Habits and Hustle - Episode 431: Dr. Andy Galpin: Why Fitness Trackers and Bloodwork Are Misleading You

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Are you optimizing your performance or leaving gains on the table? In this week's Habits and Hustle podcast episode, I sit down with Dr. Andy Galpin, a renowned human performance scientist, to discuss the science behind optimizing physical and mental performance. We dive into how the body actually works versus common fitness misconceptions, why basic blood work often misses the bigger picture, and reveal why many people's obsession with fitness data and tracking might be counterproductive. We cover everything from individualized training approaches to the science of sleep, recovery, and performance optimization. So tune in because Galpin shares insights from his work with elite athletes while making the science accessible for everyday fitness enthusiasts.  Dr. Andy Galpin PhD is a tenured full Professor at California State University, Fullerton. He is the Co-Director of the Center for Sport Performance and Founder/Director of the Biochemistry and Molecular Exercise Physiology Laboratory. He is a Human Performance scientist with a PhD in Human Bioenergetics and over 100 peer-reviewed publications and presentations. What We Discuss: (01:00) High-Performance Science and Genetics (10:22) Comprehensive Testing for Optimal Health (15:05) Optimizing Performance With Blood Analysis (21:29) Physiology and Stress Impact Testosterone (31:18) Balancing Stress and Performance (42:33) Improving Performance Beyond Physical Metrics (46:13) Navigating the Biohacking Industry (01:07:36) Overcoming Training Plateaus and Progression (01:18:20) Uncovering Sleep Disorders and Solutions …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: AquaTru: Get 20% off any purifier at aquatru.com with code HUSTLE Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off  TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. BiOptimizers: Want to try Magnesium Breakthrough? Go to https://bioptimizers.com/jennifercohen and use promo code JC10 at checkout to save 10% off your purchase. Timeline Nutrition: Get 10% off your first order at timeline.com/cohen Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers.  Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here, code Jennifer20 for 20% off.  Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off   Find more from Jen:  Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen   Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Dr. Andy Galpin: Website: https://www.andygalpin.com/  Podcast: Perform  Instagram: @drandygalpin

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Okay, so you guys, we have today Dr. Andy Galpin, who is a human performance scientist. I got that right, right? Yeah, nailed it. I love that. I want you to, before we even start, before I even get into that, let's just do our quick healthy shot. We do this on the podcast. We take this, we take a shot. Okay. I had like a hundred of them. And it's basically, it's by a company called Magic Mind. And it's basically a healthy shot to help you with your focus and being alert. And since you're a high-performance guy, I thought of all the people

I should be doing this shot with, it is you. Oh my goodness. Yeah, because, you know, hold on guys, shake it first. And then we like, you know, we open it up with cheers. And then of course we do it. Yeah. Okay. You shake it though. Yours is much more green than mine.

It's a different batch, I guess. Do you like it? Very reasonable tasting. Well, oftentimes these things taste terrible. No, no, horrible. Yeah, beyond that. Horrible. So that's why I like this one. But now you're going to tell me at the end of the podcast

if it helped you at all. And I want you to be honest. Well, just be careful because I already speak a lot and I go quickly. So if you speed me up at all, this might get worse for everybody. Oh my gosh. No, no, no. Okay, first of all, like number one,

like I said, before we even started rolling, I was really excited to have you on the show because you go so into the weeds. You're very science based. Obviously you're a professor. You've worked with like literally every single athlete on the planet because you are a high performance scientist. But what is that? Like what is the because when I was reading your bio without, I mean, I did my own kind of like knowledge and research.

But then when I got your bio, it gave me all these like all these things you have like your Ph.D. And what is a high performance scientist? I got your bio, it gave me all these things you have, like your PhD and all that. What is a high performance scientist? I think actually that's a really good question, first of all, because we define performance quite differently. Ultimately, I'm not a metabolism guy. I'm not a sleep guy. I'm not a muscle growth guy.

What I am is a physiologist. And why that matters is I actually don't really particularly care how you yourself define performance. So the people that we coach, whether it's our athletes or our non athletes, the science we do in my lab, the way that I communicate in the public sphere, it is designed to have somebody be able to come in and say, hey, Andy, I have these goals.

I want more mental focus. I want to lose weight. I want to lose weight. I want to be strong. You tell me the goal. And from my perspective, I'm trying to make sure your physiology aligns with that goal. And so that's why I've had success with NFL players, executives, actors, music, uh, musicians, rather tons of regular people.

It's because I'm not focused on that last end of the niche, which is how do I optimize hitting a baseball? Or how do I run the fastest? Or how do I mobilize my big toe the best? I don't care about that end. What I make sure is that physiology is running at its highest level so that you can then deploy those capabilities however you're defining perform

in your unique world. So that's why we've been able to gear our laboratory and our coaching programs in that fashion. And we've had success in so many different areas. So you work, cause I saw that you do like every modality of sports. You do like baseball players, wrestlers, UFC people, like Olympians, Olympians of all kinds. So my first question then is like, if it's physiology that you're looking at,

then it really is individual, right? It's all very personalized, right? It can't just be a one for all type of situation. And the second thing is, does that mean that genetics actually matter for someone's human performance? Well, we'll go backwards. Genetics always matter.

They matter for everything, right? There is just no world or reality Well, we'll go backwards. Genetics always matter. They matter for everything, right? There is just no world or reality in which me or you could do any training or modality of any kind and all of a sudden be the top athlete in the world in any sport, right? So clearly genetics matter. So talent supersedes everything, really? Starting point. Okay.

Right? Now all humans have the same genes. We're 99.9% the same. We all have some very slight variations in one of those allele pairs, and one from mom, one from dad. And that's what gives us our unique characteristics, right? So we can all have basically the exact same genome,

despite the fact that we are all, a billion of us will never be the same person. So what that means is yes, genes are there. Genetic testing for the most part for performance perspectives is almost entirely useless. It doesn't tell us much of anything. Where we become unique different people is at the next level down, which is what we call the proteome.

So your genetics are just a potential to create proteins. What are you actually making? What proteins are made? How are they functioning? That's what we're going to measure, right? That's blood work. That is performance testing. That's a hair sample? That's what we're gonna measure, right? That's blood work. That is performance testing. That's a hair sample.

That's urine, saliva. It's a VO2 max test. Like all of these laboratory tests or emotional tests, like this is all at the level of the protein as a big kind of easy way to say it. So that is what's gonna explain your uniqueness. That's why I care about that part, right? Because I actually don't really care

what genetics you have because if the genes aren't or not turned on or off, it's not gonna matter. So it's just a potential. It's sort of like saying, okay, I'm gonna invest in your company. Well, you're in the space of protein powder. Okay, great.

Well, therefore I'm gonna give you a billion dollars. Like, whoa, the company could be great, terrible. Like, just because you're in the protein powder space, it tells me nothing about anything else. Like, that's just a stupid level to stop at. So going to the next level of saying, like, what's your revenue? What's your, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

Like, that would be what you actually care about. That is the protein level in our world. And so getting to that level is actually what allows us to create those individualized plans. And the way that we think about it, we have a program called Aurete. A-R-E-T-E, right? I've heard of that before. There's another, did someone, did this other guy create that program?

No, I mean, that word Aurete has been used a trillion times. Oh, it has, okay. Because someone else pitched me who wrote a book called Aurete. Do you know what guy I'm talking about? No. Oh, okay. Because I saw that on your website. I was like, what the hell is this?

You find there's like construction companies and there's mindset books. Like it's- Yeah, yeah. It was a mindset guy. Okay. Yeah, yeah. All right, sure.

There's like, no one owns that word. It's been, it comes from actual ancient Greek philosophy of reaching your full potential in all areas. Okay. That's all it really stands for. That's what it means. Okay, I didn't even know that. I didn't get that far. Yeah.

I've been obsessed with the word since I was a kid. I've just loved it. I've used it my whole life and things. So other people have too, but nonetheless. Within that program, we get as detailed as possible with testing so that we can provide a simple straightforward solution solution, okay? The way to think about that is, you know,

again, pick your goal. You want to get rid of your headaches. You wanna sleep better. You feel fine, you just wanna make sure you're optimizing for longevity. Like, whatever the particular thing is that you're interested in, fine, no big deal. All right, the next step then is saying,

well, what is the constraint in your physiology? What's the thing that's holding you back the most? What's creating the biggest limitation or problem? Well, you could just start by saying like, well, I'm gonna get really good at hydration, or I'm gonna focus on food, or I'm gonna do better with meditation. Like there's lots of things you can do, right?

But how do you know which one is gonna make the most impact? You're just guessing, and you might guess right occasionally, but we would prefer the method of saying, well, let's test everything, identify what the biggest constraint or what we call performance anchor is, and now I can give you a program

that is hyper-specific to that issue. And so in this particular case, I might say, hey, Jen, you know what? Like meditation is great. It's awesome. We love it all. And so is red light therapy and so is walking in H. All those things are awesome, but you right now specifically need additional B6

and 15 more minutes of cardiovascular exercise a day. Great, everything else is good too. You can also do that, but you will get the most impact out of, and I just made those examples. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I'm just thinking that, so basically, so when someone comes into your office or your lab or whatever, your facility, do you have a facility?

We don't have a physical facility, it's all remote. So it's basically telemedicine type of thing? Sort of, yeah, we actually just send people to you. So we send someone to your house and take care of everything remote. So it doesn't matter where in the country you are, we take care of it. Okay, so let's say,

because I've had a ton of people come over and take a ton of blood for me, right? Like all those blood, and everyone now has, it's like now who can take the most blood, like how many markers can someone test? It was like 50, now it's 75, now it's 180. Like we take a lot more than that. How many, yes, so my first question is, well, I've had a, not my first question, my eighth question by now, but how many markers do you check for when you do your blood? Like when you

test for someone, what are the most important markers? Because what I heard you once say, which I found very interesting, kind of one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is that you were saying that you don't, when you even get the mark, when you get people's results, you don't even do things based on that necessarily.

Correct. So that to me was very interesting. Like how do you then give someone a program if it's not even based on what their results are off of the blood work? I found that very interesting. Right. Okay. So let me clarify what we're saying there.

Number one, the amount of markers we take is a little bit dependent upon situations and scenario, right? So- Like me, let's say I call you up, like a regular person who's been working out a long time, who's pretty high, like who's pretty high up there in terms of like my fitness level, my regimen, and various structured routine, but I wanna be optimal. I wanna like be, right?

This is basically exactly what all of our non-athletes say. Exactly. So our athletes will come in and have a very specific thing that they're after for the most part, and then all of our non-athletes. Exactly. So our athletes will come in and have a very specific thing that they're after for the most part. And then all of our non-athletes are, oftentimes your answer. Our analysis process takes about two months to get through. So we do, I said, an extraordinary amount of testing.

We come from, and this program was built on situations like the Olympics, professional athletes, where you have one shot. I don't have, hey go try this and come back in eight weeks and let me know how you're feeling. And then we'll just run this for three or four years and eventually your career's over. Right, right, right, exactly. Right?

In addition to people saying, look, I have more money than I have time. So I don't want to wait three or four years for these headaches to go away. I can't wait two years for me to stop having diarrhea all the time. Like I'd rather spend an extra hundred dollars to do more testing that maybe we didn't need than wait six months and then come back and say, okay, now let's try this additional. Right.

Right. Like this trial and error thing. Totally. Yeah. We just said, what if we can go past all that? Yeah. And just get as much stuff as we can possibly get done initially. So it takes a couple of months.

Some people get done in two weeks, but on average it takes a couple of months. Now what does that involve? It's a little bit different, but just making up as a direct example. It's everything from a ton of blood work, urine. How much blood work? Like how many markers are you checking? Directly we're probably going to test 115, but off of that we're going to run over 20,000 calculations on those. And why I'm saying that is it's not the marker. It's not, where's your free testosterone? Where's your cortisol? Where's your sodium?

Blah, blah, blah. In addition to that, you have a whole bunch of calculations. You have relationships. You have patterns that you can recognize within that. And so this is when people have traditionally gotten blood work done, they'll look at a single marker and say that marker is high or that marker is low. Now they're saying that's high or low based on a number of problems. In other words, they look at the sheet and the sheet says that number is green, that I must be good.

Right. Or that number says I'm red, like I must be bad. Well, there's a whole host of issues with this approach. First and foremost is the fact that what you're being compared against is called a reference range. So if you look at your albumin or your sodium, pick your favorite marker here. And it says, oh, your albumin is 7.0. They're going to be like, wow, you're really, really high because the average person, 95% of people will be within four to five. What's albumin? What is that? It's a protein. It does. I'm at one example, but it's a protein that carries around

carbon dioxide through your body, cortisol, it has a whole bunch of transportation. It to me is, the reason I bring it up is, it's my favorite marker of all things in the world. It's on every blood test you've ever gotten done, almost nobody has ever seen their albumin out of normal, but it will still tell you everything that's going on in your body.

So it's the one I pick because people will go, oh look, my albumin is normal, and I'll be able to tell them actually that's going on in your body. So it's the one I pick, because people will go, oh look, my albumin is normal, and I'll be able to tell them actually it's not. Like really consistently. Because albumin is what's called an acute phase reactant, which means it's going to change in response to dehydration and inflammation. But it does it the opposite.

So if you are dehydrated, albumin is going to go down. But if you're inflamed, it goes up. So guess what? What? If you're slightly but if you're inflamed, it goes up. So guess what? What? If you're slightly dehydrated and slightly inflamed, albumin will be smack in the middle. Wow.

This is what I'm saying. You can't just look at the numbers and go, oh, everything's fine. Because it's not. I can look directly at your albumin. It can be perfectly right within that reference range. That's not a normal population group, by the way. It's not a healthy group of people.

You're not in the population database that we create reference ranges from, right? You're way above it. But nonetheless, you'll still be right in the middle, and then this is exactly what happens when people go, oh, I got my labs done, and I looked pretty good. Right, so then what do you do? How do you take into consideration all these other things?

You have to go next level. You have to then, in this particular case, look at things like sodium, potassium, carbon dioxide, a ton of other things that are all still going to go next level. You have to then, in this particular case, look at things like sodium, potassium, carbon dioxide, a ton of other things that are all still going to be the way, by the way, within the reference range. But if sodium is trending a little bit low, still within the green, potassium is a little bit high, carbon dioxide is a little bit low, you can start to see these patterns are going, you're actually A, B, C, D, E, and F, plus we asked you some questions and you're talking

about how sometimes you get a little bit constipated. Oh, and then on the afternoons, you're like, you feel like you're getting a little bit of additional brain fog. We track your hydration markers and you're slightly dehydrated. Now we know that being dehydrated by as little as 1% can have significant, both clinical

and statistically significant reductions in physical performance and cognitive capacity, mood, arithmetic, retention, sleep, all things like that. So I can look within the labs and go, every single thing on your labs is within the reference range. You don't have a clinical disease, Jen. You don't have a disease,

but this is why you're performing slightly suboptimally. And it could just be as simple as just being dehydrated. In that particular case, it might be you're just slightly dehydrated, but not that day, because we'll see that, right? It's not like, oh, you didn't drink enough water and you have a blood drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you that. case, it might be you're just slightly dehydrated, but not that day, because we'll see that, right? It's not like, oh, you didn't drink enough water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you that.

No, no. So we'll see that in your blood as well. We have a number of short-term, medium, and long-term markers to let us cross-reference and go, oh, you know what? Actually, we're seeing dehydration for her, but her medium and long-term markers are fine, so she just didn't drink enough water that day. False finding. Don't worry about it.

Right. So I was going to say, because if like, for an example, right, if I'm feeling kind of lethargic and tired, I was getting over a flu or whatever, flying, whatever it was, and then I got my blood taken, my markers will be very different that time than it would be in a week's time. Some of them. Some of them change very acutely. Some of them are very chronic. And that's why you need to have a combination of both and be able to look at that independently and say, yeah, yeah, again, she's a little bit active.

It could be sick. It could be you trained or worked out really hard. Could be the food you had the night before. Depending on what you're looking at in any host of functional areas, then you have to be able to cross-reference, again, short-term and long- term, as well as symptomology. So how are you feeling?

We're seeing some signs here of poor sleep. All my sleep's tremendous. Oh, okay, then maybe it's normal for your physiology. So you have to be able to match this entire thing, which honestly kind of goes back and answers your original question. When you say you don't treat the individual markers, this is exactly what I'm referring to.

So we will almost always look at somebody's blood and we'll hear this all the time. Again, I've had a bunch of blood work done, nothing's ever showed up really great and we can look at it and go, boom, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And we actually do this as like, I do it all the time in like live seminars.

We'll just like pull somebody's blood randomly. I don't know, you pull it up or whatever and like just watch us start telling you about your life. And they're like, what the? Are you serious? Yeah, it's right there in your blood. Like no one's ever told me that. I'm like, yeah, because there's a different level

of interpretation from that, what we call high performance perspective. And so again, these are things that if you have a disease, I'm not gonna touch it, I'm not a medical doctor. I'm gonna say, you need to go talk to a doctor. Like you might have a disease. But this is high performance. This is stuff that is still usually within the reference range

or pretty close or subclinical, but it doesn't mean it's not affecting how you're living and feeling and performing. And that's what we do. Well, what I find interesting again is that, especially in the last few years, I feel a lot of this telemedicine, a lot of these clinics have popped up.

And if testosterone is low, right, they just automatically put you on testosterone. They automatically give you a hormone therapy. Almost everybody I know, and by the way, besides me, because I'm like super scared of hormone therapy, but every guy I know over the age of, let's say, 40 is now being supplemented by testosterone and all these things. And they're like, wow, I never felt better. I never looked as good. I'm leaner than ever. And they're putting them on lots of other things too. They're microdosing, GLP-1s, they're doing all sorts of shit. And they think that this makes them super healthy

because their inflammation is getting lower, all these things. And my Spidey sense tells me that is not the right thing. There can't be a world where everybody now is now being over supplemented with stuff to look good for the moment. There has to be some kind of backlash somewhere else. Yeah. I have many things to say about the topic. First and foremost, again, I'm not a medical doctor. Yes. And you just play one on TV. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I never play a doctor. Do you say this because you think you're going to get in trouble? No, I think it's just fairness. Like people listening might have been like, oh, he's a doctor and assume I'm a medical doctor. I mean, you are, you probably have a lot, but you're a PhD, you're a professor,

and you do a lot of research on this constantly. Yeah, we do. But I'm not a medical doctor. But you're not a medical doctor. Okay, fine. Good. That said, I'm very supportive of hormone therapy, particularly for women, especially post-menopause.

There's even for men, lots of reasons why hormone therapy is great. That said, I will say in my personal experience, we have had many people come into our coaching programs post TRT, many men, because they were given it flippantly or haphazardly. And that is a real significant problem because you will feel pretty good for six weeks,

for six months. And then things get really bad and generally are gonna stay bad for a long time unless you do something about it. So there are real concerns about giving people exogenous hormones in a very poor, underdeveloped, unmanaged way. If someone's really paying attention,

taking you through it, it can be safe and highly effective. There are problems with it because of the way that you got into it. Again, did you have a 15-minute teledoc and you said, I'm tired and I'm sleepy and they just gave you testosterone? To me, that's a really poor decision. We can use these easy examples

because we actually just got our, pretty recently just got all of our mid-season blood work back from our NFL players. On average, we're seeing about 150 to 200 increase in testosterone mid-season in the NFL. We can't use exogenous hormones there, right? Or anything like that. So we're seeing now most of our interval players

are sitting like 700 plus testosterone, usually in the like mid 500s at the beginning of the year. See the same thing with our baseball players and everybody else. So we are really consistently able to elevate people's testosterone without touching any hormones, any peptides, anything that's even close to this stuff.

All we actually ever have to do is remove any major constraints from their physiology. What are the constraints? It could be suboptimal sleep, right? They could have a clinical sleep disorder, not realize it. You just get a small improvement in sleep and you will see 20% increases in testosterone really routinely. It might be something to do with their physiology. Good examples, you look at somebody's testosterone

on a blood test, let's just say it's a male and we're talking total testosterone. Okay. And that number is low. Great. First stop is, is that normal for that person? Second stop is, do they have any symptoms? Again, are they fatigued, libido, recovery,

like anything there? Awesome. If you haven't even gone to those two steps, we probably shouldn't be jumping to therapies and things. But past that, before I'm even worrying about any of those things, I'm gonna look at this and go, okay, why is testosterone low? And then I'm gonna look at things,

the easy one that's gonna come to people's mind is things like cortisol. There's an antagonist relationship between cortisol and testosterone. If your blood draw, draw cortisol is super high, there's lots of ways to measure cortisol, so I specified blood. Then before you go anywhere with testosterone,

all you have to do is get cortisol back down and your testosterone will go up. If we then start looking at things like sodium to potassium ratios, now again, both those numbers are probably gonna be fine, but that individual ratio itself will tell us a lot about acute versus chronic fatigue. So if I start looking at that and I start seeing,

okay, resting cortisol is normal, but sodium-potassium ratios are off, we don't have an acute stress issue, you have a long-term stress management issue. Then I start poking around and we start looking at things like HRV, your respiratory rate, how often you're breathing, your CO2 tolerance, and some other functional categories there, maybe we're looking at basic pH and we start seeing three or four or five signs of chronic stress. And what's key about this is that may or may not manifest itself in psychological

stress. So the person may not be like, no, I'm not stressed. Depression, no, I'm fine. Anxiety, no, I'm good. Like, no, they may or may not have those symptoms, but we can look at it and see they are physiologically very stressed. So now all we do is resolve some or most of that physiological stress and guess what happens to testosterone. So it shoots right back up.

How do you resolve it though? It depends on what the cause is. Okay, so like the core, I get the stressors, but like, does that mean if you're doing, so that's confusing because they always say, well, if you like the core, I get the stressors, but like, does that mean if you're doing, so that's confusing because they always say, well, if you like doing legs, like if you're doing a lot of strength training for your legs, your testosterone will go up, right?

Is that not true? Not really. Really? So what you're, what you're conflating, and I see the confusion, this is actually a really good question. You have to disentangle short, acute with long chronic. So if you and I were to leave right now,

go hit your gym right across the hall here, and we train like crazy, did legs, did whatever, right? We would see a huge rise in cortisol right now. But by the time we got home tonight or tomorrow morning, it would actually be lower than where we are right now. So it's a short, really aggressive spike that comes back down to baseline. And then typically goes lower than normal baseline. This is why chronic exercise is a stress reducer, but acute exercise is a

massive short-term stressor, right? So it's that small, it's called a hormetic stress, right? So it's a little bit of poison, makes you actually better. Okay, so then, but you're saying though, is that a myth that if you do heavy leg workouts, it will increase your testosterone? It's not a myth, it depends on what you mean when you say increase.

If you say increase in terms of, if we were to go train right now, and we took your blood before the workout and after the workout, yes, it would go up. But the question is- Not long-term. Exercise generally does increase testosterone long-term if it is suppressed.

If it's normal, then it won't. And so there's always a difference in physiology for the most part going from suboptimal to normal, going from normal to superoptimal. Cause that's a different thing that gets you from normal to high. So if you were walking around- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying, and you were suppressed, then exercise would elevate it.

But if you're already super fit, your stress is managed, you sleep really well, blah, blah, blah, then working out is not gonna make your testosterone keep going higher. So then what, because I also, maybe this is just my own myth, but because someone like me who works out super hard, like it's like high intense a lot,

like I like to, you're gonna hate this, but I love to run. But because someone like me who works out super hard, it's like high intense a lot. Like I like to, you're going to hate this, but I love to run. I like to do things that make me sweat, to make me feel psychologically like I've done something. Which then I feel like, I mean, this is my own self diagnosis, but then I have adrenal fatigue or my cortisol is always really high. Would that make my testosterone extra low because it's constant for many, many years of constant banging on my body like that?

That absolutely happens. We see that very routinely. It's not the norm, but we see that really commonly. Too much high intensity can absolutely lead to, it's not gonna lead to adrenal fatigue. It can certainly lead to cortisol dysfunction though. And we see this typically when things like really high intensity exercise are dosed too often

in combination with really high stress lifestyles. Yes. That's it. So if you are like, oh, I trained super hard and then I have this other down regulation practice I do, I have this other, my lifestyle is great, I'm not living in these high stress areas, like geographically and so on and so forth.

Then it doesn't seem to be as much of a problem. It's also very person dependent. We work with a number of like legitimately fortune 10 executives and they are doing billions of dollars a year and every decision they make is worth hundreds of millions and they train like crazy. They're on just loads of stimulants and they're actually like very fine. We don't see these issues like they're okay.

Other folks the opposite where they have like a middle to lower stress lifestyle. They train kind of hard but it is too much for them. And so I don't want people to just think that like all of a sudden you have to do these things or you can't train high intensity. What I want, the message I would like to get across is just make sure it's working for you because sometimes it's not. In the same token, we've had plenty of executives and high performers where the exercise is not servicing them. It's actually making their life way worse because it's doing things like this. And when we pull them off of that high intensity training, everything in their life gets better.

And so it's always not necessarily just about the person or the category of person, male versus female, or middle-aged or executive, it's always about the individual physiology and their unique environment. So some people can work fine and no problem. And then other people, so how do you know? What are some symptoms of cortisol dysfunction then?

Yep. Okay, great. Number one, I'm okay calling it cortisol dysfunction for the sake of kind of like learning, but it's not just that because your cortisol can be fine. And this is one thing to pay attention to is if you're like, well, I got my blood drawn or I did this cortisol test and it was fine. Great. There's many other physiological mechanisms that go into stress management.

Cortisol is just one of them. So just because your cortisol is bad, that doesn't mean this is you. Okay. Because your cortisol is good, that doesn't mean you're free from this either. Okay. So what are the symptoms? Things like reduced motivation to train, no more progress. You're not making any more progress in the gym. Another way that we will classically see this is delayed onset to sleep. It takes me a long time to fall asleep at night. When I fall asleep, I'm great or I'm okay or I'm terrible,

it doesn't matter, but it takes me a while to fall asleep. Awesome. What about when they wake up in the middle of the night? If you get woken up in the night, do you have a really hard time falling back to sleep? Oh yeah, never going to happen. Great. Another common thing we see pop up in people, maybe they fall asleep really fast because they're exhausted because they've been running on level nine all day. But if they wake up at all in the middle of the night, they'll never go back to sleep. If you look at their heart rate at night,

if you look at some down regulation, we have a thing that we use in my sleep company called a wind down index. And you'll see that number is just awful with these people, right? So you'll start to see some signs of symptoms like that. So sleep is a great way to go about it. Another one is, again, the big lack of progress.

Like I'm training super hard. And I'm not making progress. Hmm, okay, great. And then the other more classic ones like libido, like follow through, like I'm just like not getting stuff done that I used to, like I feel like I'm delaying and procrastinating projects. I never used to do that before.

I'd say those are generally like the four or five things that are probably most likely to tip with people. Or the last one that is less common, but will happen is just kind of like the feeling of like, I always feel anxious. Like I feel like my heart's like going, I don't even know why. I'm like not even stressed at work right now or whatever.

But your system is just so waxed all the time. It never comes back down. So what's the solution? What do you tell people to do? So the solution is, number one, resolve what's causing the problem. If it is truly too much high intensity exercise, take two weeks down.

Don't take two weeks off. There's no way, because if you work with high performers on the regular, you know that's not even an option for your brain, right? Like there's no chance in hell that I would not work out for two weeks just because my brain would be shut off. If that happens.

No, I didn't say I didn't know it worked out. Okay, but just do like, just do some basic walking. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Still train, but just don't go to level 10 every time. Can you give me seven out of 10 for two weeks? I mean, I mean, me personally, I don't know. But so, because there's that- That's all we're talking about here, right?

Right. Give me seven out of 10. Because like there is this thing, because overtraining is a real thing, right? Yeah. So it sounds to me like cortisol dysfunction is very similar to over training, really. This is one of the classic signs and symptoms of, there's different terminology

than over training, but for colloquially what you're referring to, yeah, this is, you will see, for example, testosterone. Testosterone will go down with over training almost every time. Right, right, right. And it's this exact same pathway that you're in. But let's just continue on your example. Because I've heard this a thousand times. Okay, I'm glad I'm unique. Yeah, sure. Not like, okay, let's just say because mentally you won't allow it, personality, you won't allow it.

And by allow it, I mean backing off from training. No, no, no, yeah. Because other things happen, right? Like it's like then my mental, not just me, by the way, a lot of people, their mental health takes a nosed happen, right? Like it's like then your mind, mental, not just me, by the way, a lot of people, their mental health takes a nose dive, right? Cause then like they lose the motivation, the focus, the productivity, your mood.

Like if I don't work out or if I don't do some kind of cardio first thing, even though I know cardio, blah, blah, blah, I know strength training is like the king. But if I don't do cardio, my brain just won't, doesn't turn on the same way. Yeah, so a lot to dive into there. Number one would be fine.

Again, I've heard this a bunch. And if, for example, you are an athlete, like our NFL players are in the playoffs right now. There is no, hey, let's tone it down for a couple of weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not an option. So we have dealt with this, whether it's just cause you're being ridiculous

and you won't back off a little bit, or we have legitimate, we're two weeks from the Olympics, we're not gonna back off. Oh, okay, got it. Fine, no problem. So let's work backwards. What are you willing to do?

If you're not willing to trade off intensity with your exercise, will you trade off intensity somewhere else? Hmm, okay. Fine, you block that out. What are my other options? Are you doing something in your personal life that we can take the five out of 10?

Are we doing something work wise that we can take out a five out of 10? I'm not saying forever again, short periods. Or if you're not willing to back down on stress or intake, you have to ramp up de-stress, right? So you're not willing to back down on stress or intake, you have to ramp up de-stress, right? So, you're not willing to reduce any stress intake. You have to triple down now on down regulation processes. That's the only other side of the coin

that we can play with now. So what's that look like? Fine, you won't give up your training. You're not gonna stop the work project. You're gonna keep fighting with your friend or whatever you're in the middle of, then you just won't let it go for a week. Cool, you owe me an hour and a half of focused down regulation every day.

Hour and a half, no, no, stop. Do you want this to get better or not? Like you have to pick something here. An hour and a half is like aggressive, but you get the point here, right? It's not like, okay, I'll do 10 minutes of breath work today. It's not gonna be enough.

You have to legitimately do something that gives your system and physiology a chance to back up. What this could look like is, maybe I'll give you some physical activity back and you can walk for 30 minutes twice a day with no headphones, no podcast, no stimuli coming in, no music, no talking on the phone. It is reduced arousal.

You will have nothing but sympathetic drive coming in all day. You have to give some processing time. Now what's interesting that you said about that is if I took your exercise away, your mental health, and whatever, how are you gonna phrase it, would tank. My mood. Sure. Yeah.

But you know what I just did in the second thing? What? I just forced you to deal with that. Because I said Sure. Yeah. But you know what I just did in the second thing? What? I just forced you to deal with that. Because I said, we're gonna go for a 30 minute walk and you don't get to distract yourself with podcasts and music. Which means what's gonna happen in that 30 minute time? You're gonna have to process.

You're gonna have to process things. And that sucks. That's why you wanna train because you don't wanna process things. Right, it's like more of a distraction. No question. Right? All the stuff you're doing in life is distraction so you don't have to process either emotionally

or subconsciously. You don't wanna have to process those things. So you're just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If I just keep putting things in my ear, I won't have to deal with the things that are between my ears. Right. Now I'm taking that option away

and you have to go deal with it. The fact that when you say that, and this is not my particular realm, I'm a physiologist, but we have a tremendous amount of behavioral therapists and psychologists and stuff on our teams, and we see this stuff so routinely, I feel a little bit fair to go at it this way. This is exactly what that person,

if you came into our program, if you were an archer right now, I would be like chuckling, I'd be like, Emily, you're on, here you go, take her. Because we know this story, we've just seen it so many times, I know the thing you're going to say. I know the next excuse you're going to say. Let me guess. Blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, yeah, great. We've seen it. So a lot of this is mental. In no particular case. I mean, no, no, no, no. I'm saying, but I think it is. I think a lot of people who exercise a lot maybe at a high intensity or it's more of an addiction maybe because it's a distraction. No, no, no.

To something else that needs to be managed and taken care of. It depends on how silly you want to be here. Let's be really silly, Andy. I'm a, now I'm a physiologist so I'm going to offend people right now on purpose. It's a joke everyone. It's just a joke. But I always say that psychology is just misunderstood physiology. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What I mean by that is, again, it's a joke, okay? Okay, it's not just mental for some people. In this case, it can be. But if there are things happening in your metabolism, it can be causing this whole process. So you feel like you have to run all the time, not because you actually have anything going on upstairs, but simply because things like your respiratory rate

is greatly exceeding your metabolic input. because you actually have anything going on upstairs, but simply because things like your respiratory rate is greatly exceeding your metabolic input. And so when you feel that mismatch, you don't feel normal. When you feel normal then is when you increase your metabolic rate to match your respiratory rate and things are balanced again. And so people that are really addicted to exercise, not always, but a lot of the times they have this going on.

So this is actually a metabolic issue. It's just sending signals that are screaming to you like you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go. And it's not, it feels or can also be expressed as a psychological thing, but it is really at its core in this case, driven by accelerated metabolism, if you wanna call it that.

And you feel mismatched. That's what it is, right? And so what we can do is come backwards and go, yo, let's slow that thing down a little bit. And so when you, you should feel normal at rest as well, but you're not. So we can match you there. And this is exactly why,

we see this routinely, where people feel more calm, more focused, more serene when they're training. Where other people are like, dude, no way. Like I'm way more comfortable. Like wake up, like blah, blah. Totally. And that's the word is.

This is commonly like a mismatch of metabolic input versus output. And so you don't feel great until you're moving. Are there specific exercises that are like, are better for your cognitive functioning than others? No. No? No, because it's not about the exercise per se.

It's about a whole host of reactions like increased cerebral blood flow, metabolic changes, alterations in pH. It's this combination in cocktail that transfers from physiology up to this, in your example, cognition. So you wanna pick a kettlebell up, great. You wanna go for a swim, awesome.

You wanna jump rope, you wanna go to jujitsu, hop in the, like it doesn't actually matter the exercise choice. In fact, there's actually more evidence now that all the long-term brain health benefits of exercise are large part simply driven by increased arousal rather than like a physical structural sort of change. The structural change will happen in your brain, but it's the engagement of arousal that gets it. So whatever that thing is to get you moving, it doesn't matter too much. So are you someone then who believes that just plain walking a day, like if you exist, if you can give one piece of advice to someone looking to improve

their overall fitness and performance, what would it be? This is like a non-answer answer. But my number one thing for that person would be find your biggest limitation and get that a little bit better. What I mean? Some people do great at training really hard with weights, but their cardiovascular

system is terrible. Then that person would see way more of a benefit from just doing a little bit of conditioning, a little bit of endurance work. Or you can see the opposite scenario, right? Some people are great with lots of forms of exercise, but their overall physical activity is tiny. That person would see huge benefits from doing something like a standing desk

or a walking treadmill or taking a couple of walks per day. Some people are doing awesome in all those areas, but their sleep is actually, like you picked a thing, right? And I really, I know that is like not the thing that's gonna get the most views on social media clip here. Right, right, right. But it's my honest answer

because I've worked with hundreds of people and that is the real true honest thing that actually happens. When we make smashing changes in people's lives, I wish I could be like, oh, it's just lift more weights or eat better food. For you, it might be a multivitamin and a therapist. Another person might be like, hey, you actually, fine,

we actually have to do this whole weight loss thing and you got, another person might be their shoulder pain. Like it really, I mean, again, I've coached a lot of people and had a lot of people in my lab and that is the honest truth of when you say like, what will make the biggest change in somebody's life? It is whatever is causing their biggest limitation. Just get that out of the way and things will change.

Or work on it. I think a lot of what a lot of people do is like, A, they go on autopilot and they do what's the most comfortable. Totally. Right? So you're saying it's like a mindset change, right? Like just do something that you're not comfortable with a little bit more.

Yeah. Let me say it this way. Once a year, maybe once every six months, think about all the things in your lifestyle and pick one thing that's probably the worst and get a little bit better at it. This is not every month or every week or whatever. So it's not just like, okay, so you're not just talking about like strength versus cardio, versus shoulder pain versus flexibility. It's one thing in your life. One thing in your life, right? So you go 20, 25, let's do the New Year's resolution thing,

right? And you look around and you go, okay, how are my relationships? Do I feel like I have a sense of purpose? Do I feel connected? Am I lonely? All right. How's my shoulder feeling? Great. How's my, am I making enough money? Just go through everything in your life and go, what is causing me the biggest problems? And this year, it's not the only thing you're going to do, but that's this year. Can I leave 2025 being a little bit better

at this back pain? And anything else you can accomplish, just try to keep it on maintenance. So imagine juggling five or six balls. Okay. Right? Just go, great. I got six balls here.

This ball over here, ball A, is broken. It's got chips in it. It's just terrible. And every time I catch it, it hurts my hand because it puts a little cut in there. And the rest are like, okay, they're not polished and they're dirty and like, we can make them better. But this one is causing the most pain.

So you know what I'm gonna do? Like I'm gonna juggle these other five, just enough to keep them from getting dust, a little bit of maintenance. And then I'm gonna spend a lot of my time just focused on this cracked, dirty, nasty broken ball. And if I can get that a little bit better at the end of the year,

we start stacking that on for 40 years, a lot of things changed, a lot. So it's interesting, you're not focused on strictly, even though you're a physiologist, right? You're not focusing strictly on your body composition or your strength or your VO2 max. You're really focusing on like life, like behavioral, like mental, like everything. It's performance. This is what I call it, right?

So when you come to me, whether you're an athlete or not, and you say, Andy, I'm gonna pay you $15. I'll hire you for 15 bucks. Right. I'll pay you $15, and I'm trying to make an NFL team next year. This is something we've actually done, right?

Not for $15, but I'm gonna try to make an NFL team next year. Okay, great. What do you want me to done, right? Not for $15, but I'm gonna try to make an NFL team next year. Okay, great. What do you want me to do, client? No, no, I told you what I want. I wanna make an NFL team. Okay, great. My job is not your body composition.

My job is not your 40-yard dash. My job is to look at you and go, what is gonna stop her from making an NFL team? That's what I have to figure out, right? Because people pay me not for blood tests, not for VO2 max tests. They pay us to get results. Like that's what I get paid for.

It's my job to figure out what they need to go do, right? So if I look at this person and go, all right, hey man, he's getting injured all the time. She's really getting hurt a lot. Yeah, we could do, you know, test for toxic metals and we could do a full body MRI. Like, we do these things, but you know what? Like, I think if this dude could just train a year and not get hurt, he might have a shot. So we're going to double, triple down on everything that goes

into the whole slew of injury prevention. And then, boom, if I do that, then that guy, and again, this is a real example, has a shot to make an NFL roster. And if they don't, then I can go, you just didn't have enough talent, which is fine, right? has a shot to make an NFL roster. And if they don't, then I can go, you just didn't have enough talent, which is fine, right? You're not outside of my realm, right? But I don't get paid to make you sleep better. I don't get paid for those things, right? Well, we have always,

whether it's our blood work company, Vitality, our sleep company, Absolute Rest, our coaching company, Arte, my lab, our research, they don't operate on, like raise my testosterone, they operate on like, again, get me to this goal. It is our job to find what's stopping you from that goal, and if that is your terrible relationship, then I go, great, I've looked at all your blood work,

I've looked at all this, we got stuff to work on, but the biggest problem you're having is this relationship with your mom, so why don't you go work with our team of mental health specialists and blah, blah, blah, and they're gonna lead to charge. And you know what, our physical therapists and stuff like that, like,

you guys take a back seat right now. This is what she's gotta go work on as her top tier priority. Not my area, but I'm gonna bring in the best in the world to go do that, right? Or the opposite. Everyone could always improve mental health, but you actually right now,

gotta go get this ad doctor thing figured out, and we're gonna focus on that for three months if we have to, because once that thing stops hurting, now we'll come back and work on our red light therapy, or like some of these other things that just don't matter as much for you right now. How about all these fads right now, right? You have like the red light therapy, you have the saunas, you have the cold plunges. I have 90 of it, every single one of these things, right? Yeah, me too. Yeah, right? But, and be honest, how much do those things really make a difference if you don't have

the other stuff in place? It's everywhere from zero to 100 on that. Here's what I mean. Where people run into problems is this lack of precision with the tools that they're using. You probably can't name a tool like Sana, like a supplement, like anything that I can pull up and say, the tools that they're using. You probably can't name a tool like Sana, like a supplement, like anything,

that I can pull up and say, there's no evidence that this does anything. And this is why it gets confusing, because someone could come on a podcast, someone could put a post up, and show you high quality evidence on everything from grounding to crystals or whatever stuff, right? And then you at home are going like,

well, like what do I do? Yeah, yeah. Like, which ones do I pick, right? And then you at home are going like, well, like what do I do? Yeah, yeah. Like, well, which ones do I pick, right? And if you pick them all, you realize you're like, I have this four and a half hour morning routine. Well, that was a big joke, right? Like people come on this show all the time and by the time they finish their morning routine,

it's dinnertime. No kidding. Right, like. We had a client, this is a true story. We had somebody at absolute rest who was going to bed at between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, not because he worked swing shift. He was having dinner at like 10 a.m.,

going to bed at three or four, waking up at about midnight because he had a four hour morning routine that he wanted to get done so that he could get to his job site by five or six in the morning. And we were like, dude, I think you lost the plot. Yeah, no kidding. Like, I think he lost the plot just a touch. What was he doing in that routine?

He was a big follower of a very particular, I wouldn't say influencer, a guy that's been around in this space for a long time. Okay. And he was doing like a 35 minute trampoline routine in the morning. He was doing breath work. He was stretching.

He was doing all this hydration stuff. He was doing all the right- Was he following Tony Robbins? Cause he's the only one who trampolines for like every single day that I know of. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Again, no, no, but it was like, you can't do all of it.

Oh, it's beyond. You can't, right? We laugh all the time cause like people think that this is how pro athletes do it. And I'm like, you know, they have kids too. But that's the thing, like, I feel like things have gotten so out of hand with what like, just like practical reality for most people.

Yeah, it's like maybe the 0.001% of people can like afford these things or whatever, or do these things on the regular, whatever. But then the day, like the basics to me always work the best. You know, like a squat, a pushup. Like, people want fancy and they want this magic bullet. Right? Well, there's always the hope there, right?

So we actually see this in our program because we're like, that's it. Okay, I'm doing it. I'm going all in. I'm getting all the tests and stuff done because I know that I just have this micronutrient deficiency. Right, right, right.

It doesn't happen very often. It does happen. Right. Sometimes it is like, wow, you really just have this thing going on here. But the vast does happen. Sometimes it is like, wow, you really just have this thing going on here. But the vast majority of the time it's like, yeah, this is a little low over here, this is a little high over there,

that's kind of off, you're not doing, and we kind of have to like, and we always start, of course, like always with all the big rocks and the basics. Because everyone now thinks like, oh, they get these tests and like, oh, my problem was I'm allergic to gluten or is this, like how many people

are really allergic to gluten? Give me a break. Well, some, but. Like what's the percentage? Cause in LA it's 99% of people. 1000%. Right? Yeah, 100%.

I'm very much chuckling. This is one we've had a lot of fun with over the years cause we're like, yep, yep. Or it's like these really basic things and then they do them and they're like, oh, you're right. Like what? What's the most basic things that- Like again, having a reasonable nutritional profile,

having a reasonable lifestyle, having a reasonable amount. And I'm intentionally not even saying optimal. Just like being reasonable- I know reasonable. With stress management and stuff like that, right? So to kind of answer your question about all the tools and stuff, the reason I said zero to 100 is a lot

of the times it is this kind of person when they come in and we've had so many of the like biohacking folks come in and they're like, oh, I've already had a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah testing done. The reality of it is, and I can't stress this point enough, I don't care what laboratory tests you do. There is almost no value in the actual markers on those lab tests at all. All of the value is in the interpretation and the analysis of those markers. If you don't really know

what you're doing in that, you're going to miss things. You're also going to get a ton of false positives. And this for these crowds, they tend to hyper-focus and go nuts and they really freak themselves out over something because they don't honestly know what they're doing when they're looking at it. And so it makes things way worse. This is also the crowd who we tend to pull things away from. We take your sleep tracker away.

We take your morning meditation away. We take your sauna stuff away because you can become hyper fixated on these things. Orthosomnia is very real, right? By the way, like again, like I used to wear those trackers and all the things. And like, honestly, it gives you more anxiety because you're checking everything all the time.

You're checking your sleep. Did I sleep okay? Did I not sleep okay? Did I sleep too high, too little by ramp? So many of these things are actually make your health worse, not better. They can. Some people it doesn't matter, some people it's neutral,

and some people it's really deleterious. I've told this story a bunch, and I always have to tell people I have permission, but I coach a guy named John Rahm, one of the top golfers in the world, and he was pretty public about this. Like he threw that stuff away because it was very clearly making his stuff get worse

and all other reasons. So we've gone away from, and he is one of the most highly paid athletes in the entire world. He is? Yeah, like insanely highly paid. We can afford anything with his, we can do anything we want technology wise with him.

And we don't use those things because he was just making things worse. Perfect, yeah, do anything we want technology-wise with him, and we don't use those things, because he was just making things worse. Perfect, yeah, exactly. So what do you do with him? Lots of different things that are specific to what he's doing. But the point I'm trying to make is,

it's not just about can you afford the technology, can you afford the test, because even those things that feel innocuous can be deleterious. I'll actually go back to the very beginning, and this is really important because of things like genetic testing. There are ample data now that will show pretty clearly

that when people have tests done based on their genetics, that they take the information more seriously and they have bigger follow through. Now this is a huge, huge problem because if that information is poor, which it almost always is, then we tend to drive a lot of negative behavior and a lot of problems. And so the reason I'm bringing that up is people say things

like, well why not do that test, it's only a couple of hundred bucks. You'll get more data and there's no harm. There is harm, there is legitimately harm, even if it's a couple of hundred dollars in a sleep tracker, a couple of hundred dollars for a genetic test. Not gonna harm everybody, most people it won't,

but for some people, there is a risk here. It's not just a couple of hundred dollars. And so you need to be really careful, whether you're coaching people or advising people or you're a clinician or it's you yourself. If the product or service is serving you, great, I'm all for it. Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for all I care.

If it is making things worse though, then you need to pay attention to that client. Pay attention to what they're saying and be really careful. Something as simple as a food tracker can really harm some people if they have poor associations and regulations with food. So it's not the technology,

it's none of those things that I care about, it's just you really paying attention and realizing what's actually happening and going, oh yeah, great, great, great. You know, we're going to take the red light away from you. Why? Red light's bad? No, no, no, no. But just because you right now, it's bad. Right, right, right. That's all it is. That's coaching.

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I guess, exercise modality that you've seen. Because when I said, the reason I'm asking you this is because when I said I like, I have to do cardio in the morning, you're like, oh, that's okay. Most people who I would ask that to would be like, oh my God, no, you're like breaking down your muscles, you should be doing strength training only, like, they go through this whole thing of like, they cardio shame me, right?

Oh, no. And so you didn't do that, and you're the scientist behind it. So would you say that it's cardio okay? Of course it's okay. In fact, it's, I mean, geez, that is a really, I hope it wasn't actually teed up that way from people. That'd be a really terrible message. No, you didn't do that.

Yeah. I'm saying you did the opposite. I'm saying other people did. Oh yeah. Well, people say that like, you know, that you can, cardio can break, cardio breaks down your muscle mass, especially as you age, it makes you hungrier, which it does. That's true. Also, it's a stressor, which it is.

No, no, no. Okay. Okay. All right. Time out here. Time out here. Time out. Okay.

Exercise science 101 here. First and foremost, almost all forms of exercise are great, right? So I don't care what it is in terms of short and long-term health. Okay. right? So I don't care what it is in terms of short and long-term health. In fact, if you look at any amount of data on longevity, lifespan, health span, strength span, wellness span, pick your terms here, you will routinely see the best combination of all exercise over a long span is going to be the blend of something in the world of strength training and something in the world of cardiovascular training.

That is unequivocal at this point. It is inarguable at this point. Now, can you hedge towards one over the other a little bit more? Sure, of course. If you like to do more endurance and conditioning and if you wanna call it cardio work, great. But don't leave strength training off the table.

If you're only cycling, only running, I would guarantee you, and as a scientist, I don't like saying things like that, but I would pretty much guarantee you, you're leaving some health and productivity on the table. And I'd say the same thing about strength training. If you're only lifting weights and you're not doing anything else,

I definitely would be comfortable in saying you are leaving health and performance in the short and long term on the table Like you're leaving gains there. So How do I blend these two? Well, there is a reality if you are trying to maximize any adaptation You want to get your legs stronger? You want to get bigger shoulders? You want to get more flexible? You want to run your first marathon? I don't care. What if you want to do all of that, but also look good? No, I got you.

I got you. I'm starting off on one side. Okay. Just making sure. If you want to maximize one adaptation, the more you focus on that and nothing else, the faster you'll get to that goal. So if you're like, wow, I want to run a marathon. Great. I want to do half marathon.

Then I would say we are going to focus almost exclusively on running moderate to long distances. Not entirely, but almost exclusively, right? I'm not gonna be like, I'll run once a week and let's lift some weights. Like it'd be a terrible training program. Same thing if you said I wanna squat double body weight for the first time ever.

All right, great. We're like, we're gonna be squatting. Like this is not rocket science, right? That said, when you move past one individual specific goal and you're looking for well-roundedness, I want to be lean and I want to have energy and I don't want my joints to hurt and I want ... Fine. Whatever those define you.

Then we're going to have a combination of these two things. What you're referring to is what we would often call a crossover or blocking effect, where if you do a bunch of strength training, it's not going to limit your gains in cardiovascular training. Very rarely are lifting weights or plyometrics or power training going to make an endurance out that worse. Almost always it makes them better. But the opposite isn't true.

If you do a bunch of volume conditioning wise or endurance wise, this will eventually limit muscle growth. Bodybuilders don't run 20 miles a day, very clearly. That got blown out of proportion, though. And I was as guilty as that many years ago saying the same thing, right? So then this sort of got portrayed as like,

hey, if you do any cardio, it's gonna block all your gains. No, it's not. No, it's not at all. If you're trying to maximize strength, and I, like really maximize it, not get stronger. I mean, like get it, set a world record, get the strongest you've ever been in your life. Then you probably don't want to waste a lot of your energy and your recovery capacity on running miles or swimming miles. Like that just makes a lot of sense. Save all your energy so you can truly go in, put a maximum effort in any amount of energy you don't have in recovery

that you wasted on the treadmill takes away from that goal, right? The same thing for muscle growth. But does that mean you can't jog a couple of miles here and there? Of course you can. So it's more about energy expenditure. Energy expenditure is a huge component to it.

There is a number of review articles that have been published on this. My colleague and friend, Dr. Kevin Mirak at Arkansas and Jimmy Bagley at San Francisco State published a great one. And it basically said total volume, overall energy intake, the type of exercise you're doing. So things like swimming don't have nearly as much of an interference effect on muscle growth as things like running because it's an impact on your quads, right? You're trying to grow your quads,

but then you're, damn, you get the idea. So cycling doesn't have as much of an interference effect. It's not as landing. So all these factors go into it. So running is basically the worst in terms of breaking down your muscle. In terms of if you're trying to maximize muscle strength or growth, but that said, that running volume

has to get pretty high for it to do any amount of interference. How much do you think you need to run to ruin your muscles? Depends on the person. If you don't run and I have you run two miles a day, that's going to crush you, right? If you run a lot and you run two miles a day, it might not do anything at all. See, I think, so I thought like, okay, if I'm running like three or four miles a day, let's say, you know, for 40, 45 minutes, that's not as bad as like,

when I look at endurance runners or people who are running like 10 miles plus, or like, like running like 50 to a hundred miles a week. 50, a hundred miles, yeah. You look at them and I hate to say it, but they do look like flabby skinny fat. You know, they don't have the aesthetics that I think that most people are trying to get.

They may be thin, but they're not toned. So how do I get, what's the delicate balance then? You're saying there is no delicate balance? No, no, no, there isn't. I would say for you, three to four miles a day probably is getting on the line of limiting muscle growth and strength if you're trying to maximize that.

So here's what I'd say to you. All right. You want to get, let's get jacked, right? You want to get as big as you can. Like you want to go, you want to put on some muscle right now. Can we back that off to like two miles a day just for the next say eight weeks? Great. And after that, we're going to change our focus a little bit.

We'll put some miles back in. We'll see if we can maintain this new muscle and strength for as long as we can. But I can't have everything pegged all the way up to the top and then expect progress. We'll put some miles back in. We'll see if we can maintain this new muscle and strength for as long as we can. But I can't have everything pegged all the way up to the top and then expect progress. Because also you're saying because A, because of its energy expenditure, right? There's always so much energy you can put. It's true because what happens is there's only time in the day, right? So once if you're doing too much cardio, you're not leaving enough time in terms of time,

energy to put it because what I'll do is I'll run up like, oh, I'll do my weights later. And then it always suffers. I'll do like 10 minutes. There you go, right? Like, and then really was it a, was it this big molecular interference effect, or was it the fact that it just took away

your training quality? Right. It's not some big science thing. You just didn't train as hard because of it. Exactly. I'll do it, but not as hard as I would have if I didn't, right? Of course, yep. So what you could do in that train as hard because of it. Exactly. I'll do it, but not as hard as I would have if I didn't. Right? Of course. Yep. So what you could do in that scenario is a

couple things. Twitch the order. Train first, get your lift in first. And then you got any juice left go for your run. Does there is there any kind of physiological difference between doing cardio first or strength? Not really. No, there is myths on that too. Yes. The easy rule here is priority. Do the thing that is the most important to you when you're the most fresh. And now to be clear, I'm saying most fresh. I'm not saying first in the day.

Yeah. Some people, a lot of our, like our competitive athletes, they train like in a couple of weeks, one of my athletes is fighting for a UFC championship in Australia. A girl, Tatiana Suarez, right? Now she is a main event fighter. When she fights, she fights at like eight to nine to 10 p.m.

So she doesn't get up and do six o'clock workouts. That would be a terrible time, right? So not her specifically, but people like that, we will do their best, most important training session late at night, because that's when they're the most fresh. You get up and they train in the morning, they will train, but they're not actually ready to go because they're physiologically peaking at 6 p.m., 7 p.m.

Other people are the opposite. Yeah, makes sense. Right, and so it's not just first in the day, it is when are you at your absolute best, and that's when we do the most important thing for you. That makes perfect sense to me, right? Because she's training, like these UFC fighters, boxers, whoever,

they're doing their fights at night. So they also have to be the most optimal at night. Mentally, physically, all of it, right? Energetically, just like get through our mornings. We take them very slow. We're not up and going. And we are peaking in the evenings. That makes perfect sense.

Yep, NBA players, NFL players, like most of our performing athletes, that's how we operate. So, so even an NBA player, LeBron or whoever, are they doing their heaviest or their most intense workouts late in the day because of that reason? It depends on the individual person, but oftentimes they're doing it after the game. After the game. Same thing. What's your priority today? Play the game. Like you're getting $2 million for that game, not for your workout or whatever you're making. And so your energy expenditure has to go in that game.

Totally. And now whatever you got left will lift after the game. That's a really common thing in the NBA. Major League Baseball is different. Nobody lifts for the most part after the game, just because it's so late at night and other things. And baseball is a very easy, like physical sport. Yeah, like you can see that they're not,

they don't look like they're like the most, you know, prowess looking athletes of all time. Yeah, exactly. Um, but that makes perfect sense. So like an act, like a regular person who like works a normal day, probably then just by based on what you're saying, working out first thing in the morning or in the morning should be their highest. that's when they're gonna have the most energy. If they're a morning person. Well, cause by the way, like at three o'clock in the afternoon, if you go ask me to have my best workout, I'll be very tired.

Yeah, so that is when I train always. You really, but you're not an NBA star, are you? Two to three, if I train at six in the morning, I'm a very early riser, I get up really early. What time do you wake up? If it's my preference in my world for foreign change in the morning is like, that's when I like to get up and get going.

Why is your morning routine four hours also? My morning routine is like six minutes. Okay, what is your, okay, I wanna ask you about that. Yeah. What are you gonna say? Now I sleep in later now because I have little kids. Yeah. And like there's a different scenario.

Normally when you have little kids, you wake up earlier. But I mean by that is now I wake up at six. And then they'll set it there, right? So I can have time with them and do other stuff like that. But prior to kids, I was definitely a, I wanna be up at four or four 15 most mornings and going, right? But even when I get up in the morning,

if I train two or three hours after waking up, I can get through it, but I'm not gonna be that great. I actually like to get up and I'm usually really on. When I wake up in the morning, I'm like ready to go. I'm ready to go. I wanna get up, I wanna get to work, I wanna get going on things like knocking stuff out, like I'm doing a bunch of different stuff

and then I feel great after that. So then I train and then my energy's high, I feel good. Like everything's out of my brain. Two or three o'clock in the afternoon. So wait, so how does that possible? If you're waking up so early, aren't you depleted though by two o'clock? No, I feel great. But why?

How is that possible? What time are you going to bed at night? If I'm going to get up at four, then I'm going to be a better date. Okay, so then that kind of just takes the whole thing about working. If you're someone who is like fighting, let's say at night, training, you know, later on in the day is really important because that's when you have to have your optimal energy

or an NBA player, whatever. But if you're going to bed at eight o'clock like a granny, wouldn't you think that you're going to have more energy like at 10 o'clock in the morning? Like energy for different things. So I have a lot of energy at 10, but I'd rather get stuff done work-wise. So that's where you're putting your energy expenditure. Okay, so what's your morning routine?

And with, yeah. Yeah, so right now we are not getting up at four again, because of kids. The kids. How old are your kids? My daughter's six and my son's four. Oh, okay, yeah. I mean, as you know, it's a magical time

that I don't wanna miss. So I've changed my lifestyle to- To accommodate that. Totally, to be around the kids, which is like fine, okay. Yeah. I mean, as you know, it's a magical time that I don't want to miss. So I've changed my lifestyle to- To accommodate that. Totally, to be around the kids, which is like fine, okay, whatever. So I generally get up, always hang out with the kids for a solid like 20 minutes, make breakfast, do all that stuff, just mess around.

Then they usually get off and go about their routine. I will take the dogs outside. I live up in the mountains. So I'm going to be in nature within 20 seconds. I'll be in the trees and like there's deer around, there's animals around, like there's coyotes, like there are bear, elk around, like I'm in nature and moving for the most part there.

I don't spend very much time out there initially, like it's a really quick walk, I just get up going. And then I get straight to work. I don't do anything else in the morning, but then get right into work and I feel incredible and I'm usually stoked to get going. So really your only big thing is you wanna like have fresh air or outdoor stuff.

I wanna move a little bit. I wanna move and I generally wanna get like really cold or hot if I can or whatever like just to get up and get moving so I've gotten some family time in. Right. I've gotten food in, I've gotten moving, and now I'm ready to go. So you're into, okay, so breakfast.

So let's get into the nutrition. Okay, but did we finish the training and then training mistakes? Did you give me them? I think you're close, yeah. That was good, right? Yeah. Is there any particular big mistake that people make?

Well, what I'd say is one general mistake people make with exercise, if you're failing to make progress or hitting your goals, it's oftentimes just a few things. One, you probably don't have any structure to your plan. So people are kind of just like doing whatever they feel like that day, or what we call in the field program hopping. So you're like, you did this program for a week, and then you did this one or whatever,

and there's not enough specificity and then not enough overload over time for you to actually drive any adaptations. So that's generally like problem number one. The second one is because of that or similar to it, it's lack of any true progression. So you do the same workout at the same intensity, at the same repetition range, in the same range of motion,

in the same order for years, and then why would you think you would actually make changes? Your body will get very adapted and accustomed to that. You'll be optimized for it. And because of that, you don't make any progress. So without going into individual exercises and orders and things like that, because they can vary, the answer can be anything there. In general, if you're following a well-developed plan, at least kind of closely, and you're

making some sort of intention for progressive overload, you should be seeing results. If you're not, then you got to go back to those things. And if you're doing both of those things and you're not seeing progress, now we're probably at the point of consistency and effort. You're actually trying hard. You're working hard. You're like going hard.

Right. And are you doing it for more than a week and then falling off for a week and then doing it for two weeks and then you're missing five days. That's just gonna be hard to make progress like that. So lack of structure is one huge training mistake people make. Yup. And then moving from program to program or thing to thing with randomly.

Yup. What about plateauing? Because that's how people plateau or is it completely different? Because how I find that's a problem. Like if you're someone who works out regularly at a moderate to intense level, you do plateau or you're just maintaining.

How can you break through a plateau? Yeah, this is actually a really cool question. I did an entire podcast on this exact topic. Oh, okay. It's like two and a half hours probably. So you can go into all the details. What are the signs? What are the symptoms?

What do I measure? What do I pay attention to? Like, how do I know it? And then what do I do about it? I'll try to condense it into just a couple of minutes. Can you give me a cool version of two and a half hours, please? Give me a one minute version of it. Yeah, even two minutes is fine.

In general, the reason for plateaus is lack of intentional progression. That is simply it. Right? You don't have a plan for how you're going to add weight or reps or many ways you can do it. You just kind of are working. And sometimes you work really hard, but there's no intentional judicious plan of saying this

is how we're going to get to that number. Second big thing that causes it is distraction. And what I mean by that is you did that lift, oh, and then also you popped into an extra Pilates class this week. And then you did that extra 16 mile hike. And you're like, okay, there's not enough energy reserves left to put the stressor

in that intentional spot. And so the body just kind of recovered everything a little bit. There's no intentionality there. You have to train something hard, hardish, and then not distract it with other adaptations and other things that deplete energy reserves. So if it's not that, those first two things, then the third big thing that it comes down to is are you making

some grand limitation in the other big rocks? You just don't have enough calories. You're not getting enough protein. You're having big limitations in your sleep or something like that. So if it's not the stress input, which is those first two, then it is the stress output side of it, which is you're not allowing enough recovery capacity to actually build any structural change. So as long as you're taking care of those big things, most people will go right past plateaus. Number five is if it's not any of those first four, it's just a time issue. The better you get, the more well-trained you are,

the longer it takes to make progress. So when we hear people that are pretty well-trained and experienced and like, man, I'm plateaued, I'm plateaued, I'm like, all right, how long's it been? Oh, it's been three weeks. Okay, that's not a plateau. That is a normal adaptation response time. Right. Oh, it's been three months. That is a normal adaptation response time. Right.

Oh, it's been three months. How long you been lifting? 15 years. Three months is nothing then. Right, when we have our Olympic weightlifters and professional powerlifters, and the Olympic weightlifters, for example, are training for the Olympics,

if we saw a gain every three months, we'd be breaking world records. Yeah, right. Right, it is, you plan the four years out and saying like, we're trying to get a peak at the end of this four years. So that's a pretty extreme example. But when you get really to the end of your strength spectrum

or whatever you're after, it just takes a long time. And so you're probably not at a plateau. You're just at a level of where we can't perceive the progress, the increments are going slower than we realize, right? So if you want to think about it this way, you've gained a half a pound of strength. But how can I see that in the weight room? Well, that's the problem with it.

Also, you know, that's exactly because it's so incredibly difficult to lose two pounds of body fat, but it's so easy to lose 30 pounds, right? So, right? Isn't that like the biggest loser whole thing, right? Remember this year, the biggest loser? They lost 40 pounds on the first week, right? But when you get down to the nitty gritty, those like the minute minutiae, like for someone like me to lose a pound of fat is so much more, it's, you have to be so precise in everything you do because you're already doing so much, right? That's exactly right.

Right. Yep. So like even people with all these things we're talking about, right? With the red light, the this, the supplements. Yeah. Like if you're doing everything, it's hard to know what works, what doesn't work, how much everything is working because you're doing everything. That's exactly right.

Right. Yep. So now you have to just be a little more patient in your progress and realize that, yeah, when you first started your journey, you were losing five pounds every week, or every time you went to the gym, you were adding more weight.

Well, again, did you think that that was gonna last forever and you were gonna break world records by year one? Right. Like, just do the basic math there. You'd be squatting 6,000 pounds by next year. Exactly. Not gonna happen, right? How important then is recovery to then

the plateau? You know, people will always say this, you don't make progress in the gym, your progress comes at home, which is the way of saying like nothing will change whether we're talking about gaining muscle, losing fat, neuroplasticity, enhancing, like you pick the physiological adaptation and it does not happen during the stimulus. It happens post stimuli. So how important is recovery? Like it is the only opportunity you actually have to make a change. So what kind, okay, so here's my question for you.

I wrote it down. Let me just make sure I didn't. So like for the recovery, yeah, what's the most critical components of recovery that people overlook? It's a hard one to answer without saying similar things as I've said before, where it depends on what that person's limitation is.

Could be sleep, could be nutrition. It could be down regulation. Those are the big ones that pop up. I'd say on aggregate, people just don't sleep as well as they think they do. And I'd say the thing that will make the biggest impact in progress that is the most consistent problem is sleep. Generally people even that think that they're sleeping

okay or not, or even I would say is okay sleep might be okay enough for regular people, but if you're trying to perform at your best, okay sleep is not enough. And we see really big progress gains when people go from like okay sleep to really good sleep. Right. But like you were saying earlier too, a lot of that, a lot of sleep, unfortunately is about like other stressors in your life. If you have a lot of other stressors in your life, it will affect your sleep. It's hard not to. Yeah. I mean, there's a, look, kind of like a handful of big categories for sleep. You can bucket it this way. You can think about physiology. This could be strictly a physiology problem.

If you're not making appropriate neurotransmitters, if any number of things in your physiology are off high or low, this is gonna directly back sleep. So it could be a physiology issue. Could be psychological, of course, as you're alluding to. It could be pathology. There are a ton of people that have clinical or subclinical sleep disorders that don't realize it.

In fact, the numbers are crazy. It's something like 30 to 50 million people have clinical sleep disorders and don't know it. Over 80% of sleep disorders go undiagnosed. It's really, really, really problematic and people don't realize it. And then within that, again, there are subclinical ones, which means you don't qualify for a technical disease.

This is people who have said things like, I went to a sleep clinic, I got testing, and they said I have like mild sleep apnea. Well, almost surely, you have a whole host of fixable things going on, but you didn't meet a clinical diagnosis for that clinical disease, something you didn't get much help, right?

So there's a ton of things we can do that are super easy to fix that will change people's lives that fall below that threshold. The fourth component of good sleep then is your environment. So there's a whole host of things in your physical environment that people do not even realize.

Everyone knows about temperature. Everyone knows about light and sound. It's all the other stuff going on in your environment that people are oblivious to that can be the single thing that is tormenting your sleep. And you just have no idea. The smell, the CO2 concentration in the area, the way that the air flows through your room,

sounds coming from your partner. We have fixed an enormous amount of sleep disorders in people that have nothing wrong with their sleep. It is all because of a disorder in their partner, and neither one of them had any idea about it. So that's the type of stuff where we can go, we can fix A, B, and C. It's a passive fix oftentimes.

And they're like, I just, I thought I had this stuff going on and you didn't have it. I thought my testosterone was low. I thought I was going, I just middle. Yeah. You just had shitty sleep. I thought it was menopause or whatever. It was like, it could be everything.

You just had shitty sleep. Yeah, you just had this thing going on in your physical environment and you can do all the down regulation and meditation you want. It's not gonna fix the fact that this thing is in the air in your bedroom, and it's tanking your sleep.

Well, you mentioned something on a podcast about an environmental scanner. Yep, we do that. What the hell is that? So this is my company, Absolute Rest. Okay. We run full clinical grade sleep studies on people from their house.

So you never have to go to a hospital ever again. We can do the whole thing from your house and we can do 50 nights if you want instead of having to worry about like, you slept weird that one night when you're in the hospital and someone was watching, like of course. Of course you're gonna sleep terrible at a sleep clinic, right?

So it was super easy for us to just go in and send all this equipment to your house and run these sleep tests. What is it? What is this thing though? Like what's the scanner? What happens with the full sleep test is we're running everything from we're detecting if

your mouth is moving at night to your chest to your stomach. We're running EEG analysis, direct brain wave analysis of your brain. We're taking blood and saliva and doing a whole host of testing there. What you're referring to is in addition to all that, we're looking and we're scanning your environment. So we have a full time, real time analysis of all the particulate matter that's in your air, any dander, allergens, pollen, CO2 concentrations, anything like that that's in the atmosphere of your room.

And that's all synced up directly against your sleep data. So if we see things like, well, you're moving a lot at this particular time, we can look back and go, oh, interesting. We saw this particulate matter got really high in the air, and this had nothing to do with bruxism or anxiety or anything else. This was an actual environmental factor

that was stuffing up your nose, causing you to breathe through your mouth a bunch, which then looked like it was causing sleep apnea or whatever the case is, and it was just an environmental factor. Can someone just use this scanner? No, the only way to do it is to go through our full absolute rest program.

How expensive is it? It, depending on your definition of expensive. More than $15. A little bit more than, I mean, you're gonna go through this, you meet directly with scientists and like, it's not a sleep test by the way, it is a full coaching program.

So you go through all this testing and then we run experiments, we test things, we change things, we see if it's actually working rather than just being like, you have sleep apnea, go do these things and sort of good luck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a full coaching program. So you can't just get the environmental scanner.

Damn, I thought you can just buy one. No, you can't. And the reason for that is a couple of things. Number one, it won't tell you anything because it's just telling you about your environment. Whether that is actually making an impact on your sleep, you don't even actually know. And then secondly, we actually did that for a little bit

where we let people do that. And it caused so many problems with people freaking out. Really? And we were like, all right. Like how? Like, you know, blue light, you know, if you go... Like, you know, when you go in the hotel room, you see all that shit that you see with the blue light?

Is it the same thing? Yeah, so they're running, because we do this with our, like, athletes and stuff when they go on the road. So like you test the hotel rooms, we take care of all these things ahead of time. Our performer, high performing, like executives are traveling, something like that.

And when people didn't have that with proper context, they were honestly overemphasizing the environment thing and freaking out. And we're just like, all right, no more of this because it's not always true. There can be things going on. It's like the genetic test, right? People then over-focus on that stuff.

Yeah, as you're seeing all of our stuff, we generally just want to help people and we don't want to upsell things and put people with this fear. And when we feel like something's doing that, then we're generally gonna take it away. Wow, my God, okay. Yeah.