Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 367: Zach Bitter- Ketogenic 100 Mile Record Holder

Episode Date: September 19, 2016

Zach Bitter is an Ultrarunner and Coach, 100 Mile American Record Holder and 12 Hour World Record Holder. Not only does he run long distances but he does it with minimal carbs. In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin interview Zach who provides a lot of insight on being a fat adapted athlete. Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you with a new video on our new YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic and the Butt Builder Blueprint (The RGB Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get your Kimera Koffee, Mind Pump's first official sponsor, at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Alright, mine, pump listeners. Listen here, little mother fuckers. Whoa! That's the wrong way to talk to our listeners. We love you guys.

We interviewed a very intra-appropriate way. Interesting individual. Let's be honest, some of them are motherfuckers. Yeah. Anything about it? So were you. Yeah. You're about to listen to us. Mentos.

Interviewed out. Zach Bitter. Zach Bitter is the holder of the 100 mile American running record. You heard that correctly. Yeah. 100 miles. 100 miles. At one time, that's not like over the course of a year.

Yeah, like I've run 100 miles not like over the course of a year. Yeah, like I've run a hundred miles to Over the course of 37 years, but he This is what was the pace like it was like a seven minute mile pace. Yeah, that is insane Can I just say that's the part that is unbelievable to me to I can't even right now. There's no way and you maintain that To run a seven minute mile It you have to be in fucking great shape. Just to run one mile. One seven minute mile. You're in good shape.

Yes. He ran that a hundred times in a row. He basically ran the equivalent of three marathons, and three three hour marathons all at the one time. I mean, it's insane. This guy's level of endurance and performance, but he's very interesting for other reasons as well. Yeah.

Zach is one of the fascinating guests. He is part of a very quick, fast growing minority in the athletic world of athletes who eat low carbohydrates who are fat adapted. He eats a pretty much ketogenic diet most of the time. And so he talks about that and why other athletes are now adapting this type of diet adopting this type of diet very interesting insight He puts in there very very interesting. He's a very intelligent guy that the way he approaches is training his understanding of nutrition and exercise

It's obvious why he's a world record holder. Yeah, it's obvious. He's level of That he's gone into as far as studying with his nutrition his program design I mean, it was what a one of my favorite interviews actually. For a guy who who who who prides himself on never doing cardio or running ever in my life. I know. He was probably one of my favorite guys to talk to because it was just so interesting to dive into his mind and his approach. Not to mention, it goes right along with everything that we've been talking about recently

with sugar and carbs, because in the past, he would be the perfect example that they would pull from on why it would be ridiculous for you to do that, because they need carbs, and carbs are so important, and you got a low, low, low load, everyone, if you're an athlete or you're anybody who does anything endurance related, you must take carbs in, and so that just blew that excuse right out of the face.

Oh, yeah, it's fascinating. You can find them on Facebook, Zach Bitter. You can find them on Twitter. As ZBitter, Instagram at ZachBitter and his website is you want to make it, anybody want to take a guess? What? ZachBitter? ZachBitter.com.

You spell that ZACH-B-I-T-T-E-R. Dotcom. He's bitter than you. Without going into any more uh hubbub uh here we are with mr. Zach bitter i don't first of all um we looked at your 100 mile american uh record you kept up a seven minute mile do pace for a hundred miles it's fucking crazy so what a past out on the first lap well i mean i can't run a i can't run a half a mile and three and a half minutes. So I and you did a hundred of them in seven minutes. That's insane. But it was on a track, right?

Yeah. It was. Yeah. They do this event down in Phoenix, Arizona every year called the Desert Solstice. And it's basically like an ultra marathon track invite where you, I guess if you go with a trying to break some kind of record, whether it's an age group or outright world or American records. So that day I had good fortunes in a hundred mile distance, I guess. Wow, and how many laps is that? It comes out to be like about 402 and a half. Wow. Wow, 400 laps in the same circle.

Because when we were watching it, there's two things that we all commented on. Number one is the insane, of course, the obvious, the insane amount of just endurance, just total physical endurance. But the mental piece is- What are you focusing on? Yeah, it's an understanding. Is there a hot chicken mind? Is there like something?

He listens to the mind pump and his ears is what I think that he's talking about. You know what I'm hearing about? For sure, yeah, you can definitely listen to music and stuff on them. One of the things, you write about the mental aspect of it, it's definitely like even different from other 100 millers that are more traditional like on the trails where

you can kind of like take in the landscape or things are changing like every place you go or every like hill you climb. Whereas on the track, you kind of have to try to mentally separate yourself from that, because once you start counting laps, that's when you're gonna run in a trouble, it just gets overwhelming.

So in the training, even I would go to a track and do a run where I would progressively get faster and work on being able to kind of just mentally tune out and almost meditate, separate yourself yourself from your body type of thing and just kind of like go around in those circles without actually feeling like I was actually there. Now where do you go when you say you get out of your body? Like where are you going?

Yeah, what do you mentally focus on? Like what takes you away from that? Yeah, you know, it's hard. I think that's probably the number one question I get and it's tough as one to answer too because I don't always remember. Sometimes I'll just be like zoned out. Almost like it's like dreaming then for you.

Kind of yeah. And then like I think what oftentimes happens, I kind of think of the same thing over and over again. And then it all blends into one thought at the end. And then I start thinking like, well, I only thought about three or four things at a whole time. It really was like the same thing over and over again that just kind of kept popping up. I would be very interested to see

what your brain waves look like while you're doing that because it's almost seems like the way you explain it. Like autopilot. Well, it seems, it's almost like a dream state or even a meditative state is what it sounds like. Yeah, definitely you would fall in the line with like a meditative state type of thing. And that works well as long as you're hitting the splits

you want to hit. And it's coming like naturally and not like having either artificially push yourself too fast or slow yourself down. And where I noticed it got the most difficult was when I started falling off my pace. And then I couldn't really zone out because if I zone out I'd be slowing down too much. And then you start counting laps a little bit and you start, everything starts catching up to you a little bit. So, it's definitely, you know, split more like 70 miles, 30 miles or 80 miles, 20 miles in terms of like the halfway point. What I said, it was like eight hours of consistent running.

Something like that. The total time was 11 hours and 40 minutes. 11 hours, holy shit. Which I think for someone like you is no big deal, because I know my good buddies, a ultra marathon runner and some of your guys's runs are like overnight, like you guys run for 24 hours straight and some stuff, right? I'm like just, I'm pedestrian compared to what some of these guys are doing, like there's these guys who do like six day events where they're like out there running for six days

and you obviously you manage things along the way you decide when to sleep and when not to sleep and I mean there's guys who've done it and slept like less than 10 hours the entire time and just think of staying up for it and slept like less than 10 hours the entire time. And it's just like, great. Just think of staying up for six days and only sleeping for 10 hours. Not even just sitting around seems pretty daunting. But yeah, yeah, it's a goofy sport.

And you kind of find like what part is gonna draw the most, the most like intrigue from you. And that's kind of what you're focused on because when you're exerting that much physical and mental energy, you've got to enjoy the process. When did you start? When did you know you had a passion for that? Where did this come from? Yeah, from childhood or did you get it later? Like when the bug hit you? For sure it was you know running in general was started early on like middle school high school age is you know like any boy that age you kind of grabbed it what you tend to be better at.

And I found out very quickly that I was near the back of the pack if I did the 100 meter dash, but I could be in the front of the pack if I would do like the 800 or the mile or something like that. So, I started kind of thinking, oh, maybe I should try a cross country, maybe I should do the two mile and track instead of the 200 or something like that. And that's when I started to kind of realize that I had at least some talent in the sport. And then competing in college and stuff, I got introduced to a high mileage training mindset. And I really started to like that.

Most of my college days kind of ended up being just really physically adapting to that building that base, that structure. And then afterwards, that was my favorite part of it. It was a longer, slower, distant run. So I did a lot of that and really developed like an aerobic base. And you know, that kind of, I turn my energies towards running races that kind of matched that type of training style. Now with all that training, you know, starting from, you know, going through college and

up until now, were there any turning points? In other words, were there any moments where you change something fundamental in your training or your diet or maybe your mental preparation where you were able to see a significant boost in your performance, things that you may now incorporate now that you learned early on? Yeah, for sure.

Like we were saying before, basically at one point, I looked at what I was doing and like training log and I was like, you know, I'm investing 20 plus hours a week into this activity and at the time, I was a full-time teacher as well. So I started almost feeling guilty about it. So I'm like, I gotta find a way to like, double my time here and kill two birds with one stone,

so to speak. So I started, you know started listing through tons of podcasts on both fitness and nutrition and things like that. And I started looking at how can nutrition really take you to the next level. And that was right around the time where using Fat As Fuel kind of became a little more mainstream or well known.

And at least it was information about it was more available and it wasn't completely like spat at by all the professionals. So I started kind of playing around with that. And I noticed right away it was one of those things where like you don't really always know if something's not wrong until you change it and then you feel better. And you're like wow, like for me, it was, it was pretty, pretty abrupt too. I like, um, at first, I didn't, I didn't go like strict ketogenic right away or anything like that in, in my diet, but I definitely kind of flipped it all on its head.

And rather than doing a typical, typical endurance athlete protocol where you're like super high carbohydrate, I did the majority of my macros from, from dietary fats. And you know, at least half of those saturated. So when I did that majority of my macros from dietary fats and at least half of those saturated. So when I did that, I noticed I was sleeping better. I wasn't waking up as much to go to the bathroom as you're covering quicker. I wasn't getting as much swelling and stuff from hard workouts and stuff like that. So things seem to be just seem to be clicking along a little better from that. So with that, I was really sold. And then it was kind of like, all right, I've got this base of like kind of idea of what

works for me. Now let's sharpen that spear as much as possible. And like over the next three, four years, I really started to fine tune things by trying little things to change and stuff all along that same kind of concept where the high fat approach is going to be the fueling point for my training. Very interesting because the one category of athletes that have really started to adapt or excuse me adopt a more high fat diet approach

seems to be the endurance athletes. I think that's, now you're still a minority with among your peers. However, it's much harder to find other categories of athletes that eat this way. Now, I think in the future, you're going to see much more, but you guys have seemed to adopt more of the stuff. And I think it probably has a lot to do with the fact that,

like you said, the anti-inflammatory effects, they're going to be pronounced with someone who does constant repetitive motion like you. And then here's a second question I have, because I've trained and I've worked with lots of endurance athletes, and they have to feed themselves during their long events. They have to make sure they refuel themselves with glycogen. And what a lot of people don't realize is, at most, your body may be able to store, I don't know, six, 7,000 calories with a glycogen, but even the leanest athletes will have

in the tens of thousands of calories, 30,000 calories of stored fat energy that they could use. Do you find yourself, you know, refeeding yourself while you're running differently or less now as a result? Is that change at all? Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting. A lot of people will come to this approach

because of that very reason. They'll do 100 miles or something like that. And then they'll realize, wow, after a mile, 80, I stopped to use the bathroom 20 times. Something went wrong. I couldn't take my gels in anymore. They realize that that's not a sustainable option for them if they want to meet their full potential.

So they have to look at trying to find a way to not put their stomach in that place to begin with. For me, it was a little different. Like, I always kind of had an iron gut and I would be able to take in four or five hundred calories an hour of basically pure sugar and it didn't seem to really bug me too much. But then what I noticed is when I switched my macros around in my day-to-day life, I could do the same level performance of the same energy output on one to two, maybe two 50 calories an hour. And then you just, you feel a lot, anytime you can keep your body from doing an extra task and you're already asking to do a lot, that's a plus.

So like I tried to eliminate digestion as much as possible by doing that lower feeding during the event type of pro. Interesting. Now are you still feeding with carbohydrates while you're doing these long runs? So, in other words, you're eating your macros or high fat, but then when you get into your race, because I know some endurance athletes, what they do is they eat ketogenic, which really sensitizes their body to insulin, then they may load a little bit on carbs, far less than they ever did before, and then the refeeds during the runs or cycle, whatever is much, much less as a result

because their body's utilizing more of those carbohydrates. Are you doing it like that, or are you refeeding with fats or how's that work for you? Yeah, I definitely have like, just like with my training, I've got like cycles. So in a race, I'm gonna, any fat, I'm gonna burn, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna allow it to burn off my body. Cause like you said, even when I'm at my very leanest state,

you know, the leanest endurance, at least still has tens of thousands of calories that they can tap into from body fat. So for me, the ingest of fat during a race, seems counter-intuitive because I can just bypass the digestive track altogether. Very good point. Fucking brilliant.

Yeah, yeah, so that's one last task. You definitely have spent some time in this. It's fine tuning in this. You could say I've done a deep dive. But yeah, so the interesting thing too is from what I've seen is there's some, there's at least some individual like variance from person to person where like when I really hit hard training, where I'm doing like two a days and doing some strength work and maybe some speed work and stuff like that, you know, carbs are definitely a faster acting fuel source. And I don't feel like they should be eliminated or I don't want people to come away thinking of the same case carbohydrates, these anti-carb, because when I'm peak training and like really

going hard, you know, all my intake to 20, 30% carbohydrate and fuel that higher end stuff and just replenish those glycines stores a little faster through that through those means. But then when I'm doing like a recovery post-race or doing just an easy block where I'm not going really hard, I'm just doing base miles, that's when I'll drop it down low or like alfinish a race, then I'll drop it down to keto level like 5% or sometimes less. Wow. See, it's important for our listeners to know, now your high amount is 20%, 100, right?

Right. Which is low. That's low carbs. And you are a guy who's running miles, a miles, a miles every single week. Now think of the average person who's usually sedative, even if they go to the gym for an hour a day, they're extremely sedative, and 20% of the calories from carbs

will still be considered a little better. Well, this is why we were so excited to have you on the show. This has been a recent message of ours. There's been a lot of stuff that just recently in New York times about the sugar. We just did a thing from a TED talk we watched. And so we've been trying to get this message across to people that we're not trying to tell people that like,

oh God, carbs are so bad Stay away from but it's like getting people to realize how little we actually need them right and in the past We used to always lean on the like well if you were somebody who trains really hard or an athlete You need that energy. Yeah, we're gonna get it from you need those carbide and so that was kind of the pushback And then everybody in their head justifies it there's some sort of a fucking athlete and they That was kind of the pushback and then everybody in their head justifies it. There's some sort of a fucking athlete and they help me. I'm saying so they need 65% carbohydrates. So I love listening to you talk about how much more efficient and probably better you feel.

And you said something early, I have to repeat it because we've said it before in the show and I think it's so important is that people don't realize that they were either one doing something wrong or less healthy for themselves until you find like the healthier path, right? You probably thought you were kicking ass already, you know what I'm saying? You were just finding the way you were going and then you make that switch and then all of a sudden it's like, whoa, I feel even better than I felt before.

Oh my God, I'm seeing, and this is like a lot of people who ingest a lot of process, shit, food all the time, who listen to the podcast and say like, well I'm not one of the, I feel fine, I feel healthy, I feel good. Well, maybe it's not that. Maybe you just don't know what it's like to your body to feel really true.

You're used to it, yeah. You even got to that. Well, an interesting thing too is like, from my experience, there's like three things that people really get a kind of routine or dogmatic or just kind of like stuck on. And that's politics, religion, and their their health

or nutrition. They're what they're eating. We just said literally that episode. So you can't even bring up nutrition right conversation anymore. I know it's that polarizing that it's like it's like debating Trump and Hillary or you know, half like versus Lutheran kind of thing. So it's yeah, you, you definitely have to, you definitely hear a lot and see a lot.

And like one of the questions I'll get to about that is the someone will say, well, yeah, but you're doing these ultra endurance events where you're at that zone one, zone two, aerobic state at the majority of the run. So you can do that. And it's like if you are doing a fast 5K or something like that,

you have to go super high car. And you know, my thought about that is that, I mean, I would definitely restructure my kind of cycle the way I described before. But even if you're doing like a 1,500 meter, that's on a huge aerobic base that's developed throughout the year for that. So like the way I would approach it would be the same way I approach my training. I use fat for fuel for the aerobic stuff.

And then when I need that high octane fuel, I turn to the high octane fuel and that's sugar. Well, there's been several studies that have shown that athletic strength, athletic performance. They did this with male gymnasts, was just as it was okay. Not only was it okay,

but it was the same if not a little better on a ketogenic style diet. And they also now found that athletes who are fat adapted, believe it or not, have just as much glycogen stores within their muscle as other people, because the body will make all the glycogen it needs from your protein. So it's pretty interesting. But one thing you said that was fascinating was that you noticed less inflammation in your body when you switched over to eating that way. And I think it's important to note the oxygen, just the pure oxidative stress on the body that any extreme sport or any extreme endeavor will do. I mean, you're training for a high level of performance, you're not

training for just overall health and longevity. For sure. And so oxidative stress and damage and inflammation are huge factors for you to consider. And you said you noticed less pain. What do you mean by that? Some of it was really, really subtle where it was almost like you noticed what you don't notice kind of thing where I'd wake up in the morning and then instead of having my ankles swollen, they would be like, you know, they'd be like, there'd be no swelling in there, my feet would have like veins throwing like all over the place,

as opposed to just being having this like puffy foot from being on my feet all day the day before. Stuff like that, little things like that, recovery too. The biggest thing I noticed early on was like I would before when I was a high carb Approach I would I'd do like a 50 mileer really hard and then you know I would after about three days the muscle soreness would be would have subsided But it'd be about two weeks before I felt like really good running again like I would be able to run But it just be kind of like slow plotting or like you you know, like, I wouldn't really have any desire to push pace. And then when I switched that on its head

and like really lowered that oxidative stress I was causing during the event and the days after, I noticed I'd still take that two to three days to kind of let that muscle recovery occur. But then after that, it's like I could almost do a speed workout like five days after, where that pop was back, that inflammation had been flushed out. There wasn't any of that chronic lingering around,

type of swelling and stuff that really is the majority of anyone's muscle pains. And the muscle's heel quick, it's getting all that other crap out of there. It's the hard part. It goes into a little bit of what I want to ask you about, too, the whole, I mean, I can't imagine how sore we were watching the video of you just, you were just like, give me a fucking blanket. I'm just gonna sleep right here on the couch. Fuck,

even going on to night. To me, and I know we were probably gonna offend all the other athletes and other sports, but we were all debating and saying, that has to be one of the most intense grueling things you could ever possibly put your body through. I mean, for that long, that heart, the level that you're pushing at, and then to see you afterwards, literally, you just want to just curl up right there. What is that like afterwards? It's pretty crazy.

It ranges a bit. I've had events where you finish and you don't feel good, but you're up and going. Even after that event, the initial response was like, all right, I'm done. This is over. I'm sitting down. I'm lying down. I'm not getting up until I want to, but 10, 15 minutes later, I'm up walking around talking to people and hanging out and stuff. That's one thing that I've found the human body has impressed me the most with is that regardless of what you focus it on,

it can get really, really good and it can adapt. So the nutrition is just a whole other aspect towards that towards maximizing that ability for your body to adapt. But yeah, usually what I find is if I do a race that doesn't match my Training environment is one of the most racked so like of course going into that race I did a lot of hard flat like road track type races

So the muscle pain wasn't too bad really afterwards. I was definitely sore on the lake But you know a couple days later. I was fine But if I had gone out and done like a race that was just like up and down, up and down tons of Accenture contraction, I would have been just destroyed after that thing because it's just different Different stimulus. Now now going to the bathroom while you're doing that for you know 11 hours or whatever I mean obviously if you're gonna if you got to take a poop you got to stop but you just pee yourself, right? And then we do you I'm asking that because I have a friend of mine who does long, long, and that's what she said.

She's like, you just pee yourself and you keep it just pretty much fucking water. I mean, you don't want to stop because it all counts towards your time. Yeah, in my ride or? It's interesting, you know, I've, I've, at Desert Salis, I stopped twice to pee, and that's all I stopped the entire time.

So it was maybe 90 seconds. Wow. And we actually talked about some other podcast too, then the guy was like, so if you were like, right on Razor's Edge of Breaking a Record, and you had to pee really bad, would you just like, pee your pants? So I'm like, well, yeah.

Fuck you, fuck you, yeah, for a record. For a record. Dude, I would shit myself, no problem. No problem. That's happened to people before. If they're like, you're about to break the world record. I'm like, I'm taking a shit right now. For two reasons.

Number one of about to break the world record. Number two. But that's a shit. Sorry, it's the guy behind you. That's a huge aspect of the 100 mile distance. And I think it really becomes kind of the dividing point between like a 100 kilometer or like a 50 mile race. And then moving up to the 100 mile distance is

Managing your digestion managing the bathroom breaks and stuff because like you said if if digestion goes wrong It can go horribly wrong and you can end up in the bathroom like and just realize how was how was there that much in me Like where's this coming from and you know you hear stories of people like having to stop 20 sometimes in the last like Quarter race and stuff and they're just destroyed and you know that adds tons of time tons of time. And you know I actually haven't I had an instance that that happened to me once. So I was doing this indoor track race up in Alaska called six days in the dome and I was doing I was just I was trying to go for the hundred mile world record actually which is 11 hours and 28 minutes. And I ate something bad, like right before the race or the night before or something, because like

as soon as I started running, my stomach was already kind of off, so I knew it wasn't like just bad fueling choices during the race. And I stopped like three times in the first 30 miles and just like unloaded. And I was like, I remember thinking at mile 30, like, that's everything. There's no way there's anything else in there. I'm good to go. So many miles, let's just get this done now. And I got, I think I started kind of eating,

I think I focused more on liquid calories after that, just because I was like, that's gonna be a little easier to absorb. And then I think I got to like mile 60 or 65 or something and I started kind of thinking I was gonna try to eat something, something like really small and sugary. Like I always try to really trickle it in slow because I do rely majority on that fat adaptation.

But I remember grabbing like a small handful of Swedish fish and that just like turned my stomach upside down and like literally 15, 15, 20 miles later I shit the Swedish fish right now. They came straight out. There's no digesting of those things. They went right through me. So like you have those instances of stories

and I think I ended up stopping like 17 or 18 times on that event and I ran 12 hours and eight minutes and you look at like the 17 stops, how much time that adds up. I mean that's the difference between getting that time you wanted and having it be a little slower than you wanted. So it's part of the sport, so to speak, but it's something that's very preventable

if you get yourself to a position where you can trust what your body's gonna do and you know how it's gonna react in certain environments and stuff like that. Yeah, you don't wanna introduce new foods. foods right right before that would not be smart. What about leading up to a big event like this like what take us through what training and prep looks like for you like during the week you know more so from your program design like how many miles you can't see your training and like how you vary up your training. That's very interesting.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so basically what I do is, you know, I'll, at the beginning of the year, I'll probably, I'll probably do maybe two, at the most three, what I would say in A races. So one where I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna tape or four, I'm gonna try to peak for it, because you can only peak for so many things. Like I can do six, maybe eight ultra marathons in a year,

but a lot of them are just basically hard workout long runs. So the ones I'm trying to peak for, the ones I'm building everything around. So throughout the course of the year, I'll probably do about four months of, like, I guess you could call it, like, active recovery or just low zone one training where I'm not really, like, I just detach. I'm like, I'm not going to mentally stress myself out about getting this done, but I'm still running a lot. Like, I average over 5,000 miles a year, so that's over 100 mile a week. So even when I'm not training hard, I'm still out there moving around quite a bit.

Wow. And then basically once I kind of have those areas that's identified, I structure the next two parts of the training around that. And that the second block is kind of like this really high end of Robic like zone two or like if you're familiar like there's this Maffatone heart rate training method where I do a huge bulk of my training at like a heart rate range and for me it's

like I usually target between maybe one 45 and like one 55 to 160 beats per minute and I do like a lot of workouts in that range and that you know that that for me when I'm getting pretty fit is between like you know if between, if I go up to 160, I'm well under six minute pace, if I'm at 150, 155, maybe just under six minute per mile pace. It takes well for your muscles to adapt to that pace. Once I get that portion of it done, when I'm getting closer, maybe like 8, 10 weeks out from the A race, I'll start really trying to like sharpen the spear and I'll do like 400 meter repeats in the track, mile repeats, things you'd see more traditionally

in like a marathon or sub marathon distance training program. And what I find out for me, what that does is it just like makes my running economy way better. So then when I kind of revert back to those zone two, heart rate based training workouts, I notice that my heart rate is lower at any given pace that I was before. So it's kind of like that thing that pushes you past the plateau. And then you can only do that so many times before your body just like says screw you. So you have the time at just right. And then you do your your race, you recover and you kind of like work your way back

to that after that. Excellent. Any strength training as a part of your routine? Do you do any type of resistance forms of training? Yeah, yeah. You know, I got into, I really loved weightlifting in high school and then in college I continued to do it and stuff and I was injured for like four months at one point in college and I just like do it and stuff. And I was injured for like four months at one point in college. And I just like really, really got into the weight room. And just I've just enjoyed it. So I've always tried to keep some semblance of that in my training.

And lately, it's been a lot more, a lot more like kind of core strength where it's like not like crunches or anything like that. But like you see a lot of the runners are like, I'm gonna do some, I'm gonna do some abs, and then they're just doing these little tiny crunches on the grass, and it's like that's not, you're probably just hurting your back. But it's a lot of plank work, or resistance band work, to really address my entire core. I'll grab a foam roller,

I like it because it's like, the most bang for your buck, where I'll roll out for my quad all the way down to my ankle and it'll include a push up as well as a complete abdominal crunch. So stuff like that, I do quite a bit of I'll target lower legs, strength, a little bit periodized as well,

where I don't shy away from the heavy weights during the base. And so I'll do, dead lifting and stuff with fairly heavy weights where it's, like, I'm only doing maybe five reps. And then, yeah, when I get closer, I usually drop some of the heavy stuff out once I start doing the high intensity workouts, because I never want the strength training to kind of, that's like step two kind of I don't if it interferes with step one then I shouldn't be doing it. So so it's always kind of trying to find that balance. Very intelligent as far as training and stuff like that. Well, in addressing the post to your change. Yeah, no, I think it's very important.

Yeah, no, I think that's fucking really smart. How how common are are you compared to everybody else? In other words, does do you feel like a lot of your peers are just kind of gifted and talented and get after it? Or are people starting to figure this out? Are there more ketogenic people, are there more people that are training like you're training and program designing leading up? I mean, what does it look like for you as far as

looking at your peers? Yeah, it's interesting. There's definitely people out there who are taking like the professional athlete approach and they're like everything they're doing is like how is this going to affect My end result. I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of people doing it the exact same way I am You know, I I've really really preach that like you Keep an open mind and you do your homework and you find what works for you

And you know what works for me works for me and it's certainly worked for some of my coaching clients as well. But some people they need to go on that journey on their own and find out what works for them. And the alternate community is kind of goofy too, where some of the intrigue for a lot of people is this more of a relaxed approach to it. And sometimes that works out for people because like if as I'm sure you guys know like when you start

Stressing out about something too much or investing putting too many eggs in one basket like that can be a negative thing too Like then you then things start getting getting getting bad in your own head and with a sport that's so mentally driven like you do on a Yeah, so you you have to keep everything in perspective from that regard. I guess my personality kind of allows me to keep an eye on that, so like I know I'm very, very dialed in, but it's become such a part of my lifestyle and what I want to do that it hasn't caused a whole lot of undue stress from other areas that could cause if I were like, you know, trying to juggle too much at once. And you know, some of it's just, you know, I'm super lucky to where like my main sponsor,

ultra footwear, I also employees me to do some marketing in Northern California. So like my whole day and life kind of revolves around training and like teaching like a lot of like proper footwear, proper foot mechanic type stuff. So, you know, with that and coaching, it's like I'm doing what I wanna do, I'm doing my passions.

So I can really minimize a huge chunk of what most people derive their stress from, like work. A lot of people are just punching the clock and that's stressful. Yeah, well, so two things. So when I asked you about strength training, you brought up, that you did a lot of core work.

And it's interesting to me because, when I've trained endurance athletes in the past, if we did a hard resistance training workout before they were going to do a long endurance type of training, let's say the day after, if I train, like if I train a runner and I train their legs really hard the day before, they could still run the next day. If I train their upper body, they could still run the next day. If I hammered their core, they were screwed. The next day was to your training. I had to be very careful where I would position, you know, the core training, because it's such an important part of running.

Yeah, that and you're basically the lumball pelvic hip complex, right? Which we talk about all the time. But something you just, you just talked a little bit about foot mechanic and foot strength and that kind of stuff. Are you in the camp of the excessive, like the super cushioned shoe, supported shoe, or you in more on the minimal list, and do you train your feet? Besides running or the things you do for your feet to make them stronger, or is that even something you need to worry about? Yeah, definitely.

That's, I've done a lot of experimenting with that in the past and currently due to and you know I go my philosophy kind of is in line with The founder of ultra footwear who says like you want your foot to do what it would do without a shoe there But you sometimes want a shoe there to protect you from the environment Yeah, you know, I wanted to be stepping on things you should be stepping on But you want your your foot to be doing all these different movements because like you're getting these muscles in there that are gonna atrophy if you don't use them just like you go into a gym and you know if you go to a gym for the first time in six months and you

do a routine even if it was something you used to do like casually and not be sore the next day you're gonna be wrecked. So the same thing with your feet if you put something on your feet that's not gonna allow those muscles to be addressed, as soon as you do something where that's not there, they're gonna be really sore. So like my approach to that is like I always want to have that really, really even playing like that zero drop footwear.

Because that's gonna put me in a position to strike more naturally and kind of exercise those muscles thoroughly, where I, I guess, separate from the minimalist movement there as I'm not always like super low cushion. Like I'll range the amount of cushion I do. I'll go from something that's really flat no cushion and really kind of work some of those muscles. But then I won't always go back out to the next day and do that again. Then I might use something that's got like a flat plain with a decent amount of cushion on.

So you'll actually rotate what shoe. Oh, it makes sense. Think about what it does. If you go to the gym, like, what do we talk about with resistance training, right? You go in the gym, you work a muscle hard. You can't keep hammering it, you know, day after day, it's gonna take, give it some time to adapt.

And the foot is no different. Like if he goes running in a very thin shoe, then it makes sense to have a little bit more support the next day. And then you can really assess the environment that you're about to do your race into and adjust your foot, your shoe accordingly, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think people need to realize that when they embark on a journey of getting, you know, their feet strong or whatever, it takes a lot of time, especially considering the fact that we've been put in shoes since we were able to walk. For sure. getting their feet strong or whatever, it takes a lot of time, especially considering the fact that we've been put in shoes since we were able to walk. And most shoes are so supportive that we have, even the most developed muscular people, have got like super atrophied week feet. I mean, one of our colleagues, Dr. Brink,

pointed this out big time, especially me and Adam, we were over there and we were doing some assessment stuff and he was showing me like my feet are basically worthless. Worthless, yeah, they're not contributing. Well, I mean, we did a simple test, I won't never forget it. And it was just like, you know, you just wanted me to lift my big toe

and I'm like, I can't fucking eat that, you know. And he walks, no, no, you can't. Yeah, he walks over me like, look, I know you totally can. The muscles are there, the range of motion is there. You just have to floss the connection there because you don't, it's crazy. And people don't realize too, like, you know have to have lost the connection there. Because you don't. It's crazy. And people don't realize too.

Like, you know, one thing I didn't realize when I got into starting to pay attention to footwear, my first thing was like, you know, what is this minimalist idea and, you know, diving into that and kind of figuring that out or the natural foot movement thing. And then I really kind of got into the idea, like, you're toes, like you were saying, they need to be able to move like that,

so you can make that mind-body connection, as well as, you know, let your foot do what it was supposed to do. So having that room to let your toes play out is just super important. And even from like, letting those nerves that kind of run from your midfoot down into your toes, relax and build up and keep the inflammation out of there

and stuff like that, they're just pinched up in there all day long. Things are going to get inflamed. Things are going to atrophy. And then you're going to, like you said, become kind of useless. Well, what's interesting, so they've done studies on people and found just explosion of neural connections in the brain when people walk around barefoot a lot.

Yeah. Because you got to think about this way. Your brain adapts to sensory information. So the more things I touch, the more things I experience, whether it be walking on different terrain or experience different light or you know I'm reading something whatever, my brain will adapt and will develop. And one of those things like the bottom of your foot has a tremendous amount of nerve endings. And constantly always walking around in shoes all the time means that you're not only have an underdeveloped foot

but there's parts of your brain, there's proprioceptive parts of the brain that are not developed as well. They find that people, when they walk around barefoot, their brains develop all these new neural connections which will only benefit other parts of your learning and the way your body, your brain, excuse me, processes information. Do you ever walk barefoot? Is that something you do?

Yeah, okay. Yeah, for sure. And I came to where I read this, but I remember somewhere, somebody I was citing something where it was like, even if it's just 15 minutes a day on actual ground contact, like foot to grass, or ground contact, is like really beneficial to kind of,

and when you think about it makes perfect sense. Like your body is a whole bunch of little things working together in unison to accomplish whatever you're doing. And when you're walking that foot is the first point of context would make sense that in a perfect state your brain is gonna gather that first base of information from your feet.

Yeah, I sort of got it. And the deeper we get into fitness and health and the more we learn about the body, the more we realize that it's that if you just don't, if you don't fight, if you stop fighting evolution and go along with how your body kind of evolved moving and adapting, you're going to do better than trying to always throw, you know, cushions on it and, you know, crutches and supplements and all this other stuff. It kind of worked. I was having this discussion with the boys before he came in when we were watching your

100 mile race and I was telling them, although we're very having the resistance training, we love building muscle, we love having big biceps and all that stuff. Humans from a physical standpoint, there's only really one physical thing we do that's pretty exceptional in the animal kingdom. And that's a track. We can out of our long distances. Yeah, it's correct, right? We can outtrack almost any animal on earth, but the strongest. Certainly, Zach can. Yeah.

I'm not sure, just. We'll put you in that category. I'm not sure, just, I can outtrack anything. Right now. What I always tell people is that, yeah, what I always bring and kill and I don't want to I don't want to anger any of the bodybuilding. No, before it. But I do all the time.

I love I love the bodybuilding groups and like the the the the gym rats, so to speak, because like, I mean, you guys are always a step ahead of the science. Like that's where I go when I want to find out what What are people doing that we haven't figured out works yet? And you guys are always cutting edge with that. So it's like a super intriguing group. And that open-mindedness from that group has been very beneficial for me. So that's what got me intrigued with your guys'

podcast in the first place. But, yeah, so I always tell people, based on what are we kind of meant to do, we could take an average or weak gorilla take the strongest man on the world that gorilla is going to destroy you. That's exactly exactly exactly exactly that I say. Exactly. That's exactly exactly that I say. Exactly. That's exactly exactly that I say.

Exactly. You could literally take the most roided out you know gifted you know strength athlete in the world and he won't come close to a weak average gorilla, but you take a human and you train, you could train any human for a decent amount, you know, keep them active, feed them well. And they will perform incredible feats of endurance and they'll be able to out trek most animals.

There's actually been races in the past for distance where a man will race a horse. There was a famous one, I can't remember the name or what it was, but there were these two really wealthy, this was back in the 1800s, and one guy bet the other guy, look, I bet I could go further than your horse can. And he actually was able to do it.

And this was back then, and with just normal amounts of training. So, question I have about, when you're doing that kind of a race, obviously people are going to think, oh, your legs are tired, your body's tired, but there's got to be parts of your body where you're going to be hurting or things that are going to happen, like, damage, like, for example, the chafing from your shirt on your nipples or the freaking, or eating nipples. Yeah, like, not fun. Anything weird, you know, that you could talk, because I saw on the end of your video that your shoulder, it was just so painful.

Yeah. Probably from holding in a certain position for so long. I mean, what's that like? Yeah, it's interesting, because you know, it's one of those things where like you go into a hundred mile race and it's like you know some things gonna come up you didn't expect. It's just a question of when and what will it be

and then how will you respond to it. So like really that's what when you get these guys who are really, really good have done a 1,100 miles are they're the ones who respond best to that uncertainty. When that thing pops up, they're ready to like figure it out, problem solve and then move on and then not dwell on it. I think, oh, if that would have happened, I'd be five minutes up faster.

Or this guy would never pass me. You know, so like, yeah, that stuff happens all the time. Like, you know, chafing is one that usually that one doesn't pop up until after. You realize it. It's there and it's manifesting, but then you get in the shower afterwards and all that salt starts to burn over. The worst shower on earth is the post-algebra shower.

Not wide into night. Yeah. I've had, you always have interesting things. One time I did, I was actually I was going to do a hundred mile around a track and I was still living Wisconsin at time. So I did a lot of my running on the road, the flat roads, which was good for the whole

flat hard impact type thing. But I didn't do any like running around circles. So when I went out there on the day I was doing the event, I like strained my quad in a weird way from just the turning. Oh, shit. So in that one direction, yeah. Exactly.

And I've noticed that too. There's all these weird little injuries that kind of, they don't always flare up during the event, but sometimes they'll flare up after. From doing those circles, if you haven't kind of adapted to it. So this last time was one of the only times I did it and came out completely unscathed. You know, the days after and everything, no like weird little like niggling things that would be like, would pop up afterwards.

And part of it's because I did, I put my time in on the track. I would do these like 12, 14, 15 mile progression runs and then I would turn the direction we're going to turn on the race. They mounted like percentage wise, like basically switch your directions every four hours. So I thought my mind, I'm gonna be turning left for about eight hours, I'm gonna be turning right for about four, so when I would do those track workouts, I would specify it that way.

I would do about, I would do about two thirds of my laps around in that leftward turn, and then I would do the other one third, the opposite way, and I noticed that that really helped, especially when I would do speed other one third, the opposite way. And I noticed that that really helped. Especially when I would do speed work around those turns. Smart, man. Because that really developed those turning muscles, those leaning muscles, the little ones, and like your legs and feet and stuff that could really...

Yeah, I wonder how many guys really are taking it to this level, like, where you're at. You would be surprised because from the people who I've met at that train, especially the ultra endurance type athletes, because there's so many of these, think about it this way. If I'm doing like a max lift, or if I'm competing in a three minute wrestling competition or whatever, small little things aren't gonna, and when I say small, I mean the tiniest of things

don't necessarily come up, but they do when you're doing the same shit over and over again for 11 hours. I mean, that's a fantastic example of, like we talk about muscle imbalances and recruitment patterns and people and how over the years they develop into bigger recruitment patterns, you know, changes in pain.

You're not sure they can have it in eight hours, right? But this is a fantastic example because, you know, rerun in circles or on a track, it's a big track, you're not gonna notice any pain, but if you do that for 11 hours, one side of your leg is striking differently than the other side and it's a big track, you're not gonna notice any pain, but if you do that for 11 hours, one side of your leg is striking differently than the other side, and it's such a small difference that you wouldn't notice unless you did it repetitive stress,

really adds up. Yeah, just over and over and over. And so of all the, when I've met ultra endurance athletes, the successful ones tend to be very analytical and intelligent. Like they break everything down. Is that accurate and accurate ascentation? Yeah, there's, I mean, people, whether they do it from a more like a real numbers-based analytical approach or they kind of stumble upon it from a more laid-back approach is

kind of what I see. I mean, there's definitely guys who are more along the lines of like, they're not thinking about it, they're not tracking their miles, they're not tracking like all this stuff, they're just going out and they're doing a lot of running But they they along the way they don't necessarily realize it But they're developing routines and they're developing like habits that are successful for them and then they're just kind of doing it From a more they're kind of hitting it at a different angle Whereas I'm more along the lines of like I really really am interested in the data on the analytic side of things

I'm gonna ask you about that because like as far as the adoption of technology and you see like Strava communities and you see like all these like crazy Communities built up now with like apps that you know attached to all these things like How much how into that are you in like explain those communities? Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a it's insane Like I mean like strive like you said basically you upload your your workout and it will tell you everything you want to know from your heart rate to like How fast you did a specific little section? And even can get competitive to where people will build segments where like this is the fastest anyone's ever gone from that spot That's bot so competitive. Yeah, yeah Yeah, so it's, it can get, some people I think will abuse it

and then they'll leave the race out on training with that stuff, but if you kind of know how to like, go about it and not make that your folk, unless that is your goal, to chase, chase, drive a segment, so. Which there's probably some guys to do. People for sure. There's always people like that.

Yeah, for sure. But yeah, you know, there's a lot of info there and what I always tell people is this is good information. This is information you can use, but you have to know where to draw the line. Like if you're using it and it's causing you to overstress and overthink, that's gonna be a negative. That's where you've went over the tipping point.

Like a paralysis by analysis. That's what you're saying. And it's the same thing with like, with the whole nutrition approach, like I was saying before, people ask me, oh, did you test your ketones? How often do you're in ketosis? I'm like, I don't know. I go in and out of ketosis, and that's part of the thing.

I want to be metabolically flexible. So that's my goal is to be able to go in and out of ketosis. I want to be able to go into a high fat burning mode if I need to, but I also want to be able to tap into carbohydrates. But I don't go way out of my way to figure out, oh wow I was in ketosis for 22 hours that day and but only 21 this day because that's just going to cause undue stress. But what I do is I take a little more lay back approach. If I can go

out for like a long run where I'm like five, six, maybe even eight hours and do it on very little fuel, just basically water and electrolytes, then I know I'm fat adapted. I don't have to have a ketone. You're telling me that. Like if I'm doing that on like 300 calories, then it's like, yeah, my body's able to utilize fats. I don't have to really worry about whether, I'm in this range of that range and stuff like that.

So, and then also goes back kind of a thing where like using some of those more natural signs is supposed to like the deep like, like I could like draw blood and test ketones every day or test blood sugar and all that stuff. But for me, that's probably taking it maybe one step two for it. But Strava, I love Strava. I definitely geek out on that.

All right. I noticed that myself. I went on to, I just recently went on a long road trip and the first part of my road trip was for my, supposed to be part of my road trip was a four mile, supposed to be a four mile kayak trip to a camping site. It turned out to be eight miles of kayaking and then another four to six miles of hiking, which for me is extreme endurance. I don't train that way at all.

But I am, for the most part, fat adapted. And I was shocked at how I was okay. I was able to continue doing this kind of like moderate level long duration of intensity. By the way, I was fasted. I hadn't eaten anything that entire morning because I had planned on eating that night. And I felt okay and I wasn't that sore the day after.

And it's 100% because I was fat adapted. My body was able to tap into that. I wasn't asking you, what are your favorite sources of fat? Oh yeah. So I definitely try to make sure I get, like I take a very, very whole animal approach where I'll get a chicken and I'll cook it, I'll take the meat off, I'll make a bone broth,

and stuff, sometimes I'll even slow cook the bones long enough where you can mash them up and put them in something. So you're really getting all of this stuff, all those micronutrients and stuff from the animal. So definitely a huge portion of it is, I wouldn't say huge, but a sizable portion of it's gonna be like animal fats. I do a lot of coconut oil and stuff as well.

It's, I think, is any medium-chain triglyceride is kind of the king of metabolizing. Any sad, I think I mentioned earlier, I try to aim for about half of my fat calories come from saturated at least because When you look at it, you know saturated fat spends demonized, but really it's the one the body prefers to metabolize It metabolizes quicker than the other ones so when I'm trying to get my body to metabolize fat as quickly and as efficiently as possible I'm gonna want to give it the ones that are gonna to do that more readily. And that's like, you know, MCTs, coconut

oil type things and stuff like that. So that one really finds, you know, other things like extra virgin olive oil, you know, seeds and nuts. I'll get some fat from those two. That's usually probably the bulk of it, some oils, animal fats, and then seeds nuts. Excellent. Excellent. What about marijuana in your community? Well, that's a good question, because there's been a lot of outspoken endurance athletes who say that they like, that they find benefit from using like an edible or marijuana either to recover or even before a long,

you know, Chinese cycle. Yeah, you know, I can't speak from personal experience as to like whether that would make me faster or not, but I know there's plenty of people who do it in our community and I don't have much. Most it's funny because a lot of the folks that are doing it on a regular basis, they're the ones who are a little more laid back about things. So like they're not necessarily like, oh yeah, I don't, I think there's very, very, very few of any ultra marathon marijuana users are thinking,

like, how is this gonna help my performance? But that's that question's been asked. So it's got to be on the back of their mind at this point. And it's really interesting. You know, you hear, you hear both sides. And it could be something that you know, you use gens up in the case where it's very individualistic, where you look

at some aspects of it, where you got this increased pain tolerance, calming effects, great things to have for a hundred mile event. You don't want to be overstressing, you want to be in the moment, you want to not feel some of that pain, that sounds great. But then the other side of it's like, you know, sitting around on a couch all day and getting lazy, not necessarily. So however you respond to it, I suppose it probably played a pretty big role in that.

But yeah, you know, it's a growing field for sure and especially out here in California where it's more accessible than some other states. And I think you're seeing more and more people play around with it. And you know, part of it too, from like a professional side of things, too, is like the legalities in performance and stuff. And currently it's not in the sport of running. I think the rules are like it's fine to use.

But you can't use it six hours before, during, or six hours after an event. So it's like, yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, I did, actually. Yeah, it's interesting. I just... I'm a test for that.

That's a good question. Because it stays in your system for so long. But I've read a couple articles that were they're breaking down the whole runner's high. You know, the runner, one people run for long distances. And if you talk to runners who are, you know, really good at running, they'll tell you that they hit this, this, there's this time where that, you know, after a certain amount of miles where they get this euphoric feeling. And some scientists are attributing it to the release of endocannabinoids, which are the bodies, the body's natural cannabinoids, just almost

like the ones you find in marijuana, which are called, which are phyto cannabinoids, just almost like the ones you find in marijuana, which are phyto cannabinoids. And so those endocannabinoids are released to help improve performance. And so there's some theories going on as to why marijuana may in fact improve especially endurance performance. Endurance performance because your body

already trying to do that. So I would think those like sub Maximal efforts it could it could there's probably something there or the high maximum effort. No, it's probably gonna. No, I've tested it Maxing out no, what about have you try have you Experimented with exogenous ketones at all and that's a big thing right now in the, it's an up and coming supplement. And I predict, I've told these guys already,

I predict that to be the next big thing. The science really supports it for athletic performance. Have you taken anything like that? I haven't yet. I actually, it's funny you mentioned it though. I was talking to, I'm trying to remember the doctor's name, who was kind of like deep into that, who was developing.

Daugostino, Dominic Diagostino? Maybe it was, he said, I remember like I listened to a podcast, I think it was like Ben Greenfield or something where he's talking about like right now the stuff that actually works and that doesn't have any kind of like negative side effects is like super expensive where it would be like literally thousands of dollars for a lot of stuff. But I got an email from a guy while back saying, like, we're putting this into testing. They wanted to know if I wanted to try some. I think I emailed back saying yes,

but I've got to follow up on that, I guess. Yeah, that'd be cool, looks to play around with. I've been messing around with the exogenous ketones, and I definitely notice performance boost from taking that. Yeah, you could buy the ketone salts, which are not as effective as the ones that they're testing in studies.

Right, you know, so. What about supplements? Do you take any supplements? Yeah, yeah. You know, I try to do a really, really whole food approach to my training and stuff, but like, you know, I'm also not necessarily doing what a normal person's gonna be doing. I was just gonna say, you're training at that level.

That's when supplements could, could, could, could. For sure. And it's per, you know, and my goal is to max my performance, not necessarily live forever too. So it's like, for me, I'm, I'm looking for, obviously, legal, legal things that I can do through my diet and through supplements that are gonna help me perform better recover and stuff like that.

You know, I've had a lot of luck with like, curcumin extract as an anti-inflammatory. I'll take omega-3 fatty acid stuff. Not as much as I used to because now my diet is pretty heavily focused on clean animal fats, which oftentimes do have substantial amount of omega-3s. That balance between the omega-3s and omega-6s isn't as skewed as it would be if I was eating a ton of plant, you know, the plant fats or like a ton of like, really poor, yeah, poorly sourced animal fats

where you know, the cows are in these big slaughterhouses and stuff. So that, you know, I work with a company called X and Durance, that's what I'll use on like race day, like the powder for electrolytes and the powder for energy that's like a, it's called five fuel and hydroaxen. You know, those, those have worked really well for me. The carbohydrate base is kind of like, it's like a steady release. They use, they use like a variety different of carbohydrate strains. So it's like, get, some are going to release

a little quicker than others, some are going to release longer. So I find that, you know, if I just kind of trickle that in throughout like I get that little bit of carbohydrate I need but it's not like this big sugar bomb all at once and then crash and then bomb Sure So it sounds like a staggered approach. Yeah for sure. Fast medium slow technical. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah So that stuff's worked, you know, you know, I'm a fan of like now foods products because usually like they can You don't have to do a whole lot of background homework to find out if their stuff is quality sourced

from my experience anyway. So yeah, like a lot of times when I'll, if I want to try something out, I'll go to their site and take a peek at what they got. Excellent. What about meditation? Do you do anything, any type of mind training or things that help train, you know,

train centering yourself? Because like we had talked about earlier, the mental component is just insane. I can't even imagine it. So I would imagine that would require some kind of training. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting too. I think there's so many different ways to go about that and it kind of like really depends on the person. People use variety of things. They'll do a real structured meditation approach, through prayer, whatever, and you know, really, really say like I'm gonna actually sit down like they'll pencil it into their calendar kind of I think, whereas other people are more like kind of like let it happen as it happens, which

I kind of do more of I think because like it just it tends to happen. I think a lot of people they get so stressed out that it just won't actually happen unless they kind of like consciously go after it. But for me like I do so much like a ro just won't naturally happen unless they kind of like consciously go after it. But for me, like I do so much like a Robic based training, like I find myself kind of drifting into that state oftentimes when I'm working out or you know, when I do a fair amount of driving as well with stopping in doing like, you know,

the footwear clinics and stuff like that. So like I find myself having those quiet times where it's just me, you know, by myself driving as long as the traffic isn't too hectic, I can usually get pretty calm and meditative there. San Francisco at five o'clock, not so much. But in the way. Well, I get totally relate to that

because we talked about this on an episode one time and we did a whole thing on that. And I said that, you know, for me, it's meditative to actually even be like, I'll have something listening to a podcast, I'll be walking my dogs and there actually becomes a point where I'll forget that I just went like five blocks, I forgot what house is I passed

because I'm so just kind of in the mold. You just didn't that, yeah. And to me, that's meditative. Like somebody would try and debate that in our year that you're not, you know, in the silence, dark room or like that. But I think- No, you're right Adam, I actually talked to a friend of mine who's

Huge in a meditation and I I disagreed with you at first. I thought no, that's not you not to sit down and meditate Yeah, and she said no she said he's right You can meditate at any given moment and it's literally being in the moment Yeah, you know, and so that what you we just talked about is meditating and I find and I find for me like that's the only way It works I feel if I if I sit down and say, okay, I'm going to meditate right here, there's this pressure to like, get meditative, right? And then I'm thinking, fuck, I gotta go handle this,

I need to do this, I forgot I didn't do this yet, I gotta pay this bill. You know what I'm saying? That's why it's a change of environment a lot of times is really helpful for me. I talked a lot about getting into nature and getting away from the hustle and bustle of other people and jobs and cars and all this kind of stuff because it helps to slow everything down and realize

where you are as far as where you're in space. That helps a lot. It's really interesting that you mentioned that though because I was talking to a guy the other day and he said the exact same thing where he actually had dealt with depression and stuff in the past. And if he gives himself that super quiet mode, he thinks into a bad place where he starts thinking about the negative things, he thinks about the past, he thinks about, oh, what about the future that I don't know where he needed to get into the now and just kind of enjoy the moment. And he said the same thing.

He would listen to podcasts or listen to music because that would really cause him to kind of open his mind and start thinking like, especially if it was a podcast that's discussing a topic that he's interested in. And he's like opening his mind and trying to understand something. He's very much just like slowly absorbing it

and not like freaking out or thinking about things he didn't really need to be thinking about. That's gotta be totally, and you bring up the individual thing, right? Like our type of personalities we have. I feel like, because I know other people that are opposite. That's they have this ritual, they get up,

and they just, they claim that this sitting with their legs crossed in the room dark and they can just get into this deep, and I'm like, I have tried that. I grew up in a very religious home, so prayer was a very natural, normal thing. And I have the ADD mind where I just, I'm in close my eyes, put me in a very religious home, so prayer was a very natural, normal thing. And, you know, I have the ADD mind where I just, I'm in close my eyes, put me in a room,

and I'm thinking about everything, but what I'm supposed to be probably thinking about, where, you know, get me into something I'm very interested, very relaxed, or calming for me that I've done a million times, or a song that I love to listen to, or a podcast like you said, that I'm just totally in the conversation like I'm there,

and it totally settles me down. So. Now anything on meal frequency for you, is that even important to you? Does that matter? Like, you know, I need to eat so many times a day or not eat so many times a day. Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, I find the more dialed and I get the easier I guess because you can start to kind of just trust your body signals.

Like I don't, if I don't, it sounds like me, doesn't it? Yeah. It's awesome. Totally. It's really funny. Like, you know, as a society, we kind of like, we strap ourselves down with these meal times and stuff like that. Where, for me, it's like, I wake up in the morning

and if I'm gonna go for a long run, if I'm hungry, I'll eat something. If I'm not, I won't. You know, that'll vary. Usually, I'm not hungry in the morning. So, you know, I'll have some coffee, maybe a little bit of raw honey or some coconut milk in there or something like that. Then I'll go out and run and then I'll come back and I'll eat when I'm hungry. Like I said before, sometimes I'm hungry,

as soon as I step in the door other times it takes a little bit. I definitely take a little more less structured approach to that, but I got there because of the structure. Like, when I started, I couldn't do that. Like, you know, I came off of a nutritional approach for me that was like sending all these poor signals. So like, you know, I was always hungry or I was always, you know, the, the, the, I was the thing. I always say it was the weirdest thing is like, I'd, at night, I'd eat a big meal like my stomach would be full, but I'd still be hungry. It was like, weirdest feeling. It's like it shouldn't match. Or that should match differently. So now it's different than that. Like, you know, if my body says, if my body craves a carbohydrate,

I'm usually thinking, well, I probably went really low carb and did a harder effort and, you know, didn't replace the glycogen fast enough. My body's saying, hey man, if you're going to do that again in the next five hours, you should probably, you know, have like some malinor berries or something like that. Or more often than not, I find like, you know, either like in the afternoon, if I didn't eat big, big meal early or at evening, my appetite will start to spike and I'll start craving like savory things, you know, like, you know, is it steak or something like that, you know, and then I'll kind of give me, give myself what I, what I feel I need.

Well, I tell you what, man, it's been a great time talking to you. I mean, I mean, you answered the questions, excellent, but a lot of the stuff you said is, I think very different from what people might expect someone like yourself to say. You obviously know your stuff, very, very smart, and your approach to your performance and fitness really matches the approach that we try to preach a lot about listening

to the signals of your body. Sure. And I love seeing people who can perform at a very high level who also have that approach because people I think think that you can't. You have to, if you have a high level of performance, you have to follow this approach, which is superstructured, super,

eat so many times a day, and it's like this horrible, neurotic way to live, whereas the way you're doing it, probably the best way to do it for longevity as well. For sure. Yeah, but he brings up too, which I love to hear him say, is that at the very beginning of all this,

there was lots of tracking and paying attention to these learning to connect these signs. It's a learning process. Yeah, you know, and we talk a lot about that also, is it's pressing to people that, I don't count my, I'm not competing, if I'm just eating or I don't watch and count my shit, like I know, I know what makes me feel a certain way,

and you, Scott, you said something, I've said this a bunch of times too, is that normally when you have that feeling, I know, oh, I must, I probably didn't get as much fat as I should have got yesterday and I tapped out of my carbs is why I feel, why I'm all sudden craving this and either I'll replenish it with two or three cups of berries and stuff or I'll go have a big old fatty steak meal, you know, like, so I just learned, I've learned over time, but it took the pain of tracking and paying attention, right? I mean, it takes that, a pain of attention to that

and connecting those dots, and then it really isn't, it really isn't that hard once you kind of put that together, you know, very, very cool. Yeah, thanks again, it's been excellent. Yeah, awesome having you, Zach. Thank you. Thank you, have a man. Leave us a five star rating review on iTunes.

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