Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Sprint Into Your 80s (Fast Over 40 Coach Explains Longevity, Speed, and “No Jogging”)

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Cynthia Monteleone (@FastOver40) breaks down why sprinting is one of the highest ROI tools for longevity, body comp, and performance, plus how to start safely without wrecking your joints. We get into her dad starting sprinting at 82, competing 12 weeks after bypass surgery, her own comeback from a 1:30 400m to running faster than her college PR, and the training principles most people miss: recovery, intent, periodization, and neurological “signal quality.” We also hit nutrition strategy (eating for neurotransmitters), why she’s anti “chronic cardio,” how sprinting may support brain cleanup (glymphatic system), and practical beginner progressions like hill walks, drills, and bike/rower sprints.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!

I don't just push sprinting because I love sprinting and I'm familiar with it. I push it because it actually creates the best version of yourself. And when did your dad get into sprinting? 82. Last year, 82. Really? Yeah, 82 years old. Jogging teaches that fiber optic signal to be dial-up.

I'm telling you it's that detrimental. High-intensity work like sprint intervals properly polarizes the channel better than any other kind of exercise. So you're actually helping clean your brain out by sprinting. People think it's every day, all day grinding. No, it's just smart training. You'll see Instagram and you'll see the, you know, the girl doing the glute stuff. And it's whatever the algorithm wants to show you. You know, people are copying exercises without realizing that periodization is what's really most important.

Cynthia Mionte Leoni. Oh, my God. We just went over this. You did that on purpose. Okay. C.M. Montalione. Montalione.

That's how that we say it in Italy. Yeah, my husband's Italian. Navajo, Apache, on my mom's side, Spanish. She's a firecracker, 85. And then my dad is 100% German. And when did your dad get into sprinting? Oh my gosh. At what age? Did he decide to start? 82. Last year, 82. Really? Yeah, 82 years old. Any other sports background or, I mean, when's the last time? Yes, he played basketball in high school in the 50s when the original converse came out. And when's like the last time? And then nothing in between between the 50s and

2000. Any idea like the last time he just like jogged or anything? No. He would build fences if he needed to or like go up a ladder. He was very, he's always been very active. That's good.

Yeah. There he is. Look at his BMO. I'm so proud in that clip. And there he is at Team USA. It's 12 weeks after bypass surgery. And he competed in sprinting. Yeah,

he competed at the world championships. Look at him go. What, look at that form. The form looks great. It looks natural. He doesn't look stiff. He looks like he's cruising right along.

Yeah. Well, actually, I'm curious. Yes, not even to take an aside here, but like just the aspect that your dad kept moving, like that must have played a role in helping him get to this point where he can, because, well, most people, even if they move, it would be difficult. But how big of a deal is that? Like, just basic. Yes.

He looks fit. Yeah. He looks fit. Yeah. So he did start, well, he wasn't always that fit, though. I'd say somewhere after 40s. You know, he started to get the quintessential dad bod with the beer belly type thing. But over the years, he, well, let's just back up that maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago,

I would start to tell my parents' advice as I learned it. And they would say, oh, no, we're too old to change. We're just going to be set in our ways. But unfortunately, he was diagnosed about five years ago with bladder cancer. And he had two rounds of treatment, which didn't work. and he said to me, Cynthia, I will do whatever you tell me to do. So ever since then, they've been on all the supplements and they've been doing all the things. And he started strength training a little bit on his own and then I helped him develop that.

But yeah, because I was blessed with this gift that my mentor Charles Polacken introduced to me, I'm able to research and help others. I'm not saying I can cure cancer, but I'm saying that I did put him on a supplement protocol that inhibits tumor growth. And the doctor said, I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it because you're cancer free and he's been that way for five years. Wow. Yeah. And so five years later, you know, last year he said, okay, like I want to sprint with you at the world championships. And I was like, yeah, dad, let's go. So of course, we ramped up his strength training a little bit.

Made sure his VMOs were protected because the more your quads are strong, the better your knees are protected, right, with all that load that sprinting entails. I gave him a bunch of different sprint exercises, you know, strength exercises for sprinting to do. And then he started by walking up his driveway hill. And which is, this is advice I usually give for beginner, beginner sprinters is just start by walking up a hill because that forces your foot into dorsy flexion with your toes up. And it strengthens all those little tendons and all your muscles you need for sprinting.

And then he started slowly jogging up the hill. And then he would walk around his neighborhood and he would incorporate sprints in there. And then he'd go once a week to the, the track to do a little time trial. And that would be his max effort. So yeah. And when you say sprint, you know, he would, he would just occasionally do a sprint where you kind of giving him advice like, hey, you know, go 70% or 80% or something like that? Or did you not have that same prescription for him? Yes. So when he does his intervals, whenever you do sprint intervals, you're not doing max effort. You know, well, you're going to have very few reps at max effort, which you probably know about from sprinting

yourself. But I like to prescribe three days a week of sprinting to my athletes, one day a week of tempo, which is going to be 85% or above. The rest period, this is much like strength training, if people know strength training well, but the rest period dictates the intensity. And so maybe Monday would be tempo. So we'll say eight times 200 meters with anywhere from a minute and a half to three minutes rest. This would be a tempo type thing. You're not going to max effort eight times. And so because of that, it's like an incomplete rest. Yes, correct. Yeah, because you're not going max effort. You're not resting six minutes and. Right. So that would be the next day. Yeah, that would be like maybe a Wednesday workout. You're going to do like three times 30. And then you're

going to do a couple of max effort short sprints and long rest period. So for him, he did the intervals where his hills and his walking around the neighborhood and interval sprints, you know, interval sprints in between and then his max effort day was his time trial on the track which he would do either a 400 or 200 usually because he knew he was going to run either a 400 or 200 at world championships so so then the third day usually when I prescribe protocols and I have plenty by the way on my website and stuff like that for all levels so the third day would be a race model so you pick kind of a race that you think that you would be good at so I don't know what are you thinking mark for your race that you'd be good at. Oh, I'm probably, I'm probably like, yeah, 200, 400 to. Yeah, okay, yeah, because

you know, Sean Baker's throwing down the gauntlet. He said, what's up? Let's go. Let's race the 400. Good for him. He can go hurt himself. I'm not going to race anybody. All right. Sean, you heard it. But so you, say you pick a race, say you pick the 200 and then you race model a workout around that. So it doesn't mean necessarily just doing a time trial, but maybe if I'm running a, like if my, my race is the 400. We'll just use that an example. Then I'm maybe doing a 200 at max effort, resting a brief time and doing another 200 at max effort. Or I'm going 300, 100. Something like that would be a race model. So you're still doing max effort, but you're doing it more along the lines of what you're going to race. And if you're just sprinting for fun and, you know, for health and longevity, just pick a distance

between 60 meters and 400 meters because those are really the sprints. And, you know, basically train for that. My protocols encompass that whole, that whole distance, either 60 meters to 400 meters. So if you want to run the 60, my protocol is still good. If you went on the 400, my protocol is still good. And to be honest, for longevity, I think that you should train for up to a 400 meter race. And for yourself, what are some of your best times? What are your best races? Yeah. Okay. So my story is that I ran track in college. I was a Division 1 athlete at UNC Wilmington, which is, you know, not the biggest Division 1 school, but still very good. I was a specialist in the 500 meters indoor, which if that sounds really brutal to you, it totally is.

Yeah, that sounds insane. You basically run the 400 and just keep going at the same pace. I didn't even know it was the thing. Yeah, so now you know how crazy I am because that was my race. Yeah. And so not only did I love the 400, but I love the 500 too. So I didn't do anything after college because I wasn't good enough to go the Olympics or anything like that. So I thought, all right, that's it.

I just go on with my career as an artist and art. galleries and things like that. I had. Painting, drawing? Yeah, I do murals. Yeah, a lot of people don't even know that. But I had a, gosh, when I left Wilmington, I had about 50 public murals all across the airport, the university. Yeah. And that's a good workout too, by the way. Painting huge walls. But yeah, so I did my art career and lived in L.A. for a little while. I started to tell you about that. I was assistant director of the L.A. Art Association right out of college. Had a great time there. But yeah, I lived in North Carolina. painted murals, had three kids. And after my daughter, gosh, I had to have been like 32, I think,

when I started learning about Charles. And wow, my eyes were opened. I was like, wait, what? Like, I shouldn't really just be drinking wine every night and feeling like crap from eating the standard American diet. Like, I was shocked. This was all news to me. And I started lifting a little bit of weights but no running and then the student that I was studying under his name was Jared Olson J. Rod they called them he said I bet you could run as fast as you did in college and I was like yeah right you know I've already had a child and like who does that and even my track coach I mentioned it to him because I ran into him and he said yeah that would be really hard Cynthia you know like he wasn't a believer either because it's just you know usually not

possible so fast forward to I turned 40 I had my third child just got done breastfeeding, so I had a little extra weight, which, by the way, I always make an announcement to say, women, don't be in a rush to lose that body fat because you need it to feed the baby. And when you lose body fat too quickly, after you have your baby, it releases toxins into the breast milk. So no rush, right? Okay, so I was a little overweight, not overweight, but me, I'm 15, 20 pounds heavier, which was fine for what I was doing. But my daughter was 11, and she said, Mom, I want to run track in college.

like you did. Can you teach me how? And I was like, all right, let's go. Let's go to the track. Turn on the rocky music. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go run a 400. Okay. And I was like, yeah. So we crawled across the finish line in about a minute and 30 seconds. Blazing time. No, it's not fast. We had, I remember. That's hard though, by the way. For people that don't, for people that don't sprint to go to a track. Yeah. Go do the 400 and do it in 90 seconds. Yeah. I was, I was thinking. You're going to be breathing pretty hard. Yeah. You're going to Oh, yeah. So I remember the track coach that was out there, the high school track coach. He said, well, you started out good. That's good, looking at the positive. That's good. So we just kept showing up,

and I remember my bones feeling like, oh my gosh, they're moving back in place. It was not easy. Okay. A lot of people think I just always ran. I was always fast. No. Like, I had a major body transformation. And at this point, I was really, you know, studying with Charles. And he took me under his wing and really showed me. Charles Pullick when we're talking about everybody. Yes. Yeah, in case I didn't mention that. The legend. So not only did he teach me all the things, but he taught me how to do my own research and, you know, like, take whatever's new and go beyond and learn what's going to be new in 20 years for everybody else. Like if you know Charles's work, you knew he was ahead of his time.

So at that point, I knew, okay, from 40 to 43, I knew exactly what supplements to take, what foods to eat to make myself a superhero. And that's kind of how I view it. I also had a great strength coach, Malcolm William, source performance. He was one of Charles' top students. I'm also a strength coach under Charles, but he's like, you know, level bazillion compared to me. And we always like our other people to write our strength programs anyway. I mean, for me, like now I write my own, but like when I'm in competition,

I like somebody else to coach me and somebody else to write my strength programs. But, yeah, so I ended up running not only. as fast as I did in college, but my indoor world championship time was faster than my best indoor 400 college time. It was 58.1. My outdoor time was 57.4. This is 500. The 400. Yeah. So I went from one minute and 30 seconds, three years later showing up three times a week, not every day, three times a week, three to four times a week strength training. That was it. People think it's every day, all day grinding. No, it's just smart training. It's just smart training. It's knowing metabolics. So I showed up, I won the world championship, and I ran faster than I did

for my PR in college. Now, some people track out, athletes out there might say, okay, well, 57, 58's not as fast as, you know, the top college runners who are running 51 or 52 or 53, that, you know, that sort of times. But those ladies who I ran against were running those times in college. So here I am, age 43, running with people that ran 51 seconds, but now they're running slower. And I am exceeding what my genetic potential was. So in comparison, you know, I was just really proud of myself and served as an inspiration to others that anything is possible. And that's why I'm here today is to really encourage everybody. It's cheesy. I'm just cheesy like this, but to encourage people to be their superhero warrior selves.

Like it is possible. Don't put limits on yourself. Yeah. Question. Yes. I'm actually quite curious. Conceptually thinking about training and not overdoing things. Just as I have a friend that he ran track at Davis Division I, he's in his late 30s and his body.

Just like he feels the wear and tear from college track. And we were talking about it one day. And he's like, yeah, all my track friends are like this. Like I don't know anybody that ran D1 track who in their 30s is feeling 100% or even close to it because of the nature of how we trained. So I think one thing that people wonder when trying to get into sprinting is how can I do this without my body actually getting worse as I get in better shape and get faster. Like ideally you don't want to just be sprinting for a few years.

You want to be sprinting until your 80s. You know what I mean? So conceptually, how can people think about how to do that? Yes. And by the way, I do have master's track friends that are in their 70s and they've been doing it their whole life. They've been running their whole lives. So it isn't just taking a break.

Some people say, well, maybe because you had the break or my dad had the break. But you can keep doing it. And I would say it's probably their crap nutrition that's more responsible than the actual training. Now, college training could be different from master's training, of course. You do need to dial it back a little bit and have more recovery time. I think recovery time is where most people miss the boat. They just think they need to grind it out. So you really need that central nervous system recovery time.

But as far as like joint aches and pains or muscle pulls or I had zero of that, still zero of that. You know, so like it definitely comes down to the metabolics and smart training. I would say if that helps. Like do you need a way to start sprinting? Like, or no, he's already started sprinting so he knows. Yeah. I think it, you know, I think probably his recovery and his nutrition would need to be addressed. It can depend on maybe like what.

you're doing you know like uh the shorter races maybe could beat someone up a little bit more or um the uh you know someone's doing like high jump or long jump or triple jump like a triple jump it's a triple jump from the time you're 10 until the time you're 70 it's pretty hard on the body yeah it's just as you know yeah and but you could you could you could figure out a way to do it yeah you're not triple jumping every day right you're doing all the drills right right so you'd have to be very thoughtful yeah very thoughtfully i think the more dangerous the thing is or the shorter the time is the higher the intensity of the movement, right? And so then therefore, you just need like strategy. But a quick shout out to our buddy, Brad Kern, who over the age of 60

ran, I think, a 59, 400 meter. And Brad is still doing high jumping and everything like that, too. Yeah. Yeah, Brad's awesome and an inspiration for all of us as well because he keeps trying to figure out the ways, you know. And I do help coach Brad. So I give him tips and tricks and all that sort of stuff. Sometimes he listens. Sometimes he doesn't. It's hard. You know, I think if you grow up in a sport, then you think you have to do the sport. So Brad is at to track a lot. Yes.

You know, and sometimes I think to myself when he sends me a message about being like a little beat up, I'm like, I think he's at the track too much. Yeah. But I'm not a track coach. So sometimes I just think you have a tendency to want to overdo it because you're trying to excel. Yeah. And you're like, man, I need to be here to do this. I can tell you Brad's problem with his little niggles and what's going on with him. And he won't mind if I share this, but because it might relate to somebody else.

Brad, because he was a former triathlete and a champion, like anyone in the triathlon world knows Brad. And he grinded so hard for so many years that his body and his mental structure is like no more routine. So I was talking with Encema earlier about how a lot of people miss having periodized programs. Like you'll see Instagram and you'll see the, you know, the girl doing the glue. stuff and it's whatever the algorithm wants to show you, you know. And I just feel like people are copying exercises without realizing that periodization is is what's really most important. And for, I mean, I assume that your audience knows what periodization is. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, you have a peek and then you work back from that and you structure. So Brad's problem is that

he doesn't like structure. So I give him a whole year program and I'm like, here's how you build your foundation so you don't get hurt. He just lights it on fire. And then you move to phase two and you get a little faster and then you move to phase three. You have you go faster and you have more recovery. And Brad picks like month two, workout two. And he's like, I did this one. And I did it three times. And I'm like, that is not at all what I told you to do. But it's okay because that's just how he is and it's fine. And I'm still going to help him and I'm still there for him. And he's still going to be a champion because he keeps trying and he keeps succeeding. I feel like this video doesn't give serve Brad justice.

Well, I don't know. He's always doing something in very short shorts. Yeah. But besides Brad, you know, I have the high jump world record holder over age 50. She jumps five feet, six inches, which is even more than Brad. She, I have, you know, so it's not only elite athletes and Olympians I work with in multiple different sports, by the way, not just track and field, but jujitsu. and wrestling and just all kinds.

But I have a lot of master's athletes that I work with. So when people are like, well, what do you know, really? Okay, well, let's see, Sue McDonald's age 61. And she just ran a 61 second 400, which is insane. Yeah. That's absolutely nuts. But not only that, she broke 17 world records when she turned 60. And she's got a fun story.

Let me tell you her story real quick. So Sue called me right before she turned 60. 60 and she said, I heard you were the best and I really want to break all these records. So I'd like to work with you. And I said, okay, well, let's make an appointment for Thursday. And we'll talk on the phone. I'll put you through my interview and we'll figure it out. And then one of my friends said, oh, you know, she's vegetarian.

Yeah, there she is. Vegetarian. And I said, oh, okay, well, I don't work with plant base athletes. That's a no go. Discrimination. Yep. Sorry. It's just not optimal.

I'm just going to tell it how it is. Charles used to say plant protein. It's like the cardboard that it comes in is more nutritious than the plant protein or something like that. So anyway, so I let her know. I said, I'm sorry, I can't work with you because I heard your plant based and it's just not optimal for what you're trying to do. And she said, okay, I'll eat steak tonight.

And I said, well, actually, I teach eating for neurotransmitters, which we can get into later. But I said, actually, chicken is probably better, or poultry is better for winding down. Oh, for winding down. Yes. Okay. Okay. Oh, no.

Oh, no. I'm a red meat fan. Don't worry. In fact, people used to call me the meat lady at track meets because I had my baggy of steak. Yeah. And all my clients do too. My Olympians are out there at the freaking Olympics. Mark, Mark.

With their baggy of steak. He's very familiar with carrying around a meat bag. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He carries meat bags around. Yeah. Yeah, meat bags. Okay.

So this was a Tuesday. And she took a picture of her. chicken dinner and sent it to me and I was like oh my god she's going to be great so we had her appointment and the rest is history she wrote 17 or 18 world records 800 meters indoor outdoor she looks incredible 16 and she wait but not only that looks super let's let's change the mantra to not only does she look incredible but she moves incredible that's the big deal right people tell me like oh hey Cynthia you look great for being almost 50 I go yeah but how do I move like and they're like oh yeah Of course, you move good too, but like she moves.

Is there a one where she, she's doing like a drill recently? Like a, oh, well, actually, there's a picture of me up there. And yeah, click on that one because she's pulling a sled and sprinting. There, look at her move. Oh, shit. Yeah, I said, I don't need to hear. I don't know who needs to hear this, but you can be a 62-year-old woman, be faster than most people in the entire world.

Question for you real quick. I don't want to divert. But, like, did she notice? How long was she vegetarian? Seven years. Seven years. So there must have been a reason behind that, but she switches when she comes to you. Did she, soon after that, what did she notice in terms of her performance, et cetera?

Yeah, so she's 100% on board and she loved it immediately. She had more energy. She was not, she just thought it was healthier to be plant-based. She just didn't, like most of America, they just didn't know. Maybe she saw the game changers documentary and didn't know the follow-up stories on how everybody kind of fell the pieces after that. But, you know, so yeah, she just. just thought that was healthy and but she was having some nagging injuries and so I particularly particularly put her yeah put her on anti-inflammatory foods and supplements she had a torn hip labrum that was bothering her

so then that just like poof went away within oh my gosh probably four to eight weeks I'd say and she was able to train at a really high capacity because most of the time people can't train due to little nagging injuries or something like that. They can't reach their full potential. So, yeah, she was able to train, like, I mean, she trains like a college athlete and heavy loads, like interval work because she was running everything from the 1500 down to the 200. I'd imagine she's lifting and stuff too, right?

She does do strength training, but it's very safe. So a lot of, you know, like slow eccentrics and that sort of thing. I did not write her strength program. I just did her metabolics. Let's talk about that for a second. Sure. The slow eccentrics, because I heard you talk about it recently. And I think a lot of times people think slow equals slow.

But the weight room, sometimes we just have to realize the weight room is different than the track. What have you seen with slower type of training for your own sprints and for the people that you work with? Right. So if you look at videos or something like this on Instagram of collegiate track athletes, you're going to see them doing a lot of fast Olympic lifts or, you know, just. fast movements with the bar. And I think Charles was one of the first ones to point out that there are a couple different things that matter. One, slow eccentrics recruit more muscle fibers, including fast twitch. So you're actually, and if this is neurological, right, Charles was way ahead of his time talking about neurological progress is more important in strength training,

you know, because we're talking about functional strength training, not just hypertrophy. But yeah, so the slow eccentric recruits more fast switch fibers. you're able to become faster, but with a safety net, because you're not going to load tons of weight on doing a six-second, six-second eccentric or a four-second. You're kind of mastering a movement when you're going through it slowly. That's true. Yeah, you're not just flinging it everywhere, right? And then the other thing is intent. What is your intent to move the bar? So when you have a heavy bench press, but your intent is to move it fast, so you're trying to be explosive on that concentric, then that actually neurologically stimulates you just as well, if not better,

than moving the bar fast with a lightweight. That's been around for a long time, compensatory acceleration. I think Dr. Squat used to talk about it. Louis Simmons obviously talked about a lot of that stuff. And Louis Simmons and Charles Poliquin had many interactions over the years. I sure did. That was a really cool thing. You mentioned red meat not being great for winding down.

Can you explain more of that? and maybe we can get into meat and nuts situation. Sure, absolutely. So we have this war, right, going on where you got the vegans versus the carnivore and you got the, you know, carbs versus how much carbs, what time a day. I mean, I joked with you earlier when I brought you some freeze dried fruit from Hawaii. I said, no, I called it, I don't know what circus of diets you're all right doing right now. bit, you know, I can't keep up with your circus, the diets, but it's okay to each his own and you're experimenting and I think it's always great to ask questions and collect data and that's a good way

to do it. So, but yeah, so everyone's having this war and no one's talking about eating for neurotransmitters. So this is what I basically started learning from Charles and then took it and ran with it and kept developing a program. But when you eat for neurotransmitters, you're eating for energy that lasts throughout the day, right? So you want the red meat in the morning. because it's got el tyrosine, which is the precursor to dopamine. And then you want the nuts, which is the meat and nuts breakfast was Charles' invention. We will say it's not the, I don't, I didn't rebrand it, the Montalione breakfast. But that's an inside joke anyway.

But anyway, so, yeah, the meat and nuts breakfast, Charles came up with specifically to trigger neurotransmitters for lasting energy throughout the day. And this is what I teach my clients, especially my elite clients, have no idea about this. and then acetylcholine from the coline from the nuts and then you can do berries if you're carbohydrate tolerant because you need the antioxidants so the thinner the skin the more antioxidants so that's really important so that is the ultimate breakfast the wild meats have more nutrients so I often prescribe elks and venison and all kinds of you know wild meat but yeah meat and nuts berries for breakfast and then the winding down the you want the try to

wind down serotonin, carbohydrates for serotonin and gaba. You want all those neurotransmitters for the evening. So yeah, this is basically a nutshell of what I teach my athletes. So everyone's arguing about macros and I'm like, hey, what about the neurotransmitters? Let's look at a terrible scenario. Eating a sugary breakfast spikes dopamine. There's a difference between making dopamine and spiking dopamine. So the nature of dopamine is if you spike it, you're going to have a dip that's worse than the spike. A lot of people equate, what is that old saying? Like sugar lights up your brain the same way as cocaine. Have you heard that one? I've heard of it. Or things like that. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's not too far from the truth because it's the dopamine that's lighting up the reward system. So when you have

the sugary breakfast, and I even classify oatmeal with maple syrup as part of that, you know, anything that's going to send that spike is going to spike your dopamine, but then you're going to dip and you're going to need more to get back to baseline much like drugs. And so why spike that, drop it. Spike the blood sugar, drop it. Why not just be instead of on the roller coaster, be even? Because when you go to competition for my elite athletes, you do not want to be on that roller coaster. You're already, you know, your nervous system's prime because you're competing. You want to be steady energy all throughout the time. I mean, my hepat athletes, my decathletes, they compete for hours. You know, their competition's like five to seven hours long every day.

You're saying most of your athletes are fairly low carb. Yeah, so low carb, it depends on what you call low carb. Yeah, so not 20 grams or less a day, but I would say 100 grams or less a day for sure. Every single one of them. Even the people that are super lean. Super lean, super explosive. It does not harm explosiveness, any of that. So, yeah, I teach them how to eat for neurotransmitters instead.

Well, apparently it seems like they have enough, right? Oh, yeah. They have enough carbohydrates to where it doesn't seem like they need extra. I find stuff like that to be really interesting because sometimes I think, you know, when you're going to do a specific workout, you're always thinking like I need more energy. You know, I need more food or more carbs or more fats or whatever. Yeah, but where does energy come from? It comes from that, but it also comes from neurotransmitters.

Right. Think about, I think it was, it might have been Andrew Huberman who gave the example of a bunch of college students are studying late night in a library and they're all tired and someone cracks the joke and they all have energy because they start. started laughing. That's not food energy. That's neurotransmitter energy. When I see the finish line at the end of my 400, that is dopamine. And I actually have trained myself to get a reward at the 300 mark. So this is part of my secret sauce. I'm sharing with you guys, all the 400 meter runners out there. Look at that 300 and think of that as your reward. So you have to accelerate mentally. Your body's probably not accelerating too much,

but you have to accelerate mentally from the 200 to the 300, like that's the end of your race. And then when you hit that corner and you see the finish line, automatically that finish line boosts your dopamine. So you have to really take care of your neurotransmitters as well. Does that make sense? Yes, yes. You know, for everyone, we're going to be asking some questions about nutrition,

but we also did a nutrition-focused podcast with Cynthia. So I'm curious about this. You know, when you look at strength training, When you look at sprinting, there's going to be a lot of people who will say, well, okay, you could be performing with 100 carbs or less. And you could be, you could be doing what you do. But you perform better if you had 200, 300, 400 grams of carbs because filling muscle glycogen. And that's going to be the thing that fuels performance in this aspect of training. So why would, do you believe that's the case?

First off. And why are you going towards this type of eating pattern instead for this type of activity? That's a great question. That is, no, I don't believe that, because I've seen the opposite to be true so many times. Okay. We have, well, I don't want to get too much in the nutrition, but we're like, because we have that separately. But basically, it's, you know, we're adaptive. You can run off of carbs.

I'm not saying that you can't, but what I have found personally is that the most successful athletes in the world, and especially ones that are getting a little older, maybe they're like 30, you know, and up and still competing. at the Olympic level, they need different strategies. So this particular strategy and minding inflammation works the best. So we can get into the specifics in the nutrition segment if you want. Okay. What are some things you think that?

What are some things you think that sprints do for people that maybe people are missing? You know, because there's a big push right now for like muscle gain, you know, strength training and eat your protein and all those things I think are good messages. But something different happens when we're talking about sprints. Yes. Okay. So I have a top 10 reasons why sprinting is better for endurance training over for longevity. If you want to, if you want to breeze through that.

Okay. All right. So, you know, I don't just push sprinting because I love sprinting and I'm familiar with it. I push it because it actually creates the best version of yourself as we age. And I know you're really concerned with that. And same with like, you know, you do all kinds of different activity for longevity. and I'm completely on board with all of that because it taps into the same neurological system. So, and I'll get into that.

But I'll go through my top 10 real quick. One is better hormone balance. Endurance training tanks, testosterone, long biking, long runs. It increases lingering cortisol, which we all need cortisol. It's not a bad thing. We need it when we exercise, but we want to blunt it right away. And so it creates this lingering cortisol that interferes with sex hormones. disrupts hormones and as females over the age of 40, our hormones are already disrupted.

Paramenopause is like getting hit by a truck. You're like, whoa, what symptom this day? You know, and I like to be able to help specialize in helping women kind of tackle paramedopause symptoms without HRT. That's my thing. All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called Good Life Protein. Okay. Tell me about that. I've been doing some good life protein. You know, we've been talking on the show for a really long time of certified Piedmontese beef. And you can get that under the umbrella of good life proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs, sausage, shrimp, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia.

The website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb. There's another one that comes of mind. And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy, kind of depending on the way that I'm eating. So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20 grass-fed, grass-finish ground beef, I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more bodybuilder style, where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that. And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef.

This is one of the reasons why, like, neither of us find it hard to stay in shape because we're always enjoying the food we're eating. And protein, you talk about protein leverage it all the time. it's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal. And I can surf and turf, you know? I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it or I could have some steak.

I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorite. So it's hard for me to lock one down. But I really love the bovette steaks. Yeah. And then I also love the rib-eyes as well. You can't go wrong with the rib-eyes. So, guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat,

Pause. You can have to GoodLifeProtines.com and use code power for 20% off any purchases made on the website. Or you can use Code Power Project to get an extra 5% off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meat in the world. With supplements in ancient medicines. So herbal remedies, TCM, really into Maya medicine recently. But we can talk about that. But anyway, better hormone balance because you don't want to interfere with the sex hormones.

So endurance training does. The second one is gastrointestinal problems. So endurance athletes, you can look up, look this up on PubMed. And by the way, anyone listening out there, you can think I'm a quack all you want. But go ahead and do your own research. They'll find it. Well, they do seem to be very, very connected. I always kind of wonder what comes first, you know, because a lot of times an endurance athlete

is a smaller framed athlete. That's true. And is that like because their digestion or is their digestion get out wrecked? because of? Well, their digestion. Okay, so our gut bacteria actually follow what, we create gut bacteria according to what exercise we do. So when you strength train and lift heavy and sprint,

you actually create a better gut bacteria profile for health than you do in endurance training. A lot of times endurance training creates arthritis type bacteria, which we can get into later when we talk about injuries. But yeah, so it just creates a cascade of gut problems. even the gut lining is compromised. And then not to mention all the crappy fuels and gels that, you know, people are taking to thinking that they need to maintain that energy,

which they really don't actually. A ketogenic diet is shown to be the best for endurance work anyway. But gastrointestinal problems, it's all over PubMed, put in endurance training, gastrointestinal, and you'll get a plethora of studies on this. Number three, sprinting makes you smarter. So why? Okay, because it increases BDNF.

Do we know BDNF? Brain-derived neurotropic factor. It's like fertilizer for your brain. It's kind of in these days. I trolled Rhonda Patrick for years telling her, hey, aerobic is not as good as sprinting, you know, because you actually get more BDNF. And then, you know, now recently, she's like,

guess what? High intensity exercise is the way to go. And I'm all like, ah, okay, whatever. But also, good job. Yeah. Finally. Finally. But what do I know?

You know? So anyway, sprinting makes you smarter because it increases BDNF more than endurance training. It also makes you happier for the same reason. There are really good studies. I can anecdotally attest to that. Oh, yeah. You feel it. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

That's why I love doing it so much. Well, you definitely not very happy if you're running really far. You know what I mean? Some people say they like it. Some people do like it. but I think those people, I think they kind of hate themselves. Aren't you? Well, wait, aren't you one to talk, though?

No, I like to run. I like to run some distances. I know. But I think you want to. What are you trying to tell us, Mark? No. Do we need an intervention? Right, right.

I think, I think so. Well, maybe I should add your circus of exercise forms to your circus of eating. Yeah. I don't know. I don't run that far. No, I know. I know. But I did get into running pretty far.

Well, we talked earlier. You, yeah, you experimented in it. You did it. And now you're like, hey, I don't want to do this for longevity forever. And that's a smart. Because I realize you got to hate yourself. And also you started,

you started sprinting. I was like, I like myself too much to go this far. This is too much. What a waste of time. This makes me so happy to hear. But what a waste of time to go that far, to be honest.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. So it makes you happier. If you look on PubMed, all the studies, it'll show that actually it's, you know,

it increases, well, it decreases anxiety, decreases depression. It's right there in the clinical studies. So that's exciting. Okay, five overuse injuries. So tendonopathies.

You know, if you think about it, have you ever seen like that marathon person training for a marathon on the side of the road and they're like the worst running for them and they're just struggling to get down the road? Think about all those times that they're repeating that mistaken gate over and over. But even if they're a trained marathon runner,

the amount of mileage that you have to put in for that just creates wear and tear on the body. So you're talking about sprinting wear and tear on the body. No, it's the endurance training that really puts the wear and tear on the body. Okay, so number six, a lot of people are really shocked at this one, but heart health. So training for a marathon, not the golden ticket for heart disease. Oftentimes, what happens is the heart is remodeled. So it becomes, you know, you have hypertrophy in the heart because of all the pumping it has to do.

So just like any other muscle, it's getting bigger. sprinting gets it stronger to a point where it's healthy for you but endurance training makes it too big and especially the left ventricle and it actually increases your chance for heart problems yeah and again if you don't believe me it's in the research so number seven i just want to go ahead say something like it everything always matters how you do stuff so there's some people out there that are running long distance and their heart rate is that 180 the whole time. There's other people that are running long distances and their heart rate's probably like 140. So they're going to have some different outcomes and long distance is like, you know, how far we're really talking. I think, you know, maybe what you're referring to is probably people like

that are maybe what 50 or maybe 75 miles a week, right? And upward. Marathon training. Yeah, yeah. And maybe half marathons are a little bit more okay. Maybe 10Ks are a little bit more reasonable. Yeah. The shorter it is, the better it is for your body. 5Ks. Yeah, I mean, that's, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Yeah, that's some really good points right there. I just wanted to say that because I think that, like, I don't think that running is bad. I don't think that running long distance is bad, but I do think that you need a strategy.

You know, I power lifted for many years and, you know, I like power lifting, but I don't think power lifting is super healthy, but it can be. It can be super healthy. But you can also, you know, how you do stuff is really important, I think. That's true. And, you know, to be honest, any movement off the couch is probably better than no movement. So I really would love for, you know, people when they turn 40 to not have marathon as, you know, their goal. I don't know if you know people like that, but I know a lot of people that they turn 40 and they're like, okay, I'm going to run a marathon because that's going to get me in shape and give me motivation.

If that's what gets you there, then maybe do that. But then like yourself, transition to the smarter form, which is sprinting. Okay, so number seven, body fat loss. So we see sprinters. They're always, you know, pretty jacked. And what happens is our bodies release catacolamines, you know, adrenaline or adrenaline. And that actually creates a lasting effect for metabolic cascade of health benefits. So endurance training doesn't have that.

It's kind of like you have that window of calorie burning and then it shuts off. So sprinting lasts a longer time and also the epoch after. after sprinting is greater, the oxygen consumption, right, post-oxygen consumption. So number eight is you hold on to more muscle, which we know is beneficial as we age. So sprinters, you look at a sprinter, you look at a marathon runner, there's a clear difference between them. I have a question about that after we finish the list. Okay. So the, the, we talked, you asked earlier about how they're skinny, the endurance runners, but really it's about it being catabolic.

So at some point, it's eating away the muscle, right, in order to produce the energy. Actually, you know, I think I'll just ask us now. I think sometimes people tend to choose activities that they believe that they're better built to do. So, you know, like as Mark was doing longer distance running, I was always like, Mark, you're, your build, bro. Like, you're built like me, man. We like to go fast. So, you know, power athlete. And some people will, some people might look at their athletic history and they'll think, you know what,

I'm not fast. Whenever I try to go fast, I don't build muscle in that way. It's not for me. So that might tend them to go towards something more endurance-based. I'm curious to your thoughts there because obviously sprinting does have a lot of great benefits. Some people, because of aspects of their genetics, will have a propensity to be faster than others. But for those that maybe they don't believe or they don't think that their genetics are set to be a good sprinter or sprint well, What is your advice for them? My advice for them would be to start developing those fast twitch fibers because I don't know if those people know, but you can change slow twitch fibers to fast twitch fibers and vice versa. So, you know, actually jogging is one of the worst ways to lose fast twitch fibers, which are the most important fibers for us.

It's one of the worst ways to lose fast twitch fibers? Yeah, if you jog. Oh, you mean so it's one of the best ways to lose? I'm sorry. Best ways to lose. Thank you. Okay. Okay.

Sorry. It's all good. And so, yeah, so you might, so maybe your grand, your dad and your grandma already were given you those fast twitch, I mean slow twitch fibers. So just because they gave you those slow twitch fibers, it doesn't mean that it's too late for you to change them to fast twitch. Brian, can you look up this guy Julian Baldy, J-U-L-I-A-N, B-A-L-D-I? I've seen this guy before, I think.

Yeah, yeah, he came onto our show years ago. The reason why I'm mentioning him is because he's also, his coach, Fernando, did a lot of stuff with Charles Poliquin. And when he showed his transformation over years, like he shifted his, he did a lot of Pauliquin type training. And he's someone that like. That he changed himself. He shifted. Everyone thinks, oh, this guy took a bunch of steroids for sure. He didn't.

He did it. He looks great. He does. What a transformation, like he said. Yeah. Look at those quads. Yeah. Okay.

And I always tell people, be your superhero warrior self. And what do we see when we see superheroes? Do we see skinny endurance runner type bodies? Like, how are they drawn in the cartoons? You're saying this. Right? I feel you. Yeah, big old round muscle, yeah.

I'm just saying, unless you're elastic girl, I guess. But, yeah, so we want to be our superhero war yourselves. And I think that's innate. Like, we can't prove this really, but maybe we can in psychology studies. But I think when we see a superhero type body, we think, that person looks like a superhero. I don't know. Do you feel like that too? Like if they look strong, you're like, wow, I have confidence in them. They look strong. And if they look pale and skinny, and don't even get me started on the whole Zempic thing going on, have you seen the cast of Wicked?

I'm a little scared for them. I'm like worried. I'm like, girl, let me give you some red meat and some, you know, and teach you out a sprint. Let's go. I want to fix you. But anyway, yeah, unfortunately with a Zempic, there's a little tangent, but unfortunately with that, that, you know, people are exercising less because of it. But we can get into that later. We'll get back to our list. But yeah, if that makes sense, you absolutely can get faster. If you don't think that you're fast, look at my dad.

You know, he's 82. Does anybody think that he's super fast? Like, of course, no, like my sixth grader. Yeah, my sixth grader could probably beat him in 100 meters. But for him, he's running fast. And that is sparking all of the health benefits for him. His intention to run fast. So they might not think they're fast, but if they intend to run fast at their capacity,

they're going to still reap those health benefits. Yeah, absolutely. Don't give up on yourself. I think just to interrupt for a second, I think Ryan Hall, maybe look him up. Ryan Hall had the U.S. record for marathon and the United States record for half marathon, and he's completely switched over to like running shorter distances and lifting heavy. And I think his wife still runs marathons. I think he trains her for marathons and she's very successful with it.

And I don't think he has anything like necessarily against the longer running. But he's saying for himself, he's like, I want to move into this, you know, slightly different style of training for longevity and for health. Oh, okay. So he's doing, yeah, he's doing the longer distance for his whole, most of his life. Well, you know, and once you start sprinting, remember that was number three, it makes you smarter. So then you're smart enough to realize that that endurance was crap.

Wasn't a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. And he put on quite a bit. I'm pissing all of the distance runners off today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you definitely are.

That's okay. I don't mind. Okay. So I learned that from Charles too. I don't give a crap. For yourself, do you run a mile, two miles? Do you occasionally just, you know, maybe you find, maybe you like that or maybe some people that you work with like that? Is that ever part of anything or any off season?

in? Well, no is a sprinter, but I did become a decathlet after sprinting. And we can talk about that after I finished my list if you want to, but for many reasons. But I became a decathlet and I had around a 1,500 at the end of my decathlon. So I did incorporate a mile run in, but that was it and it was fast. It was never a slow mile. It was always within like a pretty fast intention. So jogging, absolutely not. I don't even teach jogging and warmups. No jogging in warmups, no jogging and cool down, you do not want to have any opportunity to develop that slow twitch. Get it in your brain to be fast. Yeah, we'll talk about that too at the end of the list.

What about some zone two cardio, like on a bike or something just for general fitness? I guess a sprinter doesn't need it. Nope. And it's a waste of time. Don't believe it. Nope. I don't really. I'm not a fan of zone too.

So or, you know, just basically it's like I think you can do the high intensity and then you, you can do things for your nervous system that keep you moving kind of. like what Encema does. Like there's a whole pyramid that, you know, you kind of go down the pyramid, and I just don't think that any kind of long, slow cardio is in that. And I don't think, I think it's detrimental, to be honest. I'll have a question. Well, you know what?

Let's finish your list. We're almost done with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we got, we're on number nine, ROS, reactive oxygen species, the oxidative stress on our bodies. So big in endurance training, especially ultra endurance, that you can't even consume. they did a study, they could not consume enough antioxidants after doing an ultra-endurance race to mitigate the damage done by the oxidative stress from endurance training.

So the lower the distance, the better chance you have of that. But otherwise, you just can't fix it. So that's a big one. And as we get older, and I think one of the number one reasons that women have paramenopausal symptoms is oxidative stress because estrogen protects us from this and it declines and fluctuates as we age. They miss that one. That's one of the things that I've learned that a lot of people miss is the oxidative stress. You really don't want to compound that if you're already feeling that from lack of estrogen. Okay. Number 10, this one other than my bonus one, which I really want

to talk about right now, but number 10 is my favorite one. And it's one, it's my favorite because not a lot of people know about it. And I like to educate them. And it's so important. It's called better AQP4. And that is aquaporin4. It's a channel in our brain that controls getting rid of our waste. So a lot of people know the lymphatic system, right? We clean our body of waste every day. Then I think it's been only about since 2015 or 2010 that we've discovered the glimphatic system, which is in our brain. So every night our glial cells shrink and our cerebral cells. spinal fluid flows through, picks up the trash, and flushes it out. Well, where it needs to be flushed out, the channel needs to be properly polarized. And just I randomly came across this

study where they're showing high intensity work like sprint intervals, properly polarizes the channel better than any other kind of exercise. So you're actually helping clean your brain out by sprinting. So this, I mean, with Alzheimer's and dementia and all that is huge, right? Okay. So then my bonus, which I'm really passionate about talking about right now, is neurological firing. A lot of people don't realize that sprinting is primarily neurological. So if you take a hundred meter, an elite hundred meter race, that's like about 10 seconds. And those athletes have the strength and the power to get through that 100 meters, but they slow down. Why? It's because of the neurological fire.

It actually gets less and less that signaling. So the same thing happens when we age. And this is why muscle function and muscle power is so important over muscle size. So yes, you need some muscle to produce power, but you don't just need all show muscle. Sorry, if I'm offending any of the listeners out there. I know your power lifters out there. But it's really important to make sure that muscle is functional as we age. And sprinting is one of the best ways to do that.

So think of it like fiber optics. You have a, when you're young, you have a fast, high speed connection. And that tells your muscles to contract. Your brain and your spinal cord is sending these signals, right? And it's, you're like, you know, live gaming. It's fast. Everything you want to do, you can do. You can sprint fast.

You can jump fast. Whatever your brain and your spinal cord is telling you, it's happening. And then we get to, you know, our 80s or actually it's past 60 in the research. And we're getting more into dial up. And whatever, that modem noise. was, you know. The ding, the ding. Yeah, that is kind of what's happening with our neurons firing.

We have these things called NMJ's neuromuscular junctions, and it's where the nerves meet to contract the muscle. And that is actually more important as we age than the muscle size, because we have sarcopenia, muscle mass, loss of muscle mass. We have dynapenia, loss of muscle power. Dynapeania happens twice as fast as loss of muscle mass. So the research is saying we're actually not getting weaker because we're losing muscle mass. We're getting weaker because of this neurological firing.

Okay. So what do we do to keep that firing going? We sprint because that is the top of the pyramid and the list of exercises that contributes to keeping those nerves firing fast. I go back to that 100 meters. Those athletes are training their neurological system to keep firing longer. and that's how they're winning. So if you know elite coaches, which I do, and you talk to them, they do a lot of neurological work and they do exercises to keep those nerves firing.

This is perfect for you in Seema because what you're doing with the rope flow is actually keeping the signal clear. So you don't want noise interfering with that fiber optic signal, we'll call it. So what you're doing is you're training the brain to keep the signal clear. And it's a low threshold, so it's not threatening to the nervous system, meaning there's not an overload. So that rope flow or even dancing or anything like that is really important for keeping that signal clear.

Jump rope is another excellent thing. Any kind of body movement that coordinates all of your body together. So assault bike sprints. And if you're not, you know, people are like, how am I supposed to sprint? I've never sprinted before. You can start sprinting on a bike or a rower. Those are full body movements. And those keep those nerves firing.

I'm very passionate about the nerve thing because I think too many influencers are like, okay, eat protein, build muscle, muscles, the organ of, you know, keeping you healthy as you age. And that's not wrong, but let's talk more about muscle function and muscle power and nerve firing. This, you know, going, I want to go back to what you're mentioning about jogging real quick because as I, over time, as I developed the skill of like jump roping. that's what I use for my zone two work instead of like a jog. I'll use that or some assault bike work. And my question is, since jump rope is inherently a ballistic type of thing, jogging is more cyclical, there's longer ground contact time. When you become experience with jump rope, it's like short ground contact, quick flexion of the ankle. It's supposed to be like you're popping off the ground, right?

Yeah. If one were to do that, how would you categorize that? Because I've, and this is just anecdotal for me, but I've felt that over time as I've become better at jump roping, my feet have become stronger. And oddly enough, like, I'm much better at my ground contacts with sprinting, you know? So what are your thoughts there? Oh, I love it. And that you just described what's key to sprinting, tendon stiffness or ankle stiffness, we call it, which doesn't mean that it's like concrete. It means that when you hit the ground, you can be elastic right off of it, really recoil very fast. And so the jump roping helps you with that, not to mention strengthening all those tendons and ligaments. It keeps your explosiveness.

Anything that's like that, that keeps your great. Jogging teaches that fiber optic signal to be dial up. I'm telling you it's that detrimental. Why does walking not do that? Because it's below the threshold. You're not giving intent. You're not trying to ask for elasticity or recoil. you're not doing that. You're walking. It's totally different. So yes to walking, no to jogging.

Yeah. And so jump ropes on that pyramid. Deadlift would be another example, full body coordination. And oh my gosh, the juggling also helps keep your signal clear. So that teaches you, oh, this is really important, teaches you prediction. Okay. Have you heard that? Yeah. Please explain. In relation to sprinting? No, not actually no. Not in relation to sprinting, no. Have you ever seen Sydney McLaughlin sprint?

Yes. Have you ever seen her juggle? No. She juggles at the trackmates all the time. Really? Yeah. Look her up. She famously, I think she was on like the Today Show and they asked her about like what her

mile time is. She was like, what? That was Gabby Thomas. Yeah, she's like our best 200 meter sprinter. Yeah. And she was like, I don't ever run. I don't ever run that. Shout out to Gabby Thomas.

I don't know her, but I'd love to work with her. Yeah. So the prediction aspect, like, why would that be beneficial? Like the reason why I use juggling is just getting better at more information processing. Initially, it starts just for me throwing the balls and getting used to that. But now I try to track it with movement. You know what I mean? And just what are your thoughts when it comes to bad practice?

I think you're right in line with everything that you need for longevity and being having a quality of life as you age. Why? That prediction matters. Because in sprinting, let's relate it to sprinting. Yeah, look at her go. Easy work. I'm telling you that this is part of her neurological training for sprinting. This is not just a hobby for her.

This is 100% part of her sprinting training. Like, yes. Yeah, that's Ian Danny works with her. Oh, awesome. Yeah. So, okay, prediction and sprinting. The ground contact time of an elite sprinter is something like 80 to 100 milliseconds. So what happens is by the time your foot hits the ground,

even you, Mark, not an elite sprinter. By the time your foot hits the ground, your brain already, it's too late to tell it to recoil, right? You need to have the prediction ability of when your body, when your foot's going to hit the ground and when to recoil. You need to like be able to tell the future neurologically. Yeah. So the juggling helps with that. Okay. But wait, why is that important for getting older?

All of this. It's because when you're walking around, shuffling around as an older person, you need to predict to where that step is going to be. You need to per preceptive, you know, like perception of where everything is around you so that you don't fall and break a hip because that could be it, you know. So this is really important.

All these little exercises, the elasticity of your tendons, all very important for keeping you safe as you age. What are some things that you do in training for sprinting, like when you're not on the track? That's like neurologically, you mean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, like, well, I would say just basically,

drills and mindfulness. Typical track drills. Yeah. So I mean like my overall training would be, we'll say as sprinting because decathlon is different. But I and we can talk about this, but I got into the decathlon because I wanted to incorporate more power movements as I got older. And believe it or not throwing is also neurologically and power stimulating.

So yeah, oh my gosh, the decathlon is such a beast. I won the national championship. I keep forgetting to say that on all the other shows. I did the decathlon, but I won it too. So I won the, in the past year, I won the outdoor decathlon, the indoor heptathlon, the outdoor or the indoor pentathlon national championships, the high jump, the shot put. And then I also won a silver medal at the world's, no, pentathlon.

What is a decathlon? What is my throwing coach? What's the hardest event for you? jump hurdles. I fucking hate hurdles. Can you just like run around them like you're around the side of I wish I wish um I jump hurdles which is not what you're supposed to do I jump them because I'm I like high jumping so it's one of my stronger events um but yeah uh I like I like the 1500 even more than the hurdles it's just a mental challenge for me I had a great hurdle coach though um from afar hurdle science out of Texas works with a lot of really great athletes and he really helped me

get in the rhythm of it because again it's neurological so I just was scared and that kept me seeing like how far I am over the hurdle that is not the correct form but it made the news yeah you got to get a foot and a half above any of the hurdlers that are looking at it like oh my god that is not great but you know what I didn't know how to hurdle two years ago at all like it's I'm almost 50 hurtling so I'm okay with that um but yeah so what my workouts okay Okay, so other things that are important, you know, journaling, setting goals, like all of these mindset, champion mindset activities are just as important. Recovery is huge. Sprint, take the whole day off the next day. What does take the day off mean? Brad, it doesn't mean do another workout.

This is one of the things Brad does from being a triathlet. He's like, okay, well, I'm just going to do a bike for 20 miles then. And I'm like, no, Brad, no, that is not, but it's relaxing. Backtrack. You know, so like I guess like my message for the sprinting is make sure you're recovering as well. That would be like a day if you are antsy and you do like to move around. That could be rope flow and juggling. Absolutely. Right?

You could still do those things because they're. Yeah. On the lower end. And then probably maybe not a good idea like jump rope and do any jumping or anything like that. Just keep your feet planted on the damn ground. Sana ice bath. Good idea. Yoga.

So a little yoga flow maybe. Read a book. Sit down. Not hot, you know? Yeah. So people are really surprised when I tell them that, you know, even becoming a world champion or all these championships, I took whole days off in between my training. Yeah. So like, nothing.

They're like, what do you mean nothing? I'm like, I mean nothing. Like sometimes when I was in training blocks like right before championships, I didn't work or anything. Like, well, you know, like whatever work I was doing if it had to be standing up or anything like that, nothing. You're all painting nothing. Like nothing. Kind of sounds like powerlifting. Yeah, well, right?

You take a lot of rest then. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's the game. It's to like, you know, a lot of, I've seen a lot of bodybuilders even at like Gold's Gym in Venice. They would like park super close to the front door because they didn't want to, you know, they didn't want any extra movement. Yeah. They wanted just to go in there and get their work out in.

Oh, man. I used to work out there and I lived in L.A. Yeah. That place is great. Yeah, it is. I mean, I saw so many people. I didn't even know who they were at the time, you know, not so later. Oh, there's so many celebrities.

Yeah. was kickboxing, but I would like learn competitive kickboxing, but not, I was modeling also at the time, so I couldn't get punched in the face. So I'd go like, as far as I could up to that point and then not compete. Yeah. Where does someone start with sprinting? Somebody's listening to this. You convinced them. And now where do they start? Let's go. Let's go. Okay. So you're on the couch, maybe. We'll start at that point. You're on the couch. You want to sprint. Or maybe you just lift weights right now and you want to sprint. You don't want to pull a hamstring or get injured, right? So start slow to be fast. That's what I'll say. Don't let your ego get the best of you. I think you

probably see this in strength training too where people are like, oh, I got to put more weight on and they have terrible form and then they get injured, right? So learn the basics. I have a free sprint drills protocol, you know, sprint warm up protocol. So it's a 20 minute warm up dynamic. Of course, static stretching is not good. I actually don't believe in static stretching at any point, not even after you run. But yeah, so we can talk about that later. But you can start by learning the drills, wall marches. Do you know that one where you stand up against a wall and you're, yeah, and you're kind of

at a triple extension angle and then you march. So you're at that, you know, that 45 degree basic angle. That's a good one. Claw drill where you're standing. And you lift your knee up about parallel and then you bring your knee, strike your foot right down underneath your hip. That takes, you can stand there and do that all day and that is going to be huge for your form. Quite quick question. Absolutely.

When it comes to, because some people, like not only are they just getting off the couch, sometimes their bottom of their feet hurts, right? Like they can't handle actual a lot of contact right now. So some people feel like they have plants, our fasciitis, et cetera. what are some things to think about there in your opinion? Stationary bike? Stationary bike? Or rower? Okay. Yeah. So you're going to do your sprinting on that.

As long as you're a full body coordinated effort, you're going to get the same benefits. And you don't have to be a runner to do it, which is beautiful. Yeah. But otherwise, you know, learning the correct form. Another thing is like a chest out, roll the shoulders down, you know, type of form. We can talk more about that too later. but when we talk about maybe if we get into injuries or something like that. But so you can start sprinting by the drills first and then strength training for sprinting, of course.

Slow eccentric, RDLs, split squats, knees over toes style. Oh my gosh. Think about the stability you have to have for that front foot. And handling that load under tension, huge, not to mention the flexibility that you need to get into that range. So very, very good exercise to start sprinting. So get into all those strength exercises first. There's a bunch more. And then after that, start walking up a hill.

Then start jogging up the hill. Get a little bit faster. Go on grass first to be kind to your shins. Sprint on grass, maybe 30 meters, maybe then 50 meters, maybe than 100 meters. But not 100 meters every day. So I think I see some influencers out there who are like, yes, I sprint three. hundred meters every day and I'm like no this is not it but uh yeah I want people to stay safe and healthy and enjoy sprinting for the rest of their life like all my master's you know

athletes that I run with where sprinting at age 100 Julia Hawkins 105 literally running 100 like she is not walking that shit she's running you know so Orville Rogers are you got to look him up. I don't know if you can look Orville up. Funny story about Orville. He passed away now, but he was running the 100 meters at a national meet and his somebody put that man in a speed suit. You know speed suits? They're like wrestling singlets. Okay. And, and my husband was like, holy shit, babe, that guy's got a package. Like, what the hell? Like, who put him in that speed suit? Right. So he is not the guy in the front. Where is Orville? He's the guy in the back, I think. because this guy's 70 or 80.

He's the young buck. Everybody focuses on him, but Orville's in the back. But he's still running. Is he in the blue or the white? So he sits down. So I go, oh, Orville, can I take a picture with you? You know, and he's like, yeah, yeah, okay, you know, come over here. And so I sit down and he takes my hand and he puts my hand in his lap.

Like not inappropriately, but he's just like holding my hand. Yeah, like a nice old man. Yeah, but he's like a stud, you know, like at a hundred. And I was like, oh, my God. I'm like just like cheasing it off like oh my god orville he was like flirting but you know like a total stud yeah yeah so he definitely had that testosterone going on and you know none of us no nobody can take testosterone or even peptides in master's track because we're all uh we're all tested so he was not taking anything and he just was like super muscular at age 100 makes sense then like that it's great

like again going fast you know it makes sense that it's good for men's testosterone because I think I've read something about that with sprinting and testosterone. Exactly because endurance training tanks the testosterone and then you have IGF1 with sprinting and all the great growth hormones and yeah so it increases testosterone. There's a lot there are a lot of drugs in track though. You know that in my clients. Right right right right. I'm like so strict that I only use like there's there's as much drugs and track as there is bodybuilding I think you think so Oh, there's a lot. I like to be optimistic.

Nope. It's not true. Oh, my gosh. I'll have to show you later this picture of this master's track lady who thought she could get away with it last year. She got busted. She was age 55. What was she taken? I think it was Trent.

Oh, my God. Yeah, because I caught her. She went right to the top. Yeah. I'm going to have to show you this picture when we have a break because it looks like she swallowed a man. Like that's what it looks like. What about the, uh, but wait, I caught her on a running. forum type thing.

She was asking randomly asking like how, what foods produce tremble on? Like that I, you know, how do you pass a drug test? Like it's like those murderers that Google how to get away with murder. Yeah. And then we're all like, oh hey, when are you getting the results back from your drug test?

You know, because she got tested at, she entered the elite national championships and got tested there because they don't test masters athletes in Australia. So she really thought she was going to get away with it. Yeah, and she was running like 58 at age 56. Yeah, but those records are all thrown out the window, of course, because she did get busted. Yeah, was that one girl years ago?

Oh, I don't know. I think my way protein must have been contaminated. I only took way protein and it was water approved. And I'm all like, bitch, nothing's water approved. Like, no supplements are water approved. You can have informed sport approved. Like I only use ATP labs in Canada because Charles helped develop those formulas. Yeah.

And they're so clean. all my, you know, some of my Olympians have WADA in their cabinets or USADA in their cabinets, like three times a week. Oh, wow. So when you say there's drugs and track, I'm all like, I don't know what they're doing because they're fucking in my client's cabinets three days a week, going through everything, writing down the list, blood tests, urine tests, everything. So I don't know.

My guys are all like legit because I know they're getting tested all the time and I am so strict about their supplements. I am not trying to play that game. Well, that's good. I know there was a girl a few years ago that tried to blame it on a burrito. Do you remember that? Yes. And she came back from that and did well.

Like Nandrolones or something like Deca Dara Blan or something. Yeah, I think it was Nandrolone. Yeah. It's like, I don't know about that being in a burrito. In the pork burrito. Yeah. Pork burrito. There we go.

And actually she was on Brad's podcast and he really believes her. And I am still skeptical to be honest. So I've just. I forgot. I've seen all the excuses and in the microdosings. if they're doing it, it's probably usually micro dosing. But like I said, like some... I don't know how they get away with it, but there's some weird stat.

Yeah, how do they get away with it? What do you think? There's some weird stat of like the... Like, there's some weird stat of like the top 10 fastest 100 meter times of all time. All the athletes that have produced that have all tested positive for things that are not Wada approved. The only one was Usain Bolt. He's the only one that didn't test positive for anything. But yeah,

some sort of weird stat like that that was around. I was like, man, that's crazy. Well, it is, it might be, but it also might be like some of these people might just be taking stuff. It's like.

Contaminated or what do you think? Well, contaminated. Yeah. And maybe not all of them are just like full on like blasting steroids and performance enhancing drugs. No, I don't think they can. I really honestly don't think.

I mean, it wouldn't be smart with knowing that you're going to be tested. What do you think about the enhanced games coming out? Have you seen Fred Curley? He's going to, he's like signed up, I guess. Is he going to do it? Yeah, is he going to start taking something for the enhanced games? He hasn't admitted that. He hasn't, he said, yeah, he hasn't said.

But anyway, I think it's interesting. My athlete, Lyndon is really good friends with him. Yeah. Fred's a trip. I feel like Fred could beat those guys honestly without. Like, you can't, I mean, I don't know. Like, drugs help things. But at the same time, you know,

even if you're on drugs doesn't mean you're going to beat a Fred Curley. Even if you're a great sprinter on drugs doesn't mean you're going to be to Fred Curley. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. So it's like, I hope he goes in there clean and just...

That would be, I think that would be the most interesting point of it. Yeah. Yeah, the enhanced games is going to have a hard time breaking the record just because the records have been around for so long. You know, you got the jacked up swimmer guy. We had them on the podcast and I talked with him.

And, yeah, the odds of him, like, just breaking the 50 meter that event has been around for a really long time. And the regular Olympics, who knows? Because a lot of stuff from the Olympics, they got rid of some records because they thought that some of them were from drugs. But then those records have been surpassed.

So it's like, are the records really getting surpassed? I've ever seen the 400 meter world record for women? Oh my gosh. I think it was an East German. I don't know if you can find that one. 400 meter women's world record. record. I think it was an East German back in the 80s and she looked like she was on like meth or something. I don't know. Like she was like full on running as fast as she could the whole entire 400.

She was no Sydney McLaughlin, let me tell you. And I, and it would be amazing to see like Sydney break that record even though. So Sydney didn't break this record. She broke the national record recently. Yeah. This one is the world. No, look, she's in the middle and she's just charging. There she is. She's easier. She's pulling ahead. She's charging. No one's ever, no one's ever. See, you know, you're supposed to relax on the back stretch and then. But she's just going nuts. She's just going crazy and she just looks like she's just like somebody wound her up or something.

Wow, she's, yeah, she's quite a bit of head still. Holy crap. Damn. But you see how there's no. Look at everybody else. And then we're supposed to honor that record. She kind of literally looks like she'd run the same speed. You know, this is, this is like way off track, but I always find, I always find that this topic.

This topic always fascinates me because there's some people. I don't know why. Well, there's some people, right? There's some people that maybe don't need it. And they can get to a certain point. Right. One could argue that that person doesn't need it because of genetics versus the other person taking something just to catch up to something that someone else was born with.

I agree with. Yeah. I agree with it. That there's that. It's a weird. possible. Yeah, it's a weird gray area I always think. But I guess we need some way to make sport fair, you know, right. Yeah, right. And so, yeah, I talk a lot of fairness in sports. You have to be within these lines. Yeah. That defines this sport. Right. Exactly. So there has to be

rules for each like they were yeah, right for basketball, right, you know, the height of the goal. Like all the rules are there for a reason. Right. So this is what we particularly subscribe to when we're watching the Olympics, we want to as spectators see them doing it with their natural physique. So other people might want to see enhanced games and see, I'm kind of curious myself. Like, I want to see what, especially with Fred in the mix, you know. Right. So, but he, I think he's recently called out track for being, you know, but I don't know.

I like to remain optimistic. And like I said, I have the firsthand experience with my athletes getting tested all the time. So it's, you know, and then here I am prescribing red meat. and you've got people randomly saying like, oh, I tested positive for steroids from my meat. And I'm like, shit, my athletes are eating red meat all the time. And that's not happened. So what's going on? Yeah.

Where can people find you? Where can they find out more about you? How can they learn how to get coached by you? Oh, yeah. Sure. Thank you. I'm just really humbly grateful to have the opportunity to reach others and help them thrive. That's really my passion.

So I'm grateful for this opportunity. My website is fastover 40.com. My Instagram's fast over 40. I will be 50 in a few weeks, but I'm going to keep fast over 40 because I'm still over 40. But yeah, fastover 40.com, fast over 40. So those are the main hubs to find everything else I'm doing. I'm doing an app right now. Earth and core fire inspired by the volcano that's erupting near my house.

And I want everyone to light the fire within them. So I'm super cheesy about all that stuff. Dangerous? The volcano? Yes. It doesn't erupt towards me. me and it's not threatening neighborhoods, but the only dangerous part is if the wind blows the wrong direction, I will get volcanic glass all over my car and my outdoor gym. So it looks like

dirt, but it's actually tiny pieces of volcanic, which cannot be good to breathe. So we keep all the windows closed and nobody goes outside, but that's rarely happened over the years. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, but no, otherwise, I just feel the mana, you know, the power from it. It's so inspiring. You guys got to come out and visit. It sounds amazing. Yeah. It sounds a little scary though, a volcano. Volcano erupting by my house. Yeah. It's like went by that.

Yeah. No, it's great. I'm telling you. And it's been erupting. It's a good thing that you're fast if you need to get out of harm's way. Lava is slow. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can just sprint away.

Well, thank you so much. Strength is never a week. This week, this never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. Aloha.