Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell Got Rhabdo? Training Review With Coach Dan Garner || MBPP Ep. 886

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Dan Garner, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about what could have possibly gone wrong during Mark's run that started on a trail and ended in the hospital. Mark has been working with Dan for his Boston Marathon Prep. Follow Dan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dangarnernutrition/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #BostonMarathon #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

We're rolling? All right. Let's see, Dan, if we can try to figure out how to explain what in the fuck happened to me over the last couple days. Oh, man. This time around, I feel more comfortable here being at my second time back, but it doesn't mean I'll be any less socially awkward. So let's kick it off with a horrible thing that happened. Let's do that. Have you walked everybody through it yet?

You haven't done a video yet. Why don't you tell the story? Yeah, I'll share as much as I can here. So I was on a run. I've been getting a lot of running coaching from my boy Dan over here. I don't always follow it. A lot of times I do more than what he suggests. So that could be a big part of the problem.

I'm totally fine with taking responsibility on that. We're on a supplement protocol. We're doing a lot of blood work. We're checking in on as many things as possible. So even during my examination, which I'll explain in a minute, but even while paramedics were talking to me, I was like, no, it ain't that. It's not that. We got our shit together.

We know what we're talking about. And they're like, we've never had anybody in our ambulance before kind of yelling at us. I wasn't really yelling. I was just excited, I guess. But they're like, we think your electrolytes might be off. I'm like, they shouldn't be off. I'm like, I took electrolytes, you know, this kind of thing. Anyway, I was on a run and I was feeling really good.

I was doing these intervals and I was running for three quarters of a mile. And in between that, I would walk for three minutes. I was about to start the seventh interval and just didn't feel right. It felt like I needed like more rest or something. And I'm like, all right, well, if I was coaching somebody, what would I tell them to do? I would probably tell them, well, see if you can scale down a little bit and see if you can back off a little bit. And then maybe you can kind of refine your groove and maybe you can finish your workout, because I had still a handful of sets to do. So I slowed down the pace a little bit, and that still didn't feel comfortable.

Then I rested. I walked for about two minutes, so I gave myself a little bit more walking time. I was like, all right, when it goes to three minutes again, I'll try to pick the to pick the pace back up since I didn't finish that last set and kind of see what's going on. And I went to like pick up the pace again. And, um, I just, I could probably have done it, but it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel good. It didn't feel like it made sense. Um, right before those couple of sprints, I downed the last of my liquid that I had, which was a carbohydrate, uh, electrolyte drink. Um, I have been using similar things during my running. So I don't know if that was like a hundred percent the culprit or what, but the type

of carbohydrate I was using was a slower acting carbohydrate. And I hammered some ketones at the same time. Ketones supposedly will lower your blood glucose. Is that correct? Well. They can? Yeah, they can. But in the presence of something that isn't activating a lot of insulin,

such as a slow-release carbohydrate, then I think that the absolute opposite can happen, and that you're displacing glucose to preferred fuel source as your ketones. And then since you're not producing insulin with the resistant starch that is the corn starch, that that continued to build up and kind of create hyperglycemia instead of hypoglycemia. Yeah. So the short of it is like this is kind of complicated. We don't know exactly what happened and I'm getting more blood work done.

I don't know if we'll ever really truly know exactly what happened. And I'm getting more blood work done. I don't know if we'll ever really truly know exactly what happened. I just think it was a one-off type of thing. And I think it has to do with just the mileage that I'm starting to accumulate. Because I've never run this far before. I've never even really have run before. And now I'm 160 days or was 160 days in a row into running.

So basically, I had probably probably a preexisting condition. Would that make sense? Is that fair to say? Kind of a preexisting condition going in to the run on that particular day that I was unaware of. Because again, I feel good mentally, physically, I feel good. I felt strong. I even felt good on that day. But once I got kind of hammered by that last set,

I was like, okay, you can make a choice to kind of continue on your path and to try to finish this workout, or you need to make a choice of like completely discontinuing this and kind of seeing what's up. And I was like, well, it doesn't make any sense for me to continue down this path. I don't even know how many people are on this path. And if something happens to me, that's not great. I need to go where there's like people and I need to go and I need to get more fuel. So I started to walk from the Arboretum in Davis to Starbucks. And as I was going to Starbucks, I started to get a little shaky and things like that. I got some orange juice and I was trying to cure myself of what I thought was low

blood sugar. But as Dan will explain, we think that I probably already at that point had high blood sugar for various reasons. So I hammered an orange juice. I hammered another juice. I hammered another juice, probably took like five juices. And by the time I got to like the third or fourth one, I was like, I think I need more. I think I need more because they weren't really doing anything yet. I wasn't feeling better and I wasn't feeling worse. Um, but at the time that I started to finish maybe like the last one or so, I was like, holy fuck, this is having an opposite effect. These are, these are making me, these are clearly making me worse. At first I thought

I was just getting worse because the condition and that the carbohydrates weren't quite catching up yet, but they were literally making me worse to the point where I couldn't, um, I couldn't sip out of the, out of the orange juice jug that I had. And even when my wife put a straw in it, I couldn't even barely get it to my mouth because my hands were shaking so much um so at that point we decided to call the ambulance because I was like if I go to like emergency room I've been in that situation before and you just sit there and they just like they you know they want you to like almost die before they take you in or they don't always have room for you or

however it works but i was like an ambulance gets you gets you right in to get seen right away so he called the ambulance i'm at the starbucks in davis the fucking fire department is like right there i walk in davis all the time people know who i am so people are like what's what's going on with this guy i was pretty aware of what was going on my brain was still good um it was hard to talk just didn't have enough like hardly enough strength to talk but I could still talk and communicate um to show you kind of how weak I was I was sitting on a stool at Starbucks and just to go from the stool to the gurney was hard. Like I had to really push with my arms and get up. And then I was still like all over the place.

And they're like, we don't want you to fall because you're pretty big. We don't know how we're going to get you back up type thing. So anyway, they got me out of there. They checked my blood sugar while I was in Starbucks and it was 380. They checked it again when I was in the ambulance and it was 350. And once I saw that, I was like, oh, okay. At least, or I'm sorry, I went from 380 to 330.

I was like, at least we're heading in the right direction. This is probably just a matter of time. They took me to the hospital. I threw up many, many times. They gave me that giant donkey condom thing to throw up into, which was very convenient. There she is. And they poked me with a bunch of stuff. They gave me IVs. That picture's horrifying.

They wanted to do a bunch of... I know, I should be sleeping with my mouth shut, right? I should have the mouth tape on. That would be the most concerning thing, right? Hostageshape.com slash Power Friday. Where's the hostage tape when you need it, right? So, yeah, they did some blood work while I was there. They did a urine analysis, and Dan can kind of explain some of that stuff. a urine analysis and Dan can kind of explain some of that stuff. They gave me IVs. The IVs helped me to rehydrate. It's just a matter of just like sitting there for a while until I felt good

enough to leave. And they just want to see that you can like walk and stuff like that, which all of that was like challenging. It's so odd how even just a couple hours can make a huge difference. A handful of hours not feeling well off your feet. Then you go to get up and I don't know if people have had this happen before, but it's like if you drank a lot, like you had like four or five drinks and you didn't get up yet. Oh yeah. Then you go to get up and you're like, whoa, I'm fucking drunk. Right. It felt like that. It was really hard to kind of balance and and my wife kind of had to help me but uh luckily i had enough strength to get my ass on out of the hospital and then it was a matter of just trying to figure out like how to keep food down and uh

how to recover from there and now we're a couple days later and uh i spent all day monday all day tuesday what the hell is today wednesday wednesday um just resting resting resting and we're gonna take it kind of day by day from here got some blood work done today and we'll kind of look at that so maybe you can explain to people uh some of the stuff that you saw in the blood and the urine and stuff like that sure man well first of all dude I'm just really glad that you're okay. Like it's a story now, but like those moments can be scary when you're sitting in the hospital and you still feel weak, but your content, your mind is active. One thing I want to butt in with before I forget is there was so many people reaching

out, which was really cool. Like a lot of people reaching out. It was really cool to see people that are concerned about my well-being. But I have never heard anybody talk about this kind of stuff in fitness before of how many people get wrecked by workouts and don't ever talk about it. There was testimony after testimony after testimony. If you go and look through, there's like 1,050 comments. after testimony, if you go and look through, there's like a thousand fifty comments. There's probably a few hundred comments from people who are like, yeah, I had blurred vision during a workout. I passed out during a workout. I was fasting one time and this happened. I was

doing keto this time and this happened. I was preparing for a bodybuilding show and this happened. It was it was overwhelming. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, how? This is an area that is really not talked about much. Endurance athletes do talk about it because it does happen. It happens probably way too often in endurance stuff. But in regular fitness and in lifting, you don't really hear people talk about this much. Yeah, for sure. And I think that you've got a lot of balls to talk about it because I think a lot of people don't talk about it in order to protect their ego.

Or especially if you're like a coach in the industry, you want to protect like, I'm the guy who knows what he's doing. This would never happen to me. I think that that is why it's not talked about a lot. I'm glad that you're talking about it. And I am glad that you're okay because I've been in the hospital before

and I've had that feeling of weakness and then they're putting in the IV and I'm kind of like slowly coming back to life. But like, it's like when you're still weak, but you're thinking you're like, man, like, like what's going to actually happen here? And then you slowly start to come back to life and then you can kind of smile about it. And then it's a story. But in that frame of time, it is a scary thing. And your horrifying picture captured it quite well. But when it comes to like the actual nuts and bolts of what happened, I think you're right. I think that we'll never actually know.

But there was a lot of things at play. And I don't believe it was any one thing in particular. I think it was a combination of things, both acute and chronic. So I think that in a chronic sense, you were doing something new that you hadn't really been exposed to. As far as your biology, adapting to adaptations over time in your whole life compared to the last 160 days,

they're very, very, very different things. So I think that that chronic new exposure to something very extreme had a play with respect to fatigue management. I also think as well that we had a particular amount of ketones with 600 grams of carbohydrates that day, 100 coming in the form of liquid around that training session. And with the amount of hyperglycemia at play,

I think in a large way that the ketones displaced your utilization of glucose as a primary fuel source during exercise. But due to that specific type of glucose, it continued to rise because it is a glucose that is very resistant to creating insulin secretion. So then we're primarily using these ketones during training. And then this glucose is continuing to rise, but not necessarily creating the hormonal milieu responsible for getting that glucose back down and I think that's why in a huge way kind of that last swig you did before like that's what that was the kind of nail in the coffin to like okay now we've got even more glucose that we can't displace so in top of that we are creating

catecholamines we are creating things things that break down glucose into the bloodstream even more than they otherwise would have. So we've got ketones displacing glucose. We have a continuously rising glucose up to the multiple hundredth now creating a state of hyperglycemia, which almost mirrors the symptoms of hypoglycemia. So I think that you absolutely did the right thing in terms of going to get juice. Even medically speaking, if you think your friend is going into diabetic shock and you call the ambulance, they'll say, go have a can of Coke. Go have, not a diet Coke, go have a real can of Coke until we get there. Because hypoglycemia is something that can kill you,

but hyperglycemia is much, much more tolerable. So in terms of cost-benefit analysis, they're saying go have the Coke right now because if it's low, then the Coke is going to help bring it up until we get there and actually get something in your vein to bring it up. So we've got that hyperglycemia coming into play.

And then on top of that, I think that we have the fatigue coming into play. And then we ended up seeing something known as glycosuria in your urine, which is glucose found in the urine. So there's actually full glucose molecules in his urine, whereas the body is typically not going to do that, especially in the amounts that Mark was peeing out. So Mark was peeing out just actual glucose, which means that blood sugar was high to the point where the body was trying to dispose of it in any which way it can. And it doesn't really make sense to have that happen during exercise either,

because I should be burning through glucose as I'm exercising, right? Yeah, but just not at the rate of, you know, several hundred milligrams per unit of deciliter in the blood. So your body didn't have the insulin to get rid of it. It's trying to get rid of it in any which way it can. And one way to get rid of it is via excretion. So he had this weird situation. There's a thing known as urine specific gravity that measures the concentration of one's urine. And, you know, classically, it's a very good indication of hydration. You've got that dark concentrated urine, you're pretty dehydrated. You had clear urine that was extremely concentrated, which is like this strange combination of hydration was actually there and taking place. However, we had a lot of glucose in it.

So I think to a large extent, we had hyperglycemia with the ketone displacement, with the biological adaptations and fatigue management happening over time. But then that hyperglycemia led to nausea and vomiting. The nausea and vomiting brought down your electrolytes to a huge way. Like compared to the lab work we already have, your potassium plummeted, your magnesium really plummeted. So these things all really dropped. So then we have this plummeting electrolytes, which is why the IV really helped bring you back to life too, because you're getting hydrated. And then in the midst of all that, I think you were on enough

Kratom to still feel pretty good. Oh, yeah. So we had all of these things currently taking place. And plus also your own pain tolerance, being the athlete that you are. I think that your own pain tolerance in combination with Kratom, in combination with loving the run, in combination with getting a good time in your intervals, you were still smashing, which is why I think to a huge extent that this wasn't any type of overtraining type of thing. I think that fatigue management could have played a role in this, but performance is a leading indicator of overtraining, meaning it's one of the first things that you're going to see drop rather than one of the later things. In terms of actually fatigue management. So if I was overtrained, I'd be just dragging ass. Yeah. And you would feel

like it. You wouldn't be out there like, man, I feel great. Like, you know, and you did feel great. You were out there, you were kicking ass. I felt better than I've ever felt probably doing anything in that I can ever remember physically. Yeah, you were on fire and your times reflected that. Everything was going great which is something that a physiology of overtraining just doesn't support.

The fact that performance is the leading indicator rather than the lagging indicator, which is injuries and stuff and hormonal changes and things like that. I'm going to start drawing in the air again. Someone has to tape my hand behind my back. We had between the kratom, between the hyperglycemia, between the ketones, between the electrolytes dropping because of the nausea, between some fatigue taking place.

I really think that it wasn't any one thing that would have taken you down. I think it was a combination of all of them that had some type of contribution here. And I think in a huge way that hyperglycemia was probably one of the biggest ones because the moment you saw your glucose start coming down the ambulance,

and then when you're getting to the hospital, you're slowly coming back to life, and then they're also correcting that hydration loss from the vomiting. That correction there was the chemistry change that needed to take place in order to actually bring you back to life. And I know that it was noted there that you had a rhabdo as well, which is extreme muscle breakdown. But they wrote down mild rhabdo, which I think is certainly something that it would have been very, very mild. Especially like I've just worked in the fight game.

I've seen fighters cut a lot of weight and then go in a five-round fight and then pee Coca-Cola. Like it is that brown. Yeah, listening to Paul Felder who brought you up on, you know, Rogan, congratulations on that. Thanks, buddy. Thanks. But Paul was saying how like he had Rabdo, and Rogan was asking him something kind of specific about it.

He's like, yeah, I don't think it was that big of a deal. He's like, I kind of had that, but it wasn't that it was something else. And he just kind of glossed over it. Cause he's like,

I've kind of always register that his, I guess his like blood is always kind of jacked up. It always indicates some overtraining, I guess is what he's saying. Yeah. And then the rhabdo is really tough on your kidneys. And then, so Joe was like, Hey, so did you have any kind of jacked up it always indicates some overtraining i guess is what he's saying yeah and then the rhabdo is really tough on your kidneys and then so joe was like hey so did you have any kind of kidneys uh do you ever feel any of that to this day and paul goes well i got a twinge in my kidney here and there in my back in my lower back i was like is that a medical term

yeah yeah so just you know guys like paul guys like mark sometimes tougher uh tougher than what's good for them um but the the rhabdo um may have had some play in this um that's why i kind of opened with the fatigue thing because rhabdo is associated with two things elevations in blood sugar and hypomagnesemia and mark Mark had high blood sugar and low magnesium. He could have had the high blood sugar from the displacement of the glucose and the lack of insulin that we discussed. And he could have had low magnesium from the vomiting.

So that actually relationship already makes sense down that hypothesis. But then that hypothesis also fulfills itself with some mild rhabdo as well. So a lot of things currently at play, but what's important is you're feeling good now. I hope you guys are enjoying this episode. Now the podcast has brought value to your life. Mark told me to tell you that if you don't give us a five-star rating on iTunes or

Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast, that I should choke you out, which I would never do, but he suggested that. So please, if you enjoy the podcast, we're trying to grow. Go ahead and give us a star rating on iTunes and Spotify. Enjoy the episode. I've been eating like a motherfucker and I've been resting like a motherfucker. And when I woke up this morning, guess what happened? Nothing, I hope. I weighed less than I've ever weighed.

Oh, wow. Just from like getting more. I mean, we've talked about on the podcast before how your body tends to sometimes it just needs the rest sometimes it needs the extra calories I bought like heavy cream I bought like full fat milk I'm eating eggs

I'm like let me just let me blitz the body with some good calories here it's not like I wasn't doing some of that before I was paying attention to my sleep I was trying to get the nutrients in, but I'm like, let me pack in some extra nutrients while I'm resting and see what happens. For sure. And yeah, to reinstate, I don't think you were overtrained. Like, so you were on top of your recovery. I think that that is a, that is absolutely something that needs to be almost

overstated here. But, um, I laughed when we were on the phone cause I was like, I like that you do nothing half ass cause he was all the way crazy training. And then he was just all the way staying in bed and eating all day. It was either. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like eating in bed. He was eating in bed. I was like, you're either running a marathon or doing absolutely nothing.

Just awake enough to like chew. That's great. Hey guys, I want to talk to you about Merrick Health, owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. Now, some of you guys are on a fat loss journey. Some of you guys are trying to gain muscle and some of you guys are just trying to optimize yourself and your hormones. That's why Merrick Health is so great

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Yeah, you guys got to head over to MerrickHealth.com slash Power Project. That's M-A-R-E merrickhealth.com slash power project that's m-a-r-e-k health.com slash power project uh you guys will see the power project panel and when you guys check out use promo code power project to save 101 off the entire panel links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes so this makes me really curious though because of like this was you were feeling amazing you were hitting a PR on this workout. Everything's feeling good. Then you wonder in the future, then how can this type of, is this an intake issue, like a nutrient intake issue to like avoid in terms of the carbohydrates and the ketones, et cetera? Is there something to think about there? Because the performance was

great, right? Feeling great. So then what, what factor needs to be kept in mind in the future so that you don't end up in this situation again? Well, you had a couple of different variables happening that day, right? What were those? Yeah, I think I think that combination of stuff like the way that I took it, I probably just won't do that again. Yeah. I'll use a faster acting carbohydrate, which I was using previously. And I don't think, again, I don't think that's the only contributing factor. I think it's just part of it. The ketones are something I don't know enough about at the moment. So I probably will just discontinue those.

There's no reason. And that wasn't something that was programmed? No, we talked about it a little bit, but I was just mentioning it to him. I'm like, oh, I found these ketones and I kind of like them and I've used them in a couple workouts. Isn't something that was programmed? No, we talked about it a little bit, but I was just mentioning it to him. I'm like, oh, I found these ketones and I kind of like them and I've used them in a couple workouts and it's feeling pretty good. Yeah, I didn't program it, but you were messing with it and feeling fine. Yeah. And then I was like, all right. And even on that particular day, I was feeling good, but I also may have taken too much.

I'm not really sure, but it's definitely something I can pull out of the workout without any. It doesn't make sense to really mess with it now. I think on lighter workouts at some other time, I can like revisit it. I'm sure that they're – I'm sure it's a good product. It probably works great. I just – in combination with what I was doing on that day, probably wasn't best. What do you think we should do moving forward? Yeah.

So I kind of had three big takeaways from the event. I had number one, let's not combine that carb and that ketone again because we don't need to combine those for your maximum performance anyways. So I was basically saying we can either remove the ketone entirely, like you're talking about, and just keep the carb in, or if you're going to continue to use ketones, then use them at a little bit of a lower dose, but utilize a carbohydrate that's insulinogenic

and not one that has a very low amount of insulin secretion. So something that's not that resistant, let's just get some glucose and fructose in there and give you, you know, something that's going to be insulinogenic. So that would be recommendation number one. Recommendation number two was to just lay down and be fat all week. It's time to just, it's time to lay down and just allow the body to revitalize. And it sounds like you really needed it because two things that retain water are cortisol and inflammation. Those are both very water retentive. You're losing weight right now, despite laying down and eating a lot, which means we're dropping inflammation. We're dropping

cortisol. This recovery was likely highly needed. So needed. So in terms of the nutritional changes, the intra-workout fuel is going to be altered moving forward. We needed to take this week off and really just hang out. And then the recommendation number three is when we get back into it, we're not going to get back into it where we left off. We're going to get back into it, and then we still have nine weeks left to bring this thing back up and peak again, and truly peak again for the boston marathon and knock that thing out the good thing is the streak is broken so i don't have to worry about it anymore there you go no more pressure

yeah i don't have to run it every day quick question for anybody who does is though using ketones and you know carbohydrates like you or what do they need to keep in mind because like you you wonder if other people are doing something similar or fucking like you are, what do they need to keep in mind? Because like you wonder if other people are doing something similar or fucking around with this, just what do they need to keep in mind so they don't end up in a similar type of situation? I think just what you said is to have carbohydrates that are insulogenic.

Is that how you say it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. To have carbohydrates that give you the response. I took this product. I don't want to like name specific product, but I took a product that is a – it's called a super starch. And the super starch is supposed to have like less secretion of insulin when you're taking in the carbohydrates. So it maybe is more akin to like eating a potato or something while you're running rather than just ingesting like Gatorade.

while you're running rather than just ingesting like Gatorade. But I think if it's my understanding too, the cyclic dextrins are like not broken down extremely fast either, but I don't know. Is that, am I incorrect in that? Yeah, I think they are broken down quite fast. Oh, they are broken down. Yeah, yeah.

As is Vitargo. My typical carbs of choice for running are like super easy to digest actual foods, like even things like candies or a very small piece of fruit or something. And I did have some of those things on me and I did eat some of those things and I did have fast-acting carbohydrates, but it may have been too late. Yeah, yeah. It's probably far too,

I mean, at that point in time too, you were a little bit too late and probably just adding a lot of glucose, which seems to happen with the fruit juice that came in. But I think for the listeners, in terms of moving forward, an insulinogenic carb would be added to ketones, if you're even going to add ketones. There's many marathon runners out there

that are extremely successful on carbs alone. So that's something that I don't think it's required. If you want to mess with it, make sure it's an insulinogenic carb. And when you introduce it, introduce it really low. Don't do anything kind of extreme. You do it low, low, low, low, low. And then you can kind of incrementally work your way up to find a sweet spot with it because I do think the combination of the two can provide benefits.

You're getting different fuel sources. You're getting a type of stimulant effect from the ketones as well. And you're kind of slowly dialing in your own unique dose. So I would actually do that. And then perhaps after that, then you can kind of mess with something like Kratom. Again, you don't need it, but if you wanted to mess with Kratom or add it in, I would probably add it in after you find your unique optimal dose so that it doesn't mask any symptoms that you should be paying attention to. Because it helps you feel good. Right. Yeah.

It absolutely works in a big way that way. And sometimes not feeling good is like some of the most important signals we could ever pick up from our training. Because I'm super unaware and I'm just, I'm curious, what would be considered low, normal and high blood sugar? Because if he's at 380, how much higher is that than where we would typically be? When you're doing like a type of glucose tolerance test, you're going to expect someone to get around, say 180 or so, and then begin to taper back down. So him being in the 300s is very high. That is a high amount of glucose. Somebody eating a couple Snickers bars

would still be under 200 if they're healthy. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, a really healthy person, if you're doing like, so let's say one's glucose is quite optimal between 80 and 85 on a lab report. If you give them, and you get a glucose tolerance test

of 75 grams of carbs only upon waking. So you get actually a pretty big carb bomb upon waking. We see how high your glucose goes, and then we see how long it takes to drop. If it goes really high, then we have blood sugar issues. But also if it stays high, then we know we're insulin resistant because your body's not finding a home for those carbohydrates. Ideally, you would want someone to get up to say like around 120 or so and then taper off and find their way back home. But, uh, and, and from a Snickers perspective, I mean, that might take

it higher, might not due to the amount of fat and nuts in it. Right. So, uh, but you still would expect in a healthy person, um, for it to not even get close to that. And even when I'm saying 180, that's high. So being in the 300s, I think it's just a combination of not having the hormonal milieu that you needed to get rid of it and then pounding the juice before you actually did that. The orange juice at the Starbucks probably helped you a little bit from the hydration and electrolyte perspective, but then the carbs that it came with just kind of continued to push you over the edge and got you the ambulance. There's a relationship between your glucose and your cortisol, right? Yes. And we did see that in my previous blood work that my cortisol was elevated. I don't know

if it was like alarmingly high, but where was that at? It was trending high. Your cortisol was elevated. I don't know if it was like alarmingly high, but where was that at? It was trending high. Your cortisol was kicking around 15, whereas somebody in your age group upon waking should be around 10 to 11 or so. So I'm being pretty picky with that because that's my job. I'm very picky with everybody's labs.

As you guys saw in our previous podcast, I went like three hours of me looking at one lab report and not shedding up forever. But I work with people where if there's a one second can be $10 million. So like I am as picky as possible when I'm looking at labs. So you were trending high for what I like to see in a very high performing athlete.

But then when it comes to your cortisol and glucose combination, your glucose was actually improving tremendously from lab to lab. You came to me with a glucose around 94 and then we got it down into the 80s and even the lower 80s. So there was a marked improvement. Like you were, you left every single known risk category. It was gone. It was behind you. That problem, it was checkmark. We considered that solved. We can move on to our next goal. So I actually think in a very, very, very well-timed way, our ability to improve your glucose disposal helped you a lot that day. Because when you had that state of hyperglycemia when that was

when that when the ketones were leaving your body and when the insulin did begin to come up you had the insulin sensitivity to go from 150 to 130 you were actually recovered a lot faster than you otherwise would have and you're able to get out of the hospital i think a lot sooner than than the average person would have that's awesome how uh, like Mark was mentioning to me how you were mentioning how his like, uh, recovery is pretty wild for kind of workouts he's been doing and the workouts you've been programming. So like doing all this new running stuff, how's he been able to progress and why do you think his recovery is so good? Yeah. Up until this point. and why do you think his recovery is so good?

Up until this point. Until this minor setback. Again, I really don't think it was a recovery thing. Yeah, I will stand firm on that. Looking at the labs and knowing him and knowing how he feels and how he was performing, these are all very, very strong indicators that it was a freak incident and not some chronic thing. And I think for sure you would still feel like shit right now like total dog shit if you were in a

true state of overtraining like when you talk to athletes in the olympics or um yeah my friend uh brad kern was saying that he's had to take six weeks off before and he mentioned other athletes too they just they go out for a run on a particular day and they can't even work out that day. They try to work out and they're like something's off. They try to go out a couple days later and they can't do it and they try to go again. And then they talk with their friends and their friends are like, dude, you're fucked. Like you need to sit down for like a month or two. And that's what happens to a lot of endurance athletes.

Yeah, yeah. So like that can absolutely happen and that didn't happen. Um, but I also think that you have a genetic predisposition to have some pretty wild recovery. Um, you weren't a new person coming to me to, with the goal of a marathon, you were somebody who has already has 30 years of training under his belt and not just 30 years of messing around 30 years of real fricking training, um, under your belt. So I think that plays a big role in, um, your recovery capacity. I think also, um, sometimes that pain management, uh, can, can be a component of it. Cause I think some people, and again, like I'm blessed to work with high performing athletes. Um, but I think some people think they're really under recovered when

they're kind of just wimpy. They'll have their pain management, their ability to tolerate volume. They perceive that they're at some sort of limit, some self-prescribed limit. When they're not, they can end up, they can go harder, they can go longer. They're just, it's a psychological thing more than it actually is a physiological thing because if they had to,

you know they would absolutely be able to get it done. So I think his pain management, the foundation he came to me with, and then also his genetics were a huge component of recovery. But also just many other factors. Like I think the way in which we structure your training, the way in which we vary your tempo runs, your fartlek runs, your long runs, your intervals, where we're placing hypertrophy and strength. Like those weekly splits, they're not done by mistake.

We are utilizing certain volumes, intensities at unique times in order to keep fatigue management controlled and underway. And also, you know, last but not least, I really think I could go on for a long time about his recovery capacity because you do recover like my pro athletes. You really, really do. You're an animal. And I think one of the reasons that actually could possibly top all the other reasons

is the knowledge of your own body because you've been an advocate for many years, like not always having an exact plan to stick to, kind of just going in and giving what the defense gives you. Right. That's right. Yeah, even with what you prescribe me.

I'm like, here's what I'm supposed to do. I'm going to follow this the best I can. And if something, if something goes weird, or like, for example, if I'm running a hill and something you, uh, let's say you plan surges, they're supposed to go a minute long. Well, maybe that hill takes 45 seconds. I'm fine with the hill taking, you know, I don't mind it taking a couple seconds less or sometimes a couple seconds more. Even some of those surges, I'm like, well, I'm just going to count that as two because that was a 90 second fucking hill. And that took a lot out of me. So I'll make audibles like that. I'll make adjustments like that kind of on the fly just because I have been training.

been training. And I think most people, you know, when they think about most of the comments that you see on social media, on my social media, it's always surrounding steroids. It's always surrounding testosterone replacement. I didn't mention that once. And, and, and those things, and those things, it's a mistake to not bring them up. It's a mistake to not talk about them. They, they are, they are huge components of, uh, my training. They're huge component. It's a huge component, I guess, of like my life, you could even say. Um, but it's something that hasn't changed, you know? So that's something for people to keep in mind when people see that I made a change from powerlifting to bodybuilding, or I made a change from bodybuilding now to running. Steroids have always been in the picture. They've always been there. So it's not like I'm pulling out like this new card

and I'm saying like, I'm putting this on the table now. It's been on the table the whole time. So you don't get a sudden surge of improvement just because you're on steroids. You get a sudden surge of improvement if steroids are new for you. And they're not new for me. I've been on them for many, many years. But it is a part of the recovery. It does help me. But they were a constant. I don't think it – yeah, they have been a constant. I don't think of the Boston Marathon anybody's going to be testing me because I don't think

I'm going to be lined up next to Kipchoge anytime soon. You're natural anyways, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. I'm natural anyway. But if they were to test me naturally on steroids yeah yeah naturally

you're gonna find my testosterone levels right that's Chael Sonnen once he got popped and this is in a press conference

it was the most amazing thing I've ever heard him say he got popped for testosterone and then he said my testosterone flagged

for three times that of the average man. Guess they caught me on a low day. I was like, you are amazing. Talk about owning it. But that knowledge of your body, man, that's like something I've had to learn working with pro athletes in my career. Because I kind of cut coaching up almost into two blocks. Quantification and then qualification.

This is when I'm working with an athlete. Let's say the first one to five years are going to be the quantification stage. That is where I'm actually using a science-based approach based on the literature to quantify what you're going to do because currently I know better than you. I know how many sets and reps I'm going to prescribe for you. I know the caloric, protein, carbohydrate, and fat amounts that I'm going to prescribe to you. I know the recovery strategies I'm going to prescribe to you. I am going to utilize all of the known outside-in resources

to quantify the best possible approach that you need to take right now because you don't know your body enough yet to argue against that. That is the quantification stage, which could be summed up as shut up and do what I say. In terms of the qualification stage, that's when everything begins to shift to where now I am qualifying all of my decisions through you so it's no longer a coaching dictatorship but now it's absolutely a coaching relationship to where i'm qualifying decisions through you because now you have developed such a high level of knowledge about your own body that i would be a really arrogant coach to just go no this is what you're doing no this if i did that to sean o'malley and

he would be like no because i didn't perform as well like the the athletes they don't always have a way to represent uh or not represent but communicate high level science they they just don't but what they can absolutely communicate with you is how they feel they are more in tune with their bodies than anybody to the point where like if you just add in like a green tea or if you add in like just something, so it seems small, they know what happened. They know that there was a, there was a variable, there was a blip and they know what they know, whether that was positive or not. So transitioning somebody from quantification, let's say three to five years into qualification, we're moving from outside in coaching to inside out coaching.

And when we started working together 11 weeks ago now, we began at inside out. It's always been a conversation. You send me updates every single workout. I send you reports every single week. And your program's never the same. I've given you a new workout program every week. I didn't just say, here's your piece of paper. Do this for 10 weeks. That just would have never flied for us. We've always adjusted. You've received a new program every single week because everything's being qualified

based on how you feel, which has always been pretty goddamn good. Yeah, a lot of changes the whole time. Mark, at all during during any of it were you concerned that maybe boston wouldn't happen um you know i think when you're training for something there's always that's always like you know something that sticks around a bit so i mean i have no idea um i mean the worst thing that could happen in training for me at the moment would be like a torn muscle. You know, like something happening to my body and my body getting screwed up and having to go through that. Like that sucks.

And who knows? I don't know. It could have even been worse potentially. But I think there's like different kinds of setbacks, you know, a muscle tear or something, you know, wild like that is just those things. I mean, it literally, you know, you tear a hamstring or something, you're looking at like eight weeks or something. And then you're like, well, that puts us like right at the start of the race. You know what I mean? So there's always anytime you're preparing for

anything that's always always a possibility uh i don't even when i was power lifting my recommendation to people when they were competing uh somebody would like miss a bench press or something let's say they missed their second attempt bench press let's say they miss it badly like it's like there's no there's zero chance they're going to get their third lift i would say i i already put your attempt in and they would just look at me like it was crazy i was like well i know you're emotional at the moment and that that was heavy and it doesn't look like it's going to go but you put the attempt in and we can always scratch when you when it gets closer you know we can we can still

say that you're not going to do it like no one's going to force you to do it, but we still put it in. So I kind of take that approach with everything. You always kind of, you always put the attempt in. The attempt is always there. And if something happens where you need an audible, I'm okay with, I'm okay with any variation of anything. You know, I don't feel like I owe it to anybody. I don't even feel like I owe anything in particular to myself. I'm just trying to get better. Like I just, I want to get better at stuff. I want to get better every day. The Boston marathon is something that kind of came to me through a guy on Instagram who was like,

Hey, I think I can get you in if you do this charity thing. And I was like, fucking cool. I want to get more into charity stuff anyway. So this sounds great. This sounds like an awesome opportunity. I talked with Brad Kern about thing and I was like, fucking cool. I want to get more into charity stuff anyway. So this sounds great. This sounds like an awesome opportunity. I talked with Brad Kern about it and Brad was like,

you have to do the Boston marathon. He's like, it's too amazing. It's too unbelievable. He's like, you gotta do it. It'll be a lot of fun. So,

uh, I'm just in it to, you know, continually try to work on getting better and I'm in it for fun. And if it happens, it happens. And if it doesn't, then I'll fucking go do some other marathon somewhere else. It's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when working with somebody who is getting ready for

a marathon, do you work with marathon people often? I work with strength people who want to do marathons. Yeah. So you won't, you won't find me working with people who um who work with people who solely focus on marathons but i've absolutely had a lot of bucket listers who want to do marathons myself included i did that um that actually created kind of a wave once i got that once i completed that other people were like how the hell did you do that you mentioned you have a long you have a long-standing relationship with brian mckenzie who's a used to be an ultra marathoner and stuff like that, right? Yeah, yeah.

Brian McKenzie is the man. His work over at Shift Adapt is fantastic. I've had a look at his blood work before. That dude is an animal, and he's a really bright dude. But, yeah, my thing has always been working with meathead marathoners. I've been going on that myself. And it's something that kind of progresses over time too, because somebody might get in, they're getting out of the, Hey, I thought I couldn't do

cardio at all. If I wanted to maximize gains, I thought I should never, ever do this kind of thing. Is that true? Is that not? I would say that it's absolutely not true. And sometimes it can actually help you make gains even further, even if you don't chase a 5K, 10K, half marathon, full marathon. But yeah, man, I've worked with a bunch of guys like that and slowly progressed them up to the point. Now, when it does come with strength athletes trying to do marathons, because now there are a lot of athletes who are starting running and they do maybe do want to do a half marathon or a full marathon. What's the low hanging fruit of things that they need to try paying attention to when it comes to obviously potentially supplementation, but then programming the running when it comes to that? Are there any resources that they can look up to have like a simple program to get them

to be able to handle that mileage? Well, me and my man here are putting together a program. We are. Yeah. Faster than 50. Yeah. We're allowed to say that? Yeah, why not?

All right. Hell yeah. Yeah, we're putting together Faster Than 50. So that's something that's going to be. It's like already together. Yeah, yeah. It's already sorted out pretty much. Yep.

Already together, already sorted out, already ready to rock for people. So that's something that they can absolutely use in order to have a resource to get the job done and get it done in a way that's going to be very progressive and agreeable. It's a very flexible system that they can use and not many rigid rules, but will guide you into the right direction and keep the safety bumpers in place so that you can smash that thing. But people shouldn't be worried about adding a little bit of cardio into your plan. I think, first of all, from the health perspective, adding in a little bit of aerobic work, even if you're a strength person, can help a lot in many ways that people don't really think about. Like adding in some aerobic work to improve your systemic and general work capacity. You're just improving work capacity to be able to handle more volume.

You have a healthier heart. You've got better oxygenation of tissues. You're just improving work capacity to be able to handle more volume. You have a healthier heart. You've got better oxygenation of tissues. You've got more vascularization of tissues and you are increasing your generalized work capacity, but you can point that work capacity in any direction that you want. Having a better aerobic system will help you recover in between sets faster

and in between workouts faster. So that work capacity component can help with the volume that you're trying to perform in order to achieve new hypertrophic gains. So that's really number one. Number two, I got a lot of people who just can't eat the food in order to get jacked. Nothing stimulates your appetite like a little bit of aerobic work. And it does not take a lot. If you want to just get on the treadmill, or I would really recommend getting outside instead, there's health benefits about being outside that we don't even understand yet. But if you're out there and you're walking 10 to 20 minutes, first of all, you're walking, so you're not going to

lose your gains. You're allowed to walk around. Second, you're going to stimulate your appetite, and you're also going to increase your insulin sensitivity. So on top of the work capacity thing, you're also going to improve your appetite. It's good for your heart as you continue to gain weight as well. I mean, there's so many things that I think can really, really benefit anybody in the strength world. And the whole interference effect, that doesn't come into play for so long. Like unless you are an athlete who's like in shot put and you're in the Olympics. So your entire life is like one second. And you just need absolutely nothing at all except a lactic power output.

And you're at the one of the best in the world. Like that's when you can start caring more about interference effects. But like you get dudes with like 160 pounds worrying that they're going to lose their gains if they don't want to walk. Get out of here, man. You need to stop that. Anything is going to allow you to gain weight right now and gain mass and concurrent training. You can absolutely include aerobic, anaerobic work, strength work, hypertrophy work. We're doing all of it in your plan right now. We're doing a a lactic lactic and aerobic conditioning on top of hypertrophy and strength work every single week a well-designed program will allow you to achieve both for an extremely long time until you want to get hyper

hyper elite and then of course specialization can take place but even then it doesn't need to take place year-round it could take place within a phase in order to peak for a certain event. Yeah. So you're working with a golfer as well, and he won a major tournament recently, right? Yes, sir.

John Rahm. He's a, he's an absolute monster. He's a, you know, number one golfer in the world with his swing or what? No, that's why he's winning.

Yeah. I, yeah, yeah. Just like I'm sparring with Sean. Yeah. You're holding the mitts for him, right? why he's winning. Yeah, just like I'm sparring with Sean. You're holding the mitts for him, right? No. I'm way too much of a meathead to do any of those things.

But no, Rahm's a monster. And, like, dude, when it comes to golf, it's easy to kind of look at golf and think that they don't need the nutritional support. But come on, even comparing those examples, a fighter might fight three five-minute rounds for 15 minutes of activity. John's going to go play 18 holes of golf for hours, and they've got to walk the entire thing. He has to stay mentally sharp the entire time. He has to be physically explosive. He has to be able to maintain the technical execution the entire time. He has to

stay calm. There is a lot of things, hydration, electrolyte, fueling, neurotransmitters. There's my man right there. Yeah, like there is a whole lot happening in the world of golf. When you're playing for 18 holes, like that's all day, and it's all day in the sun. Amazing the way these guys can move their spine. I'm always like, I think it's incredible the way they can move. Yeah, their rotational power is just absolutely ridiculous but yeah he's he's killing the game right now i mean 2023 has been an excellent year so far for us and you know you're talking about

an 18 hole course but then also a multi-day tournaments and like sometimes a week of a tournament your recovery and your performance and then especially your hydration like if you don't if your hydration plan is the same playing in florida as it is when you're in toronto it's it's totally different animals um on top of the jet lag protocols that you need as well to keep playing tournaments in so many different locations these guys they people got to stop looking at it like nutrition and hydration and supplementation and labs, um, aren't important for these guys because they absolutely are. So you got to wonder how it impacts them. Like at the end of the day,

when they're in the sun all day and they potentially are dehydrated. Absolutely. I mean, it's got to really wear on them. Yeah. And how many miles do they walk a day, like on an 18-hole course? Many. Yeah, many. I wouldn't even be able to give you an exact number. But by the end of the day, I mean, you're getting 20-plus thousand steps in. That's for sure. Yeah, easily.

And you still have to do media before. You're doing media after. There's people staring at you all day, but you're supposed to stay calm and execute the exact same swing a hundred times that day, like, or that week. That is a, that is a very, very difficult thing to undertake. Do they have to do like stuff like marathon runners or like jelly packs or anything like that? Um, it's typically more whole food. So what, what we'll do is like a very easily digestible protein and a very easily digestible carb say for example a turkey wrap or like a half of a sandwich it's a great sport you can

fucking sandwich yeah every every i was giving them the benefit of the doubt no no no every every third hole you're getting something in and like a barbecue going a cue i like to do for people is your stomach should be a half full gas tank. So you're never operating on too empty, but you should never feel full either. You want to imagine your stomach like a gas tank and that it's half full all the time. So you just have tiny bits and pieces of something every third hole. But then we're going to have a dialed in water and electrolyte strategy throughout the entire thing. And then possibly even a combination of different neural and adrenal stimulants like caffeine. But then maybe on hole nine, we might pick up some alpha GPC, something like that to get the

brain back in, back in gear and give you something that will help stimulate you, but not impact your sleep quality. There's a, there's a lot going on that people, that people don't really see. Cause you just see them with a water bottle walking around, but it is, it is physically designed for the entire day. Since you work with fighters, uh, like fighters, jujitsu athletes, any of these athletes who like sweat a fuck ton when it comes to the sessions of sparring, sparring that they do when, if they do, if they start trying to do some blood work, cause most don't on their own um what kind like i know it takes a certain level of expertise to be able to interpret blood work

but if they don't have the ability to pay for somebody to do that then what factors can they be trying to pay attention to on their end so they can get the best with what they've got um with respect to hydration hydration blood work if they do choose to get the best with what they've got. With respect to hydration? Hydration, blood work, if they do choose to get blood work, like what basic things can they maybe keep in mind that is accessible to them? Sure. So in terms of hydration, red blood cells, hematocrit, and albumin will all be increased in response to dehydration. So if somebody is going in there with elevated albumin, hematocrit, RBC, that is definitely going to increase with dehydration. So if somebody is going in there with elevated albumin, hematocrit, RBC,

that is definitely going to increase with dehydration and even if they're trending high. So I would be very cautious about that with respect to hydration on labs. There's also a pretty underrated one as well. If you look at a marker known as carbon dioxide, it's actually bicarbonate, but the entire world calls it bicarbonate except America. On the lab, it is carbon dioxide. But there's a lot of kind of nonsense in the world of acid versus alkaline in nutrition. Alkaline water. Yeah, exactly, dude.

Don't. Don't. Don't. There's like avoid all acid foods, only eat alkaline. And then conveniently no references are supplied during that article. But that doesn't mean that acid versus alkaline isn't a real thing. There are medical terms, metabolic acidosis and metabolic alkalosis. Those are medical terms and they can even put you in the hospital.

So that is absolutely a real thing. And it does play into performance in a lot of ways. So you can look at carbon dioxide, which is a truly evidence-based way to view one's acid-base balance. Base alkaline, I'll use them interchangeably. acid-base balance. Base, alkaline, I'll use them interchangeably. But your acid-base balance can be assessed in an easy window through your carbon dioxide. And if it's less than 23, you are actually leaning on the endobacillic. And that is a problem for a lot of reasons, okay? So first off, being in a state of acidosis, that alone is associated with skeletal muscle breakdown. So purely your chemistry is associated with skeletal muscle breakdown, which what I've

seen in athletes, it creates a type of double recovery effect. So even though training is eventually anabolic, the process of training is catabolic. We are going in there to break ourselves down so that we can create the stimulus and stress to rebuild ourself back up but what i've seen with uh athletes who are actually lean very very heavily on the end of acid you are in a state of acid which is associated with muscle protein breakdown a giant fuzz on my hand you're in a state of acid which is associated with a state of muscle protein breakdown. And let's just say this is your muscle quality. And now you're in a state of acid, which is breaking down muscle tissue, but then you trained. So now that's why I say double recovery. It doesn't sound very scientific, but that's exactly what I mean to where we not only have to recover

from the training, but now we have to recover from the chemistry that we're walking around with. And that's not even including if you have low testosterone, low DHEA, low any elevated cortisol, these other things associated with anabolism and anti-catabolism. So we've got this double recovery, which is going to increase the length at which we can perform quality workouts. So you're going to have to take more days off in between actually very productive workouts. But when you are under recovered, that is like one of the easiest telltale signs towards somebody who is going to be susceptible to fatigue. So lots of times when someone comes in with a symptom of fatigue, lots of times you are just under recovered. Nobody who's under recovered feels absolutely fantastic and they've got tons of energy. So this person is going to be more fatigued, which will impact their recovery capacity. They have more skeletal muscle protein breakdown compared to other people. So they're going to

have to increase time in between workouts. And it's due to chemistry. And we can offset this with dietary changes as well as supplementary changes to get your acid-base balance into a more optimal level, which is going to be typically between 25 and 28 would be my target for athletes. But the reference range is going to go down to 18. Whereas in the research, the reason why I said less than 23 is because, yes, the state of acid is associated with skeletal muscle protein breakdown. However, less than 23 is associated with functional outcomes of being slower and weaker. So it's not just if you put acid in a muscle in a petri dish, it begins to break down.

No, it's actually functional outcomes in humans. Less than 23 associated with being slower and weaker. So in terms of coming at a roundabout way to answer your question, something that's easily accessible. If you have a carbon dioxide of less than 23, not only are you suffering this type of double recovery effect, but you are going to be slower than you otherwise would have been. You are going to be weaker than you otherwise would have been. And then you can actually trigger yourself to, if you see that, what I would recommend you do, there's a website called MDCalc, C-A-L-C. It's like MD Calculator, but it's MDCalc. And then you can look up anion gap. Anion gap is a combination of blood markers that will all be on the same panel from a

basic blood chemistry panel. And the anion gap is a more sophisticated way that you can assess your acid-base balance. So carbon dioxide, if it's low, then that kind of triggers you to do the anion gap calculation, which then can kind of confirm the level or state of acidosis that you're in. If you have low carbon dioxide with high anion gap, high anion gap is representing a state of acid. That's associated with a reduction in cardiovascular output. So this is less conditioning, but it's also associated with increasing inflammation. So, you know, if we're all doing the math here and we're looking at my graphs that are, you can see from this side, if you have a carbon dioxide of less than 23 in combination with an elevation in anion cap that is associated

with less cardiovascular fitness, more inflammation, actual less speed, actual less peak strength, plus increased skeletal muscle protein breakdown. All of which can be reversed by just having a better diet and a better approach to supplementation. So curiosity on that side, when it comes to diet, are there any typical dietary habits that are linked to people who are in a state of, I guess, low acid or like being in that state? In a state of acidosis. In a state of acidosis.

Yeah. What dietary habits do those people typically have that are easily removed? Like people that usually drink a lot of alcohol potentially or anything like that? dietary habits to those people typically have that are easily removed? Like, is it like people that usually drink a lot of alcohol potentially or anything like that? Alcohol is a good one. That's an excellent answer because the three of the most base things that you could add to your diet to reverse that state are potassium, magnesium, and calcium. Whereas alcohol is going to lower all three. So it's going to lower all three. So that's definitely one that's going to not necessarily be acid in and of itself

but reduce your base capacity to balance any other acids. But you can increase. By increasing magnesium and potassium and calcium, let's say we get a little bit of dairy for calcium. We can have avocado or oranges for potassium. We can have quinoa for our magnesium. It's also very high in raw nuts. We could also just supplement with those things. We could have electrolytes while we're training. These are all things that contribute to it that are very easily accessible for everybody. And what I would encourage people to do is not think in terms of acid is bad,

because nothing is bad. Only what the dietary picture as a whole is can be bad. There's no such thing as a bad food. There's only such thing as a bad diet. And if you find yourself in this kind of state, let's just add in some more magnesium, potassium, and calcium, which conveniently also tend to be some of the most nutrient-dense foods we should be eating anyways. Gotcha. What about a sweat patch? You were mentioning that maybe I'll do some of my running with a sweat patch, and then I also have access to a continued glucose monitor. Do you think these are things that people can have fairly easy access to that they can kind of play biochemist with at home?

access to that they can kind of play biochemist with at home? Yeah, yeah. Those are a little bit more accessible because the world of blood interpretation can be quite complicated. There's both a science and a real art of pattern recognition, especially when doing optimal rather than just normal reference ranges. But yeah, the sweat patch, that's kind of just an assurance policy because you got your blood draw done this morning. So we got your blood work done this morning just because I want to make sure you're fully cleared to get back at it coming up this Monday or so, depending on what the defense gives us. But we'll see what's going on with your blood.

And then when it comes to the sweat patch, I really just want to see what was happening with electrolytes because were electrolytes offset because of vomiting or were they offset for something else? I want to answer that question. And the sweat patch is something that you can put on in your forearm and then go exercise or just go in the sauna or go whatever it's going to be. And it'll let us know what your electrolyte output is in your sweat so that I can finer tune your electrolyte solution that you're going to drink during exercise. It like gives information to your phone or something? Yeah, it's through an app.

So you just basically put this thing on and then we're going to be able to see your hydration. There you go. Gatorade. Super, super cheap. Coming through in an app. You just put that on your forearm and then you get an insight as to electrolyte status.

That's cool. Yeah, man. So you could go and see me, you could go put that on your forearm and go roll and see what kind of sweat is going out during jujitsu. And you'll see exactly, right? Like you'll notice like the potassium might be higher or something like that.

Yeah, those things, what I'm looking for with you are extremes. Is there anything kind of extreme, right? Because we're all going to have a little bit different output based on our diet and our own just unique chemistries. But it's only like extremes that will really throw someone off. So I'll be looking for extreme differences with you. And it's really just, I just, I want you to absolutely smash this thing. So let's do your blood work and let's do your sweat testing because between those two and the context of the event you went through, that's going to give us all the information that we need.

As far as continuous glucose monitors go, though, I'm actually not the biggest fan of them. I've been present in rooms where someone puts a continuous glucose monitor on this arm and then another one on this arm, and the results are different. Jeez. Yeah. Same monitor.

Yeah, yeah. So you have two going, and then you're getting different results on the exact same body. Maybe you got more carbs on one side than the other. So when I saw that— Depends on what side of the mouth you chewed it on, you know? Yeah. I don't know, man. I saw that.

Maybe you were leaning one way when you were eating. Yeah, like gravity. I think that's how physiology works, yeah. But yeah, so when I saw that, so let me be clear. I don't think that they're bad. But I do think that it's probably not a good move to base an entire protocol off them. And to be fair, that can probably be said about anything. But I'll take that information.

But the way in which I kind of look at all of this, I look at all lab markers, even my own labs that I love the most. I look at all data like I do the scientific evidence because you can find one study to basically prove anything that you want. If you have a bias, you can find that study to prove anything you want. But that's not a true way to look at the scientific evidence. You have to look at the evidence as a whole and then see if there's a type of consensus. Which way is the evidence leaning in order for you to make the most evidence-based decision that you can. I do that with my athletes.

So I'll look at 500 biomarkers in labs, and I never treat one biomarker as God. What I do is I look at it, and I see where the biomarkers are leading. What type of consensus can I draw here? Because we might have an outlier result over here, and then 99 other things that suggest otherwise. But if this is the thing that I'm basing everything off of, then I have a very, very, very misguided approach. So I don't treat any one biomarker as God. I look at it all and create a consensus based on both their questionnaires and the lab markers that I'm getting. What's your idea of cold therapy and sauna? Like,

are you a huge fan of either one of those protocols or do you think people are overdoing it? Kind of where do you sit on that? Well, I think certainly it's popular right now. That's for sure. So I think that a lot of people probably are overdoing it. With that said, a tool is only ever as good as it is applied. I think that can be said for anything, right? So I don't think that they're bad, but if you try to use a hammer for the job of a screwdriver, then you're completely missing the point here and you're overemphasizing or mistiming something

that can actually work against you. So for example, as I'm sure your audience and you guys already know, by the way, you guys are sneaky. This is not interviewers interviewing an expert. This is experts just talking to an expert. Like you guys softball me some questions that you're already very aware of the full answers. This is a round table discussion here. You guys are sneaky that way.

But with respect to cold therapy, I'm sure you guys and the audience know that it has been demonstrated to blunt aerobic and anaerobic adaptations from exercise. You place that in the post-workout window, you're going to get a massive anti-inflammatory wave that can suppress the purposeful and directed inflammation you were trying to create from training, which is now offsetting your results. You know, like inflammation's never static. It looks something like this throughout the day. And then when we train, it's purposeful inflammation, spike. That spike, right? We don't build strength or muscle in the gym. What we do is stimulate strength development or stimulate muscle growth in the gym. Everything we do outside of the gym

determines whether or not we actually adapt to that stimulus. But that stimulus in and of itself is inflammatory mediated. So when we're in the gym and we create that spike, then we have a real signal in the noise. But if we immediately after the gym do something extremely anti-inflammatory, whether it be NSAIDs or cold therapy or a ton of curcumin, anti-inflammatory globally, I'm discussing here, will actually suppress that inflammatory response. And the body is the ultimate efficiency machine. Why would it adapt to a stressor if it didn't have to? We suppress the inflammation with something exogenous and now we're suppressing our own ability to naturally adapt to it, which was the entire reason we trained in the first place. So I don't really like cold stuff. Um, after training, I don't even like it on the same day as training. Um, I think that you can make the argument for it on the same day for an athlete in the in season.

Um, that's kind of the rule I've always had. Cause I get a lot of questions that way. I say, uh, absolutely no ice work in the off season because that's when we're trying to drive maximal adaptation. Right now, the goal is maximum adaptation and physical development from exercise. Whereas in the end season, the goal is now maximum performance. So if you have a tournament this weekend and an ice bath is actually going to lower your inflammation

and help you feel better, knock yourself out because I don't care what your squat is right now. I want you to perform as much as possible. The offseason is physical development. The end season is physical expression. So if you are better able to express your physical talents with the ice bath in between games, knock yourself out.

That is the good time to have it. But it's very contextual. So if you're after gains, having it on the same day is not ideal. Even with Mark, he has a cold plunge at home. I was telling him, if you're ever going to do it any day, do it Sunday. All we do that day is recovery run anyways. So that's how we've kind of mapped that thing out. I think that it's good for psychological resilience as well.

Being calm and being able to control your breathing under an extreme stressor. I think cold therapy offers some benefits there. And this is something that I don't have any research for, but I certainly believe, is that I think that getting in a cold plunge is a good marker of overtraining. Because your ability to handle a stressor is your ability to handle a stressor. If you typically can get in that thing and handle it, and then all of a sudden you just want to get out of there, the total stress load of your physiology is at capacity. And I think that that's an early, I think we'll see research in the future to where if you can't stay in there.

I've noticed that before. It feels like it will burn on some days. Yeah. Yeah. And you want to. And I'll just get burn on some days. Yeah. Yeah. And you want to, you know, and I'll just get out. And it's a stressor. Your body is, I think that's a, I think that's a leading indicator of fatigue. Yeah. Would you say there's a difference on the amount of exposure you get to that? Because for example, somebody, and we haven't even talked about sauna, but

somebody getting into a sauna for 50 minutes versus 10 minutes is a very different level of fatigue that's going to be caused. Now, how about if you go into a cold plunge for one minute versus five minutes, it would probably have a much bigger difference on overall inflammation. So is that something that you think about or would have somebody think about if they were going to use that? Yeah, absolutely. I think that the longer you're going to be in there, I think, first of all, your ability to regulate your own temperature is a lot like a muscle that you're training. And I've spent a lot of time with Laird Hamilton, and he's the guy who was talking to me about this, about him training his own muscle to regulate core temperature by supersetting sauna and ice bath. Sauna, ice bath.

And it was basically— With his oven mitts on while he's riding a bike. Yeah, that was amazing, by the way. And it was basically oven mitts on while he's riding a bike. Yeah. That was amazing. By the way, he was in, in an extremely hot sauna and the bike got so hot that he had to wear oven

mitts to hold onto the handles. And then, and then, and then he said, I don't even know if this is healthy. It's like one of the greatest things. But he is way smarter than people know. Like,

I think people do know actually, because he, because he's put out some awesome stuff. But talking to him one-on-one and his theories and him being ahead of the curve on things, he's a very interesting and very intelligent dude. And he – well, I had to be a part of it, too, for crying out loud. We were doing three minutes in the cold, 15 minutes in the sauna, three cold, that, three rounds. And you do feel like you're training a muscle that regulates your core temperature.

And then when you get better at it, it can regulate it a lot faster. And then you have this adaptation to that recovery modality and you're able to handle a lot more stress, which is why he can do things like that. But you can reach a point to where your pain management and stress tolerance is so high that it's too good for your own good. Yeah, there's people that have given themselves hypothermia multiple times in cold plunges. It's not an uncommon thing to where you get used to it and you're shooting YouTube content or something like that and you're talking and you're distracted

and then you're in there for too long. I think all of us have been in there for too long. I know I have. Have you? I've been in there for too long, yeah. Yeah, it can really mess with you, dude. I had to put on like a winter coat and a winter hat and like gloves and I'm like sitting there like fucking freezing.

Yeah. Took a while to get my temperature back what about uh long-term use so like if somebody does it let's say every day for like six months straight like is there anything like real detrimental there i i don't like it because i don't think it's detrimental i think that it's neutral and that kind of misses the point um so like sure fine it's. It's okay for psychological resilience. That's fine. But in terms of, again, this is something I wouldn't be able to demonstrate with research, but it's how I coach, is I am way more of a fan of creating a parasympathetic menu for my people. So, you know, everybody knows sympathetic, fight or flight, parasympathetic, rest and digest. So

the things that activate the parasympathetic rest and digest so the things that activate the parasympathetic nervous system are going to allow you to maximally recover and maximally adapt from a stimulus however i personally believe that you can adapt to a recovery modality so if i do 60 seconds in the cold plunge today and it's freaking freezing i that is a stressor that i'm going to adapt to and get progress from and then i do it 60 seconds tomorrow and then the next day and the next day and then and all of a sudden it's kind of easy and then i think that now i am no longer gaining the benefits from my recovery modality so i actually like to give my athletes a parasympathetic menu that they choose from. So meditation, breath work, cold pledge, sauna, just do a mobility session, maybe just walk around the block, get in the sun. These things

allow the athlete, I think, to recover a lot better, A, because they're not adapting to a recovery stimulus, but B, they are able to self-select what they feel like doing that day, which makes the journey of this thing a lot more adherable in the long term because they're able to pick what they want. And, uh, and that's key because like me personally, if, if, if it's on my calendar, okay, you have to meditate for 10 minutes today and it's a day I just don't feel like doing it. How productive is that meditation going to be? Like for fuck's sakes. And I'm going to sit there and, you know,

it gets me to sit down and not look at a screen for 10 minutes, but I'm certainly not meditating because all I'm thinking about is being annoyed that I'm meditating. But if I was able to just go do a quick 10-minute mobility, maybe just go do some stretch work, maybe walk around the block with my dog, I would have been so much happier about the process. And then I could have waited till a day where I met, I really feel like meditating today. I need it. I think that there's a, there's

a qualification to bring that word back. There's a qualification to where we can listen to our body, look at that menu and not overuse any one modality because they all have their own unique benefits physically and psychologically. When it does come to something like breathing, Mark, you were mentioning how you talked to Brian McKenzie and he talked about how nasal breathing can have an effect on someone's utilization of carbohydrates during a workout. Now, when you work with athletes, do you have them pay attention to the way they breathe during workouts? Do you have any specific workouts that have breath holds, et cetera? I'm just wondering how you have athletes think about the way they breathe during workouts? Do you have any specific workouts that have breath holds, et cetera? Just wondering how you have athletes think about the way that they breathe.

I personally don't play a real big role in the breath work at all. Okay. Yeah. Typically when I'll work with an athlete, their strength and conditioning coach will be taking care of that. Like these guys have full teams behind them. Or I will tell them, and I get no money for this, but I'll tell them to download the XPT Life app.

That's what I actually do. What is XPT Life? XPT Life, it's a good app that has tons of different breathwork routines. It is an excellent company for down-regulation breathing, up-regulation, pre-sleep, energized. They've got all the different breath work stuff. Yeah, here we go. That is an absolutely awesome app. So I don't consider, and anybody who tries to be an expert in everything, we find out that they're not and that it's normally, hey, who's

that handsome man? We find out that when someone pretends to be an expert in everything, they're definitely not. No one is. And it's normally like an insecure ego dude who pretends they are. I'm not that guy. So I would rather defer to people who are experts. Like on XBT, I'm a nutrition guy. With Brian McKenzie over at Shift Adapt. I would way rather delegate that to someone who knows what they're doing,

just like they would probably delegate to me for nutrition and labs and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, just to clear it up, I believe that when you are nasal breathing, you are reserving your glucose a little bit more efficiently. I believe that's what it is, right?

Yeah, because you're turning off the sympathetic system. Right. Yeah, you're not relying nearly as much on the fight or flight, which is activating the catecholamines and also the branch. You basically have hormones coming from the adrenal glands. You have catecholamines. You have mineral corticoids, which help regulate electrolytes. But then you also have something known as glucocorticoids.

Glucocorticoids releasing glucose. That's coming from that sympathetic branch. When you're in the parasympathetic side of things, you're sparing glucose a lot more efficiently. You're staying way more aerobic, relying a lot more on body fat. So that's a way in which you can spare glycogen. But in the world of all that stuff, I actually, you know, before we kind of

leave those recovery and adaptation things, I actually don't like the sauna post-workout either. I don't like any of those post-workout, um, cold or sauna. Cause I, I think both of them can hurt adaptation. Uh, I think the cold ends up hurting adaptation via inflammation suppression, but then people are like, oh, okay, well then the sauna feels good. I want to do that then. I got to disagree for, I mean, three reasons. Basically post-workout, you have to remember the three R's, rehydrate, repair, refuel. If you can remember rehydrate, repair, refuel, and you accomplish those things post-workout, you are maximizing adaptation. I think the sauna hurts all three of those. So first of all, you're getting in the sauna, which is creating dehydration. You know, you've already dehydrated yourself during

training and now you're going to induce more dehydration to get in the sauna, really for no reason. It's not going to enhance adaptation. You're getting in the sauna, you are continuing the dehydration process and possibly making it worse. So now we're not dehydrating, which is a huge component of recovery. Muscles are 75% water. They are not going to perform or repair optimally in a state of dehydration. So we've thrown off the first R. The second R also gets thrown off through really the same mechanism. So it's already been shown in research many times that even slight states of dehydration are associated with increases in cortisol, which are catabolic. So

as far as the repair process goes, that's now taking a hit because we're dehydrated and the dehydration is what increased cortisol, which is what created more catabolism than we actually needed in the post-workout window. And the last R is refuel, but dehydration also accelerates and TILDA's increasing core temperature actually accelerates the rate of loss of glycogen because of the catecholamines and glucocorticoids from us being dehydrated, creating the stressor, allowing for the glucose to not actually be optimally stored as glycogen there. is something you have to change. If there's an Olympics in Rio de Janeiro versus an Olympics in Montreal, you will actually deplete glycogen at a faster rate in hotter climates than you will in colder climates. So with respect to rehydrate, repair, and refuel, sauna actually reduces the efficacy

of all three of those without adding an adaptation that wins the cost-benefit analysis. So I don't dislike saunas. Again, the tool is only ever as good as is applied, but let's throw that somewhere else in the day or on a non-training day. How about contrast on a non-training day? So like jump in the cold plunge and then sauna. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, that can create a type of flushing effect in the muscle, which I think is always beneficial. That can absolutely be in your parasympathetic menu.

I throw that right in there. If you're feeling up for it, knock it out. So if someone does do contrast therapy, let's say they have a sauna and they have some cold next to them, how should they do it? Should they do like you mentioned the 15 sauna, three cold or what? Like how should they try to do that?

Yeah, I think a five to one ratio. Yeah, I think that that would be good. And then it's always good to finish on cold. That's the more important thing to remember. Yeah, I think that that would be good. And then it's always good to finish on cold. That's the more important thing to remember. Yeah, finish on cold so that your body is forced to use its own mechanisms to restore core temperature. Okay. Finish on cold. But yeah, a five to one ratio from hot to cold.

That's a good one. And then you can play with it after that. Cool. What's up with Ryan Bader? You just helped coach him to a championship, right? Yeah, man. Yeah. It's been a heck of a year.

Holy crap. Bader just defended his world title against Fedor Emelianenko. I've been watching MMA for 20 plus years, man. I used to stay up late. It was like midnight or even 2 a.m. so that I could watch the Pride events live. There we go we watched the pride events live or watch the um uh or watch the dream events live and then uh here we go man it's getting right to my my sentence is like just degraded that's like me at a restaurant there's sports

on with a tv behind my wife i'm like oh you had an opportunity to actually go to the fight you were there live yeah yeah i was there live and this is this is actually um this is a good fight to watch but this is actually when he knocked him out the first time so this isn't oh my bad this isn't the recent one this is a beta fader fader one um and the one we just finished, finished him in the first round again, but it was a little bit more ground and pound this time around and sent him into retirement. But yeah, I was there in floor seats

next to all the freaking legends, man. It was like a real cool, euphoric kind of moment for me because MMA has been my favorite sport forever. And that feels like, yo, telling me in college, like, hey, you're're gonna be coaching against fedor in in this at this time um no not not even that be like hey you're actually gonna be in an event because i couldn't even afford or fathom that you're gonna be at an event and you're also gonna be coaching against fedor i would have been like get the fuck out of here i love your positivity

but also get the fuck out of here uh but your positivity but also get the fuck out of here uh but then it happened man and bader is such a cool dude he's also recovers like a wildebeest guy's an absolute animal and um also if you've got a keen eye there's a slanger hat in the audience yeah i had to represent slingshot while i was out there but yeah dude that was an incredible that was the first time me and beta have ever worked together but um did his whole fight camp and he is an awesome awesome dude and friends and uh with the ape man yeah the guys over eight man yep you help him with uh his nutrition do you help him with uh stuff that he does in the gym as well or how does that some of that work no so he has his coach, Jason, and Jason's awesome with doing the strength and conditioning

side of things. What I did for Bader was the blood, urine, saliva stool analysis. I set up his full nutrition and his full supplementation system for his whole fight camp, which is about eight weeks. And so we had, I did his full fight camp and then I also created him a peak week, uh, meal plan that was different from his fight camp meal plan. So we had the fight camp meal plan. We had the peak week meal plan. And then I also made him a fight day system too. So I was controlling all the labs and all the nutrition and all the hydration and supplements and stuff leading up to, um, just get, get his body completely dialed in. And he was telling me that this is the best he's ever felt.

Oh, wow. Yeah, his work capacity has never, ever been higher. So I was like, and even the metrics were there to prove it too. With Jason controlling everything, they were like, we've never seen this dude like this. And he was coming off of two shoulder surgeries too. So, yeah, it was was incredibly successful bout together. And on to the next one.

He doesn't have any weight restrictions, right? He's a heavyweight. Yeah, that makes it nicer. What about when you have some athletes that do have restrictions with how much they can weigh? That's got to be more challenging, right? It's certainly more challenging because you're playing a game where, um, you're trying to keep someone's testosterone as high as possible in a hypocaloric state while they're training five, six days a week, which is a, which is a very unique and

unique game, continuous blood draws and, and, uh, comprehensive battery labs. Like I just did Sean's labs, um, last week. Um, Sean just got an entire new comprehensive battery labs done. He's a guy who I've been working with Sean. I think it's eight or even nine fights now. Sean O'Malley, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been many, many years. And he is an awesome, awesome athlete to work with. He did. He's like an input output machine. If I send him something, it's done. Yeah. Yeah. It's done yeah yeah it's done like i don't have to follow up on him and then his outputs will be the qualification stuff we're talking about which is just i freaking love working with that dude um and what his thing

basically when it comes to a guy like that there's two phases if i can't weight cut those are two different animals um and and with sean um and i can talk about this because he's talked about it publicly, but he'll walk around typically in the mid-150s, and then we'll get down to 135. And then he weighs in at about 9 a.m. at 135, and then I'll have him that afternoon, just for the most recent Peter Yan fight in Abu Dhabi. That afternoon, he was 153.

So we went from 135 to 153 and it was only like 4 or 5 p.m at that point in time no diarrhea no nausea no nothing we have his weight cut so dialed in um to the point where like his performance you'll see some guys and the fight game is notorious for like old school strategies that are dumb, but like they do it because they feel tough for doing it or something. Like it's really, we're just so far beyond that now. But Sean knows and respects science. And we have his weight cut so dialed in that you'll see some guys

really suffer from their weight cut and other guys that don't. Like George St. Pierre, never worked with George. He's a good example of a dude who would cut weight and just be an absolute animal sean for his fight against mutinyo he cut weight and then we had him back up in the 150s and then he set the all-time record for strikes thrown in 15 minutes so typically you'll see someone's conditioning suffer after a weight cut. He set a record and then TKO'd him. So we not only had our conditioning, he still had his power.

So a weight cut done properly is an unfair advantage. It really is. A lot of weird stuff too. I mean, you know, with someone that's like powerlifting, you know, in a lot of powerlifting meets, in some powerlifting meets, the weigh-in is like really, really close to when you actually lift. Like that's a federation where they do drug testing, but all the other federations,

I know all the other federations, it's like, you know, 24 hour or 36 hour weigh-in. People can really pack the weight back on. And it actually doesn't matter if you're benching, squatting and deadlifting. If you're a little sloshy, like if you have like water or food in your stomach, like it doesn't make any difference. You don't have anything to worry about. You're not like wrestling somebody. Dude. But when you're in a cage, you can't, you don't have that.

You don't have that ability. You have to have, the food has had to led to you rehydrating really well. You can't, you can't have a distended belly where you didn't digest the food all the way yet, right? No, yeah. You need to be as fluid, light, and athletic as possible. No one feels fluid, light, and athletic with bloating or gastrointestinal distress.

You can bench that way. I've even heard of guys going to some guys that competed in 308 back in the day, actually eating McDonald's and stuff that bloated them because they felt like it was less distance. It was less range of motion.

I was like, you guys are outrageous. But yeah, you will not get away with that in fighting. You take one teep to the body. That's coming back out of you. You will not get away with that in fighting. You take one teep to the body. Yeah. That's coming back out of you.

We don't know which hole either. Not to give away too many secrets, but is there a way for the guys to get the glycogen into the muscle cells easier? Do they do small workouts or you advocate that they walk around? How do you get extra weight back on somebody? A lot of it is actually avoiding diarrhea. Like that's a common thing that guys obviously don't talk about because it's embarrassing, but you work with enough fighters. And if you just, if you don't have a plan, just don't shit your pants, that'll be $200. $200.

I'll charge you more than that. But, dude, for the post-weigh-in type of thing, not shitting your pants is a huge deal. If you shit your pants, not only are we not getting the glycogen, but you're dehydrating still. That's still staying out of you. I told you not to shit your pants. We're so hard about this. We went over this already. I thought you weren't sure. I was so confused to shit your pants. We're so hard about this. We went over this already. I thought you wouldn't shit. I wasn't sure.

I was so confused when you said that. Oh, fuck. That's a big part of it is getting in basically like a type of solution that allows for maximal uptake with minimum gastrointestinal distress. So you want to have plenty of water. You want to have plenty of electrolytes. You do actually want protein in there because it's going to help with glycogen replenishment more efficiently. You obviously want carbohydrates in there. I use Vitargo most frequently. I use Vitargo in the first hour. All of my athletes have three different shakes in the first hour. The first one, consume immediately as fast as you want.

The second one, start to chill out, allow it to last to the 30-minute mark. And then your third one, chill out and allow it to last to the 60-minute mark. If you smash it all way too quickly, it's going to be coming back out. So you have to, the first one, smash it because you're in your most depleted state and you're really not going to suffer at all for smashing something. But if you have to, uh, the first one smash it cause you're in your most depleted state and

you're really not going to suffer at all for smashing something. But if you smash the second one, they're each one liter. So we're getting in three liters in that first hour, depending on the size of the athlete. Um, but, uh, you're going to get in, uh, electrolytes, protein, carbohydrates. Um, I do like to include some glutamine in there as well. Glutamine actually is an electrolyte transporter. So if you have electrolytes in water or if you have electrolytes, water, and glutamine, adding glutamine actually allows the transportation and absorption of electrolytes to happen faster than just water and electrolytes alone. So I do include glutamine in there for that additional uptake. 10 grams or something like that? Yeah, 5 to 10. Yeah, yeah, that's plenty.

And glutamine is also a conditionally essential amino acid to where it's not essential unless your physiology is in a certain condition that deems it essential. And one of them is immunocompromisation. So if you have a very weak immune system, then glutamine becomes more dependent. Your immunity is very weak at the end of a weight cut and especially at the end of a weight cut after a fight camp but then glutamine is also conditionally essential in states of high stress and you're the day before a fight

and you've also completely stressed out your physiology so it's a very bang for the buck thing to do glutamine can also reduce gastrointestinal symptoms so on top of reducing your gastrointestinal symptoms, your electrolytes, your immunity, the stress tolerance, it's a very good one. So I'll throw together a unique cocktail like that without giving too much away. I love how you gave away a lot, but you're like,

y'all motherfuckers still aren't going to figure this out. There's a lot of ratios that are unique in doses. It's like Gordon Ramsay giving away or watching him cook a beef wellington, being like, I can do that. No, you can't. Not gonna be able to get it. No, you can't. Not gonna be the same.

Power Project family, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat, if you're trying to stick to a nutrition plan, if you're trying to get fit, pretty much if there's anything you're trying to do for your health, we know that sleep is the biggest determining factor to help you get from point A to point B. That's why we've been sleeping on

8C mattresses for probably more than two years now. And the main reason is the technology behind the Pod Pro. Now, the Pod Pro is like the Tesla of beds. It will change its temperature based off of how you're sleeping during the night. And if you have a partner that's sleeping on the other side, they could have their own temperature settings. We all sleep hot here. And I used to wake up in a puddle of my own sweat. That doesn't happen anymore because of the Eight Sleep mattress. And I've been getting the best sleep of my life. Now, if you don't want to replace your mattress, you can just get the Pod Pro cover and you can put that over your current mattress to get all the benefits of Eight Sleep. But if you also need to replace your old nasty mattress, you can get the Pod Pro cover and the Eight Sleep mattress. Andrew, how can they get

it? Yes, you guys got to head over to eightsleep.com slash power project and you guys will automatically receive $150 off of your order. Again, eightsleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Yeah, so I'll do three of those. And no experimentation on game day, right? Like you've got to have these guys have to already be used to these protocols. They've got to be already used to the supplements and the food. This is stuff you have to kind of mess around or play around with in some capacity probably weeks before the fight to some degree, right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And also, I mean, you don't switch your food either. It's not just about that initial rehydration. Like you keep eating the same food during your rehydration and refueling as you did during fight camp because we already know those proteins and carbs and fats are friendly for your gastrointestinal system. Like one of the worst things a weight cutting athlete could do, it doesn't just have to

be fighting, it could be power lifting, whatever, is go out for lunch after. Like that's one of the dumbest things that you could ever do. Like during the time when you need to recover the most and where it's more important than ever to perform your best, you're introducing a new variable. Does that make any sense at all and then but it happens all the time they're like weight cuts done is there a local bar and grill around here and then then they end up with gastrointestinal symptoms that they earned um that that's a very bad thing to do so you're gonna pack your freaking meals and you're gonna have your celebration food

after the fight or after your deadlift whenever you're done your final your freaking meals and you're going to have your celebration food after the fight or after your deadlift. Whenever you're done your final thing, that's when you can eat what you want. If you do it before then, you're asking for trouble. What are some of the most common weight cutting practices that you see people are still doing that maybe an athlete can keep their eyes open for a while? I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I still am, or I'm still beginning program this. Starvation being one of them. You don't have to starve to lose weight. Like weight, weight's a unit of mass.

So like, for example, even just the switching out of lowering your carbohydrates and increasing your fats, you can actually keep the exact same amount of calories per day, but you'll lose several pounds purely due to glycogen. So like you'll see Sean and my other fighters, they're still having salmon. They're still having heavy cream. They're still having eggs, full-fat cottage cheese, full-fat Greek yogurt. Those things are in there. And then other fighters are like, what?

But they have this concept that you can't have anything. But it's a unit of mass. A calorie is a unit of energy. A calorie is not a unit of mass. So the way in which you manipulate the energy in your body can offset the mass even if your calories stay the same. So you can drop a lot of weight without feeling like complete dog shit. You're going to end up feeling bad eventually. But I have something I call whoosh day that takes place on Thursday, where all the weight comes off,

I say it's the whoosh effect. And that's because many things are happening at the same time, we have water loading, you're going to be water loading for several days, which is basically going to shut down something known as antidiuretic hormone. Whereas when you begin to take water away on Thursday, let's say you water loaded from Sunday to Wednesday, and then you take water away on Thursday, your body still thinks that that water is coming in. The chemistry is set up to where we can excrete tons of water because we have tons of water coming in. But then your body actually takes upwards to 24, 36 hours to catch up and say like, wait, that water stopped coming in. It will continue to expel water. So water loading is all being excreted on Thursday. And then there's also

sodium loading and then you take sodium away. And that exact same thing happens on Thursday. And then also on Thursday, you could have laxatives. If you had problems going to the bathroom this week because you're nervous for the fight, then on Thursday would be the day to have the laxative, to include it in whoosh day. Don't do it all week. That's another bad practice because laxatives can lower your electrolytes, which is going to ruin your performance in its own thing. That's a rate-limiting step, especially for a sport as high intensity

and can be long duration as fighting with respect to anaerobic outputs. But your laxatives could go on that day. Pulling fiber out on that day will also allow for less, it's known as GI residue. You'll have less GI residue. So absolutely everything is being pulled out, and you're going to lose a ton of weight that day, and you could also add in a diuretic that day as well on top of anything else.

So I typically don't ever need diuretics with any of my guys, but that is the day where if someone was ever going to do something like that, then it could be put on that day. And then you're going to lose so much weight that day naturally based on all the work that you put in before to allow the whoosh effect to take place. So that day, and I won't even really have my guys do sauna that morning because they're going to lose so much weight throughout the day naturally. And then we'll just see where they're at before bed or in the evening. And then if they need to go in the sauna in the evening, then they will in the evening. But then we've also put in the work before to know their night loss. So like, that's something that

I'll track as well. So there's no mistake. So if you typically lose one and a half to two pounds overnight, well then, okay, let's get in the sauna for a little bit, but also understand we're going to lose two pounds overnight. So let's not overdo anything here. And the entire purpose of this, and then if we have to, we'll still do sauna work in the morning prior to weigh-in. But the entire purpose of this, and the kind of long-winded answer here, is I want my guys dehydrated for as minimal time as humanly possible, which is another huge mistake. They'll cut water. I've had a fighter cut water the Friday before Fridays weigh in, which is insanity. It's zero science and full mental toughness and outright dangerous. But that happens all the time. My guys are drinking tons of—they're water-loading during the week.

And then we have this massive flush effect on Thursday because I'm manipulating their physiology to do a lot of things I want it to do. And then we are dehydrated before we step on the scale, like for as minimal time as possible. We make weight, and then we're going into the rehydration and refueling right away. So in terms of cutting water too early and pure starvation, which is not required, those two things fighters do all the time and they do not need to. I think we'd have a lot of less scrapped events too of guys missing weight. Are you able to share any information if somebody does get GI distress? I'm just thinking because I have the opposite.

If I get nervous for something, I'm just thinking because like I have the opposite. If I get nervous for something, I'm just shitting all day long. Yeah. So is there anything that you can recommend like I eat for something like that? So if somebody has a lot of diarrhea, white potatoes and bananas are actually good to help solid things up. Metamucil can be good as well. Metamucil is a soluble fiber that adds bulk to stool. So that would definitely help there as well. But if in terms of just gastrointestinal symptoms and like it feeling uncomfortable, a lot of people don't know aloe vera really, really reduces gastrointestinal upset. Yeah. So if somebody walks around with

gastrointestinal pain or inflammation or like the nervousness really gets to their gut, aloe vera. It's really, really effective at reducing all GI symptoms. Like aloe vera water or? It's an extract and concentrate. Actually, the one I use is in, it's Thorn Research in Terramend. Some of the supplements that you recommended. I'm like looking at the back of these after like day five or six of like taking in these things i'm just taking them randomly just taking whatever he tells me yeah and i'm like this one's like digestive thing i'm like

this is digestive thing like no wonder why i'm shitting so much like a horse it was amazing yeah when i was a kid my aunt had aloe vera plants that she'd grow in her backyard and we would shave it and put it in like fucking shakes it's so fucking bitter but yeah that's a that's a little heck help clear you out she just thought it was a healthy thing so we just drank a fuck ton of aloe vera just because just what we did. I think it works. Do you think that sometimes the weight cuts are contributing factors to some of the – maybe some of the knockouts and some of the brain issues that you may see in something like UFC where the guys – maybe they don't have to get as dehydrated, but they do need someone on their side that's knowledgeable. as dehydrated, but they do need someone on their side that's knowledgeable. And if they don't have that, and they're especially like, I guess, coming up through the ranks, if they're not in the UFC, they don't have the money, they don't have the means to get these great coaches.

Maybe they are getting dehydrated to get down to that 155 pounds. And maybe not only does it have an effect on their performance, but maybe if they get hit when they're dehydrated, it could be exponentially way worse on brain health. Yeah. I mean, you took the words right out of my mouth too because not only does it dehydrate your brain, which makes things worse, but you're more susceptible to getting knocked out

because you're performing worse. So like your performance can lead to the knockout that's already going to be worse than it otherwise should have been due to your poor approach towards weight cutting and the way in which you've chosen to make weight and the way in which you've chosen to rehydrate and refuel. So yeah, absolutely. That entire, your brain needs hydration.

It's not this independent thing. Your brain requires a lot of hydration. It's a part of the brain protocol that actually just got released this morning. Me and Sean O'Malley, we teamed up, and there's the Brain Synergy Protocol. It's now available on Kindle. But what I've basically done is I've combined the known validated ways in which you can improve brain health after a concussion.

So I originally made it for Sean for the purposes of MMA. But any athlete in any contact sport can check this out. If you're in hockey, if you're in football. I called it the brain synergy protocol because it uses absolutely everything from scientifically validated literature into one system so what can you do for exercise what can you do for supplements what can you do for nutrition what can you do for lifestyle habits all these things that help with brain repair because um guys, like in that coming up in the ranks, they don't have the coaches for a good weight cut. And you can get KO'd and CTE is just becoming more and more and more prevalent.

People are caring more and more and more about it, but there doesn't seem to be a real solution. So I created a 30-day post-concussion protocol that was previously only available for my one-on-one guys, but now we're making it available for the masses. And hydration's a big part of it. I have them increasing their hydration with unique cocktails immediately.

Do you think UFC should make any changes? Do you have any... Do you care, you know, either way if they... when they have their weight... their weigh-ins and things like that? Because if they had to weigh in closer to the fight, you wouldn't be able to manipulate as much, or maybe if they had more weight classes.

What are some of your thoughts there? I actually would like to see weigh-ins go. I really would. Because I've been a fan of MMA for so long, and even though I technically get paid for being really good at weight cuts, I would actually love it if there's a same-day weigh-in or an event weigh-in like

you're you're weighing in like only a couple hours before the event or something like that um i think that that would really help the sport because the weight cut thing it is kind of it it is kind of dumb like it really is like why would somebody even kind of go through the process of a weigh-in if they're going to be just 20 pounds heavier the next day anyways. It seems kind of strange. I think that we could eliminate dehydration. We could eliminate unnecessary brain trauma from having a dehydrated brain that also catches a right cross from a freaking animal. I think that more weight, you would have to have more weight classes because people walking around at their natural weight, kind like boxing has tons of weight classes and i don't think that that would hurt the sport i some people think that having more weight classes would make things confusing

i could make things more rad you'd have more super fights you would have more people going up weight classes you would have uh more champions more title fights you would have a lot more really fun stuff without any of the unnecessarily negative stuff maybe you'd have those guys that weigh you know 155 choosing to not lose like 15 pounds which is a probably pretty good percentage chunk of their body weight yeah and like for a guy that weighs you know 205 for him to come down probably not a huge deal because it represents a smaller percentage but those smaller guys losing weight to try to stuff themselves into some of those

weight classes could be really detrimental yeah yeah i had a fighter who um on two weeks notice he took a title fight at middleweight and uh he came down i took him down from 208 to 185 to fight for the title. I won 85, and we won with a left hook. KO. We got the job done. But I think that if we just take Frankie Edgar, for example. Frankie Edgar, he fought at 155. He had to finish his career at 135. He fought at 155 when he was walking around close to 155.

He was, credit to him, tough bastard. He won the title and went on a hell of a tear. But as the guys just kept getting bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger, if you do take two guys with the equal technique and the other is a bigger animal, size and strength does matter, especially in grappling.

It won't matter as much in something like in pure boxing where you can use a lot of footwork and a lot of distance control and a lot you know a rule set where you are just you know striking with your hands but if that guy pushes you up against the cage and he's 20 pounds heavier than you and lean weight that feels like a semen nose like that that feels like an extra truck is on you if somebody has that weight on you plus they have good technique we removed that i think that'd be i think that would be awesome we were working we had somebody on the podcast that um luisa said that she's uh she just mentioned that she has a moral issue with working with like nfl players because the amount of contact that

goes within the sport it's like it she feels so bad about it that she just chooses not to work with those athletes is there any part of you that like sees the damage that happens to some of these athletes and obviously the things that you're doing mitigates that for the athletes you work with but do you see any like moral do you have any moral difficulties working and with UFC fighters and seeing the things that they go through? No. No? Nah.

Okay. It's a part of the sport. Dude, I feel like if they had the Coliseum, I'd watch that. Yeah. Hey, it's sick. It's sick. Like, yeah. Like, I don't know, man.

I'm a coach who loves the sport. I think that it's an art. I think that there's amazing people in it. And I think that if I had a moral issue with it, then the number one thing I would want to do is help them, not run away from them. That doesn't really check out with me. So I would want to make the protocols.

I would want to do the research. I would want to do the coaching to clean up an area rather than turn away from it. But the shortest answer possible is not, I love sports and I just, I think that, uh, they're bad-ass.

Like you're, you're involved in combat sports. What do you think about it? Well, I mean, I'm not working with combat sports athletes in that way. When I do see something though, like football,

um, there's a reason why I didn't play football. My mom didn't let me, she was smart about it. Right. And I was kind of pissed at it at the time because I could have, but looking back on it now, I am grateful because the amount of damage that those athletes do end up

going through. And I mean, I mean, they make a fuck ton of money and it's entertaining, but at the end of the day, it's like the longterm ramifications of taking those types of hits. It's kind of fucking brutal. You know what I mean?

So, um, I just think like, especially specifically with football, I think that fucking sucks. Uh, there's nothing I can necessarily do about it. Yeah. I had a UFC heavyweight who, um, his son, he actually, he wanted his son to go into wrestling rather than football because he thought that wrestling was going to be a lot safer for him and his body, his head in the long run than football. And that's a tough to argue against. Right. You know,

those collisions in football, like even just a recent one with the, the dude getting his heart hit. Holy Buffalo bills. Holy. I, I, I hardly ever watch football,

so I'm totally like unfamiliar. But, um, so it takes, it takes a big news hit for something to find its way into my algorithm i saw that and i was like oh my god dude this is that was scary it was crazy yeah you played football didn't you i played some football you uh did hockey right yeah yeah we we know how to skate before we know how to crawl and that's it it's a like the absolute

number one thing we've only got 35 million people in in our country compared to you guys It's like the absolute number one thing. We've only got 35 million people in our country compared to you guys. It's like 330 million. We've got 35 million, but we make up a huge percentage of the NHL. That's like all we do. I think here it's very much football and basketball.

There it's like only hockey. That's it. It's hockey or kind of nothing. I'm really rare to be like a super UFC fan. Everyone else, no one knows what I'm talking about. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Sure thing. Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation and thank you guys for

all the awesome reviews you guys have been flooding iTunes and Spotify with. Please keep those coming. Those are really, really how about the podcast? And make sure you guys go to powerproject.live for everything podcast related, including this hoodie. Follow the podcast at mbpowerproject

on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ and Seema. Where are you at? And Seema Inyang on your Instagram and YouTube. And Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Dan, where can people find you? At Dan Garner Nutrition on Instagram. You can work with me over at

rapidhealthreport.com and you can find the new brain book on Amazon. I'm sorry, there's also some sleep thing that you mentioned on the last podcast. It was like a sleep website or something that people... That was absoluterest.com. Absoluterest.com. Is that still, is that

something that you... I'm not involved with them. I just really like them. Okay. Yeah. Absolutelyrest.com. Is that still, is that something that you? I'm not involved with them. I just really like them. Okay. Yeah. There's the, there's the book. Oh, nice. Hell yeah, man. Yeah.

That's the Brain Synergy Protocol over on Amazon. Brand new. Me and Chega. Sweet. And Faster Than 50 will be available soon. I'll make you guys more aware of that when it comes. Hell yeah. Strength is never weakness.

Weakness is never strength. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Catch you guys later. Bye.