Barbell Shrugged - [Performance Blood Work] How Blood Work Lights the Path to Performance w/ Dan Garner, Travis Mash, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #723

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Dan Garner and Travis Mash discuss the relationship between blood work and high performance. In this episode you will learn: How to find internal stressors that hold back performance Where to unlock performance gains by improving energy Locating stressors and how to manage cortisol How to build a better relationship with your athletes through blood work How to adjust training programs based on blood work   Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, the home team is back together. Travis Mash, Dan Garner, myself, Doug Larson, we're all hanging out. We're going to be wrapping on how blood chemistry, blood work, helps in performance. If you're a coach, how to make better decisions. Travis Mash is also on the show. We've got the full team together today, which is really cool because when you get somebody that does performance coaching, as well as Travis Mash and blood analysis,

as well as Dan Garner and those two working together with some potential future Olympians, it's very cool to see how they work together. Some of the pieces that Dan is able to uncover inside blood chemistry, how Travis is using that stuff or has used it on some of his athletes, the insights that they kind of gain from each other and some of the steps that they take moving forward and programming changes they make, how they're able to actually

relate to their athletes. I think that one of the coolest parts of this is when Mash starts talking about the relationship, how he's able to deepen his relationship with his athletes by understanding kind of like the pieces of stress that weren't actually being talked about until dan was able to uncover cortisol levels and things like that so very cool conversation we kept it pretty quick today i appreciate everybody tuning in and as always make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dr. Andy Galvin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. You can go and access that free lab analysis over at rapidhealthreport.com.

Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner. Yo, the team is back. Doug larson travis mash dan garner this is gonna be exciting we're talking about energy fatigue recovery uh travis mash doing all the outside in dan garner inside out how do we measure this stuff on blood panels um mash i want to start with you because you have like a now you have this fancy degree from lenoir rhine university mr academia over here no one knows about on measuring fatigue and um and how how you manage your athletes um i know

we've talked many times about kind of like uh your daily testing but i'd love to really start your athlete walks in the door for the day and your job is to take what you have written on paper and then customize that on a daily basis to, to meet them where they're at, where their energy levels are at, just how they feel. And I've always thought that when you're, when you're training people, you know, we, we all do the, we, we all train people online and there's, there's pieces to the puzzle that you very much miss by not having boots on the ground, by just looking at your athlete on a daily basis and seeing what their face looks like.

Did they sleep well? I am completely the problem right now on being frozen. When your athletes walk in the door, what is your process for understanding where they're at and knowing that they're all high performing athletes and if you ask them if it's go time they're gonna say i'm ready coach um how do you how do you make those decisions on a day-to-day basis well first you gotta eliminate variability so you make sure you structure a warm-up it's very similar because you know obviously if you warm up five minutes one day and then 10

minutes the other, it'll skew the results. But so that, that will be first is we have a 10 minute warmup that we do that's structured. And then they have 10 minutes to do a warmup that applies to just them because, you know, we do a general one for the group, one for this person, and then we do the testing. And so what they do first before they do any of that is they do a subjective questionnaire. The key is don't make it so long that they won't answer truthfully. You want something that'll take them like three minutes, you know, like some important questions would be like quality of sleep, the amount,

the quality, the amount of sleep, quality nutrition. You could even say the amounts of sleep, quality nutrition. You could even say the amount of meals. But then a big one is like on a scale from one to five, like outside stressors. Like, would you say that you're a five? And then what happens is when I test them, say, because we test, we found, we tried two different things.

We tried the depth jump or some people call it the drop jump, but there was too variable but a simple front squat at only in by the way we tested it 75 and 80 percent and 75 percent was a little bit had a bigger effect size than 80 percent so like so you don't have to go heavy is the point and maybe 70 might be fine but anyway so when at 75 on the front squat if all of a sudden they're way off let's say that their their velocity we use velocity of course to measure it and then um if it's like 10 or higher slower than normal well then what i'll do is i flip to that subjective

questionnaire and try to find something to open up a conversation with, you know, why, what's happening here? Because, you know, you know, none of us writes a workout to where you're going to fatigue someone that much, you know, you want optimal fatigue, but when it's 10% slower than normal, you've, you know, something has happened to cause it to go too far. So the subjective questionnaire makes me like, when I see outside stressors of five, I can say what's going on. You know, is it your family, girlfriend, you know, and anyone who coaches athletes, if you don't get to know your athletes on that personal level, then you're not coaching. Because if you got a guy like a Ryan or some elite athlete, if you don't get in there and do life with them, you're never going to have

a big impact on them. It's just, it's a very, you know, being a great athlete is a very complicated thing. There's so many variables and like outside relationships are a huge part of those variables. But so that was, you know, what we do. And the protocol is simple. If, if they're like zero to 5% slower than normal, it's perfect. It's like, that's fatigue, you've, you know, that you've anticipated. If it's five to 10%, it's a it's like that's fatigue you've you know that you've anticipated if it's five to ten

percent it's a little high and so what we tend to do is cut uh fatigue i mean sorry cut volume and intensity by about 20 each if it's 10 or higher we do um and what i'm about to tell you is like i don't know that there's science to back this up this is brian man's protocol is that we would do some light body building preferably something that's not like really high you know high in eccentric forces because you know that causes more fatigue and like more damage but something like a pump session to elicit that um acute hormonal response that might aid in in recovery but other than that really just send them home you know um might want to talk to them at that point about like re-emphasize the importance of like sleep patterns

ask them about like you know what's going on at night you know what is your morning routines you know try to find you know those those pieces of fruit that like is causing such a big overreach but that's the best basically the protocol you mentioned the relationship with athletes like when we first met you know 10 years ago or whatever it was now you're still coaching like d and paid in a handful of other people like one of the first things that i ever thought about you as a coach was like oh that that that travis guy seems to have a really good relationship with all his athletes like he fucking really cares about his athletes in a way that was obviously unique compared to other people that i knew that were coaches that also had good seems to have a really good relationship with all his athletes. Like he fucking really cares about his athletes in a way that was obviously

unique compared to other people that I knew that were coaches that also had good relationships with their athletes. So I feel like that's all, that's something that you've done really well for a long time. Yeah, I probably do it in an unorthodox way. Like I'll probably get too close. I feel like, because like Ryan is like my son, is that too far? If you're going to coach a bunch of athletes, that's too far.

I think, you know, but like, that's too far i think you know but like it's too late like he's been with me since he was 14 years old and so like he's like my son matt weiner is the same so like maybe you know like uh if i give advice to coach if you're gonna coach on a big scale like you want to coach 100 and something athletes you want to get in there but maybe like have some boundaries you know but like i want to coach the elites so i don't want to coach hundreds i want to coach five amazing humans so then it becomes more practical to do what i've done i think there was a time like when i had a d and hayden and like i had a bunch of a bunch of athletes and i did that and like it was fine until like i started having kids and I was going back to school

and like it became quite too much. But guys like Spencer Arnold, who I, you know, I think is an amazing coach. He does a better job, like creating culture, getting to know them, but also maybe setting more boundaries than I might. So I just got to know who you are. You have that really good relationship. Like you're just more likely to spend lots of time together just talking and rehashing and rehashing if you look at like like gordon ryan's very obviously the best you know jujitsu nogi athlete in the world and him

and john dan her are like super super super tight if you look at like sean o'malley and tim we're like they're like best friends right dan like they've been good buddies for a long time they fucking hang out together. They're just always around each other just talking about the fight game, I would imagine. Being around each other that much, there's some potential downsides there for sure. There's pros and cons to everything, but it seems like a good,

more upside than downside as far as just always being around each other, just shooting ideas, just having lots of discussions and respecting each other and just generally around each other just shooting ideas just having lots of discussions and respecting each other and just generally liking each other is really but you can't do that with hundreds of people like or you can't have your own kids you know so like um i said to peel it back a bit like i still like i'm gonna coach like that till i die because it's who i am i'm not gonna try to change so just for me now is to pick five people. I'm just saying five, but like a few people who I really want to do it right with,

like Sarah, who just won the first strong man I've ever coached. She just won the nationals first time out and destroyed everyone, by the way. And then, so I have her, I have Ryan, I have like, you know, yeah, I have like these five bad asses who I love, like my kids. And like, so that's the way I'm going to do it. I just can't do it as big a scale as I used to if I want to do, if I want to be a good father and husband and do all these other things.

So you just got to ask yourself, what's your life? What do you want it to look like? And then decide how to do it. How do you actually use the data? Because I feel like I always try to roll or to make decisions based on like rolling averages versus you look good today, you don't look good today. Obviously there's like some fluctuation in that

when people walk in and you can just tell they're not on their game. Shark Family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean?

It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. 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 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 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 rapidhealthreport.com, and let's get back to the show. Do you feel like a place where coaches get too wrapped up in every tiny detail when they should almost be teaching like the mental resilience of like you're trying

to be very good at this it's going to be hard the fact that you're tired doesn't actually matter you need to go develop the skill to work harder so this doesn't feel hard or you're not up until a point i would say i say once you get past like the 10 like you've got a bigger problem you got it's like it's gone more cns now it's it's rare so so don't like it's not like a weekly occurrence it's like a once a training block you know it's like uh and like if if you're at that point where you're 10% slower and maybe you retest them just to make sure it wasn't them being lazy and you see that and you see that there's problems in their life, like there's nothing you can do that will be good at that point. Like some people would say, well, just go easy and work on technique. Well, if you've gone, if you're that fatigued mentally, like Dan, he couldn't learn anything right now because he's tired.

Like now would not be a good time to learn a new skill or to learn a new anything like yeah so like there would be a good example if i tested him right now he would be i would be like go home dan he's like you know like it's like because he's pushed he's overreached yeah that's fine so like so yes i agree with you to a point and then it becomes nothing good's gonna happen and like you're not gonna make them mentally tough you're just gonna hurt them yeah i think more of that question almost comes to like the the coaching side of it of like um reading into too much data at times can just bog you down and you end up making bad decisions when the thing is you should just get up and go work harder. I would say this for the first several weeks anyway is collect the data and then establish those norms.

So like, you know, some people will just they'll test them first day. You know, how do you know that they're fresh on that first day? So like collect four to six weeks, just collect, be quiet and collect, and then establish norms and like, and that's it. And like then, but here's the thing too, here's the caveat to that. If you're like four weeks out, especially say you have a fighter or even a weightlifter, at that point, you got to be very careful what you say. So if you say that, if you tell them they're so beat up they got to go home they're going to start to have doubt so like you got to think and consider

that too so you might just like nonchalantly say hey i have a new plan today and not even tell them about the fatigue so there's a lot of variables to consider mental being tough especially you got a fighter an mma guy like you definitely don't want to do anything to hurt that person's confidence because confidence is going to be key going into that, you know, just walking down the damn aisle and getting in the cage. You better have some confidence. Yeah. Dan, I'd love to hear your thoughts when it comes to taking like day-to-day data on your athletes versus running blood panels on them every 120 days.

Kind of the balance between the, we'll just call it quarterly, every four months snapshot into their energy levels and those biomarkers, and then how that filters to someone like Travis that's going to be making those day-to-day decisions. I would imagine if their blood panel shows up and they, you know, whatever markers show that they're struggling with energy, where do you place your, kind of like the protocol you design or how you work with other coaches in designing the right program? Because maybe the day that they took their labs, they didn't sleep well, or their training has slowed down and Travis is seeing things on a day-to-day basis that

are trending towards low energy, poor recovery, fatigue, but maybe it doesn't show up in the labs. How do you start to draw the connection and put protocols in place if there's conflicting data on the day-to-day versus the every 120 days that you're actually able to get blood work on people? Sure. So generally speaking, it will show up in the labs. I'll when somebody is biomarkers come in, I basically know what their questionnaire is going to look like without looking at the questionnaire. A part of my process and interpretation is that I look at biomarkers before I look at your questionnaire, because I don't want to have any influence at all from the bias that you've placed upon me with the way in which you filled out your questions. I don't want to be led down any false positives. I want to look at what your physiology

is. And that's an important point, because I know a lot of people who think they need to take a break when their body's actually ready to go. So I take a I take an opposite view on that. Travis and I don't always come across that as much say as we used to, because we work with high level athletes, where sometimes we have to like, not sometimes, last times we do have to tell them to chill because they are more mentally resilient than what is good for them oftentimes. But when you're working with like, say executives or somebody getting ready for a wedding or somebody getting ready for a vacation or a recreational gym goer, they are unbelievably

unaware at how resilient they truly are. And if they had the belief and mindset to where they could keep going, I think they would absolutely shock themselves at what their potential is. And I see that so much in biochemistry. So I don't actually always want to look at the questionnaire as much as I want to look at their biochemistry to see what their actual potential is. And when I'm looking at their biochemistry and you're looking at basically two branches of thinking, I want to A, make this vehicle more durable, but B, I want to make this vehicle have a greater accelerator, have a better gas pedal. So there's things I could do in order to optimize biochemical recovery, because if this context of this conversation, we're talking about energy, you're only going

to have energy to the degree that you are recovered. That's a lot of times the conversation is like, man, I wish I had more energy, man, I wish I had more energy, you're only going to have energy to the degree that you are recovered. So instead of kind of looking for a mitochondrial enhancer to produce more ATP, sometimes you actually just need to improve your recovery from training. And that's what's actually going to allow you to have a lot more energy to do the things you're supposed to do. So instead of actually hitting a gas pedal, you actually need to just work on resiliency at this time. But then

you also have the gas pedal end of the thing as well. And that is identifying different areas in which you can produce more energy from the current subset of biochemistry that I'm looking at. So there are many ways when I'm looking at a blood panel, that I can assess biochemical sources of fatigue, because you have acute hydration markers, you have chronic hydration markers, you have micronutrient markers, you have hormone markers, you have resilience markers, you have stressor markers, you have sleep markers, you have all of immune markers, you have all of these things that represent categorically what is such an umbrella statement that is fatigue, fatigue, the source of fatigue is in the dozens. Like there's so many ways that one person can be fatigued. And the way in which

you can extrapolate that from the labs is the way in which you can extrapolate that from the labs is the way in which you can categorically look at the different ratios, calculations and algorithms that a lab presents to you, so that you can identify the biochemical source of fatigue and overcome that. That's like a real key part of being able to get an athlete better because I feel like in a big way, energy, energy is like the seed of life. If you have more energy, it doesn't really matter what your goal is. If you give me your biochemistry, I will give you more energy. And if you have more energy, I don't care if your goal is to be able to play with your kids better, be able to lift more weight, be able to have more energy, jujitsu, be able to be a better partner, be able to go on

vacations at a safari and not be exhausted. Energy will accelerate any goal set that you have. And there's so many biochemical sources of fatigue. So categorically speaking, there's many ways in which you can break down fatigue sources or potential gas pedals in a lab. I think that a real underrated marker is probably RDW that the audience would take a lot of value from. RDW is red blood cell distribution width. That's what RDW stands for, red blood cell distribution width. So if we took out your blood and we put the smallest red blood cell on this side and the largest red blood cell on this side, RDW is the difference in size between those two. Your red blood cells have a four month turnover rate. So you're looking at your red blood cells over the past four months. What is the difference in size between these two. This is actually a very excellent micronutrient marker because there's a

process called erythropoiesis, which is the formation of red blood cells. It begins in your bone marrow. It goes through many different metabolic processes to go from an immature red blood cell into a mature red blood cell. But for example, about halfway through, there's something called nuclear maturation that depends upon B12 and folate for proper synthesis of red blood cells. And something kind of counterintuitive happens. You would think that if you didn't have enough raw material in order to create something, that that thing would be smaller rather than larger. But this is where the kind of counterintuitive component comes in. If you do not have enough B12 and folate, your red blood cells actually expand larger as opposed to

contract. This is called a macrocytic red blood cell, macro large cytic fluid volume. So you get this large fluid volume red blood cell in the absence of B12 and folate. So this actually drives up this RDW marker that's measuring the difference between your smallest and largest red blood cell. So if we have a lack of B12 and folate, we've got red blood cells on one side that are very big, but then we have red blood cells of a normal size on the other side.

The difference between these two is representation of your lack of consistent micronutrient intake over the past four months, because that was your red blood cell turnover rate. So we're actually looking at an excellent micronutrient metabolic pathway marker that is representative of energy status. And it's an excellent representation of energy status because, for example, ATP production, we call it burning fat, but really it's beta oxidation, key emphasis on oxidation. We need oxygen present at the mitochondria in order to convert fat into ATP. What is going to bring that oxygen over to the mitochondria?

Healthy red blood cells. If we don't have healthy red blood cells, we do not have optimal ATP production. What was holding back oxygen delivery and absorption? B12 and folate as assessed by RDW status. So when we start actually looking at a micronutrient potential for energy potential, RDW actually shines as an excellent marker. But RDW also shines in two other ways. Once RDW exceeds past 13, it actually correlates with two things, C-reactive protein and erythrocyte sedimentation rate, or you'll see them on labs, CRP and ESR. CRP is acute inflammation and ESR is chronic inflammation. RDW tracks linearly with both of those. As you get a larger RDW, which represents a larger gap in the consistency of

your micronutrient intake, you will track linearly with greater acute inflammatory markers and greater chronic inflammatory markers, which kind of makes sense because if you don't have excellent micronutrient intake on a daily basis, you're going to be more inflamed. You're going to have less antioxidant potential to neutralize the free radicals and inflammation in your body. So it's naturally going to track well with a poor diet, which tracks well with inflammatory markers. It's already been demonstrated that ATP production is limited in the presence of inflammation because your own mitochondria produces reactive oxygen species for the purpose of ATP production. But if you actually going to create more reactive oxygen species in the presence of a pro-inflammatory environment, your body as a host

defense mechanism will produce less ATP for the purpose of producing less reactive oxygen species as the exhaust out of the end of that mitochondria. So we have this RDW first beautifully representing red blood cell health, which represents energy and fatigue. And then we have this second branch where it represents inflammation, where it represents fatigue and a host of other factors that we've discussed in the past. But then there's this third branch, where once RDW gets past 15, and certainly gets past 17, it actually tracks well with gluten intolerance. There's actually a very, very excellent gluten marker in the blood, which is representative through RDW. And then that's when you can kind of further look into this thing as huh, okay, well, maybe the source of fatigue is actually related to gut health now. And these first trip offs, you know,

after 12, we're getting issues with vitamin status after 13. Now we're correlating with inflammation status. And after 15, and certainly after 17, we're starting to track to gut health, all of these things are their own energy and fatigue markers in their own unique way. So that is just one marker that really gives you past, present and future applications on what you can do for protocol design to bring this athlete out of a biochemical state of fatigue, even if they are psychologically motivated and ready to rock. I do think that was crazy. The whole gluten intolerance. Do you think like a better diet, like filled with more micronutrients could maybe reverse someone's gluten intolerance? I think that, I think that it would depend on where that's from because you can have

somebody with a, there's something known as non-celiac gluten sensitivity. And that's a lot of people, you actually see this online. It's funny. They're like, you don't have a gluten intolerance, unless you have celiac disease. That's utter bullshit. That's someone who's never actually looked at research. I'll call them out right now. There is non celiac gluten sensitivity, that is absolutely a real thing. And that is something that can absolutely be reversed. So yeah, you can see somebody who is sensitive to gluten, but has the potential to be able to improve gut health to the point where they're able to reintroduce it into their life after a

certain period of time and excellent protocol design. But somebody who's celiac, which is approximately about 2% of the population, that's that's genetic. And that's somebody who is just always going to have to stay away from gluten. But but yeah there's a lot of people who could be helped who have a gluten issue um and they just sort of kind of go through life with it as opposed to getting rid of it and that'll it won't necessarily hold them back from their athletic potential because i suppose you don't need pasta to be a great athlete but it's certainly more fun that way yeah let me ask you what about like um let's say someone's on a carnivore diet like how are they able to get in all the micronutrients they're going to need to like you know to you know function especially as an athlete like is it

a bad decision altogether or what yeah yeah i think i'll go on record to say that it's i personally think it's a bad decision altogether as an athlete as anyone honestly unless you have like a real autoimmune issue it does shine well in those departments and in there is like look a tool is only ever as good as it is applied can the carnivore diet be applied properly within the correct context? Yeah. But so can a lot of other crazy stuff that doesn't apply to 99.999% of the population. Where I get annoyed is when someone utilizes, say, the carnivore diet and then applies it population wide. That to me is like when someone is saying, hey, you need to be on the carnivore diet everybody needs to everybody on the earth yeah in my mind they're marketing the fact that they don't

understand human metabolism right it's so funny to me because like they're spending marketing dollars saying stupid stuff and like it doesn't it it's crazy to me. 90% brother. That's 90% of the marketing. Yeah. Well, man, you're, you're, you're avoiding so many important, um, phytonutrients, antioxidants, um, fiber, like, you know, how many studies you'd have to, in the department of fiber, you got to go through like a hundred good studies to find one bad one. Like there, there's so many things that, uh, plants and vegetables, imagine like, imagine being against fruits and vegetables and how amazing that sounds. Um, so there's so many things that plants and vegetables, imagine like, imagine being against fruits and vegetables and how amazing that sounds. So there's, there's a lot of things here that are just kind of from a common sense perspective

without even diving into the, the unique phytochemicals and micronutrients and fiber and ease of life and enjoying meals with family. There's a lot of things that go along outside of the pure biochemistry that should be taken into account for psychology and emotion and consistency and living a great life that extremes aren't necessarily necessary. I think you can always find the context for something to be ideal, but I don't think that context is for most people. And I think a tool is only as good as it is applied. And I think that you could use the analogy of say jujitsu in this scenario. A carnivore diet proponent would say that you

only ever need red meat. So that would be me saying, Hey, Doug, look, I know you're a black belt in jujitsu, right? But the whole jujitsu thing is kind of bullshit because all you need is a triangle choke. That's all you need. If you know a triangle choke, that's all you need. When someone to me says in nutrition, all you need is red meat. I'm like, oh, so that's it. Damn, there are thousands of studies.

You can get many different PhDs in this thing. And all along, I could have just, I ate a steak every day. You know, that, that thing, that's a wild, that's a wild thought for me. I love hearing, I love Lane Norton. He gets so mad. Like it's so funny because I know him and I know he's actually sincerely mad. Like he's not just trying to put a show on. He gets so mad with people like make these outrageous claims, but it makes me laugh just because I know him when he's on there. So pissed about it. I guess a lot of people doing

this thing that, that feel good. And I'm not picking specifically on carnivore, anybody who puts diets in a silo and applies them population wide, I think deserve the same type of treatment. I also think those people aren't coaches because if they were coaches, they would see that doesn't work for everybody who comes their way. And they would they would find that out within the first three months of actually coaching people. But in the context of say, the carnivore diets, probably easier to digest for a lot of people, it dramatically reduces their total caloric intake every day. That's what it does eat so much meat. so they start losing weight they start avoiding sugar and desserts and alcohol it's like oh shocking you feel a little bit better on that but like you could have just done that

though you could have also done that and how sustainable is this going to be for the next 50 years of your life not many people like which is what lane says is like the the best diet is whatever someone can stick to but i would even say too like you mentioned once it was like the most brilliant comment you said um that macros were for the way you look and micros were the way you feel and perform and it's brilliant so yeah you can do whatever you want as long as you limit calories and you'll get more you'll get leaner but like as far as you know as far as um like how you feel and how you perform then you got to consider a more holistic approach i believe yeah yeah for sure yeah that's go ahead sorry this is what we're

talking about in columbus how much talking over each other on zoom is awesome yeah that's okay we're fired up go anders let's go no no travis called me tired earlier so i'm about to start yelling about shit so anders you go next let's go you called yourself time man he told us taking control um i'm actually specifically to ryan because this is uh one athlete that you and dan have worked with together from his blood analysis. I'd love to know when you see Dan's report come through as the coach, do you reset where you are in training intensities, volume, and actually make decisions based off of those? Is it that immediate that you're taking that information in and and changing and making changes or is do you use that is that as like a roadmap for the next call it 16 weeks

or is that just additional information and you're putting more value on the day-to-day um data that you're collecting we made several changes based on the data like you know he had you know he even though his testosterone was high but it was in the presence of high cortisol as well so he's like his stressors were super high and like so like um it we took a massive approach meaning we started talking more and like you know he starts telling me the things that are actually there was a lot of stress in his life at the time he's's done a really good job of eliminating those stressors. And so it definitely made me be a little bit wiser in his training because at the end of last year, you know,

is when we were realizing all this, and it was too late because the World Championships were upon us, and we had massively overreached for several reasons. And he was a junior, which doesn't, you know, for me, all of my anecdotal evidence in the past was said, no junior is going to get that beat up because at that time in their life, they're 20, you know, right, they're 20.

And so like, you know, for every other person, I've been able to go super hard until, you know, the 21, 22, 23, we start to motor down. But we made massive changes starting this year because of, you know, what Dan had told me and, like, expressed to us. And he made a lot of changes. The thing that happens first is he makes lifestyle changes.

Like, you know, his sleep changed, his nutrition changed. But I definitely, you know, changed and definitely look more fatigued on a more normal basis because of his high cortisol. And he's like that. He's like, you know, there's two athletes. It's like he's like a Porsche that you drive really fast sometimes. And there's people, you know, who drive pretty fast a lot and so but he's a guy like you really do need to consider relatively on almost a daily basis where he's at because he can like on one day he can look like he's going to beat the entire world and a day later he can look like he can't

beat anybody you know so like you know you do need to like, he is an interesting animal. He's very unique in that too. Like he can be massive dips. That actually is really interesting. Dan, are you able to, when you, when you read or when you're analyzing labs, are you able to see somebody and again, kind of like where their stress tolerance is and, and understand kind of like the, the art of what Max just said of you can you can ride this guy forever and he's got a big engine call it like a crossfitter that just needs 30 seconds in between reps where somebody else needs three days a week and tons of recovery time because they're just super high output but

they don't have the big engine to go along with it yeah 100, 100%. So like, we've all heard of like big rocks that you need to take care of before you move on to the pebbles. So like big rocks from the outside in. It's like you got to start eating healthy. You got to manage your stress. You've got to start sleeping better. You probably shouldn't watch so much porn. You probably should not be on your phone so much. Like there are there's big rocks that actually handle a lot of shit where it's like you do this one thing and then you have dozens of benefits from the one thing. So focusing on something small after that doesn't make a lot of sense until you handle the big thing first.

In lab work, a big rock is the cortisol to DHEA sulfate ratio. So your serum cortisol AM to DHEA sulfate, that ratio is a biochemical big rock, where if you do that, if you get that corrected, there are dozens of things that follow suit from many different perspectives. You have your serum cortisol, DHEHA sulfate is like the tank or the reserve of DHA in your body. Whereas your free DHA is measured via saliva. But in the blood, you have DHA sulfate, which is like your reserve, it'll be sent to the liver, the liver will do a cool thing called sulfation, which takes the sulfate molecule off, and then you get free DHA after that. But this ratio, it should actually be between when you divide cortisol into DHEA, it should be

below 0.09. So it's kind of a weird number, but the data is what the data is. So it should be between zero and 0.09. This ratio is, to point to your question, Anders, your resiliency ratio. It's something that I've absolutely identified over the last 10 years in my career is that this is a resiliency ratio. It is also your anabolic to catabolic ratio, because you have stressors, which is cortisol, which isn't always a bad thing, provided you also have enough biochemical resiliency which is your ghga sulfate so so long as you can keep this between zero and 0.09 you have enough resiliency in order to deal with your current allostatic load which is your current total stress load across all markers of life psychology physiology, that is your allostatic load, your current level of allostasis should always be below point 09. This is connected to catabolism, because you have stressors cortisol

being systemically catabolic. It is connected to anabolism because DHA sulfate is the precursor, say for testosterone. So even though someone like Ryan can have an excellent testosterone, his DHA could still be wearing down in the presence of that elevation in cortisol because pregnenolone is what makes both of them. So we only have an X amount of pregnenolone and it can only go in one of two directions. It can go down to make some more DHA sulfate to become the precursor for testosterone, estradiol, estriol, estrone, androstenedione. There are many things that becomes a precursor for the purpose of reproduction, resiliency, and performance. But then pregnenolone can also just go the other way and make a bunch of catabolic stuff in the presence of too much stress. So you're getting

an anabolic to catabolic ratio between those two, you're getting a stress to resiliency ratio between those two. And it's unsurprising when you're looking at the way endocrinology works, and you're looking at steroidal metabolic pathways, that this ratio is connected to inflammation of the body, it's connected to neuro inflammation of the brain, It is connected to being anabolic for muscle tissue. It's connected to REM sleep specifically. It's connected to so many things that have many dozens of benefits beyond those things. So yeah, I'm able to look at a lab. That's just one ratio among many others that can also be included for the

purpose of creating a resiliency score for an athlete. And I'm able to say a mash hit the gas pedal. We've got plenty to go here, or I can say we should probably actually look towards peaking soon because this guy is he's running out of juice near the end here. Right. Fantastic team. We've got a short one today dan garner where can the people hang out with you you guys can hang out with me uh at dan

garner nutrition on instagram there it is coach travis bash you can go to at match elite on twitter at match the performance on instagram there you go doug larson you bet oh gentlemen good to have the band back together today uh instagram douglas c larson um we're gonna have an enormous amount of blood work stuff coming out dan has been waking up at like 11 p.m the day before and then until 11 p.m that night which means he hasn't slept in like six months and everything he just talked about he knows by reading his own lab work right now uh building out tons of blood work software and we're going to be diving into this stuff um towards the end of the year and then

really cranking into it come from new year i'll say right now just i know we got to check off here but um i'll say right now i know more about blood work now than ever before i've been doing thousands of blood panels over the last 10 years but being forced to create an algorithm out of it and force myself to create coding logic for what i did automatically has been unbelievably insightful so yeah i can't i came into the show tired today because that's what I've been doing. That's the reason, good reason. It's gonna bring a hell of a lot of killer blood work shows for the rest of 2023 and into 2024 because we're about to tackle the world with this thing.

Love it. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are barbell shrug to barbell underscore shrug. And make sure you get over to to the rapid health report dot 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. You can access that for free over at rapid health report dot com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.