Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: How to Build a Killer Cardiovascular System w/ Dr. Mike T. Nelson, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis sit down with Anders coach, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. For those that have followed the show, you know Anders has been in pursuit of running a sub-6 minute mile at the age of 40. Dr. Nelson is the coach Anders hired to help with that goal. In this episode the crew walks through program design, initial intake, and execution of how to build cardiovascular fitness. You will learn performance tests used to design Anders training program, how priorities are scheduled into a busy life, understanding higher intensity efforts mixed with Vo2Max training, Zone 2 efforts, and how to maintain strength throughout the process. We hope you enjoy. Visit https://rapidhealthoptimization.com Work with Dr. Nelson Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug Physiology Friday is back and today Dr. Michael T. Nelson is coming in. We're going to be talking about one of the coolest years of training that I put in very recently to get to a sub six minute mile, which I didn't actually hit the goal. I went 6.17 and 6.19 back to back. I realized that I have another year of banging an airdyne and a track and the pavement and I need to take a little break. But we dig into understanding a lot of the energy systems and the training that goes into getting very fast today. And also Dr. Nelson is one of the advisors and coaches inside Rapid Health Optimization.

So if you enjoy this show and would like to go through the same process, have some Dr. Nelson is one of the advisors and coaches inside Rapid Health Optimization. So if you enjoy this show and would like to go through the same process, have some program design done by Coach Nelson, highly recommend getting over to aretelab.com, A-R-E-T-E-L-A-B.com. That is where you can learn about all things labs, lifestyle, performance, testing, coaching, analysis, and you can do all of that at areteab.com. Friends, Physiology Friday. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Marner. Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash, Dr. Michael T. Nelson, my coach on the show today. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about the most important person in the world, me, and my most important thing, my training.

Why I hired Dr. Michael T. Nelson to get me to run a sub-six-minute mile at the age of 40 years old, which we still have that goal. We still are going to do that before April 26th of 2025. Is that new ground for you, by the way? Have you done sub-6 in the past? I've never. I've run in my own training. Oh, this is actually, we did a full show on this in the first quarter of COVID. I remember. The only place that you could go to socially distance and still do fitness was the track. That's when you got kicked off the track at the high school, right? They're like, get out of here.

Dude, the same guy called the cops on me. I had to talk to Mike. The same middle school athletic director called the cops on me again, like two months ago, and came out and took a picture of my license plate and was like, I'm turning you in. And I was like, why is it so illegal to run in ovals like why is it i'm by myself how in the world is this illegal it's like the middle of a school day the kids aren't there you're just booting kids off the track for you to run even the time that

he did it the football team was there they They're like in the middle, nothing else is going on. And he, he came over and I was like, dude, he may not have liked the comment where I said, I feel like we're over-exaggerating your powers here at the local track. Like you should not be escorting me anywhere right now, but I left. He got a picture of my last trip. Is it a public school? Yeah.

It's a middle school. Well, if it works for you, Annie escorted you off the thing. It's a middle school. The football team was out there like, what are you going to do with the football team? Anyways, what I want to do today is walk through kind of like the high level. When you hear some slightly above average athlete like myself wants to run a sub six minute mile, which he's never done before. I believe the best I've ever done leading up to this was 630, which I did during COVID. And it was like 630 right on the button. But I had no, all I was doing was just go fast, go to the track,

random intervals and giddy up and go there was no there was no like real rhyme or reason outside of like i just needed to get out of my house and the track seemed like a really good place um but when when when a when a 40 year old with a decent athletic history and is in decent shape comes to you with uh a high goal of a 559 mile where where do you kind of start this process i mean i start with where are they currently at which is it sounds so simple but i've gotten burned on this in the past where i took people at their word and you ask them how is your form oh it's great and then you realize like if you use a simple one rm max that they were off by 80 pounds and about six inches high on their squat so i've always said just getting some not really proof but just a current assessment

of where they're at because if you don't have that then your programming is going to be off to start so once you have that then with something like your goal i divide it into is there kind of a conditioning aspect and then what is the the technical component and then i'll usually try to separate those as much as possible initially because you can work on the technique stuff but you're probably not going to run a mile in great technique so lesser difference distances keeping good technique you know doing things like you know people classically train sprinters for decades and longer and the conditioning aspect of course if you can run

that's gonna be more specific but like we'll get into there's gonna be some constraints so maybe you could do a bike you could do a rower you could do other things so that you're still working within that person's constraints of what they have to get them to their goal because not everyone like we said is going to have access to the track every single day and can you know spend hours doing their warm-ups and their perfect drills and everything else like you have to operate within their their real world constraints too yeah what was the testing that you ended up doing with andrews did you just say go down a mile and tell me your time and then we'll take it from there or yeah yeah so what what was the initial time we did the we did the cooper test and that was actually what inspired

it go ahead i'll let you i'll let you go yeah i was gonna say so we we would do a specific test which would be like a one mile like where are you at right now and then for conditioning i'll tend to do a vo2 max test so you can either do a 2k on the concept to rower or in this case running is going to be more specific. So you can do a 12-minute Cooper run test, take 12 minutes, run as far as you can within those 12 minutes, boop up, type it in online, and it'll give you what your VO2 max is. So your volume of oxygen, kind of a marker for how big is your aerobic engine. Then you can look at those two and see, okay, which of those two needs, you know, more

work. If your technique looks good and your time isn't, you know, super far off, but your VO2 max is like the status of a field mouse and you're in the twenties and like, wow, you're some sort of weird genetic freak where we just get your aerobic base a little bit better. You're probably going to be fine. Or most people are a mix. Like the aerobic system is probably pretty good but they probably need a combination of some specific technique work also what about like the like lactate threshold or just the anaerobic system because with the mile that's going to come into play yeah then the next i would say that would be the next level down so you can do things on the rower you can do them on the bike you can do running and just see kind of what are your split times what are your pace and then if you don't have a fancy way of pricking your finger

to get a lactate reading i just kind of do rpe and see where you're at um for people listening like the 400 meter is probably like the worst possible race to do because your lactate levels are so high but it's it's just long enough to start accumulating a lot of lactate. But it's not long enough where you still have to run pretty darn fast. So you can break it up into just, you know, kind of 200 meter components and see where they kind of fall off or where they just report that. Yeah, that was good. That was good. Oh, my God. That was like, you know, horrible. So if they report like the 400 meter was like the worst possible thing ever. Okay. Maybe we'll do a little bit more lactate, you know, specific work. And like, you know, you can get hyper-specific and plot out, you know,

different types of, you know, lactate testing and get really granular from there. Yeah. For someone like Anders, uh, probably I think what you did was be perfect like you don't need to do the finger pricking you know no especially so we all know he came from crossfit so probably pretty good lactate threshold i bet yeah and you can do i use a rower as a surrogate because especially if some athletes not anders i don't really trust them to run real fast you know in terms of mechanics so i'll be like hey get on the rover do 30 seconds all out as hard as you can do 60 seconds all out and if i want to be really torturous do 180 so you're basically doing short medium and long you know that three minute all as hard as you can so as soon as you start you're

going as hard as you can for those three minutes it's awful what i've been doing a lot of is killing yeah and you can look at those three differences by pace because the rower is going to give you all that information it's also non-impact so that's kind of an easy way back of the envelope you can kind of get at it another way another reason i've chosen the rower just in my hip and so so the roller is a great way to get in conditioning if you have hip issues yep yep a lot of people just can't take that impact and i don't want them blowing a hamstring on day one doing a 60 second wind gator or something crazy yeah i can have femur neck like me yeah um the cooper test that we did really was uh my my main goal was to get on like a conditioning program because lifting at the time had been had gotten kind of like stale like it does over time

and when we did the cooper test it's 12 minutes max distance and i didn't get kicked off the track that day but i went and i timed the mile and knowing that I still had to get to 12 minutes, I hit the mile at like 710 or something like that, knowing I still had five minutes to go. And I went, I bet if I crush this thing, I could go 630 today without even thinking about it. And then all I got to do is knock off 6 30 to 6 minutes by actually training and that said that was when i was like this is this is now the goal can i run a can i run a 559 at 40 it was it was during that cooper test when i when i went basically ran a seven minute mile knowing i still had five minutes left with like tons left in the tank and i was like i bet i could get there yeah and that's a good part is you want goals that the person for them personally are going to want

to do regardless of what anyone else thinks because that is going to be their biggest intrinsic motivator and what that's one of the reasons i do a fair amount of testing and assessments is many times like you said they'll come up with, oh, wow, my 2K on the roar really sucks. I want to hit this number now, or I want to hit this for 12 minutes, or I want to run a mile in this. Like they'll come back to me with a specific goal that they want to hit, which is a lot better than me saying, well, I think you should do this or that number.

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But we know that the Concept 2 did one that's pretty close. I measured it with my own metabolic card here. It's relatively close. So, I know that one's been validated by a study. We measured it with my own metabolic card here. It's relatively close. So I know that one's been validated by a study. We know the Cooper run test has been validated. I've used other bike tests, you know, like we had you do some of them, but I can't say that this is compared to a population status where I can look at those two tests and we can have tons of data on the population status for VO2 max. And I can say, hey, you're at the 50% of a population or you're at the 90th percentile.

Or with Concept2, because they have the whole entire logbook of a bunch of crazy people logging all their stuff, I can show you that out of all the people who are rowing, you're at the 50th percentile. Here's what it would like to be hit, the 75th percentile. I can give them very specific numbers and tell them how they rate to different populations and the bike is so variable when it comes to like resistance even though the rower is kind of too but it doesn't seem to affect people as much as on the rower as it does on the bike yeah and the tip for the rower too is most

people you're going to probably want to set your drag factor at 120 to 130 so go into it and if you just don't this makes no sense to you just google it because the damper you set on the side will be very different depending upon the condition and the rower etc all your numbers will still work out like it'll still account for it but if you've ever got on a rower and you're like man this rower pulls really hard like whoa this one's like way too easy if you set that drag factor to the same every rower you're on now will be feeling the same each time you you pull same way yeah right for conditioning efforts i've actually always wondered this because there is like a short or like a very small like interval piece to or like an anaerobic piece, almost to the rower. Cause there's a rest after you, Paul, does that change kind of the, the

stimulus stimulus that you are, um, looking for where when you're on the bike, there's no, there's no breathing whatsoever. Um, like there's, there's no rest rest your arms have to be moving legs have to be moving there's no pull and then recover the air make sure that you clarify you're talking about an airdyne airdyne right yeah yeah there's a big difference in a bike and an airdyne yeah yeah the rogue assault bike that feels like a a german tank is sitting in my garage thing is a giant monstrosity but when you say though doc that like on the on the rower done properly there's always like you know after you extend you should be pulling it should be some hip flexion going on so there shouldn't be that rest unless you're chilling out i mean which you could do that on the bike too if you wanted to i guess yeah the the assault bike's a

weird thing right it's like uh the we think of running right so you have your arm motion's gonna be tapped with your leg motion rowing we kind of get that okay your legs and arms work together and on the assault bike you're pedaling but you're also moving your arms back and forth so it's kind of a weird motion but you are stimulating a lot of muscle groups so i think on that just from a skill level there's nowhere to hold unquote relax with the rower you can kind of a little bit if we just use common parlance of like when the handle gets to you you do have that kind of split second where it is going to be a little bit uh weightless um and you can get super far down that rabbit hole like i'll stick moxies on some on their quads look at how much oxygen is being used by the muscle and then if i can get them to relax

for even a split second to get those vascular beds to open more get more oxygen you can do efficiency stuff like that but on the bike you're you're just kind of not efficient by the virtue of the thing no matter how good you ever get at it well i love it now um i uh i think we did like a 20 minute test um and i want to say the first half of it you wanted me doing pure nasal breathing and then it was just open the floodgates and get after it where uh i would love to know just kind of the the reasoning behind something a test like that uh like one where you're controlling the the method at which you're breathing um and then if i'm trying to run a six minute mile like 20 minutes is two three times that that length yeah it's because most of i would say a capacity test like if i use a rower we'll do like a 20

minute or for people who are rowers you can use a 5k and so i just adapted it to the bike where i want a long enough period of time where we do want a fair amount of aerobic fatigue to see how much you're how much you're going to go off that cliff like do you start great for five to seven minutes and then you're tanked or you can you hold a relatively high wattage for that period of time? You know, biking, you get into, you know, functional power and all this other kind of crazy stuff. But you probably want a fair amount of time to see what happens there. And then I'll limit it by nasal breathing at first to see what is the difference between nasal breathing and if we don't limit you by airflow. If there's a massive difference between those two, then I'm thinking, okay,

maybe your efficiency of breathing isn't so good. So we may do a lot of nasal work to try to get that closer to your max, even though it's never gonna be your max because you're limiting airflow through your nose versus your mouth. It just gives me an idea of kind of what their breathing patterns are.

Because I've had some people where like nasal breathing you know their max heart rate was 120 and then you tell them just breathe however you can and they'll hit like 175 you know versus someone else is like 155 they're trying hard but they can still nasal breathe you know that's a pretty big difference between those two athletes you know at that lower end that nasal breathing where you're purposely capping them. Yeah. I also, um, when we're, when we're, when we're doing like a shorter, high intensity efforts, um, I I've, I've kind of like found call it a hundred meters, maybe a little bit longer

outside my house where I can just, um, rolling start into wind sprints, five to six, seven reps somewhere in there. Um, my body feels phenomenal. If you're not, if you are not sprinting in your training, you are missing out on just the amazing feeling that goes along with just being able to feel like you're flying. Even though I'm, Mash, how bad did I get beat by Johan? I was just looking at it the other day. Real bad, real bad.

There's nothing better than feeling like you're flying and then knowing what it feels like is the second fastest human of all time yeah yeah yeah it was quite amazing he got me good um it looked like it looked like a cheetah chasing down a deer with a broken leg tap tap tap dead uh yes and then and then at the end of every week you make me feel like i'm going to want to die and it's the exact opposite feeling when i'm on an airdyne and you say go 30 seconds as hard as you possibly can why are those the intervals are call it roughly the same i mean it could be 15 seconds versus 30 but inside 30 seconds the the intervals being the same. I mean, it could be 15 seconds versus 30, but inside 30 seconds, the intervals being the same, the intensity of my output by myself being the same,

one of them makes me feel amazing and fast. And the other one makes me feel like I'm going to throw up immediately being on an airdyne going that hard. Yeah. The reason for that is we're trying to get some basically sprinting mechanics and efficiency so if you take someone who has a like a the same level of conditioning but you can increase their mechanics and they can become more efficient they'll obviously run faster right because their efficiency is better it's you know if you don't always have track access it's a little bit hard to do that so when we're doing those short um intervals running the goal is it it should feel like you're going fast but it also should feel like it's relatively my little air quotes here easy like if you watch

100 meter sprinters in slow motion like their lips are moving all over the place like they are there's nothing that is excess tension that doesn't need to be tense. Like everything is perfectly timed. And it just looks like it, you can watch them finish. You're like, wow, that looked like it was pretty easy. Oh yeah, that guy just ran a world record. I know, they're not even breathing hard. They're just laughing, ready to talk to the cameras. I'm like, I'd be thrown up.

Yeah. And so that's what we want for that efficiency right because that is that's the goal of that session it's not necessary to add a bunch of fatigue on it if we had a bunch of fatigue to that your performance is going to drop and your form is probably going to go to hell now you're just doing a bunch of bad reps and you're just running around all conditioned however if we remove that and we use like the bike where it's not necessarily running on purpose we can try to develop some of those you know that systems that max out around 30 seconds we're trying to make it

more mechanically inefficient and we're actually trying to do it in something that hopefully won't transfer to sprinting meaning we're trying to give you a bigger aerobic engine without disturbing and messing up the sprinting mechanics so we're going to use a different modality on purpose to do that but so after you get the initial testing done with anders and you kind of figure out what your baselines are and how you want to uh how you want to approach his first mesocycle what does that first week look like how do you how do you structure uh intervals versus longer duration cardio versus keeping some strength training in there etc i would say the routine the split that i use probably about 80 90% of the time just to start with people is some lifting Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Again, in this case, it was a little bit different. Some type of conditioning, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Sunday or at least one day a week is completely off. Just max unload the system as best you can. Go for a walk, lock yourself in a float tank, do some breath work, whatever. And then within that, the lifting is geared more towards what's missing lower body he had some upper body goals also the conditioning then is the higher priority stuff that we think will have the most transfer will then be loaded towards the beginning of the week so in his case

he'll have saturday and sunday off so the technique stuff would be then we move to Monday in this case, because we want to do it ideally when his nervous system and everything else is as fresh as possible. And then the things, you know, from there got pushed out. If we're looking at, you know, conditioning stuff on a bike, and it can be later in the week, if you have a little bit of fatigue on board, we're not looking for anything technical, you're probably going to be fine. It probably sucks more, but I'm not as concerned about the outputs from those particular sessions. So I usually will do it in terms of a priority arrangement. And then also, you know, my background, I did a master's in mechanical engineering. So I always think of like, what are the constraints on the system? Oh, I can only get to the track this day or I can only get to a bigger gym this day. I can use the stuff in my garage this time. I only have this amount of time. So those things you have to operate within whatever their constraints are and then just,

you know, rearrange stuff and do the best you can then. Anders, from your perspective, after having done this for a number of weeks, like what do you feel like has moved the needle the most out of all the training you've done with Mike today? People, maybe not people, meatheads in general, neglect movement and think that we're doing a lot of moving when we sit down and stand up with a bar on our back. And we're like, yeah, like I'm athletic. I'm standing in place and squatting. And you don't realize how much your body genuinely wants to get up and go move and breathe. And like the, it's, it's easy to stay in shape. Um, lifting weights, you can do it a little bit faster.

You can do a little lighter, a little heavier. There's some variants in there. And like, you can, you can do a zillion different exercises to kind of get to change things up, keep it interesting. Um, but there really is something to getting out and moving and running. And, and I also think that maybe even like during my CrossFit career, whatever that whatever that means. I don't know if I ever intentionally trained like VO2 max or like did really sustained efforts at high intensity, like on the bike or things like that. It was always just like, I just went and trained with my friends and did workouts. So like being on a structured

conditioning program makes your body feel amazing. And I don't like, I can go, I would say all of the, the like talk about like zone two stuff, obviously like zone two training is very important, but I feel like I get all of that running around and playing with my kids at night. And that's, that's where I do this, like elevated heart rate, low intensity thing. Like I'm playing street hockey and trying to play kickball and like just normal life. Like it's just live an active life and you don't really have to work. You don't need to hop on a bike and like make sure your heart rate's at 120 to 130 and live in this like rigid, rigid thing. Go out and play. Sitting on a bike at maximum intensity for five minutes and trying to hit numbers really makes your body feel amazing. It's really hard to, to hit numbers day in and day out,

but there's, there really is something, uh, to the cumulative effect of putting a really structured conditioning program together that, um, your body really, really likes being able to pump blood, move oxygen to your muscles, like in a, in a very easy way. And the more you're able to do it, um, and different, like we, uh, I don't want to take the words out of your mouth, but we, we kind of structure like short, high intensity, uh, longer duration, like one, two to four mile run a week.

And then in there is like the BO2 max training of like five minute all out efforts. Can you hit numbers? Can you sustain higher level intensities like RPE nine, nine plus and be able to do that. And over time, your body starts to adapt in a very different way than it does when you're just trying to get jacked. And I think it feels significantly healthier for what's called this stage of life that I'm in where I want to just feel healthy. And I'm not going to lose a lot of muscle mass. I don't have to worry about getting weak.

But if you can get on a structured conditioning program where you're consistently doing it, I think that you'll like many people from the meathead background would one benefit and to understand how much better they feel when their body is able to just transport oxygen significantly easier on a day-to-day basis. I think it's mentally mentally healthy too just to have more measurables other than just force production like at least for a power lifter for me it's exciting to have multiple variables yeah to watch improve it's like every day it's like is it anaerobic or is it aerobic you know is it strength is it speed is it power like having all these measurables makes the workout so much fun because each day

is a little different it's mentally much healthier yeah it there's there's kind of like a letting go of that the like meathead ego side to it and just ish ish not all the way not all the way your boy got the hundreds for six last week. Two sets of six. That's awesome. I'm going three sets of six this week. Dumbbell bench press, Mash. I got him. For everyone listening, you don't have to become a weakling to do this.

You can still walk over the hundreds. Bottom row all the way to the right is where you should hang out on those dumbbells when you go to the Lifetime Fitness. Don't hang out in the top row. Um, but the, uh, but I think that that's, that's really been the biggest benefit Doug is, is I really enjoy moving like fast and, and, uh, sprint. There's just no opportunities unless you force the issue in life to need to go sprint. And there's no opportunities just built into normal life where like, you got to just giddy up and go. So you need a coach and you need a goal and you

got to have somebody that's going to structure it for you. And you really do start to feel significantly better. Just, I don't know what exact physiological changes happen when the blood just pumps better, but you can feel it. Absolutely. Last night was the first time in my life where someone actually was trying to beat me with a conditioning test. That's never happened ever. I didn't succeed, and I was like, who am I? But anyway, it was exciting. Regarding the goal of the six-minute mile,

are there any milestones or benchmarks along the way that you're looking to achieve? And then that's when you say, okay, now's the time to go test and go see if we can do it. Yeah, 75-degree weather. That's when you do it. I really feel like if I were to get to the track right now for a consistent month i would be very very close like i'm again uh anytime you say like this

is the healthiest i've ever felt or whatever that means um you're you're you always go back to like a 27 year old version peak testosterone peak like whatever that like growling noise is when you're about to like gnaw on a barbell for an afternoon, like that that's always there. If you're like, am I in better shape? But I feel better. Um, and I feel like I can go run sprints on flat ground and not get injured. I can, I can go run a half marathon tomorrow if I needed to. Um, all of those things are like very not intimidating to me at all. Um, and if I, if, if we, if it was 75 degrees and, um, I wouldn't go to jail right now trying to run around the track. Um, I feel like I would get really close and we, we haven't put any track work

in at all in the last two three months as the the weather's kind of changed uh mike what about from your perspective like what are you what are you looking for where where you look at my anderson go like based on these numbers you can probably do this now even though we haven't tested it like i feel very confident that you'd be able to hit it um and where is he at in comparison to whatever those goals might be yeah and that's i would, most of that is going to be basically on his feedback. So basically what he just said, because again, you're constraint limited. You can't go out and do any type of testing that would be the one mile. But once the weather is better, one of the things i'll have people do if we're not sure

so we're you know once the weather is available you can go run a mile and do it at an rp of a maybe a seven or an eight you know you're not going to go all out you're going to go you know pretty hard but you're not going to you know go go balls out on it and even that will give you a pretty good idea you know if you go out and you just say it's an rp of an eight you're just going to test it and you're at 7 30 oh yikes maybe you're a little farther off than you thought or if you're you know at 6 30 6 20 you're like okay yeah that's now you're you're probably with within you know striking distance of where you need to be so i think a lot of sub max tests that are specific to the goal i think are highly underrated and because it's a sub max there

isn't nearly as much of a risk involved with it either as opposed to hey bro i think you're ready and just you know ignore how your body feels just go balls out and see what happens there's a time and a place you know do that type of distress. But I wouldn't do that as like the first thing. I would do a couple of warmups. Or if they are going to do that type of thing, I'm going to do a progressive warmup where just run a short distance, just go at 50%. Walk back, give me 60%. Walk back, give me 70. Walk back, give me 80. Walk back, give me 90. And if you feel good and everything is operating well and you can slowly scale up to you know a max sprint yeah rest completely maybe

give the one mile a shot on that day right because in his case we have the luxury of time in that he doesn't have to go out and perform this on saturday at 10 a.m and a meet or something like that so there's no reason to force something when it's not there. I think a lot of people, when it's test day, if they're not competing, they get stuck in their head that they have to go that day. In reality, most people probably don't. If it's not there, it's not there.

Pick another day, and then if you're not sure, just run a sub-max test and see where you're at. I think a sub-max test will also make sure that you don't mentally discourage oh 100 because anders is motivated intrinsically but like if you have that person who is just like easily discouraged that's the last thing you want to do is go out run the test and they fail they're gonna quit yeah um to put some numbers to that doug we before the weather turned um i we did four quarter mile repeats and i want to say that my slowest one was like one everything was between 120 and 123 so you run those numbers out and that gets you to like a five 20. Um, and now you've got roughly 40 seconds of slowing down slash trying to stay below

like anaerobic threshold bonking on lap three really is the last one you can, you can die on the last one, but, uh, lap three is the one that you gotta kind of watch out for. Um, and, and make sure you're going slower than anticipated how much rest do you get between those quarter miles i think we're just doing complete rest if i remember right so one of the things i'll do is this is back when we had access to a track and it wasn't getting booted out in weird weather you can take take your goal and be like okay if you can't do the full mile at that time could you do a half a mile could you do a quarter mile did you do an eighth of a mile could you give me something that is at that pace or close to again we ran a little bit

of a buff works we're going to have them do repeats and he said it felt good how i know i'm developing those qualities specifically and then if you go complete rest, go back again. So you're trying to hit a certain pace and you're accumulating volume at that pace. And then once you can do that, your options are lengthen it and see if you can still hit the same pace. Or now you can do the density method where you're starting to condense them. So now instead of having three to five minutes between, okay, give me a three minute rest, go back, hit that same pace. Okay. Give me a two and a half minute rest, hit that same pace. So you're trying to compress it back together, but you don't want the output to actually suffer. I think that's the mistake people make is they go make training to run slower than what they needed to run, which is fine if you're going to do conditioning, but make that a conditioning thing and make it separate. Don't make it a specific to the goal at that point.

Yeah, I'd love to talk a little bit about the VO2 max training and how people can kind of structure that into their own training. Like, does it need to be five minutes? Does it need to be seven, ten? kind of structure that into their own training? Like, does it need to be five minutes? Does it need to be seven, 10? Like where's kind of like a sweet spot on those intervals for kind of like higher intensity sustained outputs? Yeah, so most of the literature for my interpretation would say that intervals at a pretty high output, you want probably two to six

minutes somewhere in there where if we just look at i put up a post about why people should not only do zone two training and like everyone got super pissed at me and put up things of like well i had this guy who was doing 13 hours of zone two and it improved his vo2 max and all these weird cases where i was just saying like doing two to three hours of zone two stuff has its benefit it's good for aerobic base building but you're probably not going to see a massive increase in vo2 max again no way in a place to do it it's useful um so to me i classify them as zone two almost recovery very bottom of the you know aerobic base building then the next level up you have what i call it just a cardiac development something you can hold at a pretty decent pace for 10 20 maybe 30 minutes a little bit higher heart rate not super max but it's definitely higher after that you're getting

into some type of interval the o2 max thing pretty high output two to six minutes somewhere in there beyond that you're kind of getting into the the wind gates and the short 30 60 seconds you know repeats and that kind of stuff so most people i think would do better if they're already you know pretty decently fit do more cardiac development stuff and then add just like one session of intervals the caveat being start with a shorter interval have it be relatively hard then repeat that interval but i will only let them drop the output by maybe five to maybe ten percent of the absolute max so you're going to rest as long as you can to hit that say two minutes again at a

very similar output again rest completely and hit another one so you don't again similar you don't want the quality to just drop off so hard because you're not training that then a high enough output to get the adaptation it it'll feel hard when you're doing it but when you're resting it almost feels too easy and so people like to mash everything together and have the whole thing feel difficult but if you look at their output over the intervals you'll see interval one interval three interval three was like 40 of interval one it's like bro just just rest longer like we we want to train your body you need to hit these outputs and are just like lifting at some point if you want to get stronger you have to hit close to your top end weights in order to kind of

move that needle yes there's transfer yes some of the other stuff works but same thing with intervals if you've got this huge difference between them then that's probably a little bit too much and again over time in an advanced athlete yeah maybe you hit a two minute interval and you're you're doing incomplete rest where you're resting for 30 seconds and then you go again great if you can hold that output awesome but that's an extremely advanced thing that most people even getting to a one-to-one work to rest ratio in my opinion is is quite advanced mash here's your test buddy you ready yes three five minute intervals on the airdyne and you got to hit two miles on each five minutes see how you can hold up buddy anybody that's listening listening to the show, that's where I'm at every Wednesday of my life.

That sounds terrible. What's the rest? Complete rest? Huh? Is it complete rest in between or what? That would be nice, but we have kids coming home off the bus, and I got daycare pickup at 5. So if you start at 4 four you run wind sprints start uh and then you got three three intervals coming your way uh it's probably like a one to one like

five on five off somewhere around there it's it's not it's not all the way back down to like a resting heart rate but you're you're sub 100 yeah three five minute intervals with a goal of two miles two miles we did that we did the test i i can i get very close to it every time uh we did the test the other day and it was 2.07 miles in five minutes i was stoked on that that's good you're a bad man that's good you're a bad man now that the uh going back the the things that i uh at the very beginning when i knew that this that there was some like real changes happening in inside me was when we were doing the like nasal breathing only stuff and i was i was able through um trying to read whatever my polar uh heart rate monitor maintaining 160 to 170 beats a minute nasal

breathing for five minutes is getting after it that was when i was like damn this thing really is different like i've i've never trained in that way and then being roughly what 85 of max heart rate um and just breathing through your nose and be able to sustain that at that high intensity was like i knew things were moving in the right i've learned so much in this podcast i've got so many notes and i can't believe i'm taking notes about aerobic training what is it we all dead i feel like we're living a dream right now mash is gonna sign up for a marathon hold on a second no chill out now 5k at best at best mike can you can you dig into kind of the science and rationale behind nasal breathing during cardio like why why is that a thing why why not just breathe however

however you need to breathe yeah i mean i'm a huge fan of the basically the gear system from brian mckenzie you know at a low intensity you should be nasal breathing the next level up would be you can still nasal breathe but it's gonna you're putting a fair amount of effort in order to nasal breathe then can you breathe in through your nose out through your mouth and then at the very end can you breathe in through your mouth and out through your mouth if we think about how a lot of athletes i see initially they're low intensity stuff they're breathing in and out of their mouth all the time and i'm like this is low to moderate intensity like you should not be limited by your airflow so if you can breathe in through your nose it's going to be better you get some filtration you get a little bit of resistance which may help with you know some respiratory muscle training

some other stuff who knows but it's as simple as like use it or lose it like i've done nasal training just low to moderate intensity with athletes and then maybe have them tape their mouth at night and shocker all of a sudden now during the night they can start breathing through their nose or they'll notice the rest of the day ah they can start breathing through their nose so to me it's a way to bring some level of awareness and to train them at a little bit higher stress level and then hopefully that'll transfer to the rest of the day and the rest of their sleep well they will automatically try to switch to more nasal breathing the caveat is i've seen some max vo2 tests from people and just i'm like hey just

send me your raw data like this looks weird and i'm looking at like their you know volumes of air and stuff and their heart rate and i'm like what were you like trying to do any breathing technique during this like oh yeah man it was a max test so i i was told the nasal breathe the whole time and i'm like your max test is limited by your airflow like you you were the one who limited your own airflow right so if it's an all-out max by all means like get you can get more air in you know through your mouth so you don't want to be limited by airflow per se on a max test where it's you know 100 about performance so it's being able to to grade those there was a time and a place for everything.

And I think just being intentional about those transitions. And so like some of the stuff we did with Anders, like we may purposely push him really hard and restrict him to nasal breathing only for a period of time. If that was a performance test though, we probably wouldn't have that restriction on there. Again, you're trying to train these specific things.

And then if it's a performance, like, okay, remove some of some of the limiters at that point but everyone wants to get into it's either 100 nasal breathing or all that's just you know bullcrap you don't need to do it just breathe however you want and shocker like the answer is both of them can be useful what are you trying to do and then i find like doing a max test like a 2k on the rower if i can start out nasal breathing that gives me something to think about okay how long can i do that okay now nasal breathe to mouth breathing and i also know that if i start shifting to that earlier oh this test is really gonna suck right and so over time you can use this as even a mental strategy to know okay you know to the halfway point, I should be able

to easily nasal breathe. But by the end of it, yeah, I'm going to be breathing it out of my mouth 100% just because of the level of fatigue. But I do think it just gives people something to focus on and also a way of moderating things like if you're running where you may not be constantly looking at a GPS or having the feedback of where you're at either. That becomes kind of your, your feedback independent of heart rate too. Yeah. One of the, one of the, uh, kind of things that I started to notice is you almost expect when your output gets higher, that you're just going to start panting. Like you've been doing it your whole life that you're just like, you're just, if you run, you just like, it's out of your mouth and you're just like you're just if you run you just like it's out of your mouth and

you're just used to this like panting thing that like kind of feels like that but when you force yourself to do it through your nose you almost it requires your nervous system to be calmer and not feel like you're going to like like you need to just gasp for air. Um, and there's definitely a learning curve to it, but once you become okay with that feeling, uh, I, I don't think it changed much on the performance side at all. It was just now I'm just moving. I'm just on the bike faster. Just, I just, I'm just breathing through my nose. It doesn't, it didn't change the performance. It changes just the method at which the, you know know the directions are telling me to do it yeah and i have noticed that higher outputs like on the rower and i've done this a couple people that if you get to kind of right where your limit is like you're trying pretty hard and you're still nasal breathing

in and out so i did this a while ago my heart rate was like 165 and that was like that was definitely the limit it was pretty hard to stay there. And I would switch to mouth breathing. My heart rate would instantly go up to like 168, 169. My output was the same. I fixed my output the same. So I think there is something where maybe it's a little bit more parasympathetic tone. Maybe it's an efficiency. I'm not sure. But it seems like you do get a little bit lower heart rate for that same output. Again, the caveat being these are all still sub max. This'm not sure, but it seems like you do get a little bit lower heart rate for that same output. Again, the caveat being these are all still sub max. This is not an absolute max test. And during a max test, you don't want that to be the limiter.

Yeah. Um, and structuring, um, the strength training side of things. Um, we've been very consistent and I've, I've enjoyed, uh, all the kind of the strength stuff that we're doing. Is there a, is there a, like the, the push and pull kind of like balancing the overall fatigue on lifting and how that then carries over into just like the, the full, um, recovery and into the next training when really the goal is increasing cardiovascular fitness health whatever yeah the two things i look at there are just overall sort of systemic fatigue and then the transfer also motor patterns so if for example you said man all my sprints lately are just feeling like dog crap the first thing i would look at is

oh what are we doing with lower body loading like are we gonna move some of this stuff up are we gonna go to more split stand stuff you know safety bar front you know i would probably look at changing up those types of movements the thought being maybe that movement pattern is interfering with sprinting if sprinting is feeling great you're like man everything's feeling good it's great cool i'm not gonna worry about it it's it's probably gonna be okay and then also just the overall fatigue because yeah if you can get stronger and you can get more power output that should transfer to sprinting that makes sense but if we bury you in the weight room and it's like wednesday before you're recovered again and you got to do technique work on monday now we're just impairing the thing that we know is the

primary driver to improve you the thing that you stated was your number one goal yeah and sometimes with lifters that's that's hard right you know it's the old question of at one point do the lifts still transfer or do they stop transferring right i've talked to cal deets about this endless amounts of times of you know as he said like some of his you know back when he was doing back squats years ago he's like yeah we could get a guy or gal and especially a guy in this case when they're shot put throwers to go from back squat of 315 to 405 to maybe 455 he's like like, at some point, they just got worse, right? Because the rate at which they're moving that load is now slower. They're an athlete doing an explosive

sport. You know, going from 405 to say 455 wasn't beneficial. It's not worth the time. They can take 315 and move it incredibly fast. That's more useful to their sport. Again, if that athlete can't back squat more than 95 pounds, they're just weak and they need to get stronger. You're trying to find that happy medium there too. Yeah. Doug, you notice he didn't say anything about doing split squats? If you tell Mike Nelson that you want to go run a mile, you don't have to do split squats anymore.

That's the best. You're on mute. I see you agreeing with me on this. The real rationale for training with Mike has surfaced here. Yeah, you don't have to be insanely sore doing the trust fall onto the toilet in the morning because the goal is to get faster

not be sore um fantastic man this has been my favorite show ever we talked about me being athletic yeah the whole time incredible yeah guess that we can do that for a whole hour um where can people work with you which i also highly recommend uh you you set a call up with mike and uh go over some goals and and get a training program built and it's not just training that's just the piece that i'm doing but yeah yeah this place is uh miketnelson.com and yeah i'll have contact place there most of the writing everything i do goes out to the newsletter just go to miketnelson.com there'll be a place you can hop onto the newsletter tab right on the top. And it's free. And yeah, probably

90% of the writing I go is through that. They can just hit reply once around the newsletter and ask any questions they have. More than willing to help anyone out. There you go. Coach Travis Mash. You can find him at Mash Elite. He had to go try and get in better shape so he could hang out with me. Doug Larson.

Man was sick of talking about Anders. He was like, I've had enough. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. We're going to see a video on him on Instagram in about an hour front squatting like 500. And he'll be like, screw that. Screw that guy.

Screw the bike. I thought he was doing cardio now. Still front squatting 500 pounds. 50 years old. You can find me on Instagram 50 years old. Right on. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. Mr. Mike T. Nelson, always wonderful to have you on the show, my friend. Thank you.

Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. This was super fun. Absolutely, man. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive.

You can access that free report at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.