Barbell Shrugged - Science Backed Supplements for High Performance w/ Coach Flavia Pereira, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #782

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Flavia is a passionate CISSN nutrition coach, full-time Exercise & Sport Science faculty member, and beach volleyball strength & nutrition coach. She has been teaching and coaching for the past 18 years. She graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in Kinesiology - Exercise Science and is pursuing her Ph.D. in Health & Human Performance. Flavia is part of the Rapid Health Optimization team as a nutritionist and a research team for the International Society of Sports Nutrition, participating in different projects related to ergogenic supplements. Flavia has been involved in athletics as a volleyball athlete, coach, and fitness enthusiast. She attended the University of Arkansas and Georgia Southern University on a volleyball scholarship for her B.S. and received her M.S. as a graduate assistant at FAU. Outside of work, Flavia is a mom to Leo (9 years old), and Maya (a 6-year-old golden retriever), and some of her hobbies are playing beach volleyball, working out, traveling, walking Maya, and being a soccer mom. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Coach Flavia Pereira on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Coach Flavia Pereira. That's Portuguese. I did it. I think I did it well. I can do a little bit of Spanish, you throw some Portuguese in the mix, things get really crazy. So I think I nailed it. I'm giving myself 9.1 out of 10.

Pereira. Anyways, Coach Flavia is a nutritionist here at Rapid Health Optimization, and we love having her. Not only is she super awesome, but she is currently in her PhD program. And one of the papers that was just published that she just put out is the top five high performance supplements. And we're going to be digging into those supplements, that paper, where you can find these supplements, what they are, how much to take, how you're going to be benefiting from them. And as always, friends,

we have a little bit of a switch up today. Rapid Health Report still exists. Go there, do that. But aretalab.com, we have actually named the program. Three plus years into this company, we have finally actually named the program and the thing that we do. It's had a couple of different offerings and a couple of different programs.

And this really has turned into the core offer, what we call Areta. And you can access all things lab testing. You can access the performance analysis that you are going to receive inside the RTA program. Rtalab.com. Friends, it's a little different, but all the same goodness, high precision, health and performance. You can access all of that over at Rtalab.com. Friends, let's get into the show welcome to barbell shrug i'm andrews warner doug larson the fastest person on the show inside 800 meters coach travis mash the fastest person to run to his mailbox and back what did we say you were 10 seconds and less yeah 10 seconds or less and then the best nutritionist in the entire planet coach flabio

welcome to the show hey guys thanks for having me i left yourself out though anders you're the you're the best over a minute rounded the most slightly above average that's really where i anything above out of my uh grand scale like a seven at everything. That's impressive. I'm only a ten at a few things and one at everything else. I can swim. All the things. Coach Flavia, I'm leading this show off with a very, very cool story that happened

inside the last 24 hours. One of our clients, we're going to leave his name out of this because he's an epic human being and we can't overwhelm him with all the fan mail that will be coming to him if we announce his name on the show. But you wrote his nutrition plan for him to be hiking up to base camp at Everest. And he said that what you wrote for him or what you talked to him about had him feeling absolutely amazing and energized and recovered. And with the altitude changes and every aspect of it, he had 10 out of 10 enjoyment of that trip. Praise for you.

And that's going to lead us into you and your performance supplementation podcast that we are about to do today, but round of applause for coach Flavia, totally, totally savage, uh, nutritionist. Um, we just had a brand new paper come out, uh, probably what a month, two months ago. And we want to walk through all of these supplements that you started to or that you were looking into when it comes to optimizing performance. Where do we start this thing? Yeah, so first, I want to say thank you for having me. I have been listening to you guys forever. So it's really cool to be here and sharing what I'm researching, my knowledge. Hopefully this is helpful to people and coaches who are listening.

So I just want to say a huge thank you to you guys. And I also want to say I'm a well-rounded athlete, too. So I think I would compete well with you and. Here we go. Here we go. But Coach Flavio is by is by far the most athletic uh coaches we have on the team also if you really wanted to know uh who's going to jump the highest and be fastest side to side coach flavia hanging out on the beach playing beach volleyball total monster oh wow yes well the reason i said that, because I was always, like, a good moderate athlete on different areas, but never, like, the greatest.

So it's kind of like how Travis spoke about you. So I was like, oh, I think I can challenge you then. Like, I was kind of like you, you know? Fast year, but not the fastest. MASH tells that story because we were down in Jamaica and out of uh first off earlier in that week I ran the 60 against Johan Blake and beat him for four steps like almost beat him in the first four steps with a 20 meter head start and then we went to this like super remote had to hike down this weird waterfall type thing it was beautiful and terrifying i thought we're gonna like i thought it was gonna be like the island

where you get to the other side of this thing and all of a sudden there's just like a giant marijuana field and some gangster with a machete and like it was terrifying and really nice and then it was like we had this like beautiful open ourselves. And somebody out of nowhere goes, anyone want to race across the ocean? And I went, yeah. And I just took off. And smoked the guy. Smoked him. I mean, I was afraid the guy might drown.

He was getting beat so badly. But he made it. Yeah. I'm not sure I can challenge that. Oh, man. I was amazed. You could have lapped him. I was very confident in the water

let's get into it let's get into this thing yeah so we chose uh when i say we our team uh dr antonio uh who is our leader my mentor and uh dr uh jason curtis cassie evans jose rojas so they And Dr. Jason Curtis, Cassie Evans, Jose Rojas. So they did the paper with me. I cannot take credit for the paper. Where was this? What school? So we do research with Novo University. And I teach at Kaiser University, the residential campus.

And I'm doing my PhD at Rocky Mountain so those three schools are affiliated with the paper but this was a review paper our goal was to present five top supplements that have the most robust evidence and what should you take them for who should take them dosage and you know kind of like a little summary of the current evidence. So starting with creatine, which I'm also writing a paper on creatine now. So if you guys have any other questions, you can ask after. Yeah. But I love creatine.

Actually, my dissertation will be on creatine as well, beach volleyball players. So so creatine is naturally synthesized by our body. But we get creatine from meat, seafood, and we can get creatine from well researched, over 30 years of research with creatine, mostly during high-intensity interval training or strength power type of exercise. Now we're seeing that creatine can also help in other areas of our health, like brain, cognitive function, and even with the aging population. So we used to think that creatine was only important if you want to get a big bicep, right? If you want to get lean body mass, but we see improvements in not just muscle mass, strength, power, but we also see improvements in body composition. So there are some studies that show

that creatine can body fat or improve lean body mass in general. There are also some really interesting studies with creatine and cognitive function in sleep deprived populations. So maybe firefighters or police officers or even students just trying to, you know, study through the night, but sleep deprived population taking a little bit higher dose, the general dose can help them with cognitive function. In regards to bone density and also brain function,

the dosage will be higher. So what is the dosage for standard performance benefits? Three to five grams per day. Sorry, Doug, do you have a question? Yeah, I was going to jump into the cognitive benefits there. I was aware that there was good research showing that creatine could improve cognitive function. Is that truly siloed to sleep-deprived people? Or is that just like some more recent stuff, but it's more applicable across the board? Yes. So that's a good question because I think this is a hot topic now.

We don't have a lot of studies on to really say with confidence that yes for everyone it seems that the benefits that creatine on this higher dosage close to 10 grams per day are most beneficial in combination if you are stressed which is sleep deprived or extremely stressful situations or like as well but if you're just you know have you sleep you're sleeping well you have everything under control you're not stressed you're not jet lagged it doesn't seem the cognitive benefits are there um yes so going back to the supplements, so creatine three to five grams a day, um, safety, there's a lot of evidence on safety of creatine, more than 30 years of research. We make creatine. So it's not like it's something that our body doesn't know.

Um, and, uh, form of creatine that we advise taking and all research is done is on creatine monohydrate. Yeah. Yo guys, when did you start taking creatine that we advise taking and all research is done is on creatine monohydrate yeah yo guys when did you start taking creatine when was like the first time it showed up in your life do you remember college for sure yeah Appalachia State this is like the 90s but I'm one of the few people yeah you're 10 yeah so you're that yeah college days yeah I'm one of the few though that it messes up my like GI tract so like um i would love to find a form where i could take that wouldn't make me like nauseous or like sick so any thoughts there like i know that you know one out of every so few people can irritate maybe what do you

what do you think there yeah that's interesting i never met anyone but i have heard reports of people that may have gi discomfort um the only tip i would give you there is to maybe divide your dosage so maybe like two grams in the morning two grams in the evening and make sure you're eating with food and see how you feel have you tried that before no you know you know and this was college so who knows you know like i was probably partying taking it so like it's like one of the substances he's over there just brutally hung over so you's like, yeah, preaching just doesn't agree with me. Exactly. Come on.

They got to cycle back to that. It's been 30 years. I know. I need to try. I literally haven't tried it since that, even when I was powerlifting. I never took it. Other than the amount that might be in my pre-workout, which I feel like it's in almost every pre-workout you take. So I never thought about that.

I seem to tolerate that. Okay, so who knows? With the three to five grams being kind of like the standard dose for kind of the sleep-deprived populations, where do you think kind of the high end of that dosing is for them? Yeah, so it seems that if you want creatine to cross the blood brain barrier, so we get to the brain, you need a higher dosage. Same thing for the, so it's almost like you want to trickle down to other areas of the body. Otherwise, it will be stored in muscle tissue.

So if you want bone density benefits and possible brain benefits, or if you are going to travel and you know you're going to be jet lagged, we want to go with the higher, like 10 grams a day. And there are studies of like two years, three years, people taking 10 grams a day, every day. And all those studies show no adverse effects. So I feel confident telling you, take it for a week, 10 grams is not a big deal. Then if you wanted to just maintain after you take the three to five grams. Another dosage that we have been using in the past few years is the 0.1 grams per kilogram and that's you know i don't know how many kilograms you are anders but for me 60 kilograms let's say so too many

oh you're right on the spot yeah yeah so i remember like when when uh you know i was more interested in speed power uh and that that type of thing playing football and what have you it was always 0.03 grams per kilo i'm roughly 100 kilos so that's three grams it's kind of like the baseline for speed and power but then i remember when darren canada was on the show he basically said what you're saying right now he said 10 grams really is the standard specifically if you're if you're if you're worried about the the cognitive benefits the bone density benefits independent of speed and power and performance so 0.1 grams per kilo again for 100 kilo person which i'm you know i'm more like 90 kilos but let's round up to make the math easy it's really more like 10 grams per day so that's

been my standard ever since um i tend to i tend to split it up kind of like you were saying to mash i do like five grams in the morning my coffee and then try to throw five grams in later on in the day that was gonna be that's that guarantees i'm gonna take it every day of my life it's flavorless it goes right into the coffee in the morning yeah mixes perfectly there's another little little crystal crunches things like perfectly blends. There's got to be like an easy way to. Is that what you do, Doug? You blend it with your coffee?

I blend it. I just dump it in there and just stir it up. Okay. I see what you're saying. I might like, do you do the, I might put the, you know, actually blend it with the coffee grounds or the coffee what is it oh wow beans beans i would go the other way i would go the other way do it i just put it i feel like you put in the coffee grounds like you're only going to get a percentage of it you're not going to get

the whole whole line totally good point there too yeah it's gonna stay up in the filter man um that that really does make it one of the easiest habits for something that is very beneficial. Um, as far as like supplementing with it, um, is there where, if you did not want to, uh, what would be like a protein recommendation or type of food, um, that we, like, if you just have some issue that you just don't want to use supplements, how would we get more of that into our diet so that we don't have to supplement it? Yeah, so we can find creatine in general meats and seafood. So the population that would really need even if they are not looking for strength, power, speed benefits, would be vegetarians and vegans, right? Because they're not consuming meats, seafood, steak, chicken, shrimp, any kind of fish,

they don't have creatine. But if you're looking, if you're an athlete, or if you're looking for those extra benefits, it would be really hard to get five grams, those extra five grams a day from food, you would have to eat a lot, a lot of meat, which is hard to even eat or digest. So that's where the supplementation comes from. But our body makes creatine. And if you eat meat, and fish, you have a baseline of about three grams, some people may be more five grams. But again, if you're a vegetarian or vegan, that baseline is lower. So I would strongly recommend, you know, for vegetarians and vegans even more. Although I recommend for everyone, my mom is 69. I say, Mom, are you taking creatine? My son is 11. I put on his smoothie every day. I take it myself. I creatine my son is 11 i put on his smoothie every day um i take i create my kids too wow do

you really oh yeah load them up same dose i take every day i do a little bit less but i'm gonna what would you do the the 0.1 per kilogram of body weight is that what you would do yeah that's what i do a number just load them up with five grams, bud. Get them going. They got mass genes in them. Exactly. They don't need too much, man. Wait till you see the video I'm about to put out. They've been getting jacked in the basement.

Yeah. Honestly, it's one of those supplements that the safety is there. So many benefits across that I really suggest almost everyone to take it. Of course, if you have any like kidney diseases or anything specific, then ask your doctor about it. But other than that, pretty safe and awesome supplement. So that was our first one we wrote about.

And we also looked into beta alanine. And beta alanine will help also in those high intensity type of workouts or stimulus. So anaerobic type of stimulus. And beta alanine, the dose is just different around two to six grams. And usually we divide those doses because of the tingling sensation. A lot of pre-workouts will have beta alanine, but the goal of taking, yeah, the goal of taking beta alanine is to increase carnosine and carnosine will help neutralizing the hydrogen ions, which creates soreness, right? So you can kind of perform a little bit longer because you're not as acidic or don't have that soreness.

And beta alanine, just like I said, anaerobic activities, most evidence shows benefits in workouts or training exercises lasting between one and four minutes. So not a submaximal 30 minute run for for clarity there it's i tend to think of soreness as like a next day thing like dom's type soreness muscular damage leading to you feeling sore you know 24 or 48 hours later uh you're saying that beta alanine is the rate limiting substrate in the production of carnosine, which is an intramuscular buffer. And so as you build acidity throughout a set, if you're doing a set of 20 squats, like your

legs are going to be burning at that final rep, if you are saturated with beta alanine and therefore carnosine, then it takes longer for that level of acidity to build up. And so maybe instead of doing 20, now you't get to that that level of fatigue or that level of acidity until rep 21 or 22 or 23 and so you can do you can do more work before you hit failure on higher rep more metabolic sets right correct uh-huh absolutely yeah So you end up increasing volume of work either by weight or reps. And that's where we usually see the benefits or, you know, some studies done in rowers like 1000 meter rowing time. Subjects who took beta-alanine versus placebo finished that 1K faster because they were able to you know push a little bit longer so yeah you're absolutely correct you explain it better thank you so yeah so if you're a highly a uh a

very glycolytic athlete um where you know you're burning a lot of sugar and you're therefore producing a lot of acidity you're you're a 800 meter sprinter if you want to call it sprinting but if you're instant that kind of those middle domains where there's a lot of acidity, you're, you're a 800 meter sprinter. If you want to call it sprinting, but if you're instant that kind of those middle domains where there's a lot of, um, metabolic buildup, uh, anything where you're probably going to throw up is a, is a good way to put this. If you're a CrossFit athlete, as an example, you're going to be able to, to keep doing repetitions, um, without having that, that level of acidity build up quite as fast. And so you can do more work in less time, which is kind of what we're talking crossfit again that's kind of what crossfit's all about so

but what about fighters doug what about i feel like that for mma fighters ground and pound like that would be the thing oh yeah mma fires absolutely if you're if you're doing something very intense and that like anywhere from like two minutes to like 10 minutes you know fighting can range longer than that but um that beta alanine works very well for those populations absolutely yeah i agree 100 percent uh the only issue with beta alanine do you guys take beta alanine i do i love the tingling you do i do that's funny i know over there yeah i love their like body I love it. I love the answer on my face. Your face must break out in the morning without Beta-Alney in your system.

You're joking around here. I don't take it as much these days as I used to. I was an MMA fighter and have done grappling and that type of thing for a long time. Regular cross-fitting, bodybuilding type thing. Beta-Alney many times on and off over over 20 years once they downgraded the no explode formula

i was out yeah seriously i can't handle this week this non-life-threatening and i had it the real deal me too i need to feel like i might need to call 9. The only way to get rid of that feeling. Got to go to the gym. Got to get it out. Says the dude with like an eight inch like rip in my back right now. The first time my older brother took beta alanine, he didn't really know what it was. He just knew it was supposed to be a supplement you're supposed to take. And this is like 15 years ago, maybe more.

And so he bought some and didn't know that it would be tingly and didn't know how much to take and this is like 15 years ago maybe more and uh and so he bought some and didn't didn't know that it would be tingly and didn't know how much to take and so open up the bottle there was no scooper or he couldn't find the scooper or whatever and so it said just one scoop and back then like sometimes the scoopers in beta alanine are one gram scoopers they're very tiny yeah yeah he just he just stuck a spoon in there and just like oh spoonful after it no so i don't know what that is 15 20 or something and just like took a spoonful or two or whatever he did chug it down and then and then left to go to the gym he said about halfway there he was he was driving all of a sudden it's like his whole face was just like tingling on fire he

sort of scratched his head and he didn't know what the hell was going on he was starting he was starting to panic and like ended up like pulling over in a grocery store parking lot and, like, stopped driving even. He was like, because he didn't know what was happening to him. Oh, man. That's messed up. Did he blame you? No, he definitely called me. And after the fact, I was like, dude, like, I didn't know what was happening.

Like, is that normal? And I was like, oh, if you take a spoonful of it it's probably normal sure uh i don't know what it feels like to take 20 grams but it's probably not pleasant it's a lot yeah i have a hard time with the tingling so if i'm trying to i don't know get ready for a tournament which i haven't in a couple years but i will take out force myself but i don't enjoy the tingling at all. Like it's just, yeah. Yeah, I know. I'm weird. It's kind of weird. Yeah.

What is that supplement that causes tingling? I'm trying to, there's a funny story that people take it not for blood pressure, but for, come on I'll think of it no there's another supplement that causes tingling come on it's like a you don't remember I have to think of it

it's a funny story though any of the pre-workouts from back in the day some people take it before they go tanning oh like niacin or like okay let me tell you a funny story we we gave a guy a niacin supplement once he was going to tan he was kind of he was a football player with us at ablash estate but he was getting ready for this bodybuilding competition so he's tanning and we said yeah this will help you tan but literally all of us knew it was a high dose so we knew it was going to soon it

was going to make him feel like large ants were under his skin so we all stood by the door and waited and then like maybe literally like two minutes later you start to hear him move around, and then you hear the tanning boot door fling open, and he's come running out naked screaming. He thought he was dying. It was the funniest thing. I don't recommend doing that for your kids at home. Disclaimer, disclaimer. Gosh, we live in my college days today we got beta alanine are we wrapped on beta alanine are we moving on uh yeah if you guys don't have questions the next one we talked about that we chose as our top three now is nitrates.

So nitrates, now we're helping other energy system, which is oxygen. So endurance type of workouts. So nitrates will help with prolonged endurance type of activities. Doses around 300 to 600 milligrams. We don't have a lot of studies on nitrates. I think in our review, we could find maybe nine or 10. But you find usually nitrates in beetroot juice or supplements that are specific, like beetroot powders. And I used to take two to three hours before exercising, which makes it a little challenging sometimes

when I'm programming for clients or athletes who work out at 7 a.m. I'm like, you have to wake up at 5 to take it. So it's not great. But even if they take it at 6 a.m. and they start working on a 7, you know, endurance, so they're probably working out for an hour or more, they will probably feel some benefits throughout their training. But nitrate will convert into nitric oxide and nitric oxide is a vasodilator, right? So it improves oxygen delivery, blood flow and oxygen delivery.

So we can work out for longer in this oxygen type of energy system. So more endurance type of conditions. What about a guy who's like, well, there's a guy I know. Actually, it's me for sure. But my goal this year is to really improve my VO2 max. And so I've spent my whole life perfecting one energy system you know creatine phosphate has been you know how much can i lift or how fast can i lift a certain amount you know anyway so now my goal is to i want to become more like anders

or at least you know more like doug you know and so but like would you think it would help me or for someone like me just don't worry about it would help me or for someone like me, just don't worry about that yet? Or would it help someone like me? Well, how long is your endurance bout now, your endurance training? Are you going for 20 minutes, 30 minutes? Well, once I get the full disclosure, I'm recovering from a hip replacement, but prior to, and now, you know, it'll become more and more. Yes. It'll be, you know, I will at least spend two times a week at above 20 minutes. Okay. Yeah. I would take two times a week then,

two hours before you do your endurance type of training. But I would recommend that you're doing at least 30 minutes of it yeah perfect so prolonged prolonged endurance you got this travis yeah bash your life is going to change buddy it's going to be so awesome all the blood that starts moving so efficiently you just feel amazing when you uh when when you practice oh so it's not good if it just feels all clumped up right around my heart you know i think it's i don't think it's supposed to be that thick like oil's not good i'm just kidding just like molasses yeah yeah i always heard the slower the better i don't know oh i'm kidding i'm trying to get more, for real, trying to become more like you guys. Sweet. I would assume when people hear nitrates, that that doesn't really trigger supplement thoughts. They probably, maybe me.

But on the bacon that you buy at the store, everything says nitrate-free, as if that's not something you should be putting into your into your body what's the difference yeah i actually i'm not sure i never thought of that but this nitrate comes from beets so the nitrate that you're talking about it's probably a chemical structure yeah that is not the same root i'm looking at this time super beats like yeah i'm looking at oh look at him yeah i'm like trying to get jacked i mean trying to get jacked in a running type of way yeah yes yeah i know i know it's also like nitrites but which i think comes from like celery as well i don't know if that is in the same category but it's also like nitrites, which I think comes from like celery as well. I don't know if that is in the same category, but it's always like nitrates and nitrites are the two that I see on there.

Yeah, I've also wondered that myself. That was a very good question. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I don't have a good answer. Especially because if there's only, you know, like a dozen papers written about them in the performance world um i feel like that's a a piece of this that um if it is widely accepted and i say widely if you were to compare like the number of studies to creatine to the dozen or so on um nitrates that uh that's a large delta and it would be interesting to dig into like one of the differences if it has

some sort of like chemical compound. Here's a quick search. It is. She was right. It's like good nitrates refer to nitrates naturally found in vegetables, you know, like beets, leafy greens,

which can be found, you know, benefits for heart health. While bad nitrates are more added nitrates found in processed meats, which can be linked to cancer. And so in large, in large quantity. So yeah,

it's more of a structure. So yeah. Yeah. The ones that are, you're gonna find in beets and the leafy greens is very good for you. So yeah. Naturally, naturally occurring.

Yes. Right. Naturally occurring versus like a chemical process molecule. Yeah. naturally occurring versus like a chemical process molecule yeah meant to help probably meant to conserve meat longer and uh making it bad yeah uh as you saw this as you compare with vitamin c and kind of ameliorate any potential negative fence effect of developing um good god where to go uh nitrosamines is like the the compound that they're that was the concern about having too much nitrate content in your food because that can be carcinogenic but also says that

um let me find one more sec here let's see research suggests that the benefits of beetroot beetroot including its ability to increase nitric oxide production, which is what you're talking about, generally outweigh the potential risks when consumed in moderation as part of a balanced diet. Got it. So the upside's better than the downside is what it sounds like. And just don't be stupid with it. Yeah, yeah.

We have to think about the context too, like the dosage that we're talking about here. You know, 300 have to think about the context, too, like the dosage that we're talking about here, you know, 300 milligrams to 600 milligrams. It's probably nothing close to what the studies that found that correlation with cancer, you know, kind of like sweeteners. But anyway, it'll be like a rat study and maybe like a thousand times what a normal human would consume and in any realistic situation that gives the rat cancer and then it's all of a sudden this bad thing to eat when the dose is just like nowhere near what you would ever get to yeah a lot and just looking more scientifically too now i'm seeing like it's nitrates versus nitrites and like the the sometimes enzymes in your mouth can cause it. But mainly what they're talking about is really nitrites being added by manufacturers to preserve meat.

So really what she's talking about is unless I guess you probably took tons and tons and, you know, had some kind of enzyme in your mouth. Even if the compound is the same the the total load to preserve meat is going to be i'm taking it so much much more than uh supplementing it with intention right i take it too on sundays when i play volleyball so i can last for two and a half three hours so i take it myself i might take it before the session with my wife too. Just kidding. But I'm not. Two hours, buddy.

At least two hours. At least. Three hours. Don't you guys know about the three-hour date night? Just me? I'll leave that alone then. For a different podcast very different that's on the diesel in the diesel podcast right

um yeah so talking about endurance uh caffeine so what was our top four supplement here um and i'm just talking about the supplements. There is no specific order of top one, top two, just the fourth one, caffeine. Caffeine has been well studied as well. We know the benefits of caffeine for reaction time, for speed, for power, for cognitive function, but it can also improve endurance and power output. And the dosage for caffeine, if you're looking for those benefits in terms of sports performance, right? Three to six milligrams per kilogram, about 30 to 60 minutes before your session. Okay, so let's say my volleyball players, I'll calculate this, start on the lower

one. If it's someone who is not used to it, you would start with a three milligrams per kilogram, 30 to 60 minutes before. And if you don't see any benefits, maybe you increase slowly, uh, make sure you find kind of like the ideal dosage that doesn't give you the jitters right um but it is i mean uh a supplement that we all consume daily most of us right consume daily for focus uh reaction time cognitive or just to stay awake what's the difference in like, you know, supplementing with caffeine via like coffee versus like taking a caffeine supplement? Yeah. So pure coffee, just take the caffeine pill. We don't see differences. Actually, we do a lot of studies comparing energy drinks with the matched amount of caffeine. We did one last year, which we compared the Gorilla energy drink

with the matched amount of caffeine, but just in a pill. And then we did some performance measurements like hand grip strength, push-up. We did like a mood test and we did like a reaction time test. And we didn't see any differences between taking the energy drink or the matched amount of caffeine. So that was an interesting study because

energy drinks have so many other components, right, that sometimes we don't even know like are there any synergistic effects of having all those herbs together with caffeine or with green tea? Is that better than just taking an espresso shot? And according to that one study, of course, it's limited. It's just a few subjects in one study. But if you like the energy drink because you like the taste and whatever, you don like coffee drink the energy drink in that case but if you are looking for more energy drink will give you more benefits than just drinking coffee our studies show that that's not the case so yeah put the four lug or the uh what's the one that you like their mash monsters no no more no i'm done i haven't had energy drink in a long time

i'm like proud of you buddy i'm on the health i'm done i haven't had energy drink in a long time i'm like proud of you buddy i'm on the health i'm on the health kick trying to be like you man i'm telling you my new idol i did i did you hear that that's a slight dig there guys he's coming for me no no i will never reach your level of fitness. I want to try to. I used to love watching you roll up to the gym at like 9 a.m. when we'd meet you there and have like four of those monsters just ready to rock for the day. Oh, my God.

With a bunch of 19-year-olds. No, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'll drink coffee, caffeine, pure caffeine. That's it. When you're talking about the spiders crawling through your veins feeling, I can drink coffee all morning long. No issues. It makes me happy.

It smells delicious. There's the ritualistic. There's the energy. There's just something amazing about coffee. That's my wife. You give me one sip of a caffeine, like monster or any of that. And all of a sudden my body's like, that's not real caffeine.

Where'd that come from? And it just, it's like that creepy crawly feeling. It's just my whole body. I can't even get near them. Even if they're not like monsters and they're like lower key ones. My mom drinks, he's like Celsius things. And I had one the other day and it was like bro the celsius ones are super

strong it's like it's what they pair out of your body celsius are mac daddy energy drinks even though the amount might not be it's what they pair that with so yeah whatever this stuff is what was the one that they banned back in the day? Like the Fedra. Oh, yeah. That one was even more mellow than I feel like that Celsius made me feel. I don't ever drink them. That was like the most recent one, but I could have a Fedra. It would be fine.

It was like a little more wired, but something just needed to take a little bit more and get used to it. I was in high school, and I was trying to tell my mom that me and a bunch of other football players were taking ephedra and i and i and i said amphetamines oh but i said it in such a casual way where i was like yeah mom fucking all the football players take amphetamines i do it all the time like i wasn't hiding anything i wasn't like trying to be weird i was just like i was just letting her know and she she's like didn't even know how to respond to that level of honesty coming out my mom would have punched me right in the nose this is what my mom would have it took me like five minutes before i realized i was saying the wrong word and then she should have seen the relief on her face she was like oh my oh god okay

she was like fine fine. Whatever. That's a great way to back it down. I got it wrong. Just ephedra. It'll be off the market in a year for killing people, but it's better than amphetamines. My little brother nailed that one

one time. I was in Ireland. This is actually when me and Andy both lived in Ireland together. We were juniors in college. My little brother came to visit us i'm sorry my sorry my parents came to visit us my little brother was back home at the house like hanging out with no parents around for a week or two and this is 2004 right so um he ends up throwing a party and and got in trouble like like the cops showed up type of thing and And he got some minor some minor M.I.P. type something happened. He got like a ticket, basically not a big deal. But he wrote this this big letter to my parents over email or maybe even over Facebook, which we had just gotten back then and had this big story about like what happened.

And like just like really overplayed the whole thing with like, people got in a fight and this guy got hospitalized and they thought he was like, they thought it was going to be in a coma. And, and he's like, he's like gotten, you know,

he's like in big trouble now. And his friend got arrested and it was like, on and on and on and on. And then psycho the back was like, nah, just kidding. Threw a party. Cops showed up.

They gave me a ticket. No big deal. By the time I read the end of the letter, they were like, Oh good. Just, just just just a ticket for underage party at my house it's fine man wow nailed it he nailed the art of the deal right there yeah right off the bat then get exactly what you want uh barely even got in trouble there's at the end of it they're just like oh we're just happy you're safe that's funny last one Flavia what do you got protein

protein protein here yeah so protein I know there is this question why you have it as a supplement here you're saying extra protein I know there is this question why you have it as a supplement. Here you're saying extra protein, right? So we're just talking about protein in terms of the ergogenic effects of protein.

So my friend, mentor, Dr. Antonio, is one of the biggest researchers in protein, especially high protein, right? So I'm a little bit biased towards a higher protein by working with him and reading his research. But we chose protein because of all the so many benefits that we have with protein. And because we feel that we still need to get the point across of how important it is to have a little bit higher intake of protein that most people have, right? So protein as a supplement here, we're suggesting 20 to 40 grams of high quality protein post exercise or spread across four meals. So having at least 20 to 40 grams on each meal. So getting to that close to that one gram per pound of protein. So many benefits, right? Recovery, everything, blah, blah, blah, they guys probably know. And we suggested whey protein is as the preferred method for this, you know, supplement powder type of protein, um, because of the leucine content, rapid digestion.

But of course, if you don't consume dairy or if you're vegetarian and vegan, um, you can go for a plant-based protein as well, aiming for that 20 to 40 grams. The perfect recipe, by the way, of protein powder, optimum nutrition, same formula for the last 30 years, just the best, just saying, I love it. Me too. One and a half scoops chocolate, one and a half scoops vanilla. You're in the like 60, if you go too much vanilla, not that good. All chocolate, too much.

If you can figure out how to play in the middle. Swirl, baby, swirl. With whole milk. The whole milk changes the game. It's significantly better if you use milk over water, too. And milk, whole milk specifically, specifically perfectly macroed it's an amazing it's an amazing product uh plus likely if you're getting from like your regular grocery store comes with lots of steroids that they gave with those cows so it's very very good on growing

lots of muscles awesome now i now that i'm old just so you guys know, I train in the morning, 6, 630 a.m. I hammer one of those as soon as I get home every day while I'm. Who needs HRT, baby? Just drink whole milk. Whole milk. Especially if you're really trying to get large, chocolate milk. Game on. No doubt.

Coach Flavia, what are your recommendations for total protein per day? What did you say? Yeah, so it depends on your type of activity right but for a general person maybe doing a combination of strength work endurance work just trying to be healthy i recommend one gram per pound so what if you're someone trying to add muscle, trying to be an athlete, what would you say then? Yeah, we could go a little bit higher. Depends on the other macronutrients, you know, and the whole puzzle of calculating like what are the carbon needs, total energy needs.

But I, again, I'm biased towards a higher person. I do myself. So as an athlete, I'll go around the 1.2 grams as long as it's not an endurance athlete where I may have taken some energy from carbohydrates. Right. 1 to 1.2 grams. 1 to 1. I totally agree just because of, you know, just the satiety benefits, you intensity you know increasing the internal temperature possibly so like um yeah thermogenesis yeah is real so when we do high protein studies people come back to us and like oh my god i'm so hot all the time what are you doing to me

and some people drop out of the studies even because of that um you know dr antonio is known for doing that study with 3.4 grams if i can recall well 3.4 grams per kilogram which is pretty high yeah it's about two two grams per pound almost yeah it's like yeah the double so try doing that for a week and let me know i did as a power lifter i did i was charles polligan was one of my like mentors and so i was very high on the protein side so yeah get like to a pound or like 300 a day and i was like i can't this is just too much just smashing a pound of meat every single time i was definitely well over that i was definitely two per pound and so you know 400 plus 400 is crazy dude yeah into your job what i said eating turns into your job it wasn't much yeah it's trying to be all that. Yeah. Anytime someone's like,

I just eat too much. I'm like, you want to get 300 pounds, 300 grams of protein and you get after it. Yeah. That's how you eat a lot. If you had to decide,

it seems much better to overdo it than to underdo it. So I think giving people like a number that's like even slightly above what they actually need just to ensure

they actually hit the number they need is psychologically oftentimes something that can be beneficial. Agreed. Yeah. Doug, I think we did a show, man, it's probably like five or six years ago. I want to say that we were in San Francisco up somewhere and they were talking about trying to find the upper limits.

And I don't think it's first off ever been found where too much protein gets unhealthy. Um, but haven't all college kids just like literally drinking protein shakes as many of them as they could all day long. I don't remember. Maybe it was, uh,

when you were doing the, the virtual reality boxing, when that was like brand new at, uh, San Francisco university of San Francisco. Um, but I, I remember that study or I remember them San Francisco, University of San Francisco. But I remember that study, or I remember them doing that paper,

or I don't even know if it got published, but them talking about it and being like, yeah, that sounds like a fun one until you've eaten three pounds of meat and drinking five protein shakes in a day. And that's brutal. Well, Andy's been a huge proponent of higher protein counts. Dan's like sometimes 3X.

My man. I don't want to tell him to his face but he's pretty lean. That's a big man to be. He's a jack dude. What I tell him to his face is he's a little soft and he needs to get out of it. 3.30 a.m. workouts. It's crazy. 3 a.m. That see it it's crazy 3 a.m that's right 3 30 a.m

i've seen him several times personally my bro go to bed when you gotta sleep he takes a nap i just hope i almost messed up another day i said do you take a nap like when he posted the study of the 90 minute nap i was like you can do that to yourself. Those posts tell you where he's at in life. Yes. That's what he's learning about on his own. He had the one about the forest, right? Walking around the forest, and then you see him with a boulder retriever. That's him hallucinating.

That's what he's doing. Flavia, where can the people find you? Headcoach.flavia on Instagram. Hold up. Say that again. You broke up a little bit. Yeah, sorry. Of course, the landscape guy just showed up here.

Why not, right? Sounds like once a month. At coach.flavia on Instagram. And I also have a website, but I'm not sure if it's up to date. Coach.flavia.com. Yeah. I don't know many people's website. They're personal ones that are actually up to date. CoachTravis.com. Yeah. I don't know many people's website. They're personal ones that are actually up to date.

I had to just shut mine down. It's like, this thing is so old, and I have no interest in updating it. It's like from, like, businesses before recent businesses. CoachTravisMash. Mashlead.com. Luckily, I got a good team now. Thanks to all my friends at Rise and Draw Sports. They really hooked me up.

Read all my articles at Jim Weir, of course. There you go. Douglas E. Larson. Very cool. As Andrew said, Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. I go on there on occasion these days. Flavia, thanks for coming on the show. You're doing a great job here rapping.

That was awesome. I hang out and talk with you. Appreciate you being here. Fantastic team. Thank you so much. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell shrugged at Barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you can find all things lab, lifestyle, performance analysis, testing. And if you want Flavia to write your nutrition program, it's the best place to come and learn from her. And you can access all of that over at rapidhealthreport.com.

Friends, see you guys next week.