FoundMyFitness - #098 How to Train According to the Experts

Starting point is 00:00:00 Over the course of nearly 100 episodes of the Family My Fitness podcast, I've had the privilege of interviewing some of the most prestigious researchers in the fields of exercise physiology, nutrition, human performance. And these conversations have really brought together some of the greatest minds and knowledge in the field of exercise physiology. I'm excited to introduce my special guest today, Brady Homer, who is an accomplished endurance athlete with an incredibly high B.O. 2 Max. Brady and I set out together to work on a pretty ambitious project where we wanted to distill a lot of the cutting edge research that was discussed on the Family My Fitness podcast from these leading experts into a guide that not only was evidence-based, but had actionable insights for people. It's called the how to train according to the experts guide. So I think the result is we have this really great roadmap that people can follow looking for how to improve

Starting point is 00:01:04 whatever the end goals that they're looking for, whether that is optimizing their cardiorespiratory fitness or their hypertrophy training or perhaps even body recomposition. So in this training guide, we cover a lot of different aspects of exercise, including training protocols to improve cardiorespiratory fitness training protocols to delay heart aging and improve the cardiovascular structure of the heart. We also have a lot of information in there on how to train to improve metabolism, mitochondrial metabolism, glucose metabolism. And we also get into resistance training protocols, whether you're interested in improving strength, bone mass, bone density, muscle hypertrophy, or losing fat at the same time while you're gaining muscle. So that would be

Starting point is 00:01:51 body recomposition. In addition, we have some supplemental information in there on sauna use, other protein intake and other supplements like omega-3 and creatine. So a lot of really great information in this guide. You can find that guide and download it for free in how to train guide.com. So that being said, today's episode will serve as a companion to that guide. Brady and I will discuss a lot of the information you'll find in the free guide and we'll probably give some of our personal takeaways as well. Yeah, Rana, I think putting together this guide, it was incredible I got to listen and relisten to many of the interviews that you had with some of these world-leaving experts, and I personally learned a lot and had a lot of fun putting it together.

Starting point is 00:02:29 So we're going to cover a lot of things today, and I think what we're going to start with is aerobic exercise training, kind of a very popular topic these days with people interested in how to improve their VO2 Max and their cardiovascular health. You've interviewed experts in this area, including Dr. Martin Gabala, kind of an expert in high-intensity interval training, exercise physiology, and Dr. Benjamin Levine, who honestly gave like a master class on just how to improve heart health. I found that episode very interesting. So we're going to start today with talking to people about how to improve their cardiovascular health, their VO2 max with aerobic exercise training. One of your, also one of your areas of expertise.

Starting point is 00:03:06 I agree that when Dr. Ben Levine came on the podcast while I was doing, you know, a lot of background information research on, you know, his work. So reading his publications. and then after the podcast episode, I felt like I learned just a tremendous amount of information that had no idea about, which is really like the cardiovascular structure and what role the structure of the heart plays in cardiovascular health. But I do think before we get started, we should probably mention that it's important, I think, for people to identify what their goals are with respect to training. So are you someone that's interested in becoming an elite endurance athlete like yourself? Or are you interested in improving your health metrics? So maybe

Starting point is 00:03:55 increasing your health span, so to speak, reducing your cardiovascular disease risk, reducing your dementia risk, reducing your risk of cancer, all the while, you know, improving mental health, improving muscle mass, maintaining independence with age. These are all things that are my personal goals. And I do think the guide covers a lot of those bases. But again, you know, some people might be training for different goals. Yeah, certainly. I think that, you know, in this guide, there are a lot of protocols that we're going to provide. And people can, I think they mostly geared towards people improving their longevity, their health span and optimizing health.

Starting point is 00:04:33 But, you know, if you're a performance-oriented person and are looking to get stronger or compete, whether that's in some type of resistance training competition or maybe you're on a faster 5K or 10-K, this guide has those types of things too. As you call me an elite endurance athlete, I'm kind of far from elite, but I appreciate that sentiment. Brady is being a bit modest. Not only is he elite from a cardiorespiratory fitness standpoint, if not strictly a competitive standpoint. He also has a master's in science, a research background, and is wicked smart. But, you know, I have performance goals, obviously, which are to run a fast marathon. That's kind of these days what my primary goal has been. And so, you know, I might train differently from somebody who just wants to get healthier or improve their

Starting point is 00:05:14 span if they're in middle age or older age or, you know, even younger people who are just kind of getting into exercise. So, yeah, it's important to define the goals and that will kind of determine how you want to train. And even though my goal is to optimize to run a fast marathon, you know, given that it's not my full-time job just to run fast and I have other goals like reducing my injury risk and just having a high level of vitality, I also want to, you know, train for brain health like you, Rhonda. I think I find the benefits of exercise on my brain, one of the kind of most salient benefits of exercise. But I also just want to be strong, be able to do things and, you know, maintain health late into life so I can keep doing the things that I want

Starting point is 00:05:52 to do. So I think my, the way I approach training is try to optimize for performance, but not at the extent of sacrificing some of my, you know, other health metrics. So I try to blend a little bit of the two. Well, with the VO2 max of, what, 75? 75 and to 80 is, you know, I've tested a few times throughout my life. And so it's somewhere in that range. I mean, that's why I would say you're elite, but I mean, maybe an elite level of VO2 max, but my running times wouldn't be considered elite by most standards. Well, speaking of cardiorespiratory fitness, I think that that would be a good place to start. It is something that we've covered quite a bit on the podcast. And Dr. Ben Levine, when I had him on the podcast, really he was discussing just an eye-opening study for me, that he was a part

Starting point is 00:06:40 of. It was a study that was done over the course of 30 years. There was two separate studies, known as the Dallas bed rest study. And the study involved, first of all, Dr. Lean's mentor, Gerr Mitchell, who was studying a group of men and looking at the effects of being sedentary on their cardiorespiratory fitness and other cardiovascular health parameters. And when I say sedentary, I mean full-on sedentary. They were underwent, they underwent, bed rest for three weeks. So what that study found was, lo and behold, when you're actually not moving for three weeks, not even getting up to go to the bathroom. So, I mean, they had catheters. This was extreme bed rest. They really wanted to look and see what happened to cardio vascular function,

Starting point is 00:07:27 cardiorespiratory fitness, after just not moving for three weeks. Of course, lo and behold, cardio respiratory fitness declined. Not so surprising, as well as a lot of the other parameters they measured. But what was really eye-opening to me was, you know, fast forward 30 years, Dr. Levine's now in Jeremy Mitchell's lab, and they find those same group of men, and they wanted to see what 30 years of aging had done to their cardiorespiratory fitness, which does naturally decline with age. And what they found was that their cardiorespiratory fitness after 30 years of aging was no worse than their cardiorespiratory fitness after three weeks of bed rest, 30 years ago. So essentially three weeks of bed rest is worse for your cardiovascular health, for your cardiorespiratory fitness, than 30 years of aging.

Starting point is 00:08:13 And when you put it like that, it's like, wow, being sedentary is so detrimental on our cardiovascular health. So maybe you can Brady just kind of recap, highlight, talk about what cardiorespiratory fitness is, how you measure it. I guess we'll get into some ways to improve it. but I mean, this is something that you have a lot of experience in as well. I think people will be pretty familiar with the term cardiorespiratory fitness. It's sometimes used interchangeably with VO2 Max or your maximal oxygen consumption. It's kind of a very popular biomarker these days with, you know, like you said, and we'll talk about later, correlating with longevity and so on.

Starting point is 00:08:52 So cardiorespiratory fitness is sort of the exercise physiologist's measure of aerobic fitness. It's very popular as an endurance performance marker, or that's true. traditionally how it was thought of because, you know, having a high-ve-o-2 max is kind of standard among high-level endurance athletes. But essentially what it is is your body's ability to take in oxygen, take an air from the environment, distribute it to the rest of the body through your cardiovascular system, get that oxygen into mitochondria and skeletal muscle, and then utilize that oxygen for energy in the form of ATP. So it sort of represents your body's integrative ability to take in, distribute, and utilize oxygen. And again, I think we'll

Starting point is 00:09:32 talk about this later, but I think that's why it's such a potent predictor of longevity. It's because it's not maybe just something like grip strength, but it really represents, you know, your body's physical function and your ability to produce ATP. It's measured during maximal exercise, hence the term maximal oxygen consumption. So one of the ways that it's typically measured, say, if you were in an exercise physiology study, you would get on a treadmill, you would run at progressively faster speeds until eventually you just couldn't go anymore. So you would exercise until exhaustion, all the while having your gas exchange measured. So you're going to be wearing a mask to measure your oxygen intake. And that's able to, you know, measure the rate of oxygen utilization by your body. And at the point

Starting point is 00:10:12 of maximal exertion, however much oxygen your body is utilizing, that's your maximum oxygen, your rate of oxygen consumption. And it's not a fun test. That's the main way to measure it. And probably the gold standard way to measure it would be during an incremental exercise test to exhaustion. But it can also be measured or estimated rather using things. like the Cooper 12-minute test, which essentially involves you just running kind of as far as you can in 12 minutes. And there are online calculators where you can put your time into there to get an estimate. You can also get an estimate of your view to max by if you have a smart watch or something like that, a fitness tracker that will also allow you to estimate it. And I say estimate because, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:51 without direct measures of gas exchange, you're not really able to definitively say what that is, but it uses various things like your age, sex, weight, and your physical fitness. tricks to estimate that. So those are kind of the three primary ways that people can measure it. Dr. Levine kind of talked about some of the flaws with estimating it using those equations versus, you know, obviously getting it directly measured into a lab. But yeah, it's, it's a performance marker, obviously, but it's also a health marker. And I think Levine talked about how important it was not only for improving it, but also to try to maintain it throughout lifespan. Yeah, it's something that in the past, I would say, three, two to three years,

Starting point is 00:11:34 it kind of came on my radar as an important biomarker for longevity, right? There's a variety of biomarkers that can be looked at. And, you know, as you mentioned, even compared to something like grip strength, cardiorespiratory fitness seems to really shine in terms of being a good indicator of your overall health status. When Levine was on the podcast, Dr. Lean was talking about, It takes a certain amount of oxygen. Like your cardiorespiratory fitness has to be a certain level just to sit down and have a conversation like we're having. Right. And if you're a sedentary person that really hasn't tried to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness at all as you get older because it does decline, like even maintaining that just level of just having a conversation or maybe walking to the bathroom or walking to your car, you're so out of breath.

Starting point is 00:12:25 That's when you're really reaching this level where you have to be concerned about falling off a cliff, right, when just normal everyday functioning is hard. But even above and beyond that, there's been just numerous studies that have looked at the correlation of VO-2 Max, so cardi respiratory fitness in all-cause mortality. One I've talked about, and I talked about with Levine as well, was a published study in JAMA, medical journal in 2018, where I think it was like participants that were involved in some, they were vet. previous veterans. And so they were sort of looked at according to their cardiorespiratory fitness and the people that were in the highest group had a five-year increased life expectancy compared to people in the lowest cardiorespiratory fitness group, which is pretty profound. I mean, you're talking about five years. But also, even if you looked at the people in the very highest group and you compared them to people in the high normal, so they were still like on the high normal end or doing good, like those people in the highest group had a 20%

Starting point is 00:13:25 lower all-cause mortality. So they were still doing better than the people that had a high normal cardiorespiratory fitness. But I think also what was really surprising to me in that study was that the people in that low cardiorespiratory fitness group had a mortality risk that was comparable or even worse than people with diseases that we know are clearly bad for your health, like type 2 diabetes, like heart disease, hypertension, even smokers. So in other words, again, going back to this Dallas bed rest study as well, where being sedentary for three weeks was worse on your cardiovascular health than 30 years of aging. It really drives home that point that when you're sedentary and your cardiorespiratory fitness is falling,

Starting point is 00:14:11 it is a disease. Being sedentary is a disease, and I do think that low cardiovascular fitness should be considered kind of like a disease marker as well. A lot more can be said about V-O-2 max and cardiorespiratory fitness. I do, you kind of mentioned a little bit about athletes being interested in V-O-2 Max and improving their V-A-2 Max. Can you talk a little bit about why maybe athletes think about training explicitly for B-O-2 Max or maybe why they don't? Yeah, I think the answer to that would be they sort of do and they don't. I mean, I guess it would depend maybe what type of athletes we're talking about. So I guess maybe we'll use endurance athletes, maybe such as myself as an example.

Starting point is 00:14:52 like you mentioned before, I have a generally high V-O-2 Max, and what I like to think about it is, you know, having a high VU2-Max if you want to be an endurance athlete is sort of a prerequisite to kind of get in the door. You know, you won't find someone in the Olympics or, you know, even at a sub-elite level who probably doesn't have a V-O-2 max of 65 or above. So it's sort of this ticket to get into the gate of,

Starting point is 00:15:16 oh, if you want to be an endurance athlete, you need to have a VO2 max of 65 or higher. But once you get kind of different, to those higher levels of elite athletes who all have that V02 max of above 65, it doesn't do a very good job of predicting who's going to win the race. So if we line up at the start line and you say you don't have any idea of people's previous performance, but you just have their V02 maxes. The person with the highest VO2 max isn't always going to win.

Starting point is 00:15:41 And that's because there are several other performance markers that are associated with doing well in, say, a race, like how long you can run at a high percent of your VO2 max, your lactate threshold, your exercise economy. These are all things that you can improve independent of your VO2 Max that can help improve your performance. So, yes, while I want to do VO2 Max workouts as an endurance athlete, and most endurance athletes will do VO2 Max type workouts every now and then once a week in the form of high intensity intervals,

Starting point is 00:16:10 they can also do workouts that are targeting, you know, getting better at running economy or training their lactate threshold. So you can get better without improving your VO2 Max. I think that's important, not just for athletes, know, but just people who are generally interested in health, if you're training and you don't see, you know, your Vio2 Max on your watch isn't necessarily improving. Well, you can still get faster. You can still get stronger, improve your exercise performance while not improving your VU2 Max. So it's for that reason I think that athletes sometimes don't just think about explicitly training

Starting point is 00:16:39 their VATU Max. Many elite athletes might not even know what their VATU Max is because they don't care. They just really care about how fast they're running. But then, of course, athletes should be concerned about increasing their VU2 Max, not only for the health reasons that you just mentioned, you know, it's associated with longevity, which is great. You want to avoid that decline with age and maintain it as long as possible. But again, you know, you can see significant improvements when you do improve your VO2 max, which can be thought of as your ceiling. You know, if you move your ceiling up, everything below that is going to improve. So short answer to that would be, yeah, athletes look to improve their VO2 max. Among the highest people, the highest Vot2 Maxes, it might not be

Starting point is 00:17:16 as much of a concern, but people are all still interested, you know, athletes and non-athletes athletes alike are interested in improving their Fio2 max. Well, you elude a little bit to, you know, you said high-intensity evil training, and that's, you know, one way that you can improve VO2 Max. And I think we're going to get into that in a minute talking about Dr. Martin Cabala's research. But I'm interested. So let's say, you know, you want to improve your lactate clearance, one that you mentioned. Like how, like, what kind of training, how do you train differently than doing like high-intensity and rural training?

Starting point is 00:17:47 How would you improve your lactate clearance more? I'm like, yeah, you can certainly do that by using high-intensity interval training. I mean, you're producing a lot of lactate during high-intensity interval training, so you're inherently going to help improve your lactate clearance capacity. Doing what would be called kind of steady state or threshold workouts is kind of one way to do that, where you're exercising at that point where lactate levels are just above kind of the steady state. So you're working on, you know, where lactate production equals lactate clearance, doing those type of, and what would be called lactate threshold workouts.

Starting point is 00:18:19 that seems to obviously be a good way to improve your lactate clearance capacity. And then there are others who would argue or say, you know, I think there's decent evidence to support that something like Zone 2 training also improves your lactate clearance capacity. So you can do all different types of training. And we're going to talk about low, moderate, and high intensity training and why all of those, integrating all of those is important. But primarily the main way to do that is going to be doing like steady state type and high intensity interval training workouts.

Starting point is 00:18:45 Well, so high intensity of interval training workouts, like Dr. Martin Gaballo is on the podcast and he's really an expert in high intensity interval training. And there's, there are a lot of people that are interested in the time efficiency of it. So high intensity interval training, I guess there's a lot of ways to define it. Marty likes to talk about it being like when you're doing it, doing the interval that you're doing vigorous exercise. And that could be different for a lot of people depending on your your fitness level. But essentially it's you're working harder than. you can't really have a conversation when you're doing that interval. So you're going really hard. Most people are about 80 to 85 percent, at least maximum heart rate for the interval. And then they, you know, they have these periods of recovery and they go back to the working second part, the interval again. What was really interesting to me with respect to improving cardiorespiratory fitness, when Marty came on the podcast, he was talking about a meta analysis that had looked at a variety of different studies where people were meeting the requirements for moderate intensity exercise. So they were doing about

Starting point is 00:19:48 150 minutes a week of what is called moderate intensity exercise. So they're probably doing, you know, something more like a zone two where they're, or maybe even a little bit less than that, but, you know, something like 60 to 80 percent, their max heart rate. And about 40 percent of those individuals didn't see improvements in their cardio-respatory fitness unless some high intensive interval training or some more vigorous exercise was sort of added to the equation. So can you talk a little bit more about, like, you mix in, you know, high-intensity interval training into your workouts, but like, why do you think there's this sort of non-responder effect or there's probably multiple reasons for it, but like, what's the rationale for adding

Starting point is 00:20:32 in more vigorous type of exercise or high-intensity level training into a workout to improve cardiorespirate fitness? Yeah, so I think if you take a group of people who have never trained before, kind of unfit people, and just give them a lot of lower intensity or, you know, what people might refer to as zone two training, everybody is going to kind of improve because you have, it's a new training stimulus. You know, you've never trained before. You add some exercise. Okay, well, obviously you're going to get fitter. And you mentioned the concept of non-responders, which has kind of been around in like exercise physiology for a while. And it essentially refers to you give people

Starting point is 00:21:04 exercise training program. There are some people who don't improve for some reason or another. They're V-O-2 max. And I think there's kind of a debate on there where it might just be due to like a measurement error instead of actually a non-response. But like you just, you just, mentioned, when you give those people high intensity interval training, everybody responds. There's some kind of recent studies that show that very well. You just increase their dose of exercise or their intensity or both, and they improve their fitness. So they're just basically not doing enough. And so that points to the fact that if you want to get better, you need to add in some higher intensity interval training. Obviously, you can increase the dose of your moderate

Starting point is 00:21:38 intensity training to your volume, but adding a greater stimulus. You know, that seems to be the main benefit of doing high intensity training. You can't just do the same thing. You can't just do low intensity training all the time. You need to not only mix it up for a variety, but you need to give your body a greater stimulus if you want it to adapt and improve. And so Dr. Martin Gabala was talking a lot during your interview about the importance of doing that, doing hit probably at least once a week, elevating your heart rate, just to get that additional stimulus to force your body to adapt, get stronger for your, you know, heart to get stronger and for your cardiovascular system to get fitter. Yeah, it's actually, Dr. Levine also mentioned something similar.

Starting point is 00:22:16 where he was saying, you know, you have to continually stress your cardiovascular system to have the adaptations, the beneficial adaptations. And so if you keep doing the same thing without ever adding an additional stressor stimulus, then you're only going to stay the same, maybe. You're not really going to improve, right? And so it does make sense from that aspect as well. Since we're talking about vigorous intensity and adding more of a stressor and a more stronger stimulus, maybe you can recap some of what Dr. Levine, Dr. Kabbalah talked about on the podcast when they were sort of defining the various training zones and what these zones are because there is a lot of information out there on that, which can be quite confusing to people. It can be. And some people will like to use zones for training. I think it's common in sort of the. exercise with, you know, coaches who are coaching endurance athletes to use this five zone model. If people, you know, are familiar with listening to podcasts on fitness, they'll probably hear people reference five zones. There are obviously other zones to use. But yeah, Dr. Levine

Starting point is 00:23:23 defined these sort of five training zones. And kind of before I go and define what these are and how people can use them to guide their training, I think it's, he kind of defined them using three different metrics and that we're going to use to define each of the zones. But lactate levels are one way to do it, but we're not really going to discuss that because in reality, you know, most people are not going to be measuring their lactate levels weekly, monthly, or even, you know, certainly not daily during exercise. And so it's kind of a moot point to say, you know, zone two exercises this lactate level. Most people don't really know what that is.

Starting point is 00:23:53 And so there are other ways to measure intensities and use these zones. One way is just your rating of perceived exertion or RPE. And this is just a subjective measure of how hard you think you're exercising. And this is typically on a six to 20 scale. Now, that might seem kind of weird for people, like, oh, why is it not 1 to 10? 1 to 10 is kind of typical. What people use, like, how hard is this scale? But it's called the Borgh-RPE scale.

Starting point is 00:24:18 And the 6 to 20 is essentially because the initially the theory behind that scale was that you were just at a zero to whatever your RPE was, and that would correspond to your heart rate. So say, average person has the maximum heart rate of around 200. If I give you an RPE of 18, that means my heart rate's probably around 180, which is a fairly high intensity. Whereas maybe my RPE right now. is a six, maybe my heart rate's 60, that's like a resting heart rate. So that's kind of the idea behind that scale so people kind of can understand what, what that means and why we're

Starting point is 00:24:46 doing six to 20 versus one to 10. Another way is to use the talk test. And that's essentially just like, are you able to do a full conversation, barely get out words or not talk at all? That's kind of another way to kind of gauge zones. The next and the final way to describe the zone is to be based on your percentage of your maximal heart rate. And a lot of people have heart rate monitors, so they're going to be able to measure their heart rate during exercise. So we're going to define zones using all three of those kind of metrics. So if we look at zone one, this is going to be a recovery intensity. This is pretty much easy as you can go. It's not resting, but it's very, very light activity. So on the RPE scale, this is going to be anywhere from a 6 to an 8. It's going to be about 50 to 60% of your maximum heart rate. And if you're going to use the talk test to measure that intensity, it would be you could hold. hold a full conversation. So what you and I are doing right now, Rhonda, just talking, having a podcast, you can basically do that if you were in zone one or recovery intensity because you're going on an easy walk or something like that. Zone 2 intensity, people will hear about zone 2 training all the

Starting point is 00:25:51 time. This is still kind of a low, a light to a moderate intensity exercise. So it's going to correspond to an RPE of about 9 to 12, 60 to 70% of your maximal heart rate. And then the test again, you should be able to have a conversation in zone two. If someone we're listening to you, they could probably tell you were exercising, but in general, you could hold pretty much a full conversation. And so these, you know, zone one and zone two, those are going to be your light to moderate intensity exercises. In particular, you know, that zone two training good for kind of building your aerobic base. Then there's zone three. This is kind of veering into the territory of high intensity interval training. It's thought of a lot as your threshold intensity or maybe steady state.

Starting point is 00:26:36 exercise. It's going to correspond to an RPE of 13 to 15, about 70 to 80% of your maximal heart rate. And then this is where talking gets a little bit difficult. So you could speak in broken sentences. It's still not, you're not gasping for error yet, but you can speak in broken sentences. And that would be a good way to indicate kind of this zone during using the talk test. And then zone four, this is where you get into the high intensity training. So it's a 16 to 18 RPE. it's, you know, 80 to 95% of your maximal heart rate. And you could probably only speak one word or two at a time, maybe if you were trying to gauge that zone based on the talk test.

Starting point is 00:27:16 And then zone five, that's maximal exercise intensity. That's your VO2 max. It's as hard as you can go. So RPE 19 or 20, it's 95 plus percent of your maximal heart rate. And then you shouldn't be able to talk. So if you're doing, you know, tabata intervals or something like that, this is zone five. You shouldn't be able to talk at all during that.

Starting point is 00:27:35 exercise intensity. So those are the five zones. And I think what's cool about having all these different metrics to define the zones is that, you know, if people don't really want to train using heart rate, or maybe they don't even have a heart rate monitor, they can use the talk test, they can use RPE or maybe a combination of all three of these. And they're pretty reliable. I mean, all of these have been kind of well evidenced to correspond to the different zones. But I think what's nice is that people can use these to train and it doesn't require a lot of technical ability, a lot of experience. And so, So this is, I think, in my mind, the best way that people can think about kind of training intensities is using the zones as we define them here, or at least using those as a guide.

Starting point is 00:28:13 I really like the talk test way of defining it because as you were sitting or talking about this, I was thinking about my whole exercise protocol. And I'm like, okay, oh, yeah, that's actually what I thought was more zone two is really more zone three, what I'm doing here. With respect to heart rate monitors, do you, I know Levine mentioned there can be a lot of error with using some like a smart watch. And is there more accuracy in using something like a chest strap, like maybe a polar strap versus a smart watch versus like the talk test? So let's say you don't have a chest strap. Should you be using a talk test or can you still use your smart watch? Is it still

Starting point is 00:28:53 what's more accurate? Yeah, I think the accuracy of the smart watches is obviously there. They've been, you know, validated against EKG and things like that. But as Levine mentioned and as others have kind of drawn caution. They tend to get less accurate as the intensity of exercise increases. They're not perfect because, you know, it's getting your heart rate reading from a sensor on your wrist versus your chest. So I would encourage everybody to invest in a heart rate chest, you know, a chest strap monitor. It's less than a $100 investment. It's going to give you a lot more accurate data. Some people find them uncomfortable, but most of them now are pretty comfortable. And if you really want to train using heart rate, I would say invest in the chest strap.

Starting point is 00:29:32 But, you know, the watches aren't totally off and they can be used as a good kind of reference as to where you are. But like I said, in my experience and I think the experience of others, the harder that you go, the higher the intensity goes kind of the less accurate that they get. So if you want to use heart rate, great. It can be a good indicator. But the talk test is a very good, I think, way to assess your exercise intensity, especially for people who are newer. So I think one of the not flaws with RPE, but one of the cop. is that you need a little bit of experience to really know where you're at, like how hard something is. I mean, if somebody has never actually gone to a maximal intensity, and how do you know,

Starting point is 00:30:12 how do you know what a 20 out of 20 is if you've never really reached the point of volitional exhaustion? So if somebody is just beginning to exercise, they might be at 70% of their maximal intensity, but they might think that they're out of 20. So it takes time to learn kind of what your RPE is to be able to assess that accurately. So I would say, you know, if people are more experienced with exercise, then you could use something like RPE to kind of gauge your intensity. But those newer exercise might actually have a lot of good feedback with the talk test. I even kind of use that. I mean, you know, it's if you're running with a group of people and you can have a conversation,

Starting point is 00:30:44 okay, well, we're probably in zone two. If I'm really struggling to like breathe, then I might be in zone three, four, even five. So I think it's a great way to use the talk test. Anybody can use it, but I think newer people might benefit more from that. And I think also what people can think about doing is using a combination of all three. You know, you can use heart rate. You can use RPE. You can use the talk test. And maybe see if those, you know, correlate with one another during exercise. But use all of those to kind of inform your exercise intensity.

Starting point is 00:31:09 Exactly. I usually am not wearing. I do have a chest strap. I have a Polish chest strap. I have used it before. But I'm not typically wearing it when I'm doing a workout. And so I think using my smart, my Apple Watch, along with the talk test, because they often have someone with me when I'm working out, is like, okay, Well, maybe it's not entirely accurate as I'm getting into my zone three, perhaps zone four. But I know I can't talk more than a word. So it's clearly like it's good to combine them both. So I want to, there's a lot of interest in zone two training. I talked about zone two training with Dr. Martin Gabala, a little bit with Dr. Ben Levine.

Starting point is 00:31:50 And I want to ask you, maybe you can talk a little bit about what are the benefits of zone two training. are there unique benefits of zone two training metabolically, cardiorespiratory health-wise? And as you were explaining and defining some of these zones, I was thinking to myself even, what's the real difference between zone two and what you would call zone three, right? This threshold type of training as well, right? So I'd love to hear. Yeah, the benefits of Zoom 2 training, I think, are kind of vast. I mean, a lot of people will talk about how some of the main benefits are going to be.

Starting point is 00:32:31 It really serves as a foundation for building your aerobic base. You know, it is good for maybe I should step back a little bit and kind of define what zone two is, maybe based on the exercise physiologist's definition of it, which would be, it's kind of the intensity where you're maximizing your mitochondrial fat oxidation. It's a steady state exercise, less so than a threshold like intensity. And so your lactate levels, it's to, you know, measured during lactate is kind of the accurate. way to do it. So your lactate levels are steady. They're not increasing. Some will actually give like a lactate number being about two millimolar. I mean, I think there may be kind of some debate about that because I think

Starting point is 00:33:07 as I've heard you talk about multiple times, you know, people will have different lactate levels. And so two millimolar might not represent a zone two intensity for everyone. It might differ based on whether you're unfit or you're a fit athlete or something like that. So I think it's important though that you're at a steady, your lactate levels aren't continually rising during Zone 2 training. But the key, I think, and one of the main benefits purported for Zone 2 is that you're improving your fat burning capacity, not only during exercise, but also your mitochondria's ability to oxidize fat as an energy source, because that's the intensity at which the fat oxidation in the mitochondria is maximal. Zone 2 training, you know, elite athletes are doing a lot of it, in particular just because their exercise volumes are so high.

Starting point is 00:33:48 And so I think one of the areas of not disagreement, but kind of conflict is that people will say you need to do a lot of zone two training. You know, it needs to make up a majority of your exercise training. And a lot of what that those people are referring to, whether they're coaches, is that, you know, the elite athletes doing 20 to 30 hours a week. Well, obviously they do a lot of zone two training because they're exercising for 20 to 30 hours per week. You know, there are certainly benefits to that for building the aerobic base that allows you to do a high level of volume without burnout. There's a very low injury risk with zone 2 train because it's a lighter intensity. You're not overly stressing your autonomic nervous system or your cardiovascular system.

Starting point is 00:34:25 And so it has these benefits of just allowing you to do a lot of low intensity volume to build what's called the aerobic base and improve your fat burning capacity. And those seem to be the main benefits. And I think defining it though is important because zone 2 gets talked about a lot. But in reality, we just talked about different ways to define zone 2 based on the talk test based on RPE, based on heart rate. When most people say that there's doing zone 2 training, they really don't know if there's doing zone 2 training because you're not measuring lactate. Really without a lactate or you're not measuring your fat oxidation rate in the mitochondria,

Starting point is 00:35:02 you don't really know if you're in a physiological zone 2. It correlates with all of those other kind of subjective and objective measures that we talked about like heart rate. But to say that, you know, you're doing zone 2 training isn't necessarily accurate unless you're, you know, I actually have a accurate measure of lactate. But there are certainly several benefits to zone two or what I like to just refer to as low to moderate intensity training. I think that's more accurate and certainly a more accurate way that people can refer to that type of training. Well, you mentioned a pretty daunting number here. You said 20 to 30 hours of exercise a week, which is far beyond what I myself do.

Starting point is 00:35:39 I'm more in the six to six and a half hours a week. And so, you know, the question is, if you are not doing 20 to 30 hours, let's say you're doing maybe five or even less than that, you're getting like two and a half. This is where Dr. Gabala on the podcast was talking about high intensity interval training, being really time efficient and having many of the same benefits as even like a zone two type of training with respect to mitochondrial benefits, cardiorespiratory benefits, if not even better, if the same volumptory. volume of exercises performed. In other words, if you're doing 30 minutes of Zone 2 and then a 30 minute high-intensity interval training workout, that you're going to have even more improvements in cardio-wisputatory fitness than you would zone 2. You can have better improvements in even mitochondrial density, for example, than you would. So it's kind of interesting to look at the benefits of doing something like high-intensity interval training. Now, you're not going to do

Starting point is 00:36:38 20 hours of hit. I mean, that's impossible, right? And like you were saying, burnout. and things like that are also an issue and you have to, you know, be able to space them out with recovery. But there are a lot of benefits to doing high-intestinal interval training, time efficiency. You get improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness. We talked about that with even people that were doing regular, you know, low-to-moder intensity exercise for 150 minutes a week. They needed to really stress their system a little bit more above and beyond that to get improvements. Not everyone, but a large percentage of them did. And then there's also some brain benefits. that are also really, I don't want to say uniquely associated with high-intentional

Starting point is 00:37:17 interval training or vigorous exercise, but also the benefits are associated with the lactate that you're producing, which does come with increasing exercise intensity, right? So if people are time-limited and they want to combine some two training with hit, like, can you combine them in one session? Like, can you, I was talking about, you know, with you the other day, like sometimes I'll go for, I'll do some my jog or I'll do like a zone two workout and then I'll add in some intervals, right, where I'm like going, I'm going pretty hard for a certain out of time and then I kind of go back to a slower pace where I can have a talk test after my heart rate comes down a little bit.

Starting point is 00:37:54 Yeah, it's interesting because I think certainly, you know, there was kind of this debate in like, oh, do you need to do separate? Do you need to keep your really easy days easy or can you combine it with zone four or zone five like high intensity interval training? I think it's a unique concept, especially for, you know, as we talk about the time efficiency of it. Maybe there are people who only have two to three days per week when they can engage in aerobic exercise and they want to do some moderate and some high intensity training on the same day. I mean, in reality, like when you do a high intensity interval training session, you're kind of doing a little bit of moderate intensity because as I'm sure you structure your protocols, Rhonda, and like I structure my interval training

Starting point is 00:38:32 workouts, I'm doing, you know, probably 20 to 30 minutes of warm up or more and a cool down, which is at a lighter intensity and then I'm doing the main session which has some high intensity intervals but you know 50% of that session might actually be at a at a low intensity heart rate but yeah I think it's interesting to think about doing somebody wanted to do a 30 to 45 minute say just a zone two as we'll call it maybe low to moderate intensity run or a ride or maybe even a slow walk and then finish with some high intensity intervals I think that's a great strategy that people can use if they want to get some high intensity training and some moderate intensity training in the same session. That moderate intensity session beforehand might even serve as like a good warm up if you're doing 30 or 45,

Starting point is 00:39:14 maybe even like 60 minutes to do that. And there don't seem to be detriments, I guess. You're not ruining your zone two session by doing the hit at the end of it because you've already gained the benefits of doing your low to moderate intensity and then you're ending with the lactate elevating, the heart rate elevating type of exercise. So you're getting the benefits of both. And I think people could certainly structure their workout to do that, to optimize kind of both those benefits and fit it in if they are, if they're time limited. I do love ending my run with a sprint. Yeah, I do that a lot too. Sometimes if I, you know, if I don't have a structured interval workout during the week, which most weeks I do, I will throw in some very hard like sprints at the end of my run or maybe run like the last couple miles of a run like up tempo or something like that.

Starting point is 00:39:58 So you definitely feel better. So again, going back to like the brain benefits, I think it just makes you, when you end with like your heart rate elevated, it feels a lot better. You don't feel as stale. But, you know, there might some physiological benefits there too. Yeah. Well, going back to the book, there are goals, you know, I did mention brain health and lowering dementia risk. I often also just a lot of my workouts are geared towards like brain health. And not even just thinking about long term brain health and, you know, delaying dementia. delaying brain atrophy, delaying all those brain age-related diseases, but also just like mental health, like how I feel and feeling good. And it's clear to me like after I do a, you know, a hit, either a hit or also a very long, if I do a much longer, more steady state sort of run, I also get a lot of really great feelings from that as well. Structuring the amount of, let's say, low to moderate intensity or zone two, I know we're not measuring lactate directly.

Starting point is 00:41:00 but let's call it that, versus your high-intensity interval training. A lot of people out there, you'll see on a lot of platforms, people say 80-20, right? 80% of your exercise workout should be like low to moderate, 20% should be high-intensity. Dr. Gabala talked a little bit about this, the distribution, the weekly training volume, you know, how someone who is not like yourself, you know, endurance athlete. do they need to follow this 80-20 rule or how should that distribute does that distribution change? It definitely should. I think Dr. Gabala kind of made that clear in the conversation with you. It's interesting because when I, and you know, I'm interested in this as myself as I, you know, not only looked at my own training, but how to prescribe training and talk about like training for people on the internet.

Starting point is 00:41:51 But the origins of kind of the 80 or 20 are interesting. And it was basically just looking at the training logs of elite athletes and seeing what they do. when you broke it down basically by intensity, 80% of their sessions tended to be in this lower zone 2-ish intensity and then 20% of the sessions appear to be in the higher intensity training. And the important thing I think to note was that it's not necessarily based on time, but rather sessions per week. So say you're doing five training sessions per week. One of those, if you're falling to 80-20, one of those would be high intensity. Four of those would be moderate intensity.

Starting point is 00:42:25 So it's a number of days versus the total amount of time spent, which kind of makes it easier, I think, for people to think about versus, you know, sitting down and calculating how much time you spent in each of the heart rate zones, which is kind of difficult. Not many people are going to do that. So, yeah, I think that the 80-20 breakdown, it works great if you're doing, you know, maybe eight hours or more, kind of an aerobic exercise per week. But when you were discussing with Martin Gabala, he seemed to be pretty convinced, as am I, that, you know, once your exercise volume starts decreasing kind of below, maybe, you know, five or six hours per week, you're getting a little bit below that. You can probably afford to skew that a little more in favor of high intensity training then. So maybe you're doing something like a 70-30 or a 60-40. I mean, you know, most people probably shouldn't do more than two high-intensity interval training sessions per week. But again,

Starting point is 00:43:14 that's going to depend on, like, how long are your high-intensity training sessions? I mean, you, you know, you and I were talking when creating this guiding, you talk about how, you know, you might do three high-intensity sessions per week, but they're only, and I say, say only, but 10 minutes long. So sure, you're doing hit three times per week, but they're very short. They're kind of for the brain boost that you get. And it doesn't seem to be unsustainable because you've been doing it for long. So obviously that's anecdotal. But yeah, I think if you're doing less, if you're doing one to four, maybe hours per week, you should be less concerned with how, oh, I'm spending 80% of my training time doing zone two. You could probably do a little bit more high

Starting point is 00:43:48 intensity. And in fact, you might need to do more high intensity based on things like citations from Dr. Ben Levine on studies where if you want to get the same benefits of doing eight to 10 hours of moderate intensity, you need to do the one to four hours need to be a higher intensity to equate basically your training volume. So I think if people are a little bit time limited and still want to gain the benefits of maybe doing a little bit more moderate intensity training volume, you can certainly do a little bit more hit. So maybe that looks like, again, say somebody's doing five training sessions per week, but they're doing, you know, one to five hours total. Maybe two of those sessions can be high intensity versus B1. I don't see an issue with that. Again, I think everybody should,

Starting point is 00:44:29 based on your training history and your experience, you know, you don't want to burn out or risk injury, but if your volume is low, I think you can afford to fit a little bit more high intensity training in there. And a lot of the evidence kind of would suggest that. I mean, granted, most of them are pretty short duration, but there are plenty of studies and exercise science. where you take previously unfit people or people who aren't engaging in a lot of exercise. And for eight to 12 weeks, you know, they're doing maybe two of the Norwegian four by four training sessions per week, sometimes even three sessions per week. Now, do I think that's advisable? Probably not. Maybe it's not sustainable. But it's clear that they can do it, that they can do

Starting point is 00:45:06 a couple of these training sessions per week without getting injured and they receive massive benefits from that. Yeah, maybe we should, that's a good segue into some of the high-intensity interval training protocols that are evidence-based in terms of improving cardiorespiratory fitness, for example. And a lot of these protocols are also, also improve other parameters which we're going to get into as well, like mitochondrial density, as well as other metabolic benefits. But the Norwegian 4x4, so this is one of, this is probably one of the, it's a very well-studied protocol where Dr. Levine talked about it, Dr. Kabbala talked about it. people are doing four different intervals. So they're doing for four minutes, they are exercising

Starting point is 00:45:52 typically on a stationary bike, perhaps a rowing machine. You could do it on a treadmill as well. But a lot of the protocols were on a bike. And you're doing for the four minute interval, you're going at an intensity that you can maintain for that entire four minutes. That's pretty hard. So it's pretty much a sustainable, hard intensity for four minutes. It's obviously not going to be maximal, but you're going as hard as you can for, and it's hard as you can sustain for that four minutes. And then you follow that by a three-minute recovery period, which is very light, right? You want your heart rate to come down. You want to clear your lactate.

Starting point is 00:46:28 And then you go back into the four-minute interval. So that's a four-by-four. You're doing it four times. That's a very good protocol to improve cardiorespiratory fitness. There's a variety of other protocols out there, Dr. Cabala mentioned. So there's the one minute on, one minute off, and you do that 10 times. that the 10 minute workout, well, it's actually 20 minutes, but 10 minutes of more high-intensity training, where, again, for that entire minute, you're going as hard as you can sustain for that

Starting point is 00:46:56 minute, right? It's not going to be all-out, but it's as much as hard as you can go and sustain that for a minute. And then you rest and recover for a minute, a very, very low intensity exercise. And then there's things like even Tabatas. So Tabata would be a 20-second on, 10-second off. You do that eight times. The 20 seconds, you're really going as hard as you can. And Because, I mean, 20 seconds is, it's not long, although it seems long when you're going as hard as you can. It actually seems quite long. And the recovery intervals seem too short. They're very...

Starting point is 00:47:24 Part portions seem longer than 20, and the recovery is like over before you know it. Exactly. And there's a variety of other protocols out there as well. But we were talking a lot about even just adding a little, like, higher intensity workout at the end of a run. Do the intervals necessarily have to be 85% of your... your max heart rate. I think for most people it probably, no, doesn't matter. You shouldn't focus on heart rate. It's just if you're going hard and your heart rate is elevated above the moderate intensity, you could probably call that high intensity interval training and you use that to say that was my one hit

Starting point is 00:48:01 session per week. I think, again, I mean, heart rate training, I'm not sure how many people actually use it. I know in any study that you use, an exercise physiology study, they'll have measures of heart rate because, yeah, you have physiologist on the side measuring your heart rate during exercise. But, I mean, I can't tell you the last time I really looked at my heart rate or what percent of my heart rate I was at during exercise. I'm typically just basing it off of RPE, and I'm looking at my heart rate after the fact. So I think that you can pick an interval workout if you want to do the 4x4, if you want to do the 10 by 1 or if you want to do Tabata.

Starting point is 00:48:34 One, looking at your heart rate the entire time is going to be distracting, you know, focus on the workout. So I think going out hard intensity, like you said, an intensity that you think seems sustainable for four minutes and in doing that. I mean, once you get more familiar with the exercise, you may then be able to know that, oh, if I'm going at, you know, however many watts, maybe 120 watts, and this is kind of my 85% max heart rate, you can use that to kind of guide your training. But in general, I mean, again, I think most people aren't going to be looking at their heart rate the entire time. So we're talking about what your heart rate should be at, but it's just

Starting point is 00:49:03 just go out of hard intensity. And for most people, that's going to be enough to get the benefits of high intensity interval training, which I think is important because a lot of the time we get caught up in, oh, what's my heart rate? And if you're going hard, you know whether you're going hard or not. And that can be fine, I think, for most people to train. Right. And again, going back to what we were talking about earlier and what Dr. Levine and the Kabbala were mentioning about, just mixing it up and giving that little extra stressor so that you get those adaptations, right? You don't want to keep doing the same thing. So sometimes even just doing something a little bit harder in your, you know, normal sort of low to moderate intensity workout is beneficial. Right.

Starting point is 00:49:40 Definitely. And I think, you know, with, with the training, I think there are some people who like to do, I want to just do the Norwegian 4 by 4 every week. It's easy. I know what to do. I'm kind of familiar with it. But I think to avoid, not only avoid kind of like stagnation or maybe just getting bored of like the workout, but to stress your system in different ways, we just mentioned three protocols. Obviously, there's aren't the only protocols. They're not necessarily the best, but just do different length of intervals every week. And I think that can be fun. You know, there's something that I try to do in my own training. So maybe somebody picks the 4x4. This week, you're going to do 4x4,

Starting point is 00:50:11 next week you're doing 10 by one, the next week you do a tabata. So then you have three different lengths. You know, you're doing the four minutes, which seem particularly good for improving like VO2 max. There's like two to four minute range for intervals. You're doing the 10 by one, again, which is, you know, one minute long. And then you're doing the 20 seconds, which is your super kind of your sprint interval training as maybe Dr. Gabala might refer to it. So mixing those things up, I think can not only be enjoyable, but then you're hitting really all these bodies, all the bodies like energetic systems, which can be fun as well. Yeah, for sure, mixing it up. That's something I do as well. Although I do have wonderful coaches that work with me and they're very great at mixing up my routine and it's very nice. But if it's just me left of my own device, I usually get on my peloton and I'll do a Tabata. And it's the same, almost the same exact class that I have been doing for years. But, you know, sometimes we're just creatures of habit, you know, and it's easy to kind of go back to the thing that you know. So this, I think, is a good transition point. So we talked a lot of. about improving cardiorespiratory fitness and the benefits of that and the different types of of training to help improve cardiorespiratory fitness based on a lot of what the experts have talked

Starting point is 00:51:19 about in the podcast and their research. I want to remind people that they can find all of that information along with a variety of protocols for improving cardiorespiratory fitness in our How to Train Guide according to the experts. And you can download that right now at how to train guide. We are going to move on to the next section, which is very interesting as well and is also related to cardiovascular health. But it really is an area that is kind of neglected in a way, and I would say in popular media with respect to cardiovascular health, and that is the youthful structure of the heart and maintaining that youthful structure of the heart, which is really important for its function. It's important for preventing cardiovascular disease.

Starting point is 00:52:02 it's even important for performance being able to have a good aerobic capacity as you as they're getting older. So Dr. Ben Levine is really, I would consider him one of the world's leading experts in this area. And it was just a great privilege having him on the podcast. I just learned a tremendous amount of information. You know, I didn't even really know much about how the structure of the heart changes with age until I was diving into his research and had him on the podcast. And he was talking about how as we age, our heart becomes stiffer at around early middle age. This is like around, I guess it's more like 35 to 50 years of age.

Starting point is 00:52:44 Crazy to think about that as being early middle age. Your heart starts to get stiffer. Stiffness. And that affects cardiac compliance. It affects hypertension. And part of that reason that it gets stiffer has to do with glucose regulation. And so when we're eating a variety of foods, particularly foods that are refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, and there's a elevation in our blood glucose levels that can be sustained for longer periods because perhaps there's a refined sugar or something that we're eating a lot and maybe we're not exercising. That's the key.

Starting point is 00:53:18 We're being for sedentary. That quickly stays around in your vascular system and it reacts with proteins, including collagen, which is lining our blood vessels. It's lining our myocardium, our pericardium. or pericardium, right? This is, you know, where our heart is. And that collagen, when it reacts with glucose, and the maillard reaction becomes, it causes the protein, the collagen to become stiffer. And so that affects the stiffness of our vascular system, of our heart and also our blood vessels. As we start to get into late middle age, this would be like 50 to 65, in addition to our heart getting stiffer, our heart shrinks. So it atrophies. And so our heart is getting smaller and

Starting point is 00:53:59 it's getting me stiffer, and these sorts of structural changes are affecting our cardiovascular health and our cardiovascular performance, right? Dr. Levine has done a whole lot of research, lots of different studies, trying to identify how much exercise, what exercise is doing to the structure of the heart, for one, and how much exercises really needed to help really stave off a lot of those changes, those structural changes with age. And he had one of the studies that he had done early on, which were done in master's athletes. They are physically active every single day, and they're competing at a national level in many cases.

Starting point is 00:54:39 So they're doing a lot of cardiovascular and aerobic exercise. Their hearts structurally, so we're talking about seniors, so these are people that are older, their hearts looked like healthy 30-year-olds, so 30-year-olds that don't have any identifiable diseases like cardiovascular disease or type of diabetes or hypertension, right? And so that's pretty profound when you're talking about, you know, a 50, 60-year-old person's structure, at least looking very similar to what a healthy 30-year-old would look. But we're not all going to be

Starting point is 00:55:12 endurance athletes and master's athletes throughout our lives. So the next question is, well, what is the exercise dose that's really needed to get you most of the way there to have your, to maintain that youthful cardiovascular structure. And that's where some of Dr. Levine's follow-up studies have looked at some of that research. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I think some of this might be kind of maybe not surprising to a lot of people, but I think it, based on, you know, everything he said, it seems like the dose appears to be maybe a little bit more, a little bit higher than a lot of people think it might be.

Starting point is 00:55:47 And one of the things, I think, too, to add of, you know, when you were talking about the changes that occur kind of across the lifespan, one of the, I think, craziest to, statistics that Dr. Levine side was that after the age of 70, it became nearly impossible to reverse the structure of the heart, indicating that, you know, you basically need to do everything that you can before that age to improve the structure of your heart, because after that, it takes a, you know, an unsustainable maybe level of exercise to kind of reverse some of those structural changes, which I found very informative in related to, you know, how to train with age. So in the study that he was citing during your interview, yeah, he mentioned, you know, they did

Starting point is 00:56:24 study and an observational study where people self-reported their levels of physical activity kind of throughout their life. And they bucketed them into different days of activity. So this wasn't necessarily studying the dose in hours or minutes per week, but they looked at people exercising one to two days per week, two to three days per week, three to four days per week, four to five, and then five to six or more days per week. And this was kind of a lifetime of physical activity. So how long do you have you exercised? How many days do you exercise per week for how long? And then they compared these levels of exercise to people who were sedentary, who basically didn't exercise at all. And so what they found was that the people who exercised one to two days per week pretty much

Starting point is 00:57:05 had hearts with the same structure as sedentary adults. So one and two days per week provided zero protection basically against heart aging. When you moved up to two to three and then three to four days per week, those groups had some protection compared to the sedentary adults for their heart structure. so structure of their hearts were a little bit better than people who were sedentary. The four to five group, that's kind of when you experienced a significant level of cardiovascular protection with age. And then the five to six day per week exercises had nearly complete protection. They were similar to the master's athletes. And so what the conclusion from that study was from Dr. Levine was, four or five days of exercise

Starting point is 00:57:47 appears to be the optimal dose across the lifespan to prevent. cardiovascular aging. Now again, this study didn't provide a number on how many hours or minutes per week you should exercise, but let's assume these people were exercising for 30 minutes, maybe an hour per day when they were doing it. That puts you in the sweet spot of like maybe five to six hours per week of exercise. But that four to five days appears to be important. And so maybe you don't even think about how much time the people were spending in that, you know, doing exercise, but just the frequency of exercise. make sure you're doing and when we say exercise here we're referring to aerobic training in addition to resistance training which will obviously dive deep into later but this is just aerobic exercise and again

Starting point is 00:58:28 that could be walking that could be something that activity that raises your heart rate dynamic exercise that raises your heart rate but doing four to five days per week of that seems to be optimal for preserving cardiovascular structure and i think the takeaway from that was really probably the 150 minutes per week that is cited as well with the minimum recommendation it might not be a enough if the goal was to kind of maintain cardiovascular structure throughout life. And yeah, this, I'll tell you, this study was a bit surprising to me because probably for that reason where, you know, you think the 150 minutes a week or even just three days a week of aerobic exercise, oh, you think you're doing really good, you know? And I absolutely increased

Starting point is 00:59:13 my frequency of aerobic exercise after hearing about this. I mean, I was like, oh, wow, I need to be doing more. I can do more. I should do more. And now I have evidence why I need to do more. It was a bit surprising. It's like, okay, if you do, if four to five days a week of aerobic exercise, then you're really, you're not quite at the master's athlete level in terms of your heart structure, but you're mostly there. And I do think four to five days a week is pretty sustainable for most people. It should be. Yeah, it should be. And if it's, and if it's, and if it's, and if it's not, you know, maybe you need to make it in your structure your life in such a way that it should be. You know, he had to, then Dr. Levine had a great quote where he says, you know, exercise needs to be part of your personal hygiene. It's like brushing your teeth. You wake up, you know, it's not something that you think, oh, should I do this? It's, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to do this because it's part of your personal hygiene. And so I think there's a lot of talk sometimes about, if we prescribe the recommendations for exercise too high, does that deter people from doing it? And maybe,

Starting point is 01:00:14 but, I mean, the reality is, I think he presents compelling data that if we want to get serious about it, you're really serious about not aging cardiovascularly, like you need to probably do more exercise. And so I think it's kind of a harsh reality, but just something for people to think about and how to structure their training. It is a part of both of our professional hygiene. I mean, when you wake up in the morning, what's the first thing you do? Do you, I mean, I'm not the first thing, but like in terms of work versus exercise. Oh, it's definitely exercise.

Starting point is 01:00:42 Drink coffee and exercise. Same. Yeah. Exercise is the first thing I do. I mean, I brush my teeth. and yeah, I eat a little bit. But before I work, in most cases, I exercise. And that wasn't always the case for me. Even dating back to when I have been very interested in my health span and lifespan, it was like, okay, I'm working, you know, working four days a week or no, now it's,

Starting point is 01:01:08 you know, six days. It's, it is every morning. And if I don't get to, if I take off an hour of what would be my work time, so be it, because that's what's going to happen. I'm going to exercise. Yeah, you just, you make the, you make the time for it. And I'm, you know, that has to be the case a lot. I think the paradox kind of is that most people tend to exercise more when they're younger, which is kind of when you need less exercise. I think as you get older, you probably need to do more exercise. And that's, I think, what the evidence that Dr. Levine presents would it would indicate too. But I also feel like as people get older, they might have a little bit more free time. Once you get into your 40s and 50s and 60s, you're reaching, you know, your kids are out of the house.

Starting point is 01:01:49 You know, you're maybe still working a job. But once you get into retirement age, so maybe, you know, I think the way that maybe people think about exercising is that, yeah, you want to do a lot in early life to kind of build up those reserves and your muscle mass and your aerobic fitness and things like that. But, you know, as you get older, think about exercising more as you maybe have more time to dedicate to it because not only, you know, you need probably that amount in order to kind of maintain some of these changes. So it's, again, I think a harsh reality maybe. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of Dr. Levine's research on getting into that, starting into that late middle age, age 50. And this was a very, he calls it one of the most cited or looked viewed at, I guess viewed on the website in journal circulation studies of all time. And rightly so, I think it's a pretty astounding study. It was a two-year-year-old intervention trial where he took 50-year-old. Him and his colleagues took 50-year-olds that were other. otherwise healthy, but sedentary. I would argue that's not healthy if they're sedentary as a disease. But they don't have any other identified diseases like cardiovascular disease or hypertension, for example. But they had been sedentary. And he put them on a two-year exercise protocol, which maybe you can discuss in a minute, that was pretty intense. And they looked at the structure of their heart before starting this protocol. And then two years after this exercise protocol, they looked at their hearts again and found that in many aspects like the cardiac compliance and a variety of different parameters that they looked at, the size of the heart and the stiffness, right, the stretchiness of the heart, in many aspects had reversed in terms of their aging.

Starting point is 01:03:32 In fact, it was comparable. Their hearts were comparable to looking more like 30-year-olds. So they had essentially started this program and they had these 50-year-old looking hearts. and with respect to the size and the compliance. And then after this two-year exercise protocol had reversed 20 years of cardiac aging, which is pretty astonishing and inspirational in many respects. So the protocol wasn't necessarily easy, though. It wasn't at all. It was I think it wasn't easy.

Starting point is 01:04:04 It was simple. And I think something that everybody can kind of work up to and use as kind of a framework for how to structure their training. So, yeah, as you mentioned, this was a two-year study, which again, like, if anybody's familiar with exercise physiology research, like doing a two-year exercise intervention is pretty incredible to get those participants to adhere to that regimen. I can't remember how many participants were in that studied right now, but I think it was, you know, somewhere around 200 maybe,

Starting point is 01:04:29 but they had a pretty decent number of participants. But it involved a two-year commitment, and they didn't start them out right away doing everything that they were doing at the end, but they scaled up their exercise gradually throughout the two years. By year one, they were kind of, you know, reaching their peak exercise, and then they maintain them for the second year. And so what this involved was eventually, you know, doing about five to six hours of aerobic exercise, or I guess it was total training per week was kind of five to six hours.

Starting point is 01:04:54 And what that involved was one of one Norwegian four by four session. They actually at one point in the study, just before the one year mark, we're doing two Norwegian four by four interval training sessions per week. After the year, they dropped it down to just one for the maintenance phase. So one Norwegian four by four interval training session per week. They did one session per week that was an hour or longer of their base pace. So we could refer to that as lower to moderate intensity exercise, zone two training, but it was like a one hour longer base pace session.

Starting point is 01:05:24 And that could be just a bike, a run, a walk, a hike, something like that. And then they did another 30 minute base pace session per week. So another zone two exercise training session per week. They also did a very light recovery day after all of their interval training sessions. So the day after their Norwegian four by four, they did a light active recovery day. And then they did two resistance training exercise sessions per week. So they were doing four aerobic training sessions, two resistance exercise training sessions for the protocol. And again, they scaled up to that. So this wasn't, we're doing

Starting point is 01:05:55 a four by four all at once, but they progressively, you know, added that for the first year. By the end of the second year, they were maintaining that. So they, you know, for two years did about five to six hours of exercise. And like you mentioned, they reversed their certain aspects of their cardiovascular structure by, you know, an estimated 20 years, which is pretty astounding. So, yeah, not an easy protocol, but certainly not something like a high-level elite endurance athlete is doing. So it's something that everybody, I think, could do. And these were people who were 50, 60 years old. Right. It's doable. And I'd be curious to know how many of those people continue to maintain that after the city was over, knowing they reverse their heart

Starting point is 01:06:34 aging in some in terms of the structural aging of their heart by almost you know about 20 years i feel like that would be very motivating for any 50 or 60 year old to go wow i should keep this up this is like i want to you know i want my heart to stay like a 30 year old right i mean that yeah for me it would for sure it would be cool to see a follow-up study it would also just be cool to see if they didn't say they didn't maintain that training they just totally stopped how long those benefits kind of lasted i think that would be interesting too and if i know dr levin and them have follow-up studies on some of the exercise training, but it would be interesting to see for that one. Because I'm sure you maintain some of those benefits for a few years, but the bed rest training study or just some of the

Starting point is 01:07:11 studies on detraining, you see like kind of once you stop, it's a very steep slope down back to where you were. Right. Especially with respect to your cardiorespirate fitness. Right. Yeah. Well, a lot of this research, so this intervention study, you know, we're talking about the master's athletes looking at identifying, you know, I called it the dose, but it really is in terms of frequency how many days a week you have to work out to kind of help maintain that youthful cardiac structure has led Dr. Levine to have what he calls his prescription for life with respect to exercise. He does add a little bit of resistance training into that prescription for life. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that and then talk about our own sort of our prescription

Starting point is 01:07:53 for life, like what our protocols are. His prescription for life was honestly one of, I think, my favorite takeaways from that episode because it was something that I felt was reasonable for everybody. It's a lot more exercise than probably most people are doing, but not something that everyone couldn't work up to at some point. And so his prescription for life was very similar to kind of that two-year training study that he cited. He cited the sweet spot of four to five days per week of aerobic exercise or five to six hours per week of training. That seems to be kind of the sweet spot performing interval training once per week. And you know, while in that study, they used the Norwegian four by four, you could do any type of intervals. We just mentioned,

Starting point is 01:08:33 few other protocols, the 10 by one, the Tabada, but really just do some type of high-intensity interval training once per week. After every high-intensity interval training session, take a light recovery day. Levine definitely stress the importance of recovery, not only just from a muscular perspective and your autonomic nervous system, but the cardiac and cardiovascular system also needs to recover. You know, when you stress it with a high heart rate, you do increase some markers of light cardiac damage, and those also need time to recover. So if you're doing interval workout the next day, you know, doing 30 or more maybe minutes of very light activity. That's also kind of part of his prescription. His bit one hour or longer base pace session per week

Starting point is 01:09:12 was definitely kind of a foundation of his prescription. And then the two or more resistance training session exercises per week, which, you know, this is a very, very practical approach. And I think most people could, you know, maybe you should just take this and paste it up on your wall and use that to guide your training every week. I think if most people did that, they would be certainly in a good place, not only to, I think, age better, but the way I see it, I mean, I look at Levine's prescription for life and it mirrors a lot of, like, what I do for my weekly training. I mean, the way I structure kind of my training, I do, I have one long run for every single week. I do probably two easy zone two exercise sessions. I do one high intensity interval session,

Starting point is 01:09:55 and then I try to strength train twice per week. So I really follow Levine's prescription for life. I just kind of scale it up to meet the volume that I'm seeking for week. And so I'm sure you want to probably do something similar to that. Well, you're doing, what's your total hours? I would say on the typical week, I'm probably exercising like 14 to 16 hours. Most of it's endurance. So I'll probably do 14 hours of endurance training and then, you know, getting in like one to two hours of strength training. It could probably veer more towards the strength training.

Starting point is 01:10:24 But again, you know, it's as we talked about really, what I'm trying to optimize for at this point in my life. Yeah. Well, I'm so I'm not clocking in quite as many hours. I'm doing more like six to six and a half hours a week depending on the week. So I end up doing a more high intensity training and a little bit more. I would say that Zone 3 is probably a big part of my training. So I do three days a week. I'm doing it's more like a crossfit type of training where I'm doing a combination. of, I do strength, well, two of those days I do strength training for about 30 minutes each. So it's about an hour of strength training a week. And then I do some a little bit of, a little bit of hypertrophy training as well. And then followed by like a 15 minute high intensity interval training that includes some aerobic as well. So it'll be, it'll be something like I'll do like the rowing machine or the bike or jumping rope. And then I'll add in something like, you know, lighter weight squats or pushups or dips or lunges. And, you know, so,

Starting point is 01:11:29 It's like a combination of, and that's for the remaining, like, 30 minutes. So that would be like an hour a week of that. And then I do another hour of something kind of similar, but it includes a little bit more aerobic. So it's a combination of things as well where I'm also doing things like lunges and I'm doing weight and I'm doing hypertrophy training, not as much strength training, but then I'm combining it with a rowing machine. I'm doing a salt bike. I'm doing the skier or jumping rope. So it's a very efficient way for me to get that strength training, my resistance training, and also my some high-intensity interval training in there. In addition to that, I'll do about an hour a week of, I do some zone two into zone three runs, probably more zone three-ish, where I'm not really

Starting point is 01:12:17 talking. I mean, is very breathy of a talk, right? And then I'll do some sprinting towards the end of that. And then one day a week, so that's like, this is all like, that's twice a week I do that. And then on my sixth day, which is typically a weekend, I'll do hiking for like one and a half hours to two hour hike with my family. And we're walking, of course, and it is hiking, so we walk up hills. But sometimes we do some sprints like and race each other and stuff in the middle of that. But it's not like really super intense. I do consider it more of our recovery day because the walk is just very long. And it's over an hour. So it meets that box with what Dr. So, Devin said he should do something once a week that is at least an hour long. He doesn't

Starting point is 01:12:58 care what it is as long as it's fun and you enjoy it. I enjoy the hikes. And, you know, he said you could even be walking. It could be a walk. So that's kind of my, my typical, my weeks workout as well. I think what you said about enjoyment was kind of important too and something we sometimes don't talk about. You know, we're getting very technical about like how people should train. But yeah, find something. He even stressed that the hour long session, you want to, it doesn't need to be a bike ride or a run. It can be a hike. It could be, I think even said something like a dance, you know, if you go to a dance class and are dancing for an hour, or if your heart rate's elevated, you know, that works. Maybe you're skiing. So just something where you're doing

Starting point is 01:13:34 a cardiovascular type exercise for an hour or more because I think the key with his prescription was it needs to be sustainable because that's literally the whole idea, his prescription for life. This is something that you can do, whether you're 30 years old or starting at 30 all the way up until you're 70 or 80. So I think that's important to have activities that you enjoy doing. Right. For me also, accountability is important. So I do work with coaches. I have a really great coach that comes and works with me on my strength training and CrossFit type of training. And then I go and work out with friends as well. And there's, again, there's that fun group aspect. Going to a gym, maybe that has classes. I mean, that's another way. It's something that's going to

Starting point is 01:14:17 keep you going back, right? So it does have to be sustainable. It has to be something that you enjoy. I don't necessarily enjoy strength training, and we can talk a little bit more about this when we get into that part. I mean, it's very hard, and there's a lot of surprising aspects of it that I didn't quite expect after I really started engaging in that. But it helps to have, have a coach, or certainly even just going to a class, right, where there is a coach. It doesn't have to be a personal trainer, whatever, whatever it is that you have decides best for you. But with that said, I would like to move on to some of the metabolic effects and adaptations that occur with aerobic exercise. So fundamental to metabolic health is mitochondrial health.

Starting point is 01:15:04 And mitochondria, for most people who aren't aware of what these are, they're little tiny organelles that are inside of our cells. Most of our cells, with the exception of red blood cells, that are creating energy from the food that we eat, carbohydrates, fatty acids. They're very important for a variety of metabolic functions and everything from neurotransmitter synthesis, brain function to muscle function to cardiac function or mitochondria at the center of everything. So you really want to do what you can to preserve and improve mitochondrial health. There's a lot of interest in improving mitochondrial health and what types of training protocols are best for improving mitochondrial health. And when Dr. Martin Cabala was on the podcast, I was asking him about high intensity interval training and how that compared to more of a

Starting point is 01:15:56 zone two like continuous exercise type of training in terms of improving mitochondrial health. And he basically said that when the volume of exercise is kept the same, that mitochondrial density, so this is mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the creation of a new mitochondria, was actually better after high intensity interval training than more zone two low to moderate intensity type of training when the volume of exercise was the same. Now, again, as we mentioned earlier, you're most of the time going to be doing a larger volume of exercise of a zone two type of training versus high intensity interval training. So it becomes a more time-efficient way of getting some similar benefits, metabolic benefits and mitochondrial benefits as a zone two type of training would get. So with respect to mitochondrial biogenesis,

Starting point is 01:16:45 mitochondrial density, also a process known as mitophagy. So this is the clearing away of damaged mitochondria as we age. Our mitochondria become damaged. We don't have a repair system for, like, we don't have a DNA repair system. We have DNA in our mitochondria, but we don't have the same types of repair systems as we do in our nuclear genome. So mitochondria repair themselves through a variety of mechanisms, one of them is mitophagy where a portion of the mitochondria will be recycled or perhaps even the entire mitochondria if the entire mitochondria is damaged. It seems as though the more vigorously exercise, the more intense the exercise, the increased prevalence that you have of mitophagy happening. So again, it doesn't mean that zone two type of training isn't having that happen as well, but you

Starting point is 01:17:34 probably just have a larger volume of that before you get there. So then there's this whole area of fat burning. And you would discuss this a little bit earlier and Dr. Gabala discussed this, where what type of exercise is better for fat burning, right? Well, mitochondria are at the center of burning fat, right? So fatty acids are oxidized in the mitochondria. So you hear a lot about zone two training and how zone two training is really ideal for optimizing, optimizing fat burning. Maybe you can talk a little bit about, maybe you recap a little bit about what Dr. Gabala is saying with respect to how high intensity interval training affects fat utilization. and how that compares to perhaps a low to moderate intensity type of training like zone two training.

Starting point is 01:18:13 I think there's no question that zone two training, as we mentioned before, during Zoteau training, while you're actually exercising, fat oxidation is maximized. So you're burning more fat during Zotu training, at least as a relative percentage of total contribution versus carbohydrates, compared to like a higher intensity interval training. But when you were talking with Dr. Marnabala and you asked him, you know, Does the substrate that you are utilizing most during exercise kind of predict the adaptation in that? And his answer and what the literature would show is that fatty acid oxidation relies on your

Starting point is 01:18:47 mitochondrial content, as well as your levels of this enzyme known as CPT or carnitine pulmatorial transferase, which is the rate limiting enzyme for getting fatty acids into the mitochondria where they can be oxidized to produce energy? So any exercise or, you know, the exercise that improves CPT enzyme levels and mitochondrial content the most is going to enhance your fat oxidation capacity the most. And the evidence is pretty clear based on what I've been reading in certain meta-analyses that would show high-intensity training compared to moderate or low-intensity training. It increases mitochondrial content more. It increases CPT enzyme levels and activity more. So, and it also leads to better fat oxidation capacity. So even though you're not burning more fat during high-intensity training, your mitochondria are adapting in such a way to allow you to burn more fat or due to exercise training. So, which is interesting and not to say that you don't need zone two, but I think that it goes to show that maybe, you know, if your goal is to become a better fat burner, that high-intensity interval training might actually be, you know, when it's volume matched, just as good, if not a little bit better than modern intensity training. And it'll

Starting point is 01:19:57 comes back to the mitochondria. Hit is a potent stimulator of mitochondrial biogenesis and all of these mitochondrial enzymes as is in zone too, but hit might be a little bit better if volume matched again. It's always key to kind of note that. Right. It comes down to that adaptation, right? When you're pushing beyond the capacity of your body's ability to bring nutrients and oxygen to the mitochondria to be oxidized for energy and you start going into that, you know, zone three, zone four, where you're using glucose and producing lactate as a byproduct. Your body is going, oh, I need to increase my mitochondrial density so that I can start using my mitochondria, right? It's an adaptation. It's a response to that stressor.

Starting point is 01:20:38 And I think the other thing that people often think about is always like this black and white thinking, right? There's this bin and that bin, to use Lane Norton, Dr. Lane Norton's analogy, where people think if you're doing high-intensity interval training, you're just burning glucose and, and produce. producing lactate, and it's just not the case. In fact, the majority of the time, even when you're doing a high-intensity-inable training workout, you're doing both, right? You're not just burning. I mean, unless someone's doing like an all-out windgate, which I don't know many people that have done that. I certainly haven't ever done one. But you're not really going to be just only burning glucose, right? There's a gray area. So you're also still using your mitochondria to some degree as well. Totally. Yeah, I think we, yeah, sometimes, and especially going back to when we were

Starting point is 01:21:22 talking about zones. People talk about zones as if they're these very neat buckets, well, on zone two now and then, oh, if I get a little bit harder, I like flip across this threshold into zone two and then into zone three. But it's more of a spectrum versus a black and white jumping into these different buckets of zones or what we're using as a fuel source during exercise. Yeah, it's definitely more like a spectrum than a threshold that you cross and you're using one or the other. Why do people, why is there a, um, you can see it circulating around on social media and the blogosphere podcasts. If you're, if you're doing zone two training, you're going to be a better fat burner. Like I'm doing, you ask someone why I'm

Starting point is 01:22:04 doing so, I'm doing zone two training because I want to be a better, quote unquote, fat burner. What does that even mean? Is that even true? And I've also seen studies where it seems as though doing more high intensity interval training, more vigorous exercise, people end up burning more fat after the exercise, you know, if they're doing that type of exercise versus low to moderate intensity training. I think for, yeah, for something like weight loss or body composition, you know, if I think diet is probably the biggest lever you can pull for that and people will say, oh, exercise is not great for weight loss. But, you know, there is a contribution of exercise to weight loss. And for high intensity training, yeah, there does seem to be, you know, you're burning

Starting point is 01:22:42 a lot of fat during exercise. There's this quote unquote after burn effect that I know Dr. Martin Gabala talked about where, you know, maybe several hours after exercise. you kind of have this higher caloric burn or this higher fat burn. So if you're interested in, you know, improving body composition, you know, you kind of want to be, you become a better fat burner and burn more fat during exercise to help you improve your body composition. I think, you know, what it means to become a better fat burner is, is kind of nuanced and maybe not as understood. But I think this idea, one, is of metabolic flexibility. And so people may have heard this term before, but it essentially refers to the fact that, let's say, you're in between meals or you're fasting,

Starting point is 01:23:20 overnight and you wake up in the morning, like metabolic flexibility just reflects your ability to, you know, when glucose is low or glycogen stores are low, kind of switch over to using fatty acids or oxidizing fat for energy. So you can use both fuel sources kind of interchangeably and use them well because you have like the cellular and metabolic machinery to do that. But what it also means from a kind of performance and athletic perspective is that you're able to use fat as a fuel source at an increasingly higher intensity. So most people may be aware that once you start exercising more at a higher and higher intensity, you use more carbohydrate or more glucose as an energy source compared to fat.

Starting point is 01:23:59 So if you read like a classic exercise physiology textbook, there's always this graph where exercise intensity is on the x-axis and it goes from zero, which is resting to 100, maximum intensity exercise. And then the y-axis is another 0 to 100%. And that's your contribution of glucose and fat to your energy. And so at rest, you're using. you know, almost 100% maybe fat. And as you increase your exercise intensity, fat oxidation goes down, carbohydrate oxidation goes up. And then kind of in the middle, somewhere about 60, 70% of your

Starting point is 01:24:31 maximum heart rate. That's where, you know, you're getting 50% contribution from carbohydrate, 50% from fat. And so essentially, if you are a better fat burner, those are shifted a little bit. So the slope of those lines is kind of reduced, whereas, you know, maybe before your max fat oxidation occurred at 60% of your maximal exercise intensity. Well, now, if I become a better fat burner, when I'm at 80% of my maximal exercise intensity, that's where my maximal fat oxidation occurs. So you're using more fat at a higher exercise intensity. That is kind of from a performance or an athletics exercise perspective, what it means to become a better fat burner. And you can do that by doing fasted exercise. You can do it by doing zone two, doing high intensity interval training,

Starting point is 01:25:16 increasing your mitochondria. You know, eating a keto diet, there's like the famous study where they looked at people habitually eating a ketogenic diet and their max bad oxidation was at 85% of their exercise intensity, which is kind of high. So that's essentially what it means. What are the benefits? I mean, being a quote unquote glucose burner or a carb burner, you know, when you use carbohydrates, you kind of produce reactive oxygen species and maybe, you know, that may be helpful for limiting those kind of byproducts for performance, you know, it can help you not have to feel. as much during exercise. You know, if your body can use fat, you don't necessarily have to keep replenishing and keep your blood glucose high using exogenous, kind of like drinks or

Starting point is 01:25:54 gels or something like that. That's kind of from an athletics or performance perspective. So I think those are some of the main benefits. And, you know, not everybody's goal is to become a better fat burner, but there's need to be benefits both for health and longevity to doing so. Metabolic flexibility, I mean, there's definitely longevity benefits for that. And to get that metabolic flexibility. It sounds like, you know, you don't necessarily have to be just a zone two trainer. Like you can do high-intensity interval training. Again, you're increasing your mitochondrial density. There's a lot of different ways to get there in terms of aerobic exercise. It doesn't have to necessarily just be zone two, which is where some of that, like you hear some people

Starting point is 01:26:33 and I think there's a misconception where it's like, oh, I have to be in the zone two where I'm only burning fatty acids and not shifting into that more intense zone. zone where I'm burning glucose as well in order for me to become a fat burden. I don't know that that's necessarily the case. No, I don't think so. And, you know, like we just said, because if you get better, more and healthier and, you know, more efficient mitochondria, you're going to become a better fat burner. And there are multiple ways to improve the health of your mitochondria. Right. Just zone to exercise. Right. Well, shifting gears and talking a little bit about glucose regulation. I mean, this is also a very important area for cardiovascular health. I mentioned that glucose dysregulation,

Starting point is 01:27:11 And if you're constantly having elevations and blood glucose levels, that can lead to the stiffening of your myocardium, of your parricardium, right? These have collagen in them and they react with glucose, and that leads to a lower cardiac compliance. Essentially, your heart is less stretchy. You want to have, you want to maintain and improve your glucose regulation throughout your life. It's very important. This is where my conversation with Dr. Martin Cabala was really, I think, shed some light into the benefits of high-intensity interval training on glucose regulation. there's no doubt that aerobic exercise improves glucose regulation, like full stop, like you're going to have improved glucose regulation if you are engaging in aerobic exercise.

Starting point is 01:27:51 But if you're, again, comparing the volume of exercise being the same and comparing sort of a continuous lower to moderate intensity exercise with high intensity interval training or a more vigorous type of exercise, you're going to have more improvements in glucose regulation with the higher intensity exercise. And that somewhat has to do with the utilization of glucose, which produces lactate as a byproduct. It's not necessarily a byproduct. We know it's not a byproduct anymore. It's an active metabolite that is not only an energy source for mitochondria, it's also a signaling molecule. So in other words, it's a way for your muscles to communicate with your muscles and proteins in your muscles.

Starting point is 01:28:35 It's also a way for your muscles to communicate with other organs, like the brain and the heart and the liver and your kidneys. And so that lactate actually is a signaling molecule to the muscle cells, the glucose transporters in the muscle, then come up. It's called translocation. They come up to the self-surface of the muscle, and they're open and primed and ready to take in a lot of glucose. And lactate's really key in that process. So if you're producing lactate by having a more intense workout, you're going to have more for transporters that are translocating up to the muscle cell surface where they're ready to take in the glucose. So high-intensity interval training is definitely a good way to improve glucose regulation. But the lactate isn't the only reason for that, right? Yeah. So,

Starting point is 01:29:18 you know, lactate obviously pretty important in that mechanism that you just referenced, but muscle interaction in and in of itself is just so interesting in that it also causes this glue-forward transporters to translocate to the cell membrane where they can suck up more glucose into the muscle. And so what high-intensity interval training does that makes it more potent for doing that is it engages a larger amount of muscle mass. Like you mentioned, it increases our utilization of glucose in the skeletal muscle. So it kind of increases the sensitivity of the muscle to take up glucose because you're utilizing it. Larger amount of muscle mass, larger amount of glucose transporters, and more glucose taken up into the cell. So essentially, you know, that's another reason I think why high-intensity

Starting point is 01:30:00 training and resistance training too, like we'll talk about later, but are great for glucose regulation, maybe much more so particularly compared to Zone 2 training. You're talking about engaging the muscles. There was a study that was published, oh gosh, not a few months ago. I mean, it was less than a year ago that had compared doing 10 body weight squats to 30 minutes. So the 10 body weight squats over the span of an eight hour work day, basically. So you're doing it every 45 minutes. So every 45 minutes, you do 10 body weight squats over eight hours. And now is compared to a 30-minute continuous walk. And the body weight squats were more potent at improving glucose clearance than the continuous walk. Again, probably because

Starting point is 01:30:47 lactase being produced and you're engaging, like you're talking about the muscles are being engaged more robustly than perhaps a walk would do. But also, Dr. Gavala talked about walking. and continuous walking versus interval walking as well. Yeah, and I think that the study that he was citing shows that just intensity matters, but also kind of just interval, kind of the in-hole pattern could be interesting for like regularly in glucose. So yeah, he mentioned the study where they basically just did two groups of walking, where one walked at the continuous intensity of 65%. And the other group alternated intensities of 75% and 60%.

Starting point is 01:31:28 So not even high-intensity interval training. They just did interval walking, is what he called it. And they experienced much better improvements in. It was 24-hour, 24-hour glucose regulation and cardiometabolic risk factors, I think in things like waist circumference, their BMI, as well as like their HB and 1C. All those things improved better with interval walking compared to just moderate intensity walking, even when they didn't do really high-intensity. So there seems to be maybe something unique about, you know, the study that you mentioned,

Starting point is 01:31:56 breaking up the activity throughout the day and then doing oscillating intervals, even if it's just walking for glucose regulations. So something to think about for people if glucose regulation is one of their goals. Right. I like to do that. Again, like I mentioned with my hikes, you know, we'll stop and we'll do some intervals of friends. Of course, like throughout the day, it's nice. We'll talk a little bit about exercise snacks, but that's another way to kind of break up the sedentary part of your day. I want to shift gears and talk a little bit about, I'll just talk briefly about brain health. training for brain health. We cover a little bit in this in this guide as well. And Dr. Gabala and I talked a little bit about this as well. In fact, he just sent me a systematic analysis yesterday,

Starting point is 01:32:36 a new study that came out on high intensity interval of training and how it improves brain drive neurotrophic factor. So brain drive neurotrophic factor is a growth factor. It's a neurotropic factor. It's produced in the body, in the muscle, but also in the brain. In the brain, it plays a very important role for it helps the growth of new neurons in certain parts of the brain, like the substantia nigra, for example, the hippocampus. And it helped with the connections between neurons so that your synapses and your connections and your long-term potentiation, things that are forming long-term memory or more solidified. It plays a role in neuroplasticity, the ability of your brain to sort of adapt to the changing environment and a variety of other things that's doing in your brain. That's

Starting point is 01:33:23 usually beneficial for brain aging, for cognition. So you really want to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the brain. There's been a variety of exercise protocols, high-intensity exercise protocols, vigorous exercise. It seems as though the more vigorous, the intensity, the exercise, the more robust, the brain-derived neurotrophic factor effect. And again, this comes down to lactate as well as other mechanisms. Lactate's one mechanism because lactate has been shown to cross over to the blood-brain barrier and in the brain, activate brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So it's one of the ways your muscle communicates with the brain and tells the brain, you know, because you're stressed in your muscles, you're also stressing your brain at the same

Starting point is 01:34:04 time. And so it's a way, it's a response, an adaptation, the way your body is adapting and going, okay, I need to make sure I can handle this stress. Let's make more brain-derived neurotrophic factor so that I can handle that stress. Even the 10-minute, you know, high-intensity interval training workout has been shown to improve cognition. I often like to do a 10-minute tabata before I do something that I need to be sharp or focused on like a podcast, for example, because it's a 10-minute workout. I mean, you have 10 minutes and you can do it. And I often feel really good after that. So we do cover some of that in the training guide as well. I think that the bottom line with protocols to improve brain-driven, brain-driven neurotropic

Starting point is 01:34:46 factor is intensity and also volume. So, you know, even if you're doing, if you're doing a 20-minute workout and you want to be at least like 80 percent, your max heart rate for those 20 minutes, more like a zone three-ish kind of workout, right? That's been shown to robustly increase brain driven neurotrophic factor. If you double that to 40 minutes, then you get an even more robust increase. I think a lot of people will probably just know that to be true anecdotally. I certainly know that if I do a longer low to moderate intensity exercise like 60 to 90 minutes, I feel good afterwards. You know, my mind feels clear, but it's nothing like when I do a high intensity interval

Starting point is 01:35:23 session where you sometimes feel like your brain is just like on fire. So I think a lot of people have the same experience where just low kind of steady state exercise. Yeah, it feels good, but it really doesn't provide, I think, the cognitive improvement benefits acutely that high intensity training does. And I know that's something that you talk about a ton and just how you structure your own hit protocols to really correspond with your either your cognitive work that you're doing because you really do, you just feel clear, you feel sharp after, you feel energized. So I really do

Starting point is 01:35:51 think there's like nothing like hit to improve brain health. And obviously long-term brain health through exercise training, but just to use it acutely as well, just as like this kind of stimulant almost. Right. I deliberately structure those short 10-minute hit workouts around times like this, like I have a podcast I'm going to do, or a presentation I'm going to give. And I'm in a hotel and it's like I got to do my 10-minute high-intensity workout. I often go to the gym and get on the bike and do something. That kind of is a good, I think this is a good segue into these sort of exercise snacks. Now, some people would consider a 10-minute workout even on the longer end of an exercise snack. So exercise snacks are, they can be structured or unstructured. And I

Starting point is 01:36:32 talked about this with Dr. Martin Kabala a lot. He's been involved in a lot of studies involving the unstructured type of exercise snacks. But the structure type of exercise snacks, but the structure type of exercise snack is something where you're getting your heart rate really high, at least 80% of your max heart rate, right? You're getting more into that vigorous intensity zone. And it could be anywhere from one minute to nine minutes, perhaps 10 minutes, where you're doing intervals, right? If you're doing a 10 minutes, not like the entire 10 minutes you're in that, but you're doing intervals. But if you're doing a one minute or two minute or three minute workout, then you can, you can be in a pretty high, 85% your max heart rate zone, right? So,

Starting point is 01:37:10 some examples would be something like body weight squats or you do high knees or burpees or jumping jacks for some people, lunges, right? Something where you're you're engaging multiple muscle groups and you're also just getting your heart rate up as well. So those would be the structured types of exercise snacks. There's also the unstructured type where people just throughout their daily activities that they're doing will engage in an exercise snack. So these are called vigorous, intermittent lifestyle physical activity or vilpa. And this is typically someone who, let's say, their office is on the third or fourth floor of a building and they sprint up this stairs. They go fast up the stairs, maybe not technically sprint because a coach would be like, no way.

Starting point is 01:37:54 And you're right, but no way. But they're going fast. They're not just walking. They're going fast. Their heart rates getting up. And they do that multiple times a day. Or they walk. And instead of just walking, they're really briskly walking. They're, they're going really fast, right? And there's other examples of this sort of unstructured type of, you know, house cleaning sometimes, right? People are like going around and vacuuming and they're kind of fast. Like, you know, I've seen that being the case as well. So there's a lot of types of unstructured exercise that can be done. And there's a variety of benefits that are associated with is sort of these exercise snacks. And if you're with Dr. Gabala, when he came on the podcast,

Starting point is 01:38:32 he was talking a lot about these vilpa studies where researchers give people, that are engaging in this type of unstructured exercise, an accelerometer. So this is measuring their heart rate and they're able to see their heart rate and also like, I guess, the distance as well. But it's also measuring their heart rate. And they're seeing how high their heart rate goes. And then they've looked at a variety of outcomes, all cause mortality, cardiovascular related mortality, cancer-related mortality. And what these publications, which Dr. Gabala has been a part of, have shown, is that people that are engaging in this type of vilpa exercise, this unstructured exercise, for one to two minutes three times a day. So you're getting up to the nine minute a day range.

Starting point is 01:39:21 They have a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality, cardiovascular-related mortality, and a 40% reduction in cancer-related mortality. And these are even, these are benefits that are even found in people that identify as non-exercisers. So in other words, they don't consider themselves. They don't go to the gym. They're not doing tennis or dance class or whatever. They consider themselves like not doing physical activity. So I think that that day that really kind of drives home that even these small sort of burst of physical activity can be beneficial for health. Then there's also a lot of psychological benefits that Dr. Kabbala talked about as well.

Starting point is 01:40:02 With the exercise snacks, it obviously, I think, that psychologically, you know, knowing that you have to just exercise for one to two minutes at a time, it feels easier. And so one of their, I think, goals with these exercise snacks and doing these actual studies was one of the barriers to exercise for some people is, oh, I have to exercise for 30 to 40 minutes at a time. I don't really want to do that. Now, people should probably learn to do that, but, you know, for people who may not comply with that, it feels psychologically easier than long workout. And they don't really require any special equipment. If you're doing them throughout the day, where you're working at a job, you don't even have to change your clothes. And so it just removes

Starting point is 01:40:40 that psychological barrier that I have to get dressed and go to the gym and exercise for 30 minutes at a time. With exercise snacks, you're doing it for one to five minutes and then it's over and you just do it a few times per day. So psychologically, they feel easier. These consistent small efforts also appear to enhance adherence. And so when they conduct these studies, they find that adherence is pretty high as compared to maybe some of the exercise training studies where people don't necessarily do all the exercise that they're prescribed, especially if it's supposed to be at home and it's, you know, it doesn't require them coming into the lab. So those are kind of two of the psychological benefits and I think those can be leveraged by, again, maybe non-exacizers, but also people who

Starting point is 01:41:19 exercise. But there are a lot of physiological benefits to the exercise snacks as well. I mean, there are multiple studies by Dr. Gabali and colleague showing people improve their VO2 max just by doing these exercise snacks, four to five times per day for a few times per week. They can improve cardiometabolic health, so they can improve their blood pressure, reduce their fasting blood glucose, improve their HBA1C, so measures of body composition, glucose regulation. All of these can improve with exercise snacks, which is profound, I think. One thing to note, I think, is that these people were previously untrained, so I don't think you can take somebody who's exercising at a level of maybe what you and I are doing right and do exercise snacks. You're going to, you're going to

Starting point is 01:41:59 see these huge health benefits, especially like VO2 max. But I certainly think that they can be additive. So if you are exercising and you add these exercise snacks, you can receive additional health benefits, but you might not see a, you know, 50% improvement in your VO2 max by doing exercise snacks. But studies have shown that. And so I think they can be very potent in doing that as well in showing that it doesn't require a large time investment just to see a fitness improvement. And then I think one of the other benefits is that they break up sedentary time. throughout the day. So we know that being sedentary, sitting for, say, 30 to 60 minutes or longer, or maybe three hours at a time is not good for cardiometabolic health. So breaking up your

Starting point is 01:42:40 sedentary time as much as possible is good. And so physically, psychologically, just with the cognitive benefits too, using these exercise snacks intermittently throughout the day can improve physical health by reducing sedentary time and keeping more focused by reducing your kind of the cognitive maybe slump that you get after you sit for three hours or so at a time. It also helps with the midday slumpiness, like where you're feeling kind of sleepy, and I cannot drink caffeine afternoon. Like, for me, it affects me. I'll be up too late in the evening.

Starting point is 01:43:16 So I will get up and do some body weight squads. Usually it's body weight squads. Sometimes I'll do some push-ups or something. But something that just gets my heart right up and blood flowing. and what do you know, I feel better, right? I'm ready. I'm more focused, ready to get back to work as well. And the other thing that's really good with the exercise snacks is to time them around meals.

Starting point is 01:43:35 And there's also been some evidence on this published looking at mostly people with metabolic dysfunction like type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and how even doing something timed around a meal, and it doesn't have to be long. It can be a short, again, you're doing some body weight squats or burpees or jumping jacks, whatever. improves glucose regulation, right? And so it's something that you can, I typically will do it if I'm going out to dinner, certainly when I'm on vacation, and I don't eat the way I usually eat on my my usual discipline type of diet where it's like, okay, we're in Italy and we're having gelato. Guess what? I'm like next to the gelato station and I'm doing body wakes. It's like, so I mean, it's something that can be used as a tool for, like you mentioned, improving cardiometabolic health and also timing it around times when maybe you're cheating a little bit more as well.

Starting point is 01:44:25 Sure. And also, you know, can be used to kind of, if you feel like you don't have enough time with your main training sessions during the week to kind of meet that minimum recommended levels of physical activity, I think to exercise snacks, again, can be additive. So they can be used to kind of bring your total exercise volume during the week up to meet those activity levels or sneak in maybe extra exercise if you don't find you have the time or miss a training session or maybe there's a day where you just don't have the time to dedicate to an actual training session. I'm going to do exercise snacks today, and that could be a suitable alternative. Very good point.

Starting point is 01:44:56 Yeah, and also that psychologically feels good, right? I'm checking that box, right? I do exercise snacks during the day, even though I'm training a lot. Just, again, mostly, like, for the psychological benefits, it's all do, like, some kettlebell swings, some push-ups, some pull-ups. You know, they might help me build a little bit of strength, but definitely get that cognitive boost. All right, so I think that wraps up our... section on aerobic exercise training. We really covered a lot of ground here. This is all covered

Starting point is 01:45:25 in our How to Train according to the expert's guide, along with a variety of protocols, more detailed information. Again, you can find that at how to train guide.com. We're going to move on to resistance training. This is another area very important for longevity and also an area that I've actually focused a lot more on in the last year. You know, it really happened after I started having experts in this field of muscle protein synthesis, muscular health, professors like Dr. Stuart Phillips, Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, even experts like Dr. Ling Norton as well, having them on the podcast and just hearing about all the important aspects of maintaining strength, maintaining mass with age, really was eye-opening for me. And so I became,

Starting point is 01:46:21 I dedicated a lot more effort and time into resistance training over the last year. Really, some of the statistics that Dr. Stewart had called out on the podcast were kind of scary. You know, first of all, he mentioned that your peak muscle mass occurs between the age of 20 and 30. For me, was quite a while ago. I mean, you're reaching that point. But that's your peak. And then after that peak, about you start to decline on average, about 8% per decade. So this age-related decline in muscle mass is often referred to as sarcopenia.

Starting point is 01:46:59 And there's a lot of elements that can contribute to that, which I will not get into. But so 8% per decade. And then as you reach the age of 70, that goes up to 15%. per decade. And then strength actually declines even quicker than muscle mass. So strength declines annually for men about three to four percent per year. And then for women, it's about 2.5 to 3 percent. Your strength decreases per year on average. Now, if you're engaging in resistance training, strength training, then you're skewing that, right, in a positive way. You're not going to be declining as much. And that's kind of the goal, one of the goals of resistance.

Starting point is 01:47:42 training. But it's also very important for maintaining functional independence. So your muscle mass, your muscle strength, these are very important for, as you're aging, to have functional independence to make sure you're lowering your risk of a fracture, a fall. That's also very important. As well as when you're doing the resistance training, a lot of the exercises that are engaging, you know, multiple muscle groups are also improving bone density as well, right? And that's another aspect that's very beneficial with respect to resistance training. But there's also another part of this equation that's muscle power. Muscle power, yeah. We recently covered this in one of our newsletters, but researchers have kind of proposed this new term called power penia as like a nod to sarcopenia.

Starting point is 01:48:30 So power pina being the age-related loss of muscle power. And so muscle power, as opposed to muscle strength and muscle mass, is your ability to generate force quickly. So standing up out of a chair, or, you know, lifting something heavy with a high velocity. Those are all kind of examples of muscle power. And why that's important is because, you know, like strength, obviously, but it's important for predicting your functional independence and essential for activities of daily living, essentially, you know, especially as you get older.

Starting point is 01:49:00 And so one of the ways to measure it is using just like a simple sit to stand test on a chair, but like how quickly can you do that? So how quickly can you sit down and rise from a chair? We even, you know, in the study that we covered, that's how they assessed muscle power and showed that it was correlated with actually longevity, which was pretty interesting. So what's unique about muscle power is that it seems to decline earlier, start declining earlier, and then it declines more rapidly than muscle mass or muscle strength.

Starting point is 01:49:26 So obviously, you know, how much muscle you have and your strength, all of these things are kind of interrelated, but muscle power seems to be a more, a more sensitive indicator and maybe a more robust indicator of functional outcomes with age. And so muscle power is just as important. You can obviously train for it as we'll talk about how to train for hypertrophy and strength. Similar, you know, with resistance training, you need to resistance train to improve muscle power. But yeah, this is another idea that hasn't been as necessarily well cited as the declines in muscle mass and strength, but it might actually decline to a greater degree than either. Yeah, it's not something that's talked about as much either, right? So, yeah, we're going to cover a lot of aspects of resistance training.

Starting point is 01:50:05 including training for strength and hypertrophy, body composition as well. But I want to start with when I had Dr. Lane Norton on the podcast, he had some really good general principles that people can follow for resistance training. Most people can follow these general principles. And I thought they were really, they were just really, it was really good information that was just, I think, accessible and applicable for a lot of people. I did too. And this. just because they were, you know, very non-technical kind of just advice on how to think about training in general. We're applying this to resistance training, but can it be applied to, you know, any types of training. So he mentioned the first one was consistency. The most effective training

Starting point is 01:50:49 regimen is the one that you're going to follow. If you have a coach who prescribes a training regimen to you that is too hard or that leads to injury or that you don't enjoy, you know, you're not going to be consistent in executing it and you need consistency in order to see long-term progress. So his first one was consistency. That's obviously important. Progressive overload is the second one. This is kind of a fundamental aspect of all exercise training. And what progressive overload just means is increasing your dose, your load, your volume, your intensity, however you want to define it, of exercise overtime. So with resistance training, week after week, month after month, year after year, you want to continually stress your muscle by lifting a heavier weight in order to cause that muscle to grow,

Starting point is 01:51:32 either stronger or bigger or both, however you want to do that. So progressive overload, a key aspect of thinking about resistance training. The third one is going to be recovery, sometimes a cliche, but you actually get stronger when you aren't exercising, not when you are. So you need to do the training, but you also need to allow your body to recover. And so Lane stress the importance of recovery. That includes, you know, both just decreasing your training or doing light intensity training or no training at all, doing some light active recovery versus just laying on the couch all day.

Starting point is 01:52:05 That's not necessarily the ideal way to recover. And then, you know, focusing on sleep, focusing on eating, focusing on your protein intake, but obviously just eating enough to sustain your training and to rebuild the muscle so it can get stronger. And then the final one was mindset and execution. Focus on execution rather than being perfect. I mean, you know, we in this world of health and fitness, dare I say, biohacking, but I like to focus on the very specifics of things, like I got to get the sets perfectly right or the weight perfectly right. And obviously those can be important, but what the main thing is, is executing it week after week, doing the training and not focusing on you are at the perfect heart rate or the perfect lactate level or

Starting point is 01:52:46 lifting, you know, this perfect amount of weight down to the 0.1 kilogram. Just execute week after week and that will lead to consistent gains. So yeah, again, I think all of the principles that Lane provided when, you know, you were talking to them during your interview were great. And everybody should just keep those, you know, in the back of their minds when they're thinking about training in addition to, you know, structuring their training, which we will talk about how to do very soon. Yeah, it's for me, you know, I, like I mentioned, I've really engaged on this journey in the last year of really being committed to my resistance training. And all of these, you know, principles that that Lane discussed, I am following. So the consistency for me really involved

Starting point is 01:53:30 having a coach and a group of friends that I work out with as well. We do resistance training together. And both of those for me help tremendously with consistency. Now, other people might be different. Some people, I mean, I think generally speaking, accountability does help with consistent consistency so having a coach or a class you go to or some friends that you work out with routinely. Like you have this day per week, you guys are doing this workout together. Really helps with consistency. The progressive overload. So working with a coach, this is obvious probably why I'm able to. But I learned how important it was, where it's like I don't just write out the bad go and like I'm doing a back squat with 80 pounds. I'm working my way up there.

Starting point is 01:54:16 And in many cases, you can consider that like a one. warm up, but, you know, I start with just body weight squats and then I just do the bar. And then we progressively load the weight, right? And so that's also a really important aspect as well as recovery, and we're going to talk a little about recovery even between sets and also recovery days. What's interesting is now I've been doing so much of the strength training and resistance training that my recovery days are my zone two runs, which I never would have thought of as recovery days back when I was only just doing running or running in my peloton. But it's kind of funny how sometimes you call that a recovery, but it really, you know, you're engaging in exercise.

Starting point is 01:54:56 You're just letting, you're not, it's not so hard on your muscles, right? I also find that doing runs seems to help with the soreness big time. It definitely does, you know, increasing that blood flow. So I think it's, you know, basically are doing a form of like active recovery. And that's why I think if you do a strength training and you, you know, or a hard run, even lay around on the couch all the day, the next day you just feel sore, you feel stiff, you don't feel good. So yeah, I think your zone two training sessions are kind of having a dual benefit there. They're increasing your fitness, but then they're also providing some good recovery

Starting point is 01:55:27 from your resistance training session. Right. And then mindset, another one. That's a big one. And for me, sometimes I just do it, like, especially when I'm doing strength training, when I, if I know what, how heavy I got, you know, like, what was my one rep max? maximum amount of weight that I could live for just one rep. What did I get to last time? Or what was my reps in reserve? Like, what was I, what was I at for that? I don't think about those things.

Starting point is 01:55:57 I'm just, I'm just doing it. And it really helps to not be a perfectionist because that can get, that can really get in your mind and kind of stress you out. Yeah. I think the stress. And that's another thing. When I am under a lot of stress, I kind of just do something a little bit lighter, you know, not quite as intense. I think it can be counterproductive to train if you're overly psychological, psychologically stressed. I mean, when you were talking with Lane, I think he talked about, you know, there are several studies showing like psychological stress, it increases your injury risk. Your training session is not going to be compromised. I mean, I know exercise, you know, for myself and many other people can be stress relieving.

Starting point is 01:56:38 But if there's something majorly stressful and it's going to either compromise your training or increase your injury risk, then you should probably just maybe tick. a recovery day or take an easy day if you had something more intense planned. So yeah, mindset is definitely important in structuring your training. I think it's, it becomes more important when you're lifting heavy, like for strength training. So let's talk about strength training. We're talking about training for strength and even bone density, bone mass as well, because there's a lot of overlap there. And Dr. Brad Schoenfeld came on the podcast and really did, was so knowledgeable in this area and talked quite a bit about strength training and how to like the best types of exercises for strength training. And I think one of the takehomes here was the multi-joint exercises. These are

Starting point is 01:57:27 the compound type of exercises. They're engaging multiple muscle groups and joints simultaneously. It really are the best type of exercise for improving strength. And ultimately, they're more time efficient as well. So these are exercises like squats or deadlifts or lunges, rows of any type of variation presses, overhead presses, all the variety of types of presses that you can do. These are the multi-joint compound types of exercises. They're essentially improving function. It's functional training. It's also, again, I'm going to improve bone density more because you're putting more force and you're putting more with the force and stressing your bones more with those types of exercises, and that causes the adaptation of bone remodeling.

Starting point is 01:58:21 So you're going to have improvements in bone mineral density and bone mass as well. So a lot of the overlap between those multi-joint exercises. When it comes to strength itself, so I guess I should contrast that to the single joint exercises, which are more like bicep curls, trisip kickbacks, what are some other? ones, you know? Some single joint exercises. I think, yeah, bicep curls, tricep extensions, leg extensions. Yeah, that's all those, all those things.

Starting point is 01:58:51 Anything where you're just, yeah, doing a single joint kind of explains itself. Well, when you're, so strength training in general is mostly where you're lifting heavier and doing the lower volume, right? So I think Dr. Schoenfeld mentioned, you want to, when you're doing strength training, you're going to get up to about an 85% or more of your one. rep max, which again is the maximum amount of weight you can lift for one rep. And that's the strength training. And so oftentimes you are going to do fewer reps than you would if you were not strength training. And you're going to require a longer recovery. So Dr. Schoenfeld mentioned between two to five

Starting point is 01:59:32 minutes depending on the weight that you're lifting, depending on how you feel. So I know for me personally, with my strength training, you know, yesterday I was doing strength training with back squads. And I got up, I got up to 85% of my one rep max. So that's where I ended at that weight. Sometimes I go to an actual where I just do one rep. But I was doing 85% of my one rep max and I did five reps. And I would rest about three minutes between that. Typically, I rest between two to three minutes between my sets. and every person's sort of different. And if you're lifting heavier, you're going to require more rest. And it's really important.

Starting point is 02:00:13 And I've learned this where my cardio-respatory system feels ready to go pretty quickly after I finish my set. And I have to like wait and go, wait a minute. Like if I start to engage again, I'm not going to get the five in because I'm going to, my muscles haven't had enough time to recover. You, Dr. Sherwin felt, I think that was one of the main things he's stressed with strength training was there might be that temptation to, you know, rest maybe one to two minutes or like really cut the rest interval just to get to get to the next set because it does, you know, it does make the exercise quote unquote harder because, you know, you're reducing your rest period. And like you said, if you're in a decent, you know,

Starting point is 02:00:52 you have a decent level of aerobic fitness. I think that your your heart rate will come down quickly after performing that exercise. So maybe even, you know, psychologically, cardiovascularly, you might feel like, oh, I'm ready to do the next set. But your body literally needs time to replenish the fossil creatine stores in order to produce, you know, the ATP to do that next set, your nervous system needs time to rest. And so that's why, you know, Dr. Schoenfeld recommended rest up to anywhere from two to five minutes again based on how much weight you're lifting. You know, if you're doing failure on each set, you might need to do longer. If you're doing one to three reps in reserve, you might need to take a little bit shorter rest. But two to three

Starting point is 02:01:28 minutes is probably the minimum anywhere up to five. And he really emphasized, just don't rush the rest period, especially when training for strength, because your goal on each of those sets is to lift the maximum amount of weight that you can. You don't want to, it's not just about fatiguing the muscle. It's, you know, you have to be ready to, you know, if you lift 95% of your 1 rep max on, you know, this set, you want to be able to do that the next set. You need adequate recovery to be able to do that, particularly if your goal is to improve strength or even muscle power as well could be similar.

Starting point is 02:01:59 Right. You mentioned the central nervous system and that rusting being important for that you're central nervous system to recover. And I'll say that for me, it's been one of the most surprising aspects of strength training in particular is how stressful it is on my central nervous system. Lifting heavy is scary to me. And I don't know, I mean, I'm sure as I become stronger, it won't be as scary because I'm more experienced. Now, I've been doing strength training now for, I would say it's been 11 months. So I started last February. So almost a year. And of course I've been progressively getting to where I am now. But it's hard mentally on me. And I find that it's physically

Starting point is 02:02:50 hard too, for sure. But I find that, I mean, just that moment before I'm about to lift, like do a clean or, you know, squat down or deadlift, whatever it is, I'm anxious, you know, and it's very stressful for me. In fact, one of the very surprising benefits to strength training for me was the effect on my ability to handle stress throughout the day. Because I do exercise, you know, it's pretty much what I do before I eat and, you know, take care of my family and stuff. But then I exercise. I'm doing my strength training before I work. And I have found that doing the hardest thing for me mentally, in the day, first thing in the morning, makes everything else a lot easier. And that was very surprising for me, because, you know, I do a lot of stuff that's hard. And boy, but getting that

Starting point is 02:03:45 barbell and doing that clean or, you know, lifting that really heavy weight, it's very hard. So it's, it's important, again, to let your central nervous system rest as well. And that is also going back to what we were talking about with Lane, not be, if you're very, if you're under a very stressed state, it's probably not the time to try to do your, your personal PR on, you know, lifting weights. So he meant, he even mentioned that. He says, you know, if he's has something planned for the day where he's trying to go like really maximal, like either lift a failure or set like a PR in the squad or deadlift or something and he's like stressed and he won't do it because, yeah, you have to be, not only is going to raise your injury risk, but, you know, you're probably not going to be

Starting point is 02:04:29 to perform that activity because your nervous system just isn't in the state that's primed to do that. I know Lane has, like, posted videos and he'll post videos on social media where he's preparing for a lift, and you see how psychologically amped up that he gets before doing that. And, like, that's what you've got to do because part of it, yeah, you need to be strong to lift away, but it's like your nervous system is contributing a lot to lifting the way during training and trying to set like a PR attempt. So it's one of the aspects I think of training that kind of goes, it's less talked about, But it's certainly important.

Starting point is 02:05:00 I think I need to get some more loud, amping music on when I'm strength training, because I don't have any on while I'm doing my strength training. And I'm wondering if that'll help me a little bit with being a little more mentally prepared for it. It might, or maybe some of those smelling salts that the lifters use. So talking about failure, that's another area that both Dr. Schoenfeld and Dr. Lane Norton have discussed on the podcast in terms of,

Starting point is 02:05:31 do you have to go to failure to improve your muscle strength or even mass? Is, you know, for a lot of, I would say a long time, a lot of people thought that going to failure was really the ultimate, necessary thing to really get those gains in strength. And in fact, it seems as though, at least according to a lot of the published research that have come out, Dr. Schoenfeld talked about that it's actually not necessarily it's not necessary and also may even potentially be problematic in some cases, particularly if you're doing like a multi-joint type of exercise because you can increase your injury risk. And also as you mentioned, like, if you're going to failure, then you kind of like,

Starting point is 02:06:13 if you're going to do, you can't really do another next set without like you're going to affect your performance, right? So what were some other things that Dr. Norton and Dr. Roshanfeld mentioned with respect to failure? If you're, yeah, training to failure, doesn't appear to be necessary to optimize strength or hypertrophy. It appears at least, you know, pretty equal to training with, you know, a couple reps in reserve. And we'll talk about what that means in the second. But so, yeah, training to failure doesn't appear to be necessary. I think if you're going to train to failure, Dr. Schoenfeld seemed to recommend doing machine-based exercises versus on free weights because the injury risk and the risk of, you know, an accident happening is lower.

Starting point is 02:06:53 If you're on a machine, you know, you can't, you can't drop a weight on yourself really if you're using a machine. So going to failure on machine-based exercises seems to be fine. And on maybe those single joint exercises too. So if you're doing something like a bicep curl, okay, you can do to failure on that. But maybe not going to failure on a barbell back squatter or something like that. Those were kind of his recommendations there. So, but in regards to then, if you're not training to failure, what should you do to kind of optimize strength? Both Lane and Dr. Schoenfeld use this concept of reps in reserve. And so essentially what a reps in reserve means is you're lifting to the point of how many repetitions are you away from complete failure. So if you are three reps in reserve, that means I do one, you know, another repetition of exercise and, oh, if I did three more of these, I would fail.

Starting point is 02:07:40 But I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop with three repetitions in reserve. And training with one to three reps in reserve appears to be just as good as trained to failure if your goal is to max my strength or muscle hypertrophy. So people can kind of use that to guide your training. If you're doing one to three reps in reserve, that is a good kind of range to stop in terms of if you don't want to train to failure. One of the cool great recommendations I think from Lane Norton was that everybody trained a failure at least once. You know, maybe every training block trained to failure at least once. Because unless you train to failure, similar to like what we talk about with V02 Max, if you never go to failure, you don't really know what failure feels like.

Starting point is 02:08:23 So train to failure once, and then you can prescribe your training based on the reps in reserve because you sort of know what it feels like when your body really has, it doesn't have another repetition left in it. So you recommend the training failure at least once, but then, you know, you don't need to train to failure every time you train because, one, yes, it compromises your recovery for your next session, increases your entry risk, all of those things. And obviously people are free to train to failure, but it doesn't appear to be optimal or necessary to improve your strength or hypertrophy. What about, so when people, when you're engaging in a lot of compound lifts in particular, dead lifts, squats, your heart rate gets very elevated. I mean, you're,

Starting point is 02:09:07 you're pushing like high intensity training workouts for sure. And there are some people that only strength train, only to resistance training. And they think because their heart rate's getting really elevated, they're filling that cardiovascular aerobic exercise bin because their heart rates getting elevated. But Dr. Levine came on the podcast and said that not, that really wasn't the case. Definitely not the case. So strength training cannot be your form of cardio, I think is the too long, didn't read version of that. So yes, while it is true that your heart rate will increase when you do strength training, if you continue to do strength training and compare it to aerobic exercise training for one, you don't get the same improvement. So if you do, you know, if you look at all the benefits of

Starting point is 02:09:55 aerobic exercise training that include like improvements in endothelial function, cardiovascular structure, like we talked about, blood pressure, you don't get those same benefits from resistance exercise training. So that is kind of one reason why you should do both, why endurance strength training, why strength training people should do a lot of endurance exercise training. And even Levine said, you know, he consults with NFL players, football players, and he recommends that everybody do some aerobic exercise training. And the reason for that, though, is, is interesting and it's kind of rooted in, you know, the mechanisms of why heart rate increases during endurance exercise versus aerobic exercise. So during aerobic exercise, your heart rate

Starting point is 02:10:30 increases because there is an elevated metabolic demand in the muscle and therefore your, you know, your cardiac output needs to increase to deliver more blood flow to the muscles. And that means your heart rate and your stroke volume both increase. During strength training, though, the drive for the increase in heart rate is mainly from the autonomic nervous system. So it's a central, driven by central command. So if you think about, you know, if you just are here and Dr. Levine used the example where you're just clenching your fist as hard as possible or like grasping something maybe, well, your heart rate is going to increase, but that's just due to a drive from your central nervous system. So versus a metabolic demand increasing in the muscle or like the drive

Starting point is 02:11:12 for increased blood flow during aerobic exercise. So your heart rate increases for different reasons during strength training compared to aerobic exercise. And you don't, don't get the cardiac adaptations from strength training that you do from aerobic exercise. So they're not the same. They're not comparable. Yes, heart rate increases during strength training, but it is not a form of, quote, unquote, cardio or endurance aerobic exercise. It was fascinating to me to hear Dr. Levine's explanation of that and for that, basically why

Starting point is 02:11:42 your heart rate elevates so much when you're doing a strength training. And especially given my anecdote, right, where I was just talking about how. surprised it was how much my central nervous system was involved in strength training. I wonder if there is some connection there as well. I just had, you know, I had no idea that it was like, it's so, it's mentally taxing on my brain. Strength training is, it's very much, uses a lot of my, my central nervous system is very active, I guess, is the way to put it. But let's shift gears and talk a little bit about hypertrophy training, right? So this is, there's a lot of overlap with strength training here. And Dr. Schoenfeld on the podcast was talking about, no, hypertrophy training.

Starting point is 02:12:26 So these are, this is the type of training that people are interested in with the goal of increasing their muscle size, their muscle mass, right, hypertrophy, muscle hypertrophy. And essentially, the, the biggest difference that he was mentioning is, is the weight, right? So you're not, you're not lifting as heavy and you're increasing the volume, right? So you're lifting lighter and you're increasing the volume. So typically I mentioned with strength training, people are getting up to about 85% of their one rep max. With hypertrophy training, it's more like 60 to 80% of your one rep max. And so you're doing more reps rather than doing like, you know, up to five reps for what you'd be doing with strength training. You're doing like six to 10 or 12 reps. And so this is, this is a, I would

Starting point is 02:13:14 say, like, one of the biggest like general principles that Dr. Schoenfeld talked about in the podcast with respect to training for muscle hypertrophy. Resting is also a little bit lower. Like you don't have, it's not as shorter. You don't have to rest quite as long because it's not, you're not lifting as heavy. So you're resting for one to maybe two minutes between your sets versus two to five minutes. So that's also, it seems like a big difference. And then when it comes to like exercise selection, Dr. Schoenfeld mentioned, I mean, it really depends on what you're interested in, right? So you're always it seems best to do these multi-joint exercises, right? So you're doing deadlifts, you're doing squats, you're doing presses, rows,

Starting point is 02:13:53 because not only are you getting gains in muscle hypertrophy, strength, you're also getting functional, you know, you're improving your functional, your function, your muscular function, and power. A lot of powers in things like squats or lunges or things that are causing you to use muscular power, although you can get some of that with bicep curls as well. But some guys are interested in their bigger biceps. And so focusing on bicep curls obviously would be something that they'd be interested in. For myself, I do a lot of compound exercises with, you know, some bicep curls and trisip kickbacks and stuff as well.

Starting point is 02:14:31 But the majority of my training is definitely compound exercises. Yeah, I think with regard to order and exercise selection, I mean, you would think somebody like Dr. Bradshaw and Fod would be very hyper-focused on. you need to pick the perfect order and the perfect exercise to optimize hypertrophy and, you know, him being an experienced lifter and bodybuilder, physique competitor himself. But he really seemed I'm concerned with it. And, you know, when he was really talking about it, it goes, I think this goes back to focusing on execution rather than perfection. He just says, the muscles that you want to get bigger, train those first, and then train the muscles that you aren't as concerned about growing afterwards. And same thing with exercise selection.

Starting point is 02:15:09 There are lots of exercises that could target the muscles that you might want to grow bigger. So whether you choose a squad or a deadlift or a leg extension, you know, it might not matter. Just make sure to, if you want your legs to grow, then do leg exercises and make sure you're getting the quality sets and reps and time under tension for those muscle groups. And really don't just get focused on the kind of nuances maybe. Obviously, there are people who are interested in that. But when thinking about what exercises to do, what order to do them in, it seemed pretty straightforward. Just focus on what you want to get larger. Do those exercises first and then kind of everything then comes after.

Starting point is 02:15:42 Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. I like that. You know, like it's not, it's not a very complicated concept to understand. There are lots of different types of exercises and people can choose the ones that they enjoy the most and that are going to obviously, you know, help them grow, but also reduce their injury risk using machines versus free weights. He didn't seem to be concerned with that either. And even cited some meta-analysis showing, you know, is hypertrophy better with machines or free weights seem to be equal. So I think that goes to show that you can do, there are multiple paths to hypertrophy. and you can choose whether you prefer to do through aids or machines doesn't seem to matter much. I think the one question I wish I'd asked him back then when I wasn't engaged in so much of resistance training was, yes, hypertrophy, but, you know, functional independence, right? Like reducing fall risk, being able to get in and out of a chair. I wonder how much of that you're going to get with machines versus doing Olympic lifting or like a squat. dead lifts, things like that, with a barbell. And I don't know.

Starting point is 02:16:47 I think I maybe talked a little bit about this with Lane. And I don't, I think he said you might get a little bit more bang for your buck with using like a barbell or doing, doing, you know, a squat with a barbell versus like a, is it a hack squat? But at the end of the day, if you are increasing your muscle strength in your muscle mass, you're definitely going to be reducing your fall risk as well. Yeah, exactly. I think it makes a little bit of sense if you really are focused on the, quote, unquote, functional training to do, you know, maybe more stuff with free weights that moving natural movements. But like you said, if you're getting stronger, even if it's on a machine, then you're getting stronger. And that's going to help you within functional independence and activities. Yeah. You need to do what you like, which you're going to be consistent with. I mean, that's like paramount, right? The most important thing. Training for body composition. So Dr. Schoenfeld, Dr. Dr. Lang Norton, both of them talked quite a bit. about training for body composition on a podcast. And so a lot of people are interested in losing fat and simultaneously gaining muscle, so body recomposition. And Dr. Schoenfeld talked about, and this is a common thing with weight loss in general. So when people are on a weight loss diet, which most of the time involves caloric restriction to some degree, they end up

Starting point is 02:18:09 losing some muscle mass, right? It's not just fat that's being lost. And he cited a study that even up to 30% of the weight that's lost can come from muscle or lean body mass. So I think that's important to consider because if you're not engaging in some form of resistance training, then you are at a higher risk for losing muscle, even though you may be losing fat. And so I think there's a There's a variety of takehomes here that we're talked about on the podcast in terms of like the best, what sort of template to follow with respect to body recomposition. So obviously engaging in resistance training, number one, right? Yeah. Engaging in resistance training, yeah. If you're losing weight and you don't resist training, you're going to lose lean body mass. So engaging in resistance training, ideally three times per week, you know, if your goal was body recomposition, which means, you know, you either want to maintain. maintain your lean mass or increase it, probably.

Starting point is 02:19:12 You need to engage in resistance training three times three times. Probably you lift pretty heavy, probably with a focus on more hypertrophy-based training versus strength-based training. So that was obviously their one recommendation, and it was above all else. It's like resistance training. So second of all, though, is if you do want to lose a little bit of fat, you'll probably will have to eat in a caloric deficit. And you don't want it to be too drastic, though, because I think similar to not engaging

Starting point is 02:19:36 in resistance training, if you... drastically cut calories too much while you're trying for, you know, to attain body recomposition, you risk losing more lean mass. So you want kind of a more conservative weight loss approach, maybe a one to two pounds a week. And to do that, Dr. Schoenfeld recommended eating 10 to 20% below your maintenance calories. That was kind of his recommendation there. Maybe you're increasing your exercise more, so your deficit might be a little, a little bit less, but it might not cause you to actually, you need to eat less because you're exercising more. So the 10 to 20% kind of reduction in calories. And then protein intake was a super large focus of all of their recommendations.

Starting point is 02:20:14 They emphasized eating, you know, anywhere from 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, which would be one gram per pound or even more. You know if your goal is to gain muscle. And that is key because eating protein, a higher protein diet tends to have a few benefits. So not only the lean mass maintenance benefits that come with protein, but it also has a third. permogenic effect. So protein, you know, when you eat a higher protein diet, it kind of causes your body to increase its caloric burn for digestive purposes, which may lead to a slightly greater caloric deficit. And then satiety as well. Lane talked a lot of a bit about this. Eating higher protein diet may help with satiety to help you kind of eat less throughout the day. Again, some people don't have the goal of weight loss, so that might not be a concern. But if you are, if you're aiming for body

Starting point is 02:21:00 Recomposition and are aiming for that slight caloric deficit, all of those things tend to help improve that. So those were kind of some of their core recommendations for body recomposition. And I think the key takeaway was that it is possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. It's going to depend on your baseline body composition. You know, if you're already 10% body fat and, you know, it might be a little bit harder to do body recomp. But if you have some weight to lose, our neurodor resistance training, those can certainly be accomplished. It doesn't require doing one, you know, losing a lot of weight and then building up a lot of muscle. You could do both at the same time. I think the other thing that Lane had mentioned is that, you know, most people

Starting point is 02:21:37 don't even really know how many calories they're eating in a day, which is so true. You know, so you kind of have to be able to track that at least for a couple of days and get an average to know how much to cut out, right? And then again, if you want to like, if you're going to increase the amount of protein, you know, making sure it's not really fatty protein. either, right? Like, this is where something like a protein powder comes in, it's very handy because you can increase that protein without a lot of calories, right, as well. Right. Sleep too was one of the things Lane also mentioned. He cited a study showing that if you don't get enough sleep, it actually will hamper your gains in lean mass loss and it can make

Starting point is 02:22:21 a kind of body fat loss a little bit more stubborn, so harder. So if you're not sleeping enough while you're training, you're not going to gain as much lean mass as you could and you're not going to lose as much fat as you could. So focusing on that recovery aspect, that aspect of sleep, stress management, all of those things would be important as well. And not just for body recomposition, but, you know, that was one of the key principles. Yeah, sleep is important for brain health, your immune system. I mean, just cardiovascular health, everything. Hopefully people are aware of that by now, if they're not. I think another aspect that a lot of people are interested in, and certainly myself, is time-efficient protocol.

Starting point is 02:22:59 for resistance training. And this is certainly like we were talking about time-efficient protocols for aerobic exercise and high-intensity interval training being at the top of the list there. Dr. Schoenfeld has actually published a couple of studies on time efficiency and how to be efficient with your resistance training workout. He talked about it on a podcast. I really liked a few of the principles that he had covered going back again to multi-joint exercises.

Starting point is 02:23:27 They are the most time efficient. You are going to be training multiple muscle groups at once. So squats, deadlifts, lunges, rows, presses. Those are really great types of exercises to do if you are pressed for time. And then he also talked about using supersets and drop sets. And so this is something I also use in my workouts. Super sets are typically when you are engaging back-to-back, different exercises that are working different muscle groups without any rest. And so you're doing

Starting point is 02:24:01 back-to-back one. So, for example, you're doing bicep curls and then you, you know, after your bicep curls, you go straight into tricep kickbacks, then you go into lateral raises or frontal raises, and you go back, then you do, you know, hammer curls, and then you go back to some sort of tricep kick, and you're doing them like back-to-back, right? So those are the stupersets, and you really get fatigued. And it is a very time-efficient way. You can get a really good workout in 10 minutes, doing 10 minutes nonstop, just switching from muscle group to muscle group doing these sort of supersets as well. And then drop sets is another type of training that involves basically I do a lot of drop sets on the tail end of my strength training. So it involves like reducing the

Starting point is 02:24:44 load and then performing another set, you increase the volume. You reduce the load and increase the volume and then you perform another set back to back. So let's say you did a squat workout, strength-fitting squat workout, you then drop the weight way down. You're at like 60% of your 1 rep max, and then you do 10 of those rest for a minute and then 10 again. So that would be an example of drop sets. And that's also a very, and there's a lot of different ways you can do drop sets. I just talked about the way I do it. Dr. Schoenfeld talked about a variety of other ways to do it. We also cover that in the guide as well. But I do think that's another really time-efficient way to involve, engage in resistance training. And then you can combine, you know, a lot of different

Starting point is 02:25:28 types of training, right? So you can do your strength training and then do some hypertrophy training within that, within that same exercise session. You can avoid a lot of warming up. In fact, the warm up, rather than like stretching for like doing all these like stretches where you're like, I don't know, is this really that important? Maybe you can stretch for like three minutes, four minutes or whatever or less. And then your warming up is actually just like progressively loading, right? So you're like I said, you do bodyweight squats or you do your squat with the barbell and then you get to your weight, right?

Starting point is 02:25:59 Like the much more productive way to warm up because you're actually warming up your muscles. Yeah, just do the exercise that you're going to perform but either unweighted or, you know, with a very lightweight. If you're going to do a bench press, your warm up could just be just doing the bar for 15, 20 reps or whatever. In fact, static stretching as compared to dynamic stretching actually appears to have no performance benefit, if anything, it's detrimental. So standing there and doing your little arm exercises that's actually hurting your performance. So just like unweight the bar and do some reps. If you're mimicking the exercise you're going to do, it's a dynamic or more.

Starting point is 02:26:33 That appears to be much better for sure. Was there any other time efficient protocols that were important? Yeah, I think Dr. Schoenfeld did cite a steady on these sort of micro-resistance training workouts where people, performed 15 minutes of resistance training six to eight times per week versus, say, doing the same resistance training, same volume, same exercises, three to four times a week for, say, you know, 30 to 40 minutes. They achieved the same level of strength and hypertrophy. I can't remember what was exactly measured in that study. But so you can kind of do these micro workouts. So maybe you have, you have a small window to exercise every single day of the week. Not much time, but you could just

Starting point is 02:27:13 do 15 minutes of resistance exercise. Okay, well, delegate out your different, kind of exercises maybe do just bench press one day and leg extension one day and you know every day do something um it seems maybe that's not the most efficient but some people if that fits into your schedule it seems to produce kind of a similar level of of strength and gains um to three or four like longer duration session so that could be another time efficient way and you could also do cardio or cardio and strength training or high intensity interval training on the same day so you know again you might be even more warmed up if you do a 60 minute zone two session and then go to the and get your strength training in or do your Norwegian 4x4 and do some strength training afterwards.

Starting point is 02:27:52 I think depending on your goal might determine the order of those. So if you really are focused on aerobic training and then strength training a second, so someone like me, I'm going to do my long run and then I'm going to do strength training versus the other way around because that strength training is going to get in the way of the quality of my run if I do it beforehand. Whereas somebody whose strength focus might want to do strength training and then end with cardio because their goal is strength, not the endurance exercise session. So I think that should probably determine your order, but doing those on the same day could be time efficient. As for the whole like interference effect, people sometimes get worried about. Like, oh, is doing aerobic exercise on the

Starting point is 02:28:29 strength training gig going to compromise my gains due to the molecular interference of the different signals that govern like endurance adaptations and strength? That whole thing has been kind of dismissed. There's not any really such thing. It only occurs if you're obviously compromised. the quality of your sessions by doing them both on the same day. But yeah, combining cardio and strength, this can definitely be compatible in a way that it would be time efficient with your exercise. I think of anything, Dr. Schoenfeld talked about there might even be a benefit you're combining because the increased blood flow to muscle, you're getting more nutrients there, you're getting more oxygen. So it actually improves recovery time. It decreases the amount of time you need to

Starting point is 02:29:10 recover. So you might even get some benefits there as well. So the micro sets is funny that I forgot that one because my husband does, he does a lot of that type of resistance training work. He does a lot of micro sets throughout the week. And it really does depend on someone's schedule and what suits them best as well. But it's nice to have all these options. And I think it is kind of is a good segue into like the minimum amount of time required, in quotes, to basically get some strength and hypertrophy benefits. And I think Dr. Schoenfeld talked a little bit about this as well. Yeah, two times per week, 30 minutes at a time seems to be compatible with maintaining or even building strength.

Starting point is 02:29:53 He cited multiple studies. And even recently, they have published a couple showing that just engaging in resistance training, two times per week, 30 minutes. That seems to be probably the bare minimum if you want to maintain or increase your muscle strength. And then obviously you can work up from there based on kind of what your goals are. but I think three times per week is probably optimal. And then, you know, really if you're someone wanting to build a lot of strength or your performance-oriented athlete, doing four to five days per week. But yeah, I think it's great to hear, you know,

Starting point is 02:30:22 especially for someone like me who doesn't do a ton of strength training and needs to do more, that you can really do a lot in two sessions per week. But obviously that means during those two sessions, if you're just going to do them, you don't be on your phone a ton of the time. You probably want to do super sets. You probably want to do some drop sets to kind of make the most of that. But two times per week, 30 minutes out of time seems to be enough. So if people are really concerned with that time efficiency, you can accomplish a lot in that.

Starting point is 02:30:47 I think you also mentioned the microdosing as well can. So it doesn't necessarily have to be two 30 minute sessions. You can do that. The more sessions of like 10 or 15 minutes sessions that you're doing multiple times, as long as the total time is the same. Yes, exactly. So again, all of this is in our how to train guide. You can find all these protocols and information, download that copy, how to train guide.com.

Starting point is 02:31:14 We're going to move on to the last section that is covered in our guide and this really is sort of supplemental to the exercise protocols. We're going to cover a lot of supplemental protocols like deliberate heat exposure, for example, using a sauna, some nutrition protein intake, and then also some supplements like omega-3 fatty acids and creatine. So starting with deliberate heat exposure, drawing from some of the leading experts in this area of sauna research, Dr. Yari Laukonen being one of the world's experts on how this sauna is affecting cardiovascular health. I've had him on the podcast many years ago. And he has published just numerous studies on how this sauna affects cardiorespiratory fitness, how it's affecting blood pressure, cardiac compliance, arterial compliance, just a lot of different. cardiovascular health parameters. And his research has shown in a couple different ways. So there's been

Starting point is 02:32:14 observational data showing people that exercise and use the sauna have a lower all-cause mortality than people that exercise and don't use the sauna. But he's also done some interventional studies where he's taken two groups of people and put them on an exercise protocol, aerobic exercise on a stationary bike, And then only half of that group then went into a sauna after the exercise and he measured cardiorespiratory fitness and found that people that use the sauna in addition to aerobic exercise improve their cardiorespiratory fitness even more than people that only did the exercise. And there were other cardiometabolic parameters that were also improved. Cholesterol was improved. Blood pressure was improved more as well. So it seems as though adding the sauna in addition to an exercise routine is another way to improve some cardiometabolic endpoints and also cardiorespiratory fitness.

Starting point is 02:33:12 There's also some endurance benefits as well, something that I've talked about before in the podcast. In fact, you Brady use the sauna in your exercise protocol. I do. And, you know, a lot of that has to do with some of the research that you've talked about in that. Dr. Laucanin has published. So I informed kind of my strategy based on this. Not only, you know, the studies show that you can improve your V-O-2 Max, you know, additionally by using the sauna, but it also improves your exercise performance not only in the heat, you know, which kind of makes sense. You're becoming more heat acclimated, but it also improves your performance

Starting point is 02:33:50 just in normal weather or like not hot weather, I guess, as you would call it. So I integrate that in my training. Not only just do I like the sauna for the cardiovascular. benefits and the brain benefits. You know, after reading these studies, kind of hearing you talk about it, I think, you know, it makes sense to use it. So about three times per week, two to three times per week, I'll try to get into the sauna immediately or within five to ten minutes of finishing one of my runs. So I'll, you know, do my run from the gym. I don't have a sauna at home, but I have one at the gym that I use. And I'll finish my run. I'll get right into the sauna for another 20 to 30 minutes. Those seems to be the protocols used in many of the studies. They do typically a 20-minute sauna bath afterwards. So I'll get

Starting point is 02:34:27 right in there try to keep it so that my heart rate is like staying a little bit elevated from the end of the run into the sauna so i think of it as a way to sort of extend that cardio session a little bit um that endurance training session because when you're in the sauna you know my the heart rate might not be as high as it was when i was running 130 40 50 beats per minute but it'll be 110 maybe at the at the end of the sauna so um i use that as a strategy again one because it feels good and i just like it but to gain maybe some additional benefits to that endurance exercise training session. I do the same. I get in the sauna after both aerobic exercise training as well as doing my strength training,

Starting point is 02:35:06 resistance training exercise. You know, and a lot of the data that Dr. Laucanen has published has been observational data looking at people that are routinely using the sauna and the effects of that on cardiovascular-related mortality, all-cause mortality. and it seems as though like the minimum effective dose to get some benefits is really two times a week of sauna use. If you get up to four times a week, then you're really getting maximal benefits of four to seven times a week. People are getting reductions up to 50% in their cardiovascular related mortality, 40% related to reductions in their all-cause mortality. And this sauna doesn't have to be so hot.

Starting point is 02:35:42 I mean, this isn't like the 200-something degree temperatures that you often hear people cite that they're using. In fact, I think that's a little bit too hot. I mean, these people are using on average 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Often there is a little bit of a humidity, you know, up to 30 percent humidity as well, but they're in there for about 20 minutes. And so I find it, it is nice to get into the sauna after a workout and extend that sort of aerobic exercise mimicking capacity a little bit further. Another area that using deliberate heat exposure could be beneficial is combined. binding it with resistance training or even using it during perhaps an injury when you're not able to work out.

Starting point is 02:36:27 And I would say a lot of this evidence is preliminary and more needs to be done. But going off the preliminary evidence and just knowing that there's benefits for cardiovascular health as well, why wouldn't you? There has been at least some preliminary evidence in one small study that people that got in this on after the resistance training protocol increased signaling molecules that are involved, the anabolic signaling molecules that are involved in muscle hypertrophy. There's also been another trial in humans that underwent. I mean, it was this experiments that are done where they're, they mobilize a muscle for a period of time and they look at atrophy after that, right? Disuse atrophy is what it's called. And it seems as the heat exposure, at least at the local level in this regard for this study, people that had the heat exposure were about almost 40% less likely

Starting point is 02:37:15 to lose. They lost 40% less. less of their muscle mass, which is quite a bit. So a lot of potential reasons there. Heat shock proteins have been shown to be activated, a lot of disuse atrophy studies done in animal models with heat exposure. And then you're getting a variety of endocrine effects as well. Growth hormone is elevated when you get in the sauna and that can have aspects for recovery as well. So there's a lot of reasons to combine deliberate heat exposure with also resistance training workout. And I would say that is not the case for deliberate cold exposure. Yeah. And in fact, I think a lot of the evidence would suggest the opposite lately where getting in cold immediately after resistance exercise in particular

Starting point is 02:37:59 seems to blunt some of the hypertropic benefits. There's a lot of press about those studies now where it's like avoid the cold after your resistance training workout. So yeah, it makes sense to really embrace the heat, not only for recovery, but for the anabolic potential, the endurance exercise benefits. I think, you know, the, the anabolic potential is interesting because, you know, I don't know, again, if there are any studies out there showing greater hypertrophy after using heat, but like you said, with the heat shock protein, all the mechanisms kind of makes sense. And so there was recently like a review paper that just came out that will need to probably read and maybe write about on that because I think it's, heat is becoming kind of embraced.

Starting point is 02:38:36 And yeah, again, the cold, maybe not something to do around your resistance exercise sessions. Right. And Dr. Luke Van Loon, who was a guest on the podcast. as well, had done some, he has done some research on that. In fact, showed that doing deliberate cold exposure, like a cold bath, immediately after resistance training workout does blunt hypertrophy. I mean, so that's... Yeah, muscle protein synthesis all goes down if you get in the cold ride afterwards. So something to avoid, probably. Kind of going back, struggling back to the disuse atrophy, you know, that's something that's obviously very relevant for people in, if they're injured or perhaps they're traveling somewhere.

Starting point is 02:39:14 and they don't have the same, they're not, they're working their muscles out the same way that they usually do. And so there's a, there's a, there's a case to be made, you know, where it's like, okay, well, I'm not going to be engaging my muscles as much and you're kind of like you don't use it, you lose it, right? And this is where a supplement that I'm, I'm quite fond of for a variety of reasons. Omega-3 fatty acids seem to be beneficial. So Dr. Chris McClory came on the podcast and talked about some of his research using high-dose omega-3. 3, so it was about 5 grams a day, which is a little bit higher than what is prescribed for some people for different cardio metabolic reasons, was able to prevent or cut disuse atrophy

Starting point is 02:39:58 almost by 50%. In this case, it was in women. So omega-3 fatty acids might be another sort of tool for recovery, right, used during perhaps illness, injury. I think they should be used every day. There's a lot of benefits, cardiovascular benefits as well, anti-inflammatory benefits. Again, going down to the recovery and omega-3 fatty acids being beneficial for inflammation. For someone like yourself, it might be even more useful, right, where you're really running, you're running, what, 20 hours a week almost? There's a lot of stress on your muscles and a lot of inflammatory cytokines and molecules that are generated during that kind of trading. And the heart, too, I think it was maybe something that you had posted, but I think there was a study showing omega-3 fatty acids could prevent some of the cardiac injury biomarkers after endurance running or after downhill running. So, yeah, I look at some of those studies. And, I mean, I do take omega-3 myself. I think I take two grams per day. So maybe I need to up my dose to three to five grams per day based on some of this research here. But, yeah, like cardiac stuff too, you know, I think makes sense to take that for recovery purposes for sure.

Starting point is 02:41:10 Yeah, I think it was three grams a day, and it decreased the tropinin levels that are, which is a marker of, you know, cardiac stress. Okay, so we're also going to kind of transition to some of the nutritional aspects of this guide, starting with protein, which is probably, I guess, the most important when it comes to muscle mass, muscle hypertrophy, anything in all things muscle. Dr. Stuart Phillips was on the podcast. Dr. Brad Schoenfeld talked quite a bit about protein intake, Dr. Luke Van Loon, Dr. Dr. Lange, and quite a few experts have been on talking about the importance of protein intake, how the RDA for protein, which is 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight, does not appear to be enough for maintaining muscle mass, particularly if you are engaging in resistance training. In fact, Stu Phillips was a author on a study that was a meta-analysis of multiple randomized controlled trials that found that people that on average were taking in about 1.2 grams of protein,

Starting point is 02:42:10 per kilogram body weight and were engaged in a, you know, resistance training protocol, if they up that to about 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight, they had a 27% increase in muscle mass and a 10% increase in muscle strength compared to people that were resistance training, but only during the 1.2 grams per kilogram body weight, so a protein intake. So I think that's a pretty easy lever we can pull in terms of increasing our muscle mass and strength with not as much effort, right? It takes a lot of effort to lift weights, but to increase your protein intake isn't quite as much effort. Yeah, but I think something to note there, too, is that while they all, while, you know, Stu Phillips and Brad Schoenfeld and, you know, basically all of the

Starting point is 02:42:56 experts who we put evidence for into this guide, they recommended these protein intakes quoted that it was very important, but all of them really emphasized that nothing kind of compares to the resistance training. So yeah, protein intake is important, but if you're not resistance training, you're kind of really missing out on that aspect. So I think protein intake can be seen as kind of necessary, but not sufficient for muscle growth. You know, you can't just eat more protein and get bigger, you know, you got to do the training. But so, but it is certainly important. And I think total daily protein intake was one of the things that stood out as that is the most important factor when it comes to if people have questions about how much or when do I eat it or how

Starting point is 02:43:38 much or how do I distribute it. Total daily protein intake, that seems to be the most important thing. So just making sure you're getting enough during the day. But two things that, you know, we're also talked about. We're regarding protein distribution. So and that refers to, you know, timing and distribution, I guess is how we could phrase it. So when to eat your protein, particularly maybe with regards to exercise and then how to distribute it throughout the day. Regarding timing, there's this concept known as the anabolic window. And this was kind of an earlier idea where it was once thought that, you know, after you ended your resistance training session,

Starting point is 02:44:12 you need to consume protein immediately afterwards. Otherwise, you would sacrifice your gains. So if you didn't eat protein within 30 minutes after finishing resistance training, then you were leaving gains on the table. You weren't going to grow as strong. You weren't going to grow as big. Dr. Brandt-Schrodenfeld, I really liked what he said about that. He refers to it more as an anabolic barn door.

Starting point is 02:44:30 so it's just a lot larger than, you know, the 30 minutes that was kind of once thought. You know, you don't need to eat immediately after you train. Now, that's not to say that you can't. I mean, in fact, I think if you have the opportunity to, you should. It makes sense to eat as quickly after your exercise session as possible because your muscles are more sensitive to amino acids at that point. So, yes, eat a meal, have some protein immediately after resistance training, if you can. If you have to wait two to three hours, it's probably you're still going to

Starting point is 02:45:00 be okay. In fact, there was just a recent study that came out that showed delaying protein intake versus immediately after they both lead to similar gains in hypertrophy and strength. So, you know, as long as you're getting enough throughout the day, you don't need to be that concerned with the timing it right around exercise. So that seemed to be one of the key takeaways and people, you know, may not need to be as stressed about that when they're thinking about their protein timing. And then protein distribution was another thing that Luke Van Loon discussed a lot in terms of what is So is it optimal? You know, if you want to eat two meals per day with two very large doses of protein, is that worse or better than consuming three to four evenly spaced meals throughout the day?

Starting point is 02:45:41 Based on, you know, muscle protein synthesis data that Luke Van Loon cited, it seems to be optimal to eat three to four protein containing meals containing, you know, 25 to 30 grams or more throughout the day, evenly spaced. That's for optimizing muscle protein synthesis. Does it appear to be better for muscle gain? Maybe not, but it, in theory, kind of would produce greater gains due to the greater muscle protein synthesis response. But he also said that, you know, if you're just a two meal per day person or even a one meal per day person, you know, if you want to eat 100 grams of protein at once, that could be digested, absorbed, used for muscle protein synthesis. They published a kind of popular

Starting point is 02:46:21 study recently showing that. But it certainly doesn't seem to be ideal. So regarding protein distribution, evenly distributed to protein during the day, appears to be optimal, secondary, obviously, to getting enough protein throughout the day. Yeah. This, all this information and more I recently covered in an episode on the science of protein, for those of you that haven't checked it out, make sure you check it out if you're interested in protein and the effects of protein on aging, muscle mass, strength, all things considered. Definitely check that out. I kind of want to move lastly to the last sort of aspect in our, in the training guide, and that has to do with creatine supplementation. And Dr. Stuart Phillips and also Dr. Lane Norton both mentioned creatine

Starting point is 02:47:01 as one of their top tier supplements that they take. Lots and lots of evidence on safety and efficacy. I take it, you take it. Maybe you can talk a little bit about, you know, just summarize briefly for people, what are some of the benefits of creatine supplementation, how people should start dose, you know, some of the best practices. I think creatine, I feel like it's probably like one of the most popular supplements these days and everybody is taking it or if they're not they probably should be due to the evidence that's coming out. So yeah, creatine, it's something that we get from the diet, but that you can supplement with it to get more. Regarding, you know, how much you should take, I think that currently the recommendations and, you know, based on what Dr. Stu Phillips and Layne

Starting point is 02:47:47 Norton and others said, taking five to 10 grams per day appears to be the optimal dose. If you're a bit larger, you could maybe, you know, take 10 to 15, but even 5 grams per day after a while will probably saturate your muscle creatine stores, especially if you're consuming a lot of meat, which does contain creatine too. So you're getting some from your diet and supplementing. So in regards to how to dose, there was once a thought that you had to do this loading dose when you started supplementing. So you take 20 grams per day for a week and then you go down to a maintenance dose of 5 to 10 grams per day indefinitely. Um, that right, the loading dose isn't. necessarily recommend it anymore. It's pretty much just start taking 5 to 10 grams per day tomorrow

Starting point is 02:48:28 and never stop it. So the loading dose doesn't appear to be optimal unless for some reason you need to get your muscle creatine stores up, you know, in the next few days, then you need to take a loading dose. But for most people, that doesn't appear to be important. So it's pretty easy supplement to take. It doesn't matter what time of day you take it because it doesn't have the acute benefits. So just find a time during the day when it works and makes sense to take it. Take five to 10 grams and just continue to take it. It seems to have benefits for muscle performance and building strength, obviously, that's kind of where the main benefits are probably most evidence and it was thought of as being like this bodybuilding strength supplement, which it obviously is. So it allows you to

Starting point is 02:49:09 train harder, which then allows you to build more strength and muscle mass. But I think there's a lot of evidence coming out that it might be good for older adults to take for muscle strength as well. For endurance athletes, it probably makes sense for them to take it. And then, there's a lot of stuff coming out about creatine in the brain for, you know, during sleep deprivation. So just a lot of evidence that it's good to take. There appear to be very few side effects. It's very safe. And all of the myths, I think Stu was talking about some of the myths regarding hair loss or kidney health.

Starting point is 02:49:39 And Lane even said, mentioned some of those. And none of those really appear to be valid. Creatine is well studied. And so it's something that most people can benefit from. And it's, again, pretty simple to take. It's just buy creatine monohydrate, take five to ten. 10 grams per day and just continue to take it after about a month or so, that's kind of when the benefits might start to appear because that's when your muscle stores are saturated.

Starting point is 02:50:02 I take about 5 grams a day. Yeah, as do I. I take 5 grams per day. I've been experimenting with taking 10 grams per day on the weekend for no reason. I run longer on those days. So I just am like, oh, maybe for recovery purposes, just take 10 grams. It's just something I'm trying. But yeah, usually I'm 5 grams per day.

Starting point is 02:50:17 I thought about experimenting with 10 grams. I mean, it's hard to sometimes notice differences, subtle differences like that, especially when you're taking so many other things and doing so many other things, right? But I've also thought about kind of increasing the dust just to see, like, oh, can I lift a little bit heavier? Is it going to affect my ass strength as well? Yeah, it might be worth trying out. I think one more thing about creatine to note is that, like, I think people are concerned. Stu Phillips mentioned he doesn't take it all the time and that if he goes,

Starting point is 02:50:49 goes on vacation, he might just, like, not take it because it's not important. It does appear that after you stop taking it, your stores will still stay saturated for about, like, one or two weeks. So, like, if you go on vacation and forget your creatine, then just, like, eat more steak maybe on vacation and supplement when you come back. Yeah, that's good to know. Yeah. I've definitely not taking it on vacations before, especially because my, my container is like this big of it. TSA also might think it's like, they might get a little bit skeptical due to how it looks. I know. I know. I often wonder that sometimes when I'm aliquotting, like, power. outers and stuff. I'm like, oh, is this going to get my bag flat? That is to say all of this

Starting point is 02:51:25 wonderful information, very useful, practical information protocols. Everything can be found in the how to train according to the experts guide. You can pause now, download that at how to train guide.com. Wonderful training guide that Brady was a big part in working on. Thank you so much, Brady, for sitting down. First of all, for working on the guide. and for sitting down with me to discuss it. I do want to plug your book you have, V-O-2-Mex Essentials. You also have a substack page you can tell people about, and you're very active on Twitter, X.

Starting point is 02:52:02 I follow you there. You post a lot of really great stuff on exercise, physiology, so maybe you can tell people where to follow you up on those platforms. Yeah, thanks, Rhonda. So VO2 Max Essentials is just the book that I self-published. You can get it on Amazon. and Substack, I write kind of like a weekly newsletter based on, you know, studies in health, exercise, nutrition, kind of whatever I find interesting that week. It's physiologically speaking. I kind of put somewhat of a difficult name, but people should be able to find that.

Starting point is 02:52:31 And then on X, I am just B underscore Holmer, H-O-L-M-E-R. So people can find me on there. It's where I'm most active and hosting a lot about, you know, topics similar to what we talked about today. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much, Brady. Yeah, thanks, Ron. This is great.

FoundMyFitness - #098 How to Train According to the Experts

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