugged.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders Varner and Doug Larson discuss:   The path to the Olympics for USA Rowing Strength and conditioning for Olympic athletes and the resources at the Olympic Training Center Supplement programs for elite athletes Why so many supplements test positive for banned substances How do you create high quality, clean protein powder And more…   Sara Hendershot on Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM _________________________________________ Please Support Our Sponsors   Momentous - http://livemomentous.com/shrugged SAVE $20 at checkout using “SHRUGGED”   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   WHOOP - Save $30 on 12 or 18 month membership plan using code “SHRUGGED” at checkout _________________________________________ One Ton Challenge    Find your 1rm in the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, bench.    Add them up to find your One Ton Total.    The goal is 2,000 pounds for men and 1,200 for women.    “What is the One Ton Challenge”   “How Strong is Strong Enough”   “How do I Start the One Ton Challenge”   ------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-hendershot ------------------------------------------------------------------ ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged  

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because it's a flash sale on Friday. 20 rep back squat plus movement specific mobility is coming to you. You can hang out with me at Anders Varner on Instagram at the shrug collective on Instagram. That's where you will be seeing it and get into our email. I have to tell you about our brand new sponsors. I'm so excited about these people. Sarah Hendershot, who you're listening to on Shrugged today, works with Momentous Protein. Let me tell you about Momentous Protein. I have been taking protein powder my entire life and never had a clue what was actually going on in my life or going into my mouth. I've tried the chocolates, the vanillas, all the funky flavors. I've tried

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It was delicious. I got my almond milk, made a little proteins. It was so good. My body feels great. I don't run to the bathroom like I do when I go into the 7-Eleven or convenience store and just slam a gross protein shake. So high quality proteins are very hard to find. Stuff that is actually not contaminated with junk, very difficult to find. So get over to Live Momentous. I'm very excited to be working with them. LiveMomentous.com forward slash shrug. And make sure you get over there today, but also pay attention. They've got a massive Black Friday sale that I can't tell you about

right now. So we'll be announcing that next week, but brand new partnership. I'm super excited. I can't wait for you to get over there and love their stuff. LiveMomentous.com forward slash shrug. Save $20 on your order of $50 or more. And without further ado, friends, Sarah Hendershot, USA Rowing, Momentous Protein. Let's get it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. We're hanging out in CrossFit Surmount.

There's overhead squats going on over there. Look at that. Look at that. Look at that form. Look at these people. Doug Larson, Greg Pitch, Sarah Hendershot. I don't even know how to introduce you because we're going to talk a lot about some really high quality protein today from Momentous, but I want to start out. Sorry, I'm like dying with all these people. I want to go work out. We're going to talk about your rowing career you were an olympian you're like the best of the best in the whole wide world i was that's so cool do you ever think about that uh sometimes yeah i would think about it all the time like of all the people that sit in boats and try to paddle them i was the best uh when did you start your rowing career

in high school um that's usually kind of as early as you start rowing. You're not big enough otherwise to fit in the boats. Right. There's no T-ball for rowing when you're four years old. They have a kid's rowing team in this gym. That's a true story. Really? True story.

Pretty interesting. They don't make them wake up at 4 a.m., though. No. You probably have to do it early. I actually got away with not having to do that. All my teams happened to train in the afternoon, so I had a nice experience with rowing. But, yeah, I picked it up in high school.

A lot of people actually pick it up in college. Like a third of my Olympic team were all college walk-ons. Really? It's one of those sports you don't have to do from when you're two years old. When did you get so tall? Because I'm sure the coach walked up to you and was like, let me introduce you to this erg. You're going to be best friends.

Would you like to go to college for free? That's pretty much how it went. I was a swimmer, so I had this aerobic base. And I didn't have a spring sport. My parents were kind of trying to figure out what to push me towards. And they had been hearing about all these potential athletic scholarships and this base that I had. They're like, you should go wander down to the boathouse and see what happens.

I ended up picking a school that did not offer athletic scholarships, so my dad was kicking me for that one. Where'd you go? scholarships and this base that I had. They're like, you should go wander down to the boathouse and see what happens. Yeah. I ended up picking a school that did not offer athletic scholarships. So my dad was kicking me for that one. Where'd you go? I went to Princeton. Oh, what year did you graduate? 2010. You're too young.

My sister went to Princeton, played softball there. Oh, cool. Yeah. That's awesome. Tigers. How about reunion weekends? Yeah. What a blast. We're going to have our 10th.

It's going to be big. What a blast. Yeah. Do you still have your jacket? Oh, yeah, for sure. We've totally lost all our 10th. It's going to be big. What a blast. Yeah. Do you still have your jacket? Oh, yeah, for sure. We've totally lost all the people already. Go ahead. More rowing.

Sorry. Less partying in the streets with all the famous people. It's like the coolest party you could ever go to. Blues Traveler played the night my sister graduated, and I was like, is Blues Traveler just like at this frat party right now? He's just playing his harmonica really well? It was so wild. There's always a couple people like that.

There's like these super old, incredibly wealthy people walking down the streets in reunions. They shut the whole town down, and they walk through, and this is like multiple extremely wealthy people. You could just assume they were absurdly wealthy, and they were like, you should start investing in this. And I was like, should I? Am I going to be so rich?

Like, it's hard to explain what goes on in reunion weekends, but it's pretty fantastic. Tell me about the boathouse at 4 a.m. Princeton University. Yeah. So Princeton, uniquely, we shared the boathouse with the national team. So that was kind of cool because you could actually see the team that was training for the Beijing Olympics while I was in school. Oh, sweet. Yeah.

And that, I think, is kind of what made it sort of real for me was like, oh, okay, these are the women that I would be fighting for a seat against if I wanted to try to make the team. And these are the women that are going to go represent our country this summer. But, yeah, I mean, the boathouse itself is a pretty special place. It's boathouses. It's gorgeous. If you get to walk in, one of the old historical ones are pretty awesome. Do you feel like that was a good thing, like, right from the get-go to have, like, super high standards for what your performance was supposed to be? Yeah, I do think so.

I mean, I had, from a young age, kind of, like, put on a wall I wanted to go to the Olympics for something. And I thought it was going to be swimming for a long time. But it wasn't until I found rowing and then saw what that path could look like that it started to feel like okay maybe this is a real thing right and yeah to have those standards set made it much more apparent of what was possible right and that I think is a huge part of of rowing as a sport in general so much of it is individual like building your fitness and seeing that number get faster and faster over time so if you know that this crazy number is actually doable it makes that chipping away process a lot a lot more when did you when did the olympics i mean you you had a goal of doing i never had the goal of going to

the olympics like i guess i played hockey so it the nhl was like i guess the thing but why was the olympics is it because swimming that was like the highest yeah the pinnacle of the sport yeah and it was um and i remember i did this like book report on janet evans she was this little swimmer i think she made the team when she was 16 years old in 1988 and that was kind of my first exposure to a female olympian that i wanted to be like um and i guess from there on it was just kind of something that was always in the back of my head but but yeah i mean that it is the pinnacle for sure for rowing there's no professional league or anything if you mix the olympics you're the top of the game what what events did you do or like it's 2k yeah so 2,000 meters is the standard but the boat class is what changes

so there are tons of different boat classes for both men and women and from like a single skull where you're the only rower to a double or a pair i was in the pair so the two women's boat there's also a four and an eight uh but every boat class kind of requires a totally different set of skills based on how you have to match those other people in the boat and then how stable it is and how fast it is and how you're actually applying your force and input based on that speed. But I went to London in the pair. Okay. You got to explain that to me. So you're in the pair. What is your specific role in the boat of one of two people? Yeah. So they're different roles. So if you're the most stern in the boat, you're the kind of... Is that the forward or the back? So you race facing backwards. So your back crosses the finish line first. So the person that's in the front of the line, right, I'm looking at her back.

She's the stroke seat, right? So that's the stern most. She would be the rhythm setter, right? So it's her job to, like, create the rhythm, to really be super consistent, and just to lay down power. My job in the bow is to follow her, to do everything that she's doing, but then also to be the eyes and ears of the boat. So to look out of the boat and see kind of like, where are we? How far into this race are we? Where are our competitors?

Making a call for like, it's time to move now. So that kind of teamwork of me being able to read her body language too and know like, we can't go yet, she's not ready. Or like, I'm not going to tell her that we're this far down because I don't want her to get discouraged. She's the horse and you're the jockey. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I have to also be fit and go hard.

Yeah, totally. But that's what ended up happening in our Olympic trials race was I didn't really disclose the full situation until I had to because I knew that was sort of what was going to keep our heads in the game. Wait, what was the situation? We were down by a lot at the halfway point, like five seconds, which is usually kind of insurmountable, and essentially started to call the sprint really early

but didn't tell my teammate how far down we were. So just like, yep, we're down a little. We've got to start to go. We've got to start to go. Okay, we're reeling them in. We're reeling them in, and then all of a sudden we're there and passing them and earning our spot. What is your 2K on the water versus your 2K on the erg?

I'm thinking like 2K, if i'm like really in shape and getting after it roughly what like seven eight minutes uh yeah so the kind of the standard benchmark for um a national team or international woman is a 640 okay significantly better significantly better for men it's like 550 you got you need to break that yeah that. Is that on the erg or on the water? On the C2 on the erg, sorry. So what do you do in the water? It depends on the boat class, right? Because eights are much faster than singles.

In the pair, it was about a seven-minute race. It was fast conditions, but it could be slow conditions, and it could take 730. How much does the conditions play? I mean, when you're going out and you're kind of the jockey of the situation, you have to actually be reading the race first, head down and 30. How much does the conditions play? I mean, when you're going out and you're kind of the jockey of the situation, you have to actually be reading the race first, head down and go. It's more about feel when you're backs to the course, right? Because you're having to just adjust to wind or wake or whatever else is coming at you. But the goal is that you're fit enough and

skilled enough that that's not really a variable. It does end up being a variable in a lot of cases and you need to essentially have the skill set to handle any of those situations. What does, like, the training look like? Are you doing a lot of weight training when you're in college? No, not in college. I wasn't. It wasn't until much later that I figured out weight training was, like, a big key to rowing fast.

But, I mean, even on the national team level, primarily it looks like 200 to 220 kilometers a week of just rowing. Jeez, that's a lot. And about half of that's on the erg. So that part's difficult, too, because the erg is so much heavier than the boat in a lot of cases. It's a totally different strain and load on your body. But it's really great for fitness development. Yeah.

But when you're only doing that all the time, the injury is, like, rampant across the sport. Especially in the U.S. It's insanely across the sport, especially in the U.S. It's insanely prevalent. Wait, why just the U.S.? It's not just the U.S., but in the U.S. in particular, it is for sure. And it's very highlighted, I think, right now based on how many young women are now coming into this sport for scholarship opportunities and for opportunities to just take this to the next level and are not being developed the proper way. Rib stress fractures are like one of the most common and then low back disc issues.

And so I've basically figured out once I had a bunch of that stuff that I couldn't just row all the time and stay healthy. But adding weightlifting and adding strength training was going to be the component that kind of made me resilient and kept me healthy. From your swimming background as well, I feel like swimming is probably another sport where they will just like get in the pool and go back and forth forever. A little dry land maybe, but not really strength training. Has strength training taken over in that sport as well? Or when was the last time you were like in a pool competitively? Ooh, that was in high school. So 15 years ago.

Do you still stay up with the sport like in the training and um i happen to pull every so often i've done a couple triathlons i feel like it's like you know and yeah i can the skill's still there um the fitness isn't it but yeah um well with the strength training pieces that started to infiltrate into the rowing training it's like as a whole or is it just you that has this inside it's in pockets uh it's definitely not everywhere and yeah actually when i retired one of my one of my realizations was like this is not happening a lot so my husband and i who you guys know um started a stuff a company yeah he works got him on got him on yeah got the whoop on yeah uh but we started kind of working with rowers um to try to

share this knowledge on the importance of strength training and just developing an athlete properly and teaching position and not just fitness and understanding like you have to lay those things in place because you'd think that makes sense, right? Like, okay, we need to understand the skill really clearly before we build the fitness. But there's a lot of programs right now that are just like, we need to get you on the erg. We need to get your 2k time down and then we'll figure that out later. And that's where you start to see issues. So yeah, it's been programs right now that are just like, we need to get you on the erg. We need to get your 2K time down, and then we'll figure that out later. And that's where you start to see issues.

So, yeah, it's been fun. Right now we're working with the Harvard Women's Rowing Team, kind of consulting with them. I saw that on Instagram. Yeah, it's fun. They're doing power cleans. They're doing power cleans pretty well. Makes me so happy. Yeah.

When did you start working with them? Three years ago. Was it tough to get barbells in their hands? Their injury was high, so it wasn't that hard to convince them you need to do something. And so we built them a weight room. We turned their erg room into a weight room, laid the rubber foundation down, bought them a bunch of equipment. And you have to be savvy with that because boathouses aren't made to be like big lifting spaces, but we've kind of figured out how to, how to make this work with a team of 45 women in an hour, you know, maybe 70 minutes slot a couple of times a week. And they've gotten so much healthier. Yeah. The performance that

jump that they made last year, I think, you know, that second year in, they went from missing the NCAA tournament or the championship for the past five years to making the NCAA championship and performing really well. And I think part of that is like looking at their program holistically so that's been fun to do for rowers are you writing the program for them the strength program my husband is nice what are they doing is it mainly crossfit is it more bodybuilding this rowing adapted crossfit is sort of how we think of it right because we don't really need to do the super high skill gymnastics work and uh there uh, there's specific kind of, I think, core to extremity control pieces that are making a big difference that we

hone in on the most. Um, or for example, right? Like everyone's so freaking quad dominated in, in rowing, that if we can just get them to figure out like what their posterior chain is and how to control it, like that's a huge step in the right direction. Um, so yeah, kind of like an adapted crossfit sort of thing what are so you mentioned the disc issues but i know that a lot of girls just going through high school like my sister being an athlete there's there's tons of like acl um just knee issues because of the lack of posterior chain like engagement strength um do you guys see a lot of

that in rowing no because it's so quad heavy mean, there's just not really any kind of like that cutting or single leg strain in rowing. It's so, you're in one plane. It feels like an overuse, just over and over. I don't know. There's no deceleration either. Yeah. Usually you pop an ACL. It's like you're going, like you're talking about cutting and agility.

Like you go to cut, you get higher forces on deceleration. You do acceleration, but rowing's all acceleration. Yeah. Every once in a while we see a knee problem but it's primarily a low back rib and then um sometimes like shoulder like upper kind of scapped uh trap areas that like will have like little nibbles but not huge big injuries you're like an expert in low back though right when you said low back and ribs you didn't say shoulders i was actually kind of shocked i figured that would be in there somewhere well rowing is primarily lower body it's mostly leg right and core and so uh i think a big part of that just

yeah like a lot of the rib problems we end up finding are are because of like instability in your shoulders and the inability to actually maintain strong posture or like the inability to understand how to brace your core and how to press like i had a coach finally once tell me this your legs should only be driving as hard as your core can brace for press like i had a coach finally once tell me this your legs should only be driving as hard as your core can brace for rowing right and a lot of coaches are saying just drive your legs as hard as you possibly can and that's not the right idea right it's like telling someone just delve as hard as they can right you should only be delving as hard as you can with a neutral spine and doing everything correctly right right uh when you walk into a

crossfit gym with your expertise in rowing and you see people hop on the erg do you cringe i've had to turn that off a little bit because it can be sort of hard no no no you're doing it all wrong not even one piece of you pulling on that handle right now is right well sometimes a little bit that's kind of become the other side of it right so rowers want to figure out how to weight train or some do. And CrossFitters want to figure out how to row, which it's like almost the inverse of what you're trying to teach them or the skills that they haven't been exposed to, like pacing or what stroke rate really is

or how to be fluid and elastic instead of stiff and really tight in that movement. So that's been sort of fun too. Is it really that much different on the erg versus on the water? Like what are the subtle distinctions there? Yeah. Well, so when you look at the C2, right, like you are moving on that seat back and forth. In the boat, the boat's moving underneath you.

And the whole idea is you're trying to drop that blade in the water and think of it like dropping it in, you know, like concrete. And then you're moving the boat past that point. And then you get out of the're moving the boat past that point, and then you get out of the way as the boat runs underneath you. So there are machines that are not the C2 that act a little bit more dynamically, that act like the water, that are a better kind of representation of it. But that piece is a massive difference because you can get away with really hitting the erg hard,

and you can't do the same on the water. Yeah. What about the new funky-looking, looking like rowing machines with the actual water in them does that resemble or is that even worse those are worse because they're so inconsistent you hear that orange theory you're ridiculous rowers that use 80 of your body the worse um sorry we went into orange theory the other day and they told us that the rowers used 80 of your body and i wanted to be like can you explain the 20 that's not being used uh you mentioned the the low back pain and you have some some experience with this i want to hear the like do you know

what actually happened was there an actual like issue with the discs no i mean i had so i this was after the london games while i was still training um i was out for basically a year and we couldn't figure out what exactly was going on i mean it felt mostly like i had this lower back pain and that was referring down my leg and i like couldn't sit without pain so sometimes it was i was feeling it mostly in my glutes sometimes in my back um i ended up getting a couple mris done my discs looked perfectly fine yeah um yet like kind of the doctor's route was still like like, something must be going on there. Maybe we should cut it open and see.

And I opted out of that. Just go in there and look around. I don't really know what's going on, but I'll find it. It'll be better if I can just see your spine. Yeah, so we didn't do that. But, yeah, I mean, I had a couple PRP injections because then we thought maybe there was something going on like in my glute with a like mini tear. Um, but ultimately what I ended up finding out was I was just moving terribly and I was horribly imbalanced and like my glutes weren't working at all.

And as soon as somebody taught me to squat properly and like actually understood like, Oh, okay, here's how my hips are supposed to connect to this movement. And here's like what actual core bracing feels like yeah the pain started to go away and that's sort of when the light bulb went off where i'm like okay this is why strength training should be a part of this routine yeah yeah and you were working with brian mckenzie kelly star at yeah what was the just actual like process of getting you strong and healthy um it was just really starting like a very basic strength program. Do they run you through like an assessment?

Is Brian running like a special thing? Or can he just kind of look at you and go, I got a problem? He just sort of saw me move. Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, there are problems here. And the reason why I got hooked up with Brian originally is because Erin Cafaro was married to Brian and had seen similar issues with her own injury. And, um, and then Kelly had worked with a bunch of obviously tons of athletes. And so he was sort of looking at me the same way and, and diagnosing, like there was all kinds of

balance issues. Um, but honestly, it was just a matter of like, let's get your glutes turned on. Let's start to use your posterior chain. Let's build your core strength. Let's get your glutes turned on let's start to use your posterior chain let's build your core strength let's get your shoulders to sit in a more neutral position that you can maintain in the boat yeah how much of the actual like the total meters that you're rowing in a week is do you think needed versus time in the weight room because i feel like just the overuse injuries comes from you're doing way too much volume in the water or on an erg yeah it could be in the weight room yeah so my peak volume i i think i've hit 230 kilometers in a week which is just a ton yeah jesus just basically rode to san diego yeah that's and that's essentially all you're doing that week is rowing um when i found this different kind of version it ended up looking more like I was at about

150 kilometers a week, sometimes less than that. And the rest was a combination of cross training and weight training. And that was like more than enough. And that, that was at the peak really of like what my rowing volume was. There were, there were weeks where we were as low as a hundred kilometers and just like much heavier on the cross training. Yeah. Because once you get the skill of rowing,

like how often do you really have to practice that skill like over and over and over and over to make sure it's still there? I found like I didn't need it all the time. I needed to make sure that like my fitness, my feel was there, but that actual engine was continuing to build in a way that was sustainable

and wasn't going to knock me out for another six months and then you got to start over. Yeah. How long are you actually sitting on the rower when you're going 230 kilometers like 100 minute clips and sometimes that's like two by 50 minutes so you're taking a three minute break in between three minutes 50 on three off go we did that sometimes it was 50 on three oh i couldn't even't even imagine. Like, can we go 4 off? Am I really recovering in 3 minutes? Now there's been research that's like you should never. That's why you took water. Yeah.

There's research that's coming out that's like saying you should never be on the erg for more than 30 minutes at a time because of the damage it does to your back and how you just can't basically combat, even in a really great position, the load that's going on your low spine. And staying under that much of an aerobic piece like is it really doing much for your 2k once you've hit 35 minutes and you're in a seven minute race i think some of it depends on what your individual physiology is um and i mean a 2k race is close to 70 aerobic so you need like the more you can build that engine the better right but does it have to all be rowing?

I don't think so. And a lot of other countries, like New Zealand is a great example. They do about half of their work on the bike. They just have become great cyclists. And actually, some of them have retired from rowing and then become professional cyclists and done really, really well. But they win Olympic medals all the time. And they've just kind of figured out this is something that works for their sustainability across the sport.

Does that not contribute to back issues as well? Just like one more aerobic thing where you're sitting and kind of hunched over? Yeah. I mean, I don't know enough specific examples. Yeah. But it's a really great translator in terms of just like fitness development because of your leg power. And because you can go for a long time and keep that aerobic heart rate pretty low um i think that's probably the most common yeah yeah what

about like like speed intervals like running 30 second sprints one minute sprints just doing like like speed work in general or like harder intervals that isn't so long steady state endurance oriented yeah that became part of my plan too was just like let's make sure that we are bringing quality to every session and you can get more bang for your buck by doing that with some intensity and then minimizing the just like low intensity aerobic work all the time so yeah um there are there are like some sequences that are probably more common than others in terms of rowing programs like 250 meters on one minute off is a pretty common one um and kind of building that volume and the speed that you're able to maintain that that's i i've found that to be

really helpful for 2k prep work uh 500 meter intervals are another common one where's your where's the training facility for you guys is it chula vista that's for kind of the winter time yeah um it's they're still in princeton uh new jersey so uh that's whenever it's not you don't want the 4 a.m. in Princeton in January. Yeah. Terrifying. They're getting ready to go to Chula. Terrifying.

The boat won't move. They're frozen. Get the ice pack. What are the resources? Do you guys have individual strength coaches out there? I actually haven't been to Chula Vista. Even though I lived right there, it would have been nice to go for the rowing team the olympic training center has staff on hand we actually never used them um which may be part of the problem but we yeah we did not have when i was on the team we did not

have a team dietitian we did not have a team strength and conditioning coach we had two rowing coaches that like went to try to learn some stuff about um lifting and it's not like not to their fault that was kind of the resources that we were given through our NGB of U.S. Rowing. Rowing is just not a super prioritized sport. So yeah, the money isn't quite there. I mean, across the board, right? For those kinds of resources

and then also for the money that the women on the team are able to make, that's low. I had to have a job the whole time I trained. Yeah, it was actually, what I was going to get into was the nutrition side of it. Like how do you fuel your body for 50 minutes on, three minutes off times three,

and you're just your workhorse burning calories like crazy all day long. Yeah, I ate a lot. But my nutrition was probably also something that was a big change as I aged and sort of learned about my body and what was actually going to help me do better. Um, and that was through like self-research and experimentation. Um, and also spurred by that injury was like, okay, what can I do to my diet to like, keep me healthy, to keep inflammation down, to make sure I'm actually providing the energy that I need and I'm not bonking in the middle of a session and then that potentially leading to

poor form and injury. And so, yeah, I mean, it was just mostly eating a lot of calories and then it led, I became more focused just on like super clean, super high quality. I ended up at some point cutting out all dairy and grain and that made a big difference for me. I don't do that anymore. But yeah. When you say it made a big difference, what do you mean? Like what things changed? I've just felt so much better. My energy way up um yeah that bonking stuff like that was kind of a regular occurrence for me that i didn't know was bonking i kind of thought it was just like oh i'm i'm not fit towards the end of a session or like i'd get really angry at the end of a session and didn't understand why and then was realizing oh yeah this is very much so about my energy intake through

nutrition yeah um but yeah we didn't have a dietitian at the time. The team does have one now, which is great. And you can tell the women are a lot more dialed in with that, but it was something like I had to actually go out and, and find those resources to teach me and to, to do some blood work and to look at my numbers and to figure out like, are there areas that I'm deficient that I need to be, you know, subbing in different foods? Yeah. When I think about bonking, I always think about the classic videos of it's the end of the marathon or the Ironman or whatever it is, and the finish line is right there, and the person's crawling and falling over, and they can barely move, and they crawl across the finish line, and then the medics come and jump on them and help them out.

When you're saying bonking, what does that really mean? A lot of people in the cross-distance space, if they're not in the endurance world, they don't even know what bonking is. So you're saying it like everyone knows what it is, but what is bonking? Yeah, so my experience with it is just a big crash in energy level. So you're feeling high and everything's great, and you're able to perform and bring what you need, and then all of a sudden you're empty, and it just feels like there's's nothing left and you're kind of like scraping from the bottom of the barrel to finish

whatever that session is that you're doing yeah um yeah when that happens is it like your your muscles are tired or is it just like i can't breathe or like you just feel like something's wrong and you want to take a nap or like muscle fatigue yeah for sure and but just like general energy level like would be really low it feels like i think honestly very similar to like a caffeine or sugar crash like pretty similar to that and i think that's actually a lot of what was happening like my breakfasts for a long time was this big bowl of oatmeal with peanut butter and banana i'm like that's healthy but it's like super carb driven you gotta get some eggs in there yeah get some fats in there yeah yeah so You should have called me. I would have told you. Shut up.

Live and learn. Well, the mental piece of that, though, there is like a side to the bonking where you're just at the end of a session. Like what do you think about when you're on an erg for that long or on the water all day long? You play a lot of mental games. Yeah. Especially when you're on the erg and there's nothing else to look look at really except for your number that little number just scrolls it never stops do you ever just flip that thing over and just i don't want to fucking look at it i just want to do my thing i'm going to think about like i got to do my fucking laundry later and i got to

call that guy like sometimes but then like what actually really helped was trying to stay super engaged during those sessions right because you can make progress technically. So I would do things like row without my feet in the straps, right? Which becomes a technical challenge to maintain that connection the whole time. Or watch my power curve every stroke and see how much can I replicate that over and over. I do that one too. Yeah, that's good. It goes up.

And if you have a little hitch, that means your hips and your arms aren't connected. Yep, that's probably what it means. Yeah. I love that little power curve way more than the numbers. What are you looking for? I guess that's one of them, but what are you looking for just when you're staring at that thing?

What's going through your head? Power curve's one. Are you maintaining numbers? Stay in between X one minute. Yeah, depending on what the session is, you're kind of you we had done some you know like physiological testing to kind of figure out where your ranges were for different zones and so you'd usually be prescribed a number and the coach would say like i want you to maintain

this exact number and you get to the point where you can literally hold a single number down to the tenth of a second and maintain that over 100 minutes um You count a lot of strokes. You count the ABCs a lot. I do the try and hold the number one. I do the try and hold the number one, but my number's always way too strong at the beginning, and then I let myself off the hook so easily. It's like we're going to maintain like a 145, 150, stay in that range. It's like 205.

I'm tired right now. This feels good, though. Well, you're probably running the wrong range then. You'd have to just kind of adjust where that is. It should like, 205. I'm tired right now. This feels good though. Well, you're probably running the wrong range then. You'd have to just kind of adjust where that is. It should feel so easy in the beginning and then it's by the end where it's more that mental focus than anything that you have to keep up. I think I just try to do well

and then I let myself off the air. I'm going to go do some cleans. Who am I going to let down today? Me? That's cool. I can live with myself. What are your count? you do abcs each time you row uh it's a workout play around with that yeah i'd see like okay how many abc like completion is going to fit in this a thousand meter chunk and then you start to know exactly like when you need to start counting in order to finish exactly on that number like crazy silly mental counting

games yeah yo so here i'm gonna change directions real quick having wanted to go to the olympics and like thought about it and dreamed about it since you were young when you actually got there what was that experience like amazing was it yeah it was incredible i mean and i was in london too which i think they just put in really great games on um and so i mean there's nothing else like sitting on the starting line in red white and blue and having people on the like the shore yelling your name and know who you are. Because, first of all, that never happens in the U.S. Nobody's watching rowing. So when you get to London.

I watch. Thanks. No, I really do. Once every four years? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's why the Olympics are so cool. It's not like tonight I'm waiting for the curling match.

But you get to see all the cool stuff in the Olympics. Like all the people you don't really know about. I watched. I don't know if I remember your name, but I definitely watched. What about walking through opening ceremonies? You get out there and all the people are there and everyone's cheering. You're just like, fuck, I did it. I did it.

I'm here. I actually didn't do opening. I did closing because I was the very first race of the entire schedule. If I had done opening, it would have totally messed with my first heat. So I had to miss that. But more than anything, walking around the village was pretty wild. It was like you were on college campus

with a million beautiful, tall, athletic people. I was about to say, I feel like I want to know if the stories are true. Are the stories true? Or is it like, oh, we all worked really hard for four years so we could all breed well i've been working on this physique for four years let's go yeah there's definitely some of it i mean i was with some of it it sounds like it's a lot of it there's there's a good amount of it i did not partake i was with my my unbelievable would

soon to be husband he should have given you a hall pass like look i get it i get it michael phelps is there what do you want to try yeah yeah we had we were in a suite actually this is probably tmi but we were in a suite with um like eight women i think uh for the olympic village like set up and we ended up playing games where we would judge the men that had been in the previous night just based on kind of what you're experiencing or waking up to in the middle of the night. Did you set your bar high enough? We'd be like, he was an A.

That other guy was a C+. I like that. Can you tell us who they were? What sports? No, they were from other countries. I didn't even know who they were. Even better. Yeah.

Track and field guys for sure. Like that guy. That guy's fast. Lots of type A fibers. Yeah. Track and field guys for sure. Like that guy. That guy's fast. Lots of type A fibers. Yeah. Did you perform as well as you wanted to perform during the Olympics? So I finished in fourth. Definitely would have liked to have won a medal.

And it was by.2 seconds, so it was really close. Oh, man. So close. That one haunted me for a little bit. Part of what got me to come back to continue to train after was, like, the idea of just wanting to bring home some more medals. But I do think while I was there, I had probably my best performance of a race in that heat. So, like, not in actual my final medals race. But, yeah, it was great to be able to actually realize, like, some potential there with my partner.

Yeah. What does the day after you get home from the Olympics look like? Taking a quick break. We're going to thank our sponsors over at Organifi. As always, friends, there's a reason that we're here talking about Organifi again for two straight years. That's 52 times to 104 straight shows of me talking about Organifi. Organifi.com forward slash drug. Save 20% on the greens, the reds, the golds, the guttet pills. I actually went through my cabinet last night.

Of all of the fun stuff, I have like 12 bottles of the green, the red, and the gold. I have two more of the pumpkin spice. Life's good. I just got my shipment a couple weeks ago and I just have one every single day. Makes me feel good. I get all the micronutrients that I need, the vitamins and minerals and everything's great. Also, our friends over at the Air Force, man, 2020 is looking up. We have a lot of cool stuff we're going to be helping the Air Force with and building strength programs. And the reason that we're doing it is because it's good to be around people that prioritize fitness and health of their soldiers, airmen, the strength

programs that they have built in specifically for the special ops people that we have been working with are second to none. Everybody has their own personal trainer. They get blood work done. They're basically professional athletes. They're just in a tactical setting. And it's been very, very cool to see the inner workings and get to know the people that are involved in these programs. So get over to airforce.com forward slash special ops to learn more or call a recruiter. Get over there. Go talk to the people. Next week, we have a video coming out because we ran the Spartan race with Lieutenant Colonel Kearns, and we talked about a lot of stuff that goes on in the Special Ops training.

So make sure you check that out. Airforce.com forward slash Special Ops. And of course, our friends over at Whoop. If you don't know what your sleep score is right now, you're messing up. If you don't know what your daily strain is right now, you're messing up. If you don't know what your HRV is right now, you're messing up. And the reason you're messing up is you just don't know how intense you need to be training in order to maximize results.

We're talking about the ability to recover, WHOOP is the only wearable right now that is tracking HRV, daily strain, your heart rate, resting heart rate, how well you're sleeping, how long you're sleeping, and the depth of your sleep, how long you're actually in like REM sleep so that you can see how well you're recovering. These are massively important when it comes to training. They're massively important when it comes to general neurological function and body function. I can't take mine off because every day I wake up, I need to know the score. I need to know how hard I can push it in the gym. When I see the green, that means go. When it means yellow, that means I'm in the right zone. And when it says red, it means to slow down a little bit, maybe take a day off. But I use it

as a guideline and it's very important for all of us to know where we're at in our recovery so go to whoop.com use the coupon code shrug to save 30 on a 12 or 18 month membership that's whoop.com forward slash not forward slash whoop.com use the coupon code shrug to save 30 on a 12 or 18 month membership back to the show where's your your mindset ad are you ready to get back on the rug? Do you take a year off? Is it like peak excitement? And then the next day you're kind of just like, fuck now,

like all my, all my meaning is gone. Like I did the thing. Now I don't, now what do I do? Or what's it like? No, the,

the, uh, height emotion of it, like lasts you for a while. Um, I didn't come back for about six months and i specifically like didn't want to make a decision around what my plans were for at least a month like i gave myself some time um but kind of stayed in shape and active and allowed myself to do a lot of things that i had

to say no to for the previous years leading up to which was nice um yeah and then the itch was still there and i just decided i wanted to keep going so you had two olympics i had two Olympic cycles. I actually only made one team. So I didn't make the second one. Just because you've made a previous one doesn't mean you're going to make a second one. But, um, and yeah, and I think both experiences were different, but I, and I learned very different things, but it's, it was weightlifting that I discovered in that second. What is the, what is the process to actually getting on the Olympic team? Obviously you have to be fast, but how many, like, what are the events? How do they structure the quad? Yeah, so different boat classes have different kind of selection.

The team boat, so anything that's an eight-person or a four-person boat are selected out of a camp where the coach names you. So it's the four-year period, basically, is your selection. And so you're under constant scrutiny. There's erg tests like every week all any piece of data can be used as a part of that final judgment um and then there are some trials boats where you can actually just go to olympic trials you have to have met some checkpoints along the way to be able to go there but then if you win on that day you get to go and

that's how i made it was that i actually like won my olympic trials event nice so are the other women that are trying to get on the olympic team also training at the olympic training center with you like even if they're not on the team they still train there yeah so they'll keep a team of maybe like 35 or so ish women and then it ends up being whittled down to 14 um so yeah your friends with your teammates and competitors it's tricky and i think it kind of depends on the group like right now it seems like a different vibe than when i was there on the team but it was cutthroat it was like pretty yeah like it's all for enemies yeah a lot of that because you're scoping out the situation especially in my situation i was not a shoe-in um i was like very much so a bubble athlete

to make that team i was like scoping out this group to be like who can i knock off so that i can earn a spot? You've got to kill somebody. There's only so much room in the boat. Who would want you to trip in the hallway? Yeah. Why do you think Nancy Kerrigan got hit? That's exactly right.

That's the classic one to think about. Well, I mean, when we interviewed Johan Blake, it was the same way. There's only a certain number of Jamaicans that can go to the Olympics and win gold medals. So we're all in this thing together, but we'll all kill each other at the end if we have to. Well, part of the nutrition piece gets into supplementation. Do you guys have any coaches?

Like, how do you play this game? Because the worst thing you can do is train for four years and then take a protein powder, take some supplement, and get popped two weeks before the biggest moment of your life. And you just went and bought something at GNC that you had no idea. Totally. Yeah. And so, um, without a dietician at the time on the team, it was kind of like up to me to make my own decisions. And the USOC would come and sit down with us and like have, you know, a yearly talk about how to look at your nutrition and your supplementation and would

say just don't take anything it's not worth taking anything it's like too much of a risk don't do it yeah so i took zero supplements while i was training um for the olympics because i just didn't want to risk it and i didn't know and i was totally uneducated on this and it's only now actually that i'm working in the like nutrition and supplement industry that i've learned all of this stuff that i'm like god if i had had any of this knowledge I was leaving so much on the table yeah imagine a protein shake with that oatmeal in the morning game changer no bonking you're like 0.2 seconds I could have done it yeah who knows need the right supplements yeah but I I just avoided because I didn't know and um yeah it's kind of fun now in what I'm doing with Momentous.

I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little. But it's great to actually be able to work with athletes. And that's one of my primary roles is working with our team of athletes and being able to share something that I know is safe and not going to have them pop and is actually going to really benefit their performance. Yeah. When did you get hooked up with Momentous? So I've been with the company for almost two and a half years.

When, I guess, what led you to them? I imagine there's a lot of protein companies you could work for, but you chose this one. Yeah. I think it's delicious. I enjoyed it. It does taste good. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, when I mentioned having a job while I was rowing, I was working for a sports marketing agency because I knew I wanted to learn something in sports and I had a psychology background. And actually I've found that that translates to marketing quite a bit. And that was really fun because we got to work with a bunch of different brands, but I was feeling like I couldn't impact one brand enough, right? When you're working with 10 different ones, you can only give them so much of yourself. So started to look once i retired for like a brand side position something that was in sports health wellness fitness that i could kind of stay in that world of marketing uh and the timing just ended up being perfect like momentous was getting ready to launch they were looking for a head of

marketing um they were hiring in boston and at first i was super skeptical because of my own experience with supplements. I'm like, I don't know if I want to go anywhere near that. Like that industry is so messy and dirty. And when I kind of learned more about the team that was putting this company together and what the mission was and like what the process was going to look like for developing different products and formulas, then it was this just moment of like, yes, I want to be a part of that yeah tell me about this process i need to know everything because i've been taking protein powders for a long time i can't remember the first chalky disgusting protein was like

there's no way i'm going to dedicate my life to lifting weights and have to drink this gross flavorless protein now they're delicious uh what is the process actually to creating well your stuff it's a grass-fed protein too what what is that yeah so that that this was the first product that we launched was protein um we're continuing to move into other things too but it was a grass-fed cold process whey protein isolate was our first product i need i need the definition of all of those yeah there's a lot to unpack there and honestly like that all those things really matter um and i didn't know that so i mean the first piece being grass-fed right so like now we know where the animals came from and how they were treated and like not only is that like great to know that you're you're having

a product from a an animal that was treated really well but like the actual nutrition component of that milk that the way is being derived from is totally different right so like you're getting more omega-3s you're getting less saturated fat it's just completely different so in the process right the milk comes out the milk that you buy in the bottle goes one way and the way is separated and it goes the other way and that is the way is what's turned into the protein powder right correct so how humanely that cow is raised and the milk comes out becomes very important to the end product totally yeah and and i mean we went really deep in that process too right because you could get grass-fed milk from a lot of different farms and the panel of of experts that we work with that help make these

decisions like i'm definitely not one of the experts we work with a lot of different dietitians and scientists who who are helping us make this decision they specifically chose germany because they liked the farming laws there the best um it like using antibiotics and hormones on animals in the eu is illegal so like that way you could be completely sure that there's going to be none of that cool and we can actually pinpoint the farm that our cows come from right so like that that's have you ever been there no i'd love to go yeah but that's the level of like specificity that we've gone to so like okay now that that's the one part the grass-fed part then the processing right that um doing a cold processed protein is going to maintain the structure of the protein in a much better way and then everything else that's in there too

so that's that's a key thing to be looking for when you're making a protein decision uh the isolate piece is is big because it's the purest like most high quality form but then like looking for whey isolate on its own isn't really a great solution either because that can be harder to digest so like what else is being paired with that and in our case that we have an enzyme that's making sure that your gut's like ready to go and to absorb everything that is coming with that and in our case that we have an enzyme that's making sure that your gut's like ready to go and to absorb everything that is coming with that protein and that it's actually bio available so like those are that's kind of like a snapshot of the detail i think that's important to be thinking about with your supplements and if you don't know kind of what that process looks like or what's in there then like what's going on what are you putting in your

body yeah how long does it take to get from cow to my shaker bottle? Hmm. I don't know if I have an exact number on that. I know our batches like take quite a while. It's like several months because of sourcing all of the ingredients and then going through the production process. And then the testing process is so intense, right? Because the supplement market is not regulated right terrifying yeah it is really terrifying right so i think people if you don't know about this and i didn't um the fda does not regulate supplements so nobody's checking when you see a supplement label it's very different than a food label on the back of a of any kind of supplement so you can write kind of whatever you want and it means nothing yeah marketing sometimes is more important yeah i could say there's 20 grams of protein in this thing and there's not any protein in it

does that happen yes oh i've been duped the whole 25 years of drinking this gross stuff well it depends on the products right how did i get so yoked they were lying to me unbelievable wait i didn't even know that so you said the testing process what are they specifically testing for? Yeah, so we use two different independent third parties. And you have to use a third party, right, so that they have no kind of investment in whether or not you pass this. And the NSF Certified for Sport is really kind of the gold standard of tests.

Now a lot of rules in different professional leagues like the NFL and the NBA, you can't get in the locker rooms unless you're NSF certified for sport because they want to ensure that it's been tested. So it's been tested not only to verify that everything that you're saying is on the label is actually in the bottle, like down to the tiniest little tenths of milligrams. And then also they're cross checkingchecking it across 240-something banned substances. So if you are an athlete that's being tested or being scrutinized in that way, you can be sure that you're going to be clean. What is the highest level of testing? Is it like the USADA test?

Are they the gold standard in banned substances? No. Well, they don't have a third-party certification or anything. That's why I think NSF is now being approved by USADA. like this is this is the one kind of verification that we would approve of um but what nsf does do is they check across the wada so like the worldwide uh doping list and they use that list to to be part of what they're checking so is that really the big one of the big distinguishing factors like you got the high quality ingredient component but then you also have like the guarantee that there's there's no tainted anything in there so people that are super high performing athletes

that that don't want to get accidentally popped know they can buy momentous and they're safe from getting um kind of accidentally popped yeah it's both of those pieces combined and you know i i now won't have any kind of any supplement that's not as nsf certified for sport because i don't want to put something that i don't know what it is into my body right i'm not going to be tested for for drug screenings anymore but i definitely don't want to go you know buy an omega-3 and think that it's you know coming from this certain source and it's not i watched it yeah they they cut up fish oils with like canola oil put all kinds of weird stuff in there do they do they cut protein powders like that? I mean,

that's why you never want to take away blend. You have no idea what's in there. What's a way blend. I don't think I've ever had one, but now I'm definitely not. You can, when you flip over a protein bottle, you can see all kinds of different sorts of proteins,

right? Like concentrate way blends or way isolates or gotcha. Not pop up on those. And that's kind of like an immediate red flag. Yeah. Like it's sold in seven 11. It's a way blend. Mostly don't on those. And that's kind of like an immediate red flag. Yeah, like if it's sold in 7-Eleven, it's a whey blend. Don't want those. Shake before opening.

Yeah, but the NSF is even so important too, right? Like because we're moving into other areas. Like we launched a sleep product this fall and we're going to continue to do all different kinds of things next year. Like I wouldn't want to take something that's going to impact my sleep that could be potentially harmful or like sedative or, you know, just have a non-natural effect there. And there's very few actually NSF certified for sport sleep products on the market, which is part of why I was pumped for us to make that one.

So what's the full line right now? So we've got the whey isolate line. And we've got what we call like an essential protein which is something you can take at any time of day so you could add it into a smoothie or breakfast or whatever and then we've got a recovery line so one product designed specifically for after strength workouts another specifically for after endurance workouts and then we have a plant protein line as well which is actually our best seller at the moment yeah because so many people have chosen to go plant-based or have some kind of a whey or milk intolerance.

And that's what a lot of our pro teams are doing, where they're testing their athletes all the time. And if there's any kind of intolerance there, they're switching them to plant-based. And then we have a sleep aid as well. What is the difference between the endurance one? Can you walk me through who needs each one yeah when you guys sent them to me i looked at them and i was like i'm gonna need to know more because i just know

protein yeah um yeah so most of it has to do with the carb ratio um so there's more carbs in our endurance protein than in the strength one and there's no carbs in our essential it's just the pure protein in that essential one then we've got things like creatine in the strength recovery and then in the endurance recovery there's a mix of like other minerals and electrolytes that you're going to need if you're doing anything really like over 90 minutes that you need to replenish what's the r&d process of actually taking an idea and protein and then creating like the endurance one or adding creatine to it how long does it take to actually get a product to market for momentous yeah well we were in development for a year before we went live just for our initial protein line and now like it's really fun to witness this

product development because we've got half a dozen or so products that are pretty close right now yeah where for the majority of our research we really rely on this group of experts that we call our performance engineers. So they are dieticians, doctors, and strength and conditioning coaches that kind of spread the gamut across the four major leagues and then a bunch of different sports as well. And we brought them together because many of them were complaining about that there weren't products on the market that they wanted to share with their athletes

or that they were having to like hack and make their own versions of supplements and then deliver them to their pro athletes and so they help us make decisions basically we'll say hey this is a product we're exploring is this something that you think there's a gap in the market for or that you would find valuable and how would you do this like what would your perfect solution be for this product and then we like debate that and we narrow it down to kind of like what we believe is the best uh product for our like our professional teams and then also for our consumers yeah um and then we go out and find like okay where's the best possible place that we can get each one of these ingredients and it's funny when you learn like

kind of what a lot of different supplement um processes are like. There are catalogs you can shop from and say, okay, we'll take this one because it's in that price range. We don't do that. We literally are going out and trying to find where's the best version of this ingredient. How did you find the farm in Germany? I'd be lost. I wouldn't know what to do.

It was part of this performance engineer group. I wasn't on when we made that initial decision. But, yeah, it's pretty cool. A trip to Germany would have been nice. It would have been good. We hang out in CrossFit gyms. We do all the functional fitness.

And you're working with the Harvard team. Do you guys have all the supplements, all the protein powders in their nutrition programs and supplement programs? Yeah. So my personal crossfit gym that i train out of um is now just starting to to carry momentous um for the harvard women's team yeah we've played around with it for sure a lot of a lot of this is like trying to find things that are convenient too right so we make single serves serving like uh sample packets that people are throwing in their gym bags or like we can actually hand out to the girls as they're leaving a gym session with us.

And then the taste piece, right, to like what you're saying. If it tastes terrible, you're not going to take it every day. Totally. I like the chocolate. Yeah. It's always like taste, ingredients and kind of mixability, if you will. Like if it doesn't mix well, that's a problem as well. I actually haven't mixed any of it up.

Does it mix really well? Yeah. Like you can just like put a spoon in a glass of water. I actually haven't mixed any of it up. Does it mix really well? Yeah. Like you can just like put a spoon in a glass of water. I hate, yeah. How do you actually make it not the chunky chalk ball in the milk? That's the magic of the formula. I don't know how that works. I want to know why some of them break up and you can drink them well

and then some of them like you drink and it's like a whole glob of proteins coming at you, and it never breaks up. It breaks open into powder in your mouth. Yeah. Look how that happened. Yeah, that's like how all protein was for a long time. You'd take the sip, and it'd be like this chunk, and then you'd take the bite and go, bah, bah, bah. So foul.

When you're working with the team, I guess, or when, like, at your gym with the the crossfit athletes um what are like the the biggest deficiencies do are people having like a protein deficiency in their training for recovery yeah i think timing is a big part of it right so protein powder usage in crossfit and a lot of weightlifting gyms that's like that's pretty prevalent right but um are you getting actually exactly what you need after the kind of workout that you did? A lot of times not.

So like, for example, we've got magnesium in our endurance recovery formula. Pretty much everybody is magnesium deficient. And if you're active, your chances of that are going way up. So making sure that you actually have the right ratio of that magnesium to your protein and that you're taking it within the window where you're going to absorb it and you're taking like the right ratio of that magnesium to your to your protein and that you're taking it within the window where you're going to absorb it and you're taking it after the

kinds of workouts where you're losing um magnesium micro minerals and nutrients in general and then you're sweating right so like i think that part is kind of where there's a little bit of education lacking but more than anything it still just comes down to the quality yeah it's like if i'm gonna buy like grass-fed meat or organic food, why wouldn't I do the same with my supplements? I love it when you see people and they spend all the money on the food and they're spending all the money on the gym and then they go and put the 7-Eleven blend, 7-Eleven whey blend in.

You're like, don't drink that thing. That will make you sick right away. I think that people really need to have just easy access to stuff i know me personally i'll come in here and train for like 60 90 minutes i'll feel so good about my training session i'm like i'm back on a program i love it i'm doing it that lasts about four days but then i'll go home and it's like okay now i'm dad then it's like now i husband. And now I've completely wasted three hours of not having any nutrition in me and my body's just totally drained.

Like having an actual easy way to get really high quality nutrition into your body makes a massive difference in just having the ability to recover much quicker. What is like your daily, I guess, intake or what is the right prescription for people is it based off their own lifestyle

or how should people be using the proteins I think it depends on what you're training for so like I just wrapped up I raced the Chicago Marathon damn you'd wait this long to tell us that's so radical this is my second what do you think about that guy that went sub 2 hours yeah wild Damn, you'd wait this long to tell us? That's so radical.

This is my second. What do you think about that guy that went sub two hours? Yeah, wild. Freak. It was the same weekend. What did he weigh, like 112 pounds? I'm not sure. The wind was pushing him through the course?

What is going on with him? Pretty crazy, right? Yeah, test that guy. Nobody wants to test that guy. Everyone wants to be like, yeah we did we did it just collectively would you do this all of us as a race that was a victory for everyone yeah just freebasing epo and the for breakfast sorry i hope i hope it was props to that guy he did a good job he crushed it that's unbelievable um tell us about the marathon I want to hear about it.

No, it was really good. Was it your first one? No, this was my second. So I ran New York last year and then Chicago this year. Yeah? I think I'm going to take a little break. Which one's more fun? Yeah, because you've run 50-something miles, and that's insane.

That's cool. Did it beat up your feet at all? Like, you're not used to, like, the pounding on your feet. My joints, yeah. I've only ran one marathon, but, like, my feet and my ankles were just, like, by the end of the race, race i was like i feel like my feet got beat with a hammer yeah like they just weren't used to that that level of pounding like cardiovascularly muscularly like it was totally fine but like my my bones didn't like it that's what i think my training was it was just slowly building up the pounding so that you were ready for that um yeah i mean the marathon was great but so which one

do you like more new york or chicago i think new york yeah it was just a really cool environment chicago was much nicer for the course it was so much better it was flat the whole thing was flat new york was pretty hilly like hard in terms of that but um yes but so i mean while i was training for that kind of my supplement routine um for momentous stuff looked like you know i'm taking our sleep product, which is awesome, too, because, like, not only am I finding it's really helping me fall asleep and stay asleep, but, like, I wear Whoop. I've been wearing it for a while. Tracking.

Yeah. It's actually showing me, like, an increase in my sleep quality. I see a real partnership here. Yeah. I see a partnership opportunity. A lot of potential. I think you could know somebody. Well, yeah.

You could get a meeting. They hooked up all of our athlete team with Woops. We've got some pretty cool athletes on our roster, too, that I get to work with every day. Who? A lot of different people. So do you guys know the climbers, Jimmy Chin and Alex Honnold? Absolutely. I've only watched this documentary like 12 times.

Yeah. They're a freaking crazy-ass dude hanging off the side of a flat wall. Yeah. What's he doing? Crazy. He's, like, climbing. This is climbing this like, that looks like a crack. I'll risk my life with one one hundredth of my fingernail

on there. If I sneeze right now, I'm falling off this thing in instant death. You know that guy? They're investors in our company. Oh my gosh. What is that guy like on a normal basis? They're both awesome. Is he just playing traffic? Does he just feel alive?

Like, what's he doing? I mean, they're, like, amazing people. Alex is, you know, it's a special kind of person that wants to do anything like that. Yeah. But, yeah, so those guys are on our squad. And then we've got, like, NFL, NBA players. We've got Olympic triathletes, um, a lot of runners.

We now are just starting to work with some crossfitters. We've got Cody Mooney on. Yeah. And so what I was saying about that is that they're all, they got whoops with our sleep product too, so they could help us kind of validate the, um, the product. And so, yeah, mine is actually showing me that I'm getting 18% more slow wave sleep when I'm taking momentous sleep than when I'm not taking it, which is pretty cool because it will like actually distinguish between those nights. Um, but anyway, so I would take my sleep

aid, uh, especially on nights where I can like kind of tell I'm not going to sleep that well. Um, and then I would wake up and add our essential protein to my breakfast. So whether that's going to be in like a shake some days or, uh, like adding it to a different version of oatmeal that I eat now, um, uh, like that would be kind of my morning thing. And then I'd go for my long run and I'd finish that with our endurance recovery, uh, protein. And that was like my go-to routine for that whole training block. Nice. two routine for that whole training block nice what do like what is alex honnold his um like his whoop scores what does that look like does he feel things i don't know i haven't looked into any of that data specifically i assumed you were like measuring that up i just want to know like

it's like he reads like dead dead inside. You feel nothing. You have no emotions. What is it for your CrossFit training, though? How do you structure all that? Because that's who's going to be doing it. The fitness people need it. Yeah. They need better nutrition. I know.

I would agree. So I think, again, that it sort of depends on, like, what your session. Pick that mic up just a little bit. Sorry. There you go. What your session looks like. Right. So I just finished the open, too.

And so it kind of depended on, like, what that session looked like. Was I going to take our strength recovery or endurance recovery? If I did, like, a really huge warm-up and then it was one of these, like, 20-minute workouts, I was taking endurance recovery just because, like, I know how much I sweat versus if I'm just going to get in the gym and I'm going to like only lift or I'm just mostly going to like strictly weight lift. I'm going to finish with my strength recovery protein. And that's kind of the biggest distinguishing difference. And then I would say like, we actually have a ton of people that just choose to use the essential protein alone and then add their own carbs through something else, right? Like it's pretty easy to add carbs within your shake. You can add milk, you can add fruit, and you can manipulate it that way

if you're trying to like count your macros really specifically, which we've got a bunch of athletes that do. How'd you do in the open? I did pretty well. Favorite workout? Mmm. Ooh.

I think point two. Which one was that? That was the double under toe to bar. Oh, I didn't do that one. That one looked like a lot of breathing. Thruster. Yeah. When we came in here, they were like, which one do you want to do?

I was like, I'll just do the weightlifting one. That one sounds like super fun. Because it lifts weights, I just got to step on the box in between. It sounds great. What I find, one of my favorite things about coaching CrossFit when I owned my gym was like, you take a lot of people that don't understand a season and you give them a season and then they have five weeks that they have to actually have to focus on controlling the things that go in their mouth and the way that they sleep um when if you were to like take the CrossFitter coming out and structuring the open

for them um as far as like supplementation adding protein um and then nutrition pieces what's like a decent balance for somebody like these people they just want to kick ass in the open and hang out but like what how much of their nutrition should come from food and then how does supplement supplementing protein yeah play into that totally so that like the experts we work with and us ourselves too like we're never going to say like supplements should replace food because that makes no sense right i would say the majority of our dietitians live by kind of an 80 20 sort of rule where you shouldn't even really be talking about supplements until you can nail that 80 percent of

your nutrition um because you're just trying to like supplement a bad diet then at that point. So yeah, I would say, I mean like following the basic principles of having a clean, like whole food based diet. Um, but the supplement piece comes in for what you can't do just through food, right? Because you, your body can't absorb and digest food at the rate with which you need to recover. Yeah, totally. So like if you're trying to get within that 30 minute window after a session and you're trying to actually like restore and replenish your muscles and start to have them rebuild, if you were to eat a full meal right after that, like you'd be doing a pretty good job, but most people can't do that, right? You're either not going to eat right away or you, you don't have an appetite for it, or you're not going to be able

to like stomach the full range of things that you need. So having something that's realistic to, to finish a workout. And honestly, I think that's probably the biggest difference that I see with people that start to dial that piece in is like, Oh, okay. I'm timing when I'm getting my calories in and what kind of calories those are following a workout. And then I can follow that up with like a healthy meal afterwards, but just by making sure that they're recovering after the workout their fitness gains start to become so much better because you're you're actually recovering yeah i find any time i talk to especially family members and they're like can you put me on a diet i'm like okay well first off

i need to know what your body weight is let's get you to like at least you know 70 of that in protein and a day and they're like you want me to eat how much meat a day like that number's really terrifying to a lot of people they think they eat a lot of meat and they think they're recovering really well and then they realize that they're like half like one pound of meat a day just isn't getting you to a place where you can maintain muscle mass. That's why people need supplements. It's like you can really get to 100, 120 grams. But, man, waking up or having a protein shake before you go to bed and then having one right after a workout gets you right into that window where you're actually creating muscle.

Or if you're in a weight loss piece, like keeping the muscle that you have. Yeah. Plant-based athletes, I think, have a really hard time with that too. Can you talk about that? Because this Game Changer thing has just ruined everyone's life for the past three weeks. I watched it the other day. I had to. I had to do my homework.

I watched it. It was like eight minutes in, and I was like, I can't watch it anymore. What are we doing with the plant-based people if they're out there? If there's any listening to the show? Yeah, well, you know, for kind of like whatever your reason might be to want to be plant-based or to have plant-based protein, I think one of the tricky parts

is that in order to get the same amount of protein in most formulas, the volume actually has to increase of what that scoop looks like. So having a protein that's actually going to have like a complete amino acid profile is a really big part of that. And then I think a lot of cases, like this is what we hear from our dieticians,

those big athletes, like our football players that want to be plant-based, that struggle to get enough calories in, need something like a protein uh plant protein that they can really supplement that they're like a hundred two hundred i mean if you're a lineman you're eating like 400 grams of protein a day yeah they're 300 plus pounder 350 pound lineman god you eat plants only we worked with the dietician of the 49ers, and he says that that is something that he is having to work with, and it's a personal decision kind of for that athlete if they want to do it. And then it's his job to help them continue to maintain

and reach their goals with that eating plan. Just eating all day long. Yeah, I wonder who controls him bashing his own head into the wall trying to get these people to eat meat. He needs his own coach. Stop hitting yourself. What's your training looking like going forward? What are you, marathons are over?

Yeah, I'm taking a little break. What I'm saying is like. What does that mean? Are you like actually not training? No, no, no. I mean, I'm working out. You're just fitnessing. I don't have a competition on my calendar right

now and i'm like kind of intentionally trying to do that where i'm not i don't have a super big regimen and i feel like i need those pockets every so often where like i can say yes to all my fitness friends when they're like hey let's go do this thing totally and i'll just say sure let's go for it let's not messing up my plan so i'm gonna do that probably through the holidays nice and then decide um do you have another marathon coming? No, definitely not. I've actually kind of been looking at these. Have you seen these high rocks race?

Oh, yeah. I want to do that. The only reason I know about those is because our buddy Kenny Santucci has been doing them. Okay. Yeah. That seems like right up my alley. They're sponsoring strong. You know Kenny? Yeah, I do.

Do you really? What a guy. If you know Cody Mooney, then you know Kenny. Yeah. Yeah. I think. So what are these races? That was a new term for term for me what is that i'm just learning about these two they're like sort of crossfitty looking events but they're very endurance based and so the the

one that they're doing is either an individual event or a pairs event i'm going to see if i can convince my husband to do it with me but it's like alternating between running and then some other movement so there's like a sled pull a sled push push, a farmer's carry, a sandbag lunge, a row, a skier. And those are all alternating with running. And they're saying I think the top times are somewhere around an hour. So it's like a good gruel. Yeah, right. Have you ever done a Spartan race?

Yeah, I've done the Fenway Spartan. Sweet. Which is pretty cool in that stadium. Yeah. That's the only one though. I heard that was cool. Yeah, it's fun. I'm inviting you to Tahoe next year for the Fenway Spartan. Sweet. Which is pretty cool in that stadium. Yeah. That's the only one, though. I heard that was cool. Yeah, it's fun. I'm inviting you to Tahoe next year for the World Championships right now.

I'm in. Come out. You definitely should do that. Go hang out. Is that in Dubai? Is that confirmed? I don't know if we're allowed to talk about that so publicly right now. I don't know.

I don't know if that was a rumor or if that was a real thing. Joe DeSena, where you at, buddy? Come on, Joe. Come on. Make the announcement. Give us a call. Tell us. God, I hope it is.

I know. Right? I totally want to go to Dubai. I was actually talking to Marion after. She was like, would you go to Dubai if we did this? I was like, just, yeah. Of course I would go to Dubai to hang out. Right now I'm cold and wet.

You had to close down some of the events because it was so cold. And then the other events, like the other challenges, I I just said I'm not doing that because I'm cold. Imagine if we were in Dubai. I wouldn't be like, oh, it's too hot. I would do all of it. It would be great. And I'd be in that big building. What's the big one? What's the biggest building there?

Wait, in Tahoe? No, in Dubai. Oh, in Dubai. Oh, like the Burj Khalifa? Yeah. The tallest building in the world? Yeah. I can't wait to go. You can come dubai with us not to tahoe through a big party in tahoe yeah just everyone podcast together everyone around the race we're very friendly dope yeah we're very friendly with the spartan people and we help uh run like the the big media fest out there so we can bring all you need is a podcast we'll hook you up okay start a podcast be on the podcast yeah Yeah. Will came out.

Wait, what next year? Are you? Why? Why next year? January. Gathering our, our,

our episodes right now. Like you're telling me as a pro, we need to have a stock episode. You need to be all the way out. Yeah. I know a couple of guests. We will talk to you forever. Okay.

Um, where can people find you and momentous? And I'm so stoked to be working with you guys, by the way. Yeah. When you guys sent the product, I was like, man, another protein. I don't really know. But it's delicious. And just learning about it makes me so happy.

I love any company that really does. It's so much easier to not do the work. So anytime we can partner with people that are actually doing the work and really putting quality products together makes me so happy. That's why I like working for them. We're livemomentous.com The live momentous.

That's the handle on social media too. Live momentous. Those are the best ways to find us. Don't you want to put your own brand out there? Sure. Come on. It's 2019 here. Closing out.

We're almost to 2020. You have to talk about yourself. Yeah. I'm at Sarah Hendershot. What can we see on your Instagram? Mostly my puppy and me working out and working with rowers. Beautiful. The Harvard Rowing Team.

Harvard Rowing Team. Yeah. Yeah, they're on there. They're on there. Beautiful. They're crushing it. Libmomentous.com. Yep. Awesome. Greg Pitts they're on there. They're on there. Beautiful. They're crushing it. Libmomentous.com. Yep.

Awesome. Greg Pitts. You can't tell me how to live. You can't tell me how to live. Isn't that the best Instagram handle in the world? Why haven't you just gone viral? Just because it's there. It's just a hashtag.

Probably got to post pictures to do that. It might be the first step. Doug Larson, tell us where we can find you. Right on. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're the Shrug Collective at Shrug Collective. Snatch, clean, jerk. Squat, deadlifts,

bench, one-ton challenge.com. The lifetime pursuit of strength. Come hang out with us. Download our free e-book, Making Strong People Stronger. Get over to one-tonchallenge.com forward slash stronger. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you stay tuned.

Friday, Movement Specific Mobility 20 Rep Back Squat Program bundle going up for $47, saving almost $300 on this beautiful package. Also, our friends at Momentous, of course. Momentous, livemomentous.com, L-I-V-E-M-o-m-e-n-t-o-u-s.com forward slash shrug to save 20 bucks and make sure you stay tuned for next week's black friday deal got a doozy for you uh organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20 on the green the red and the gold all the micros, uh, whoop.com use the code shrugged to save $30 on a 12 or 18 month membership. And then of course, our friends at the air force, airforce.com or slash special ops. We will see you guys next week.