Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Alex Hutchinson on Pushing the Limits of Physical and Mental Performance

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

What determines the true limits of our physical performance? It it mostly hard-wired physiological factors that can’t be changed, or is it more nuanced than that? What about psychological factors? How much does the “inner game” affect the “outer game,” and how much is this under our control? People have been searching for answers to these types of questions for decades now, and new research has provided some pretty surprising insights. That’s why I wanted to talk to Alex Hutchinson, who’s been studying all of this for over a decade. In case you don’t know of Alex, he’s an award-winning science journalist, former physicist and national-class runner, regular columnist for publications like Runner’s World, Outside, and The New York Times, and in my opinion is one of the best fitness writers around. He has a new book out called Endure that dives deep into the fascinating science of human performance and potential, and in this interview, he shares with us some of the key takeaways from the extensive research that went into the project as well as some highly practical strategies and techniques we can use to increase our capacity for physical and mental output. 4:58 - What are the latest studies on the physical limit for a human? 8:32 - How much does our mental dialogue effect our pain tolerance? 11:06 - How much of our physical pain is determined from preconceived ideas versus our thoughts during the moment? 12:25 - What are some psychological coping strategies to increase your pain tolerance? 15:07 - What is motivational self talk and does it enhance performance? 27:30- What is electric brain stimulation? 35:23 - What is an example of positive self talk? 39:15 - Does your psychological tolerance increase when your physical tolerance increases? 54:53 - Where can people follow you and find your work? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

What's going on in your brain influences and affects how your brain interprets all these signals coming from the rest of your body, from your muscles, from your heart, from your lungs, so that you're able to dig deeper into your actual physiological reserve by changing the narrative in your brain. So again, it's like, yeah, it's the slogan on the yoga bag, but if you're doing this kind of thing correctly and systematically, it has real and measurable effects. What determines the true limits of our physical performance? Is it mostly hardwired physiological factors that simply can't be changed? Or is it more malleable? Or is it more nuanced than that? And what about psychological factors? How much does the inner game affect the outer game? And how much of that inner game is under our control? People have been searching for answers to these

types of questions for decades now. And the newest research on the matter has provided some pretty surprising insights. And that's why I wanted to talk to Alex Hutchinson, who has been studying all of that for over a decade now. And in case you don't know about Alex, he is an award-winning science journalist. He is a former physicist and national class runner. He's also a regular columnist for publications like Runner's World, Outside, and the New York Times. In my opinion, he is one of the best fitness writers on the scene today. And Alex has a new book out called Endure, which dives deep into the fascinating science of human

performance and potential. And in this interview, Alex is going to share with us some of the key takeaways from the extensive amount of research that he did to write that book, as well as some highly practical strategies and techniques that we can use to increase our capacity for physical and mental output. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their

best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can get the audiobook 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audiobooks. I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth so much more valuable and productive. walking my dog and so forth, so much more valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, then simply go to www.bitly.com

slash free BLS. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila, you get to listen to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for free. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least. Let's get to the show. Hey, Alex, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Hey, thanks, Mike. It's great to be here. So I came across your work. Actually, I read cardio or weightlifting first or something along those lines. I read it years ago and really liked it. And so now I'm excited to have you on to talk about your newest book, which it looks like at least I see on Amazon is doing very well. So that's cool.

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of the first book was Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? And it was a very practical kind of looking into what does the research tell us about questions about how long it takes to get fit or a lot of the stuff that very similar things to the stuff you're interested in, of course. And the second book is kind of, I kind of let my curiosity take me a little deeper and just try to understand the nature of endurance and how it relates to strength. And I think there's some practical lessons in there, but I ended up getting drawn into the brain a little more. And so, it's kind of a deeper dive into some of the topics that I've been interested in for a long time. Yeah. So I think we should start probably with just a general

overview. I mean, some of the people listening have probably heard of the governor theory, where there's just a question as to what is really the limiting factor. I mean, obviously, there is a limiting factor at some point. We only can do so much physically, but you hear stories about, for example, you have a mom whose kid gets trapped under a car and then she just deadlifts the car off the ground, basically. With enough necessity, we're able to do some pretty extraordinary things. And then with less extreme examples of that, you have obviously where people are just running faster and faster miles, for example, people are running your average top tier, probably amateur runner probably now, right. Is putting up times that 20 years ago we thought would be impossible. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely been a story of progress for the last century or

more people keep getting faster. You know, one of the interesting things to think about is you can look at horse racing records, for example, which have been kept for centuries. And up to a certain point, thoroughbred horses were getting faster. But the records kind of stagnate around the 1950s. Even though there's lots of financial incentive for horse trainers to use the latest technology and all the new knowledge in nutrition, really for the last half century, they haven't been getting a lot faster. You know, the record in the Kentucky Derby is Secretariat from 1973. And so, the question is, why are humans still getting faster and horses aren't? And so, that's where I think you start to realize, well, humans have something that horses don't, which is the ability to compare

themselves with other people who aren't there in the present, they can use their brains to think about what are my limits. So that's, I think, one of the smoking guns to say that the fact that we keep pushing ourselves a little bit farther and getting a little bit stronger and a little bit faster isn't just because we're learning better training techniques. It's also because we're able to kind of keep pushing our mental limits back in a way that a horse can't. A horse can only race whoever's there on that day. Right. And so is it, I mean, because some people would say, oh, yeah, it's mostly just in your head in terms of the upper limits of what you can endure.

And I would guess that this would apply not just to like exercise, but probably also to just any form of stress whatsoever, right? Yeah, I think it's a very general thing. So I should step back and say, look, my background is a distance runner. I competed internationally for Canada as a long distance runner. And so, this book kind of started as my attempt to understand, hey, why didn't I get faster? Why didn't I make the Olympics? What was holding me back? What were the limits? I've been sort of working on this for about 10 years. And the more I tried to understand the nature of endurance, the more I realized how general it is. You know, the definition I end up using in the book is that endurance is the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop.

And, you know, that's something that applies whether you're running a marathon, whether you're lifting weights, whether you're doing your taxes. Or writing a book. The ultimate feat of endurance, as far as I'm concerned, was writing a book. or understanding that you're capable of more than you originally thought, well, you know, at 4 a.m. with a sick kid, you discover hidden reserves that you may not have appreciated. On two hours of sleep, and then you still got to go, you got to go get to work. Yeah, exactly. You know, there's no, you don't get a vacation just because you're, just because your kid was sick. So, yeah, I think it's a really general concept. And I think, just to go back to something you said earlier, you know, is it all in your head? I think we all understand that neither of the extremes are true. It's not all in your head. Like the Winter Olympics

are going on right now. I couldn't fly to South Korea and sort of become the greatest big air snowboarder in the world just because I have a strong brain or anything. You have to have the physical tools. But similarly, that's not all about the physical tools. We all know people who are absolutely physically gifted but crumble when the pressure's on or aren't able to push themselves. So, it's always a balance between those two things. And I think, for me, it often felt like the physical side was the science side, that we can learn about the science of muscles and of endurance and nutrition. And then there's this sort of… Right, like the physiology, right? Yeah, the physiology, right?

Yeah, the physiology of it, whereas the psychology always felt, you know, we all know that the brain matters, but it always felt kind of soft and placebo-y to me. And in researching this book, what I, the message I came away with was that actually there's some real science, some good, hard, replicable science in the lab that can quantify and can show that the brain really matters, that it's not just your limits really aren't just about your muscles, that you can go into a lab. Here's a study that I found really sort of illuminating. They had cyclists do a time to exhaustion test in a lab, and they flashed subliminal images on a wall in front of them. So just 16 milliseconds at a time is like a tenth of the time it takes to blink your eye.

So the cyclists were totally unaware of these images. If there was a smiling face in the image, the cyclists were able to pedal for 12% longer than if it was a frowning face. So, I mean, that's not a placebo effect because they're not even aware that this is happening. And yet there's lots of examples like this where you realize that subtle things like your mood and your internal dialogue are affecting what feels like a totally concrete physical limit. Yeah, I've actually read that paper. I know exactly what you're talking about. I thought that was very interesting. I remember I was researching an article and come across that.

I was writing more about like, you know, I think it was visualization and weightlifting actually. So I was looking into some of that research and you'll see, you find similar things also even some weightlifting studies or just even visualizing performing a good set is probably actually going to help you get there. And with that specifically then, I mean, obviously, I think it's fair to say that we're all capable of enduring a lot more than we currently are, period. And I understand I have two kids, six-month-old daughter and a five-year-old son, so I know exactly what you're talking about. And that kind of becomes your new normal though, right? Now, it just feels very normal to have a new kind of level of chaos in your life now that

you just learned to cope with. But how much do you think is in terms of what we feel is possible or what we feel we can do, how much is determined in the given moment versus maybe preconceived ideas of, I mean, I'm sure both of these things, like what do we think we're capable of when we just sit and abstract about it versus we are in the moment feeling the pain, you know what I mean? So, first of all, let me just say about what you're saying about getting used to a new normal, that people have the misconception that athletes, great athletes, maybe they feel less pain than the rest of us. And if anything, it's the opposite.

They feel more pain because there's lots of research on pain tolerance in athletes. What you find is their pain sensitivity is the same as everyone else's. So if you give a sort of series of escalating electric shocks, they're going to say, ouch, that hurts at the same point as everyone else. They feel it just like us, but they're willing to tolerate it for longer. You can say, okay, yeah, you can keep turning that up. And moreover, that's something that is trainable. It's not something they were born with. So, even if you track pain tolerance in athletes over the course of a competitive season, they'll have their lowest pain tolerance in the off season and their highest right before their key competition.

And the thing is, it's like the process of training is uncomfortable. And so day after day, they're developing psychological coping strategies that allow them to get to deal with discomfort, to be comfortable getting uncomfortable. What are some of those strategies? Yeah. So, I mean, a simple one, but one that's very effective is distraction. It's like, if you start to hurt, don't just focus on how much it hurts. Think about something else. But another powerful thing that I think happens naturally, and again, with exposure, is learning to reframe the meaning of pain and discomfort.

Again, in a running context, because that's where I'm from, if you take someone who's sedentary and they say, I want to run a 5K in six months, and they start running three times a week, after six months, for sure, their body will have changed. They'll have got a stronger heart and stronger muscles and all sorts of other things. But their mind will have changed because they'll have learned that that feeling when they first start running and they're breathing really heavily and their legs kind of hurt, that feels like you're about to die when you're not familiar with it. You think, oh my God, my heart is going to explode. I'm not going to get enough oxygen. My legs are going to fall off. After a while, you realize that you can make those inputs to your brain, they become more emotionally neutral. It's just information.

It's just your heart beating is just telling you, okay, you can't sustain this indefinitely. You have to make some adjustments, but it's not a big deal. You don't panic. And there's been some really interesting brain scanning studies at UC San Diego, looking at this sort of thing, understanding how elite performers, not just athletes, but elite military service people and from other elite performance areas are able to deal with discomfort and stressful situations. And part of it is they're aware of it. They're hyper aware of it, but it's information. It's not a panic signal. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when you're training, that you're training your body, but you're also training your mind to say, it's okay to be uncomfortable. This isn't a disaster.

Yeah. I came across that in, I believe the book was Peak Performance, Steve Magnus, and I forget the co-author, Brad something. Yeah. They spoke by the same thing where it was like one of the coping strategies was just kind of like a positive, a little self-talk monologue that these were endurance athletes that they would go through once it really started hurting. And they would just acknowledge that, yes, my legs are really starting to hurt right now, but that's okay. This pain is, I can take this. This is separate to me. This is something I'm just observing. That same kind of outside looking in, just looking at it as information. And it doesn't mean that anything is wrong.

This is what should be happening kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting. I was on the subway yesterday and I saw a woman carrying a Lululemon yoga bag and they have all these slogans on them. And it's like setting your goal activates your internal computer and stuff. And I was thinking, huh, that's kind of more or less what my book is saying. Is my book really just kind of a big extended slogan from a yoga bag? And it's like, you know, talking about motivational self-talk, it feels like you're kind of going all woo-woo. But what was fascinating to me is, again, that there's science that tests this stuff. So,

another example is motivational self-talk. That's basically trying to learn to identify the negative responses during a stressful situation. So if you're telling yourself, oh, this hurts, this is terrible. And like you were saying, you learn to reconceptualize that and replace those thoughts with, I'm ready for this, I've trained for this. And so they've done studies showing that this really enhances performance. And one of the ones that I found most intriguing was they put cyclists in a heat chamber. So it was a particular form of stress and had them pedal to exhaustion. And then they gave half the cyclists two weeks of motivational self-talk training. So just learning to say, instead of saying, oh my God, this is hot,

to say, I'm ready for this. It's okay. I can do this. So yes, they increased their time to exhaustion from heading with eight minutes to 11 minutes. But you might say, well, it's all a placebo effect. But they also were able to push their core temperature higher by about half a degree. And so this is an illustration of like, what's going on in your brain influences and affects how your brain interprets all these signals coming from the rest of your body, from your muscles, from your heart, from your lungs, so that you're able to dig deeper into your actual physiological reserve by changing the narrative in your brain. So again, it's like, yeah, it's the slogan on the yoga bag.

But if you're doing this kind of thing correctly and systematically, it has real and measurable effects. Right. You know, that reminds me of something, an article I read just recently, I think he was an ex SAS, like the British special forces soldier. I'm not sure if this was a study or if it, I think it was just kind of an experiment that was just kind of done for fun. And the guy wrote about it basically, but it was a, it was a buddy and his friend, who's the ex SAS guy. And they were hooked up to some monitoring, just monitor different. I think it was, it was just physiological, like heart rate and blood pressure and stuff. I think it was just physiological, like heart rate and blood pressure and stuff.

And then they were exposed to violently loud noises at random intervals and things that the guy, it kind of actually started to freak him out. His heart rate obviously was rising. He started to breathe faster and it was starting to feel a bit of anxiety. Whereas the SAS guy, actually the opposite happened. The more the shocking, it wasn't very specific, but it was like flashing lights and noises and things. The more it ramped up, the more the special forces soldier, basically the more his body calmed down. And how he kind of explained it is that's what he was taught to do. He was taught to slow down and observe everything that's going on. And he was taught to do. He was taught to slow down and observe everything that's going on. And he was able to just with his mind, completely reverse the normal physiological

response. And that again, that was, it wasn't something that it was just something he learned to do because he had to. And so when he's in a firefight, he doesn't panic. Well, that's, that's really fascinating because that lines up exactly with the, the UC San Diego studies that I was mentioning earlier, which involved Navy SEALs and things. What they did in those studies was they put people into an MRI machine, which is a very constrictive and claustrophobic kind of tube. And they had them breathing through this special mask and doing cognitive tests at the same time. So they're doing tests, they're in this tube having their brain's image. And periodically, what they would do is restrict the flow of oxygen through this

mask. So all of a sudden, it would get really hard to breathe, they wouldn't, there'd be some oxygen, so they could still breathe, but it would be hard, it would be uncomfortable. It's quite a stressful situation. And actually, some of the non elite performers, the controls, you know, panicked and had to be taken out of the brain scanner. But what they found is exactly what you said. So the normal pattern is, you're lying in this brain scanner, you're doing these brain tests, you're chilling out, then all of a sudden you can't breathe properly. So you panic, the monitoring area in your brain goes haywire, and your performance on the cognitive test goes down. This is what normal people do. It makes sense. For the elite performers, whether they were elite

adventure racers or Navy SEALs or Olympic athletes, what they found is the monitoring part of the brain initially was a little bit higher. They were always kind of keeping track of how their body was feeling, what the circumstances were, until the point where the stressful situation started where they can't breathe properly. And then the absolute opposite pattern happened. Instead of heightening their monitoring of the sort of how their body was feeling, they actually lowered it. They said, okay, we're fully aware of what's happening. We can't breathe quite as much. We need to focus more. So they kind of tuned out the extraneous noise and their performance on the cognitive tests actually got better when they were having their breathing restricted because they moved into

exactly as you're saying this, this stress response of like, okay, be calm, be absolutely focused. Whatever's happening right now means makes it important that my mind isn't wandering, which is the opposite of the rest of us. Yeah. And apparently breathing plays a big role in that. Like just slowing down your breaths, longer breaths, holding breaths. That's the thing that again, you come across if you just read about one of the immediate, that's like one of the first things that in the case of the SES guy, but I've also read about it with SEALs that they train to do is when shit hits the fan, they slow their breathing down because they know that if you start to hyperventilate, you're fucked. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, again, I hate to sound like I'm reading off the

yoga bag slogan, but in the UCSD studies, what they've started to try to do is give people specific tailored forms of mindfulness training, which seems to cultivate exactly that sort of brain activation where you're aware in the present moment, but not judgmentally. So you're aware of what's happening, but you're not freaking out about it. Right. And, you know, I think also a lot of that probably comes from, and this is just in general in the special forces world, right? So like when they're planning missions, for example, it's just you have the objective and you have the general, okay, this is, here's how we're going to get there. But then it's just contingency planning. If this happens, then we do this.

If that happens, we do this. And probably to the point where it almost is ad nauseum. But it's also then applied to things like this, I'm sure is approached in the same way. If this happens, then here's how I'm going to respond physically. And it starts there and then it gets ingrained to where they don't have to think about it anymore. Yeah. And you know, these skills, I'm sure they're useful in a firefight, but I suspect they're also pretty useful in day-to-day life. Also, I think of diving as well. You know, a lot of divers, well, I can't say a lot, but

there are a percentage of divers who die, they still have oxygen left in their tanks and it's because they panic and they think they're out of oxygen and they rip their regulators out of their mouths and that's it. Or other similar stories, if you ever read the book, Shadow Divers, I mean, some of that stuff is pretty freaky where just because of just panicking what they think is happening and they they're not even experiencing reality anymore they're experiencing uh their own kind of hyper sensationalized version of reality and that can be the difference of life or death yeah that's you know that's really interesting and at the opposite end of the spectrum, you have freedivers who, again, have to exert this sort of incredible mental control on their body in order to do what they do.

And I actually have a section in my book on the limitations of oxygen, whether you're freediving or holding your breath or going to the top of Mount Everest. But what really blew my mind and what I think was a really good illustration of this idea of the difference between perceived limits and actual limits is just the simple act of holding your breath. And, you know, it blew my mind that the record for breath holding without any tricks, without like breathing pure oxygen beforehand is 11 minutes and 35 seconds. And I looked into the physiology of this. I talked to some researchers who actually study extreme breath holding. And most of us, you know, if I hold my breath after like two minutes, that's it, I'm done. And what starts to happen is you get these contractions of your breathing muscles. Your body is trying to force you to breathe it. So, it feels like an absolute true physical limit. That's triggered by levels of carbon dioxide in your blood, not by oxygen. You're not out of

oxygen. You're just having your warning signals. And even the elite free drivers, they will hit that sort of what's called involuntary breathing movements within about four minutes. And they can just keep going through them. Yeah, exactly. So they're able to ignore that. That has to be scary. Super scary. What stands out to me, so I was talking to Brandon Hendrickson, who's a guy, he lives in Kansas of all places, but he's a free diver. And he just set the American record for breath holding, which is eight minutes and 35 seconds. And he was saying, yeah, the involuntary breathing movements, the struggle phase is what they call it. It started after about four minutes. So you say four minutes versus eight minutes.

Your perceived physical limits are there. Your actual physical limits, twice as far. Now, breath holding is different from other. It doesn't mean that you can lift twice as much weight as you think you can lift. But it's just an illustration of the fact that what feels like, like nothing feels like a more absolute limit than the fact that your breathing muscles are trying to force you to breathe. And yet if you learn to push past that, there's another like 50% available there. Yeah. That's, uh, it makes me think of, you know, the David Goggins story. No, I don't. So, so he's a, he's an ex Navy SEAL and it was the book. Um, uh, what's his name? Jesse Itzler. He has that Living with a Seal book that you may have seen. I think it's sold very well. The seal that he invited to come live with him and just beat the

shit out of him basically for 30 days is this guy, David Goggins. And Jesse met him in one of these super marathon. Basically, Jesse came and he was in a long distance endurance athlete. And he's some pretty extreme things just himself. He came with a couple of buddies to run. They would just relay race this super marathon. I don't remember the exact distance, but it was long enough to where somebody who was an accomplished ultra endurance athlete needed a couple of his friends to get through it. you know, needed a couple of his friends to get through it. And the guy, David, did it by himself. So Jesse came with his friends. He came with masseuses. He came with like, you know, food. They had a whole thing set up, which I understand. I mean, the distance was absurd. And so Jesse saw this guy, David, come with like a bottle of water, some almonds, and a folding chair and ran the entire thing. And the dude, I mean, by the end he had like kidney damage, you know, multiple broken bones in his feet, but he finished it. And so Jesse, that's, that was how that book, that was how that started. He met, he saw this guy

do this and he was like, there's no fucking way. What am I actually witnessing? This is impossible in the end, basically. So this guy, David is just a hardcore dude, basically. Who's just like, he basically says that he just is very good at taking pain. And so he's like, I can just, I can, I think I can just take a lot more pain than most people. And I just don't care. I just keep going. And yeah. And this sort of raises one of the questions that always comes up when you start talking about pushing through your limits is like, is there a point where it becomes dangerous or counterproductive? He takes it to that point. That's his thing though. You know what I mean? But he says, he's like, look, here's the lesson you can learn from me. Whenever you think that you

have given everything that you can give, whether it's in a workout or whether it's in your work or whether it's in anything, you're maybe about 40% to your true limit. Yeah, that's exactly it. And maybe you don't want to go to a hundred percent, but maybe you can go to 45. You'll be pretty happy with that. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode

and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Yeah. So let's take this then to what are some practical takeaways in just in terms of

everyday life. Now, in terms of exercise, I think it's kind of baked into any good exercise program, right? That's what progression is. So if we're talking weightlifting, progressive overload, yes, you need to be getting stronger over time. There are obviously some other variables, but as a natural weightlifter, if you want to get to the closest that you can realistically get to your genetic potential for muscular strength and size, you're going to have to just continually get stronger and stronger. And the same concept, of course, applies to endurance exercise. You have to keep pushing yourself. But let's just talk about things that relating it more to, let's say, people that they have many different goals and ambitions and things that they would like to do in various, it could be

areas of life, it could be health stuff, it could be work stuff, family stuff, friend stuff. I'm sure there were some things that you personally took away from the research that you did for this book. Because again, these things are not just, it's not just about physiology, it's about the psychology as well. Yeah. So, let me give you two answers to that. Let me give you the answer of what I'm not going to do and what I am going to do. Because when we start talking about the brain's role in limits, there's a lot of effort now going into trying to directly manipulate that. And so even- Like through drugs or electrical stimulation or- Electrical stimulation is, yeah, drugs for sure.

But electrical stimulation is, I think it's going to be something that sports have to wrestle with really soon because there are athletes at the Olympics right now on the American team who are using electrical brain stimulation to try and unlock some of that potential if it's in their body to sort of release the reserves. Sure. Well, can you tell us about that? That's something I have not read about at all. I've just heard about it. Yeah. So, it's, you know, I gave it a brief try, actually. I'm bald and apparently my scalp is really tough. You know, the Canadian winters must be harsh. And so, we had a lot of trouble making proper electrical contact. That was

actually really uncomfortable for me. And I borderline like electro electro shock therapy well yeah exactly like first of all it wouldn't make contact so i had to jam these electrodes into my scalp which hurt and then if i when i turned on the current it was like burning which is not supposed to happen you know so if i sound a little dopey it's probably because i lost some brain cells there but uh no seriously like there's the research is kind research has been all over the map and it's been overhyped and all this stuff. But slowly, gradually, I think there's building evidence that you can take a couple of electrodes and a battery, run current through your brain for 10 to 20 minutes, and then for about an hour afterwards, you'll have these effects, which depending on where you put

the electrodes, one of the effects you can get is it reduces your perception of effort for a given physical task. And if it feels easier, you can do it for longer or do it a little harder. And so that can increase your performance. And there's a couple of guys on the US Nordic combined team, I know who have been doing that for months. And there's some triathletes who are at the Ironman World Championships in Kona who've been using electric brain stimulation. And there's a couple of things here. One is like, what is sport? What does it mean? What do you want to get out of it? Is this where we want high school athletes to be going? So I have some misgivings about the kind of just the ethics and the desirability of going to electric brain stimulation. Although I totally understand the opposite argument of, hey, if the potential is there, why not use it? I also have some safety concerns of when my kids get to be 16 years old, I don't want them to be like just throw your body away. I mean, in terms, because we can take a documentary like Icarus, which was an interesting documentary. Although ironically, I actually do agree with a little bit of Putin's criticism is that it was kind of a political hit system they put together, but everybody is doing

it. Why do you think that they didn't win every gold medal in everything? Why do you think people from America were able to beat their athletes who were not just on drugs in entire off season, but were drugging every single day of every single competition? Oh, but they were still losing. And sometimes by like large margins, oh, I wonder why that is. Yeah, sure. They'd be beaten by Nat. Anybody that knows anything about what these drugs can do realizes that they make such a big difference that being a truly natural athlete, you have absolutely no chance against an equally skilled natural athlete, an equally conditioned natural athlete who also has a bunch of drugs. So if you have people though, of course, if they're willing to take any drug in any amount

of any drug that it takes to do what they need to do, then fuck it. Yeah. Strap me up. Let's go. Let's see what happens. If it screws up my brain, I guess that's my problem later. Yeah. I mean, this gets down to a whole nother conversation, but I understand what you're saying. No, I know. We don't have to go down that road. I'm just like, I understand if you're already like, whatever, I'm already putting all kinds of crazy shit in my body. I'm already doing everything that I possibly can do. And if you could take this pill you'd win the olympic medal but you'd die five years later i mean i think that study's been a little exaggerated but the point is for sure motivated athletes i actually hadn't heard of that that's funny yeah it's it's kind of a classic it's hard to verify it's kind of become an urban legend but it's like you hear that like 60 of them were like yeah sign me up or whatever um but but i guess it's possible it sounds a bit high but i i wouldn't 20 i'd believe it absolutely

i'd be like oh yeah that makes sense and realistically like you know it's that's such a hypothetical question that they probably it's easy to say that you know if they actually had the pill and it's different exactly it's like those it's like those would you rathers that you play with your friends yeah it's one thing to say it's another thing to live it yeah exactly but still i mean i can say look i was I was a very competitive distance runner starting in high school. And if that was legal and that's what my perception was that other people were doing, I would start doing it. So, it's hard to draw a line between let the crazy pros do what they're going to do. They're making millions and they don't care without knowing that it's also going to bleed down to every other level. Yeah, that's true. Well, what do you think

would happen? I know I want to hypothetical, but imagine, let's take a sport like football, right? Like professional, you know, American football. And imagine if you took drugs out of football, people would be like, what is wrong with all? Like, why is everybody hurt? Why is everybody so slow? Why like this sucks?

What happened to football? And so if they understood it'd be, I think a lot of people that just they just watch it for you know see super freak athletes do super freak things if they understood they'd go oh so no no we should be giving them more drugs what else what else can we do here can we like bionically alter them somehow i think i want more entertainment out of this yeah and you know what we're going to see bionic alterations before too long. But it is interesting.

It's probably true. You know, in Canada, hockey's the sport. And there's always a debate every time the Olympics come around. People watch the women's game and they're like, hey, this game's really good. It's like there's passing and there's much more subtle strategic play because it's not quite as rocket-fueled as the men's pro game has become. And so our expectations of what's normal and the way the game should go has definitely been skewed by factors, including drugs. And I think you're right that as far as the audience is

concerned, I think people vote with their feet and their tickets. And the truth is for whatever reason in the pro sports, no one gives a damn. Someone gets popped for drugs, it doesn't hurt their reputation at all. So that's a bit of a sad thing. I mean, I don't watch sports, so maybe that's why I'm so emotionally divested from it. But when I hear that, I'm just like, yes, so what? That's unlucky because 80% of his teammates are doing the exact same thing. 80% of everybody he competes against is doing the same thing. And if he weren't, he may not even be able to keep his job, basically.

I mean, look, yeah, again, this is a big debate, but so I competed at the world championships as a runner. One year I came at the world cross country championships. I came, I think it was 108th, which is not very good. It did not win me a lot of money. The guy who came 107th, one spot in front of me, he was from Ireland. And the next year he made a huge breakthrough. He became the Irish record holder. He went to the Olympics. And two years later, he got popped for drugs. And I have friends who were better than me

who did make the Olympics, who I'm virtually positive were clean. So I know there's a cost to this stuff. But you know, look, that's my sob story. I derailed you back to the... So to answer your actual question. So all that stuff is the kind of stuff that i'm ambivalent about like stuff like brain stimulation that's look there are ways of doing it and people are going to pursue it and it's worth knowing about it what i took away from it most of all is going back to a little bit what we were talking about earlier like if i had a time machine and could go back and tell my 20 year old self give some advice on getting the most of my of myself, the very first thing I would recommend is digging into motivational self-talk and not just treating it as a sort of thing to be aware of, but actually doing it as something that you consciously practice because it has to become second nature. Identify the negative thoughts that you experience when you're in a stressful situation.

And you come up with alternatives and you practice using them so that when you're in a stressful situation, it's second nature. This is not just about workouts. It's not just about competition. It's about giving a presentation at work. It's about social situations. And how might that look? How might that dialogue actually go? Because I think anybody listening can come up easily with some negative

dialogue, like take a sales presentation, and then the mind starts racing all the ways it could go wrong. And what if I mess this up? And then what, then when, then what? But how might that go to turn that around into something more positive? Yeah. So the first thing you need to do is actually tune into that dialogue. You need to become aware. You need to make a list. So be in a stressful situation, make a list, keep in mind the things that went through your head, and as soon as you're done, sit down and write them down. Some of them might be telling you something. Something might be telling you that, you know, why didn't I prepare more? Well, maybe you actually, maybe part of your negative self-talk is because you actually didn't start preparing for this presentation until last

night. And so, that's something you can fix, not in your head, but by making sure you're taking care of the things you can take care of, like being sufficiently prepared. Yeah, where in that sense, it's like rational. Like, yeah, you probably should feel that way because you didn't prepare. It's not that complicated. You can't fix that in your head by just subduing that thought. If it's true that you're unready, then be ready next time. But the other things that are probably not rational. And you need to think of how you can reframe that as if you're telling yourself, oh, I'm so dumb. Or I'm totally unprepared for this.

Is that true? Are there really like 10 other people in the office who are better prepared for this than you are? And if not, figure out what you can tell yourself that's true. That's the other thing. You can't just in your head, tell yourself that you're eight feet tall and you're going to overcome any obstacle. You're the best salesperson that ever lived ever. I agree. I don't find that kind of stuff all that helpful. Yeah. Unless you believe it. Hey, if you believe it, then more power to you. But if you don't really feel like... And if I would say, if you can't really put up at least yourself, make a convincing, maybe I'd say evidence-based argument that you

are indeed the best salesperson ever, it's probably not going to be that helpful to say that you are. Exactly. I think you need to find things that you can tell yourself that are going to be true, like that you've prepared for this. You're ready for this. There's no one in this office who knows this topic better than you are. You have run this time in practice, so you know you can run it in this race. You have beaten this guy. Don't try and pull the wool over your eyes, but just be positive and make sure you're not torpedoing yourself. It's not about convincing yourself you're the all-time great. It's about making sure you live up to your potential rather than that you sort of exceed it by 100% or whatever. Yeah. And in the case of if you are Tiger Woods in 2004, then you just

could say, I'm Tiger Woods and I win. And that's pretty much it. Yeah. Look in the mirror, baby. It's all going to happen. That's right. That's why I'm going to win because I'm me. That's right. It's nice if you can have that, if that turns out to be true for you. But for most of us, yeah, it's just, so first of all, like you said, like I was saying, identify some realistic, but encouraging thoughts and then start using them in whether it's, you know, if it's in a sports context, you start using them in practice. In other contexts, just try a little bit using them and consciously using them in low pressure situations. You know, and it sounds stupid, like, so I'm going to have this mantra or something like that. It's

back to the, you know, yoga bag slogans. But in stressful situations, your focus narrows and you're not going to have 50 thoughts in your head. You're going to have just a couple. And so if you have a very simple thought that's waiting there to be the thing that you can focus on, it'll help you crowd out the other negative thoughts because you can only have so many thoughts when your focus is narrowed. Yeah, makes sense. What do you think about training yourself? This is actually, this is something that just kind of resonates with me personally and something that I just personally believe in. And it's just served me well, I guess, in my career, I guess I could say, of being willing to do things that other people are

unwilling to do, right? Being willing to do things that I don't particularly enjoy, but I have a goal and I have a purpose that I'm working toward. And so, therefore, even going back to the just physical pain kind of point of being able to separate from it. And so, if we apply that, let's say to work where it takes time, it takes effort, it takes energy. And especially if you're doing things that you don't particularly enjoy, you do it enough though, and then you become emotionally neutral about it. And I think that that's a skill that can be learned as well. And I think that there are probably even little exercises that people could do to just be more willing to experience pain, be more willing to be uncomfortable. And that could mean not just physically, but also psychologically, because obviously the physiology and the psychology are connected. Do you think that

you can condition yourself to experience more physical pain and discomfort, and that will just naturally spill over to the psychology or at least the psychological side? You know what I mean? Yeah, I think there's no doubt about that. There was a study published last year where they compared two different cycling training programs, which were designed to produce exactly the same physiological results. They had the same increase in VO2 max and lactate threshold and so on. But one was a sort of mostly steady, moderate-paced cycling, and one was short, high-intensity training, which was much more uncomfortable for brief periods. And even though the physiological changes were the same,

the group that did the high intensity training, the uncomfortable training, they had better improvement in performance and better improvement in pain tolerance in other areas. So they did pain tolerance by squeezing a tourniquet around their arm and making them clench and unclench their fist until they couldn't take it anymore. So nothing to do with cycling. So it's a transferable increase in ability to tolerate discomfort. And the secret was just being uncomfortable. So doing it a little bit at a time, no one workout was going to break them. You don't need to make yourself miserable, but just always being conscious of opportunities to step outside of your comfort zone and knowing that that's going to have long-term effects.

And the other thing I would say is that that is a really powerful thing to use in terms of self-talk and internal monologue. You can't make yourself eight feet tall. One thing you really can control is how hard you worked. And in a running context, one of the sort of classic things people use is like, I'm the one who was out running when it was minus 20. I'm the one who was running when it was raining and just above freezing. I'm the one who did all this. Therefore, I'm ready for this. And so, in a work context, the same thing applies. If you're like, I'm the one who read the whole report down to the footnotes. I'm the one who did this. I've done all these things that most people aren't willing to do. So, I know that I am ready for this opportunity that's now coming up. Yeah. I think I wrote an article recently on cold showering,

right? Because it's something I've been doing for, I don't know, a year or so now, a little bit over a year. And the long story short is a lot of those purported health benefits seem to be kind of just fake news, basically. My takeaway based on the research that I did is, okay, if you're going to be like a winter swimming person, if you're going to go out in the winter and expose yourself to extreme cold for hours on end, and you're going to do that regularly, yeah, there actually probably are some health benefits. You're going to have lower levels of inflammation in your body. It does appear like you're going to

have a stronger immune system. And these things make sense. You're going to have a hardier body. Now, does three minutes of cold water per day? Wishful thinking, wishful thinking, right? But the reason why I actually stuck with it is, you know, I accepted that I'm probably never going to see a health benefit from it whatsoever. Although I didn't get sick this winter, but that's not why I did a better job. Actually, ironically, I think the reason why is because last winter I got hit by the flu and it didn't destroy me, but it got me pretty good. And I got sick a couple of times and it was my first cold winter. I moved from Florida to Virginia. You just have more viruses around obviously when

it's cold. And then my son also started going to school. So that's probably, I just got hit by, you know, the germ factory. And this winter, you know, I've probably, I'm assuming that geographically you have certain viruses that just tend to kind of circulate around. So I've probably built some immunity and also did a good job, did a much better job being conscious of my hands, keeping washing my hands more. Anyways, I could do, oh, well, it must have been the cold showers right now. Probably not. But actually, definitely not.

But the reason why I stuck with the cold showers is because it's just kind of uncomfortable. And I figured like, yeah, I think I'm pretty good in this regard. Ultimately, I don't know if I would say I'm a very tough person. I haven't experienced anything that I think is good enough evidence for me. If I could go make it through hell week, I would say I'm a tough person. Then I would be able to accept it. I haven't experienced anything that I feel really warrants me saying that I'm a tough person.

However, it's something that I can always get better at. And I think I'm pretty good at just doing things for a reason and not really caring about how they make me feel. But that's why I stuck with cold showers. They kind of suck, even though now I'm just used to them. Still, when the water... I'm in Virginia again, and it's cold. And it's ice water. I mean, this water, it kind of stings actually when it first hits you. And after a couple minutes, I don't even feel temperature anymore. My skin is kind of numb at that point. I like it though as just a reminder of to just do things that are uncomfortable and just be comfortable doing things that are

uncomfortable. So I've kind of made the showers a little bit longer, although I found that doesn't really work anymore because now after a minute or so, I don't really feel the water temperature anymore. So anyways, I'm just bringing that up for random anecdote and for anybody listening. I think there's validity in it. I think that again, if you can just make yourself do that every day. And in my case, I never really got, I never really shiver, which is kind of strange. So I don't think it necessarily, I don't have the same physiological response as some people, because there's a guy in the office who tried it and he actually had to stop because, I mean, he was hyperventilating and he was shivering uncontrolled, but he just couldn't do it. I don't know why. I don't know what that is. But anyways, I think it's a stupid little exercise

that you can go, hey, if I can force myself to go get in freezing cold water first thing in the morning every day, I can make a sales presentation. I can put in a little bit of extra time on my project or I can relate to anything. I can do this blind date tonight and just increase again, I guess your willingness to just be uncomfortable and not really have an emotional response to it one way or another and just be like, oh, is that what I have to do? Then yeah, who cares? I'll just do it. I totally agree with what you're saying, both the fact that the physiology is probably negligible, but the mental benefits are real. And I think it's also, it can be a transformation of your self-identity that I'm the kind of guy who can do this stuff. It just bleeds into other areas of life that it's not that taking a cold

shower is the same as doing other uncomfortable things, but you become a person who's like, oh yeah, I'm the kind of guy who does this or who's willing to accept pain. And it's a super powerful form of self-identity, I think. Totally. And I think that that in particular is very important because I think a lot of what we do, a lot of what we think comes from a deeper place of that self-identity. And I think that, and I've actually written about this, and there's a bit of research on this, that it seems to be the only reliable way to change the subjective elements, to change our thoughts, our attitudes, our feelings, is to change our behaviors. It doesn't seem to work the other way around. It's very hard to just try to sit and think the right thoughts and hope that you'll naturally want to do the right actions. That seems to

not work at all, actually. Whereas the reverse works very well. And that has been proven in quite a few studies that if you can just force yourself to do the right actions, how you feel about it, the subjective will naturally conform to it just because that's how we work. I mean, you have a cognitive dissonance there in a positive way where now you're doing something that doesn't conform to your sense of self-identity. If you just keep doing it, you will change your self-identity to match what you're doing. I think that's a great point. And it's also a good reminder that for all that I'm talking about motivational self-talk, this shouldn't be this sort of great philosophical discussion where you spend six months thinking about how you're going to change your life

at a certain point. Just start being the person you want to be and doing the things you want to do. And to the extent you fall short, then you work on fixing it. But the first thing to do is just start. If you want to start running, get out the door and take the first step and your mind will follow, as you say, rather than trying to wait until you're in that perfect headspace. Yeah. And what are your thoughts on anticipating the pain and just saying, yeah, yeah, it's going to hurt. Yeah, it might hurt a lot. And I'm expecting that. I'm not, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think it's important. I think it's a balance. I think you definitely have to be

realistic and just be ready for it. And I'm a funny mix of optimist and pessimist. My defense mechanism is I always think to myself, this is going to be terrible. This is going to be horrible. It's going to hurt so much. And then usually it's not as bad as I expect. Yeah, right. I mean, that's like going to the movies with low expectations. That's the secret.

I think it's the secret to life. But I also found that when I was a competitive runner, it sometimes got a little out of control before a big race where I knew it was really going to hurt. My expectations of pain would get ramped up so much that I would get debilitatingly nervous. So I think you want to do that in moderation. Expect discomfort, but don't sort of fixate on how terrible everything's going to be. Otherwise, things can get a little gloomy. Yeah, makes sense. Any other practical takeaways that you want to share? Based on what you're saying, by the way, just, I mean, like, I like the idea of training to hold your breath is probably also a similar type of exercise that

you could do just because it sucks. And if you get better at it and you're like, oh, I can do sucky things and just get through it. I agree. And there's, there's so many ways you can challenge yourself in, in, in different ways in life where I finished the book, you know, the kind of message I came away or I was going away with is actually similar to what you were just saying, is that there are all these ways of sort of tweaking the brain, and I think they're important. But I think, like you were saying, action is the first place to start. So, from a physical perspective, it's like, just get out there and do it, and don't overthink things, and then figure out how you can get better. But don't wait for the perfect mindset to arrive.

So, the sort of mantra that I always follow is most people overestimate what they're going to be able to accomplish in the short term and they underestimate what they're going to be able to accomplish in the long term. And so, it's easy to get disappointed when you're like, I want to accomplish X and you're all fired up. It's the classic sort of New Year's resolution thing. And after a few months, you're not really appreciably closer to where you want it to be and you get discouraged. And well, then of course, you don't get it. Once you're discouraged, you sort of, you're never going to get there. Setting long term enough goals and understanding that just keep plugging away inch by inch, both in your physical capacity, but also in your mental

capacity, you're going to be getting stronger and tougher as time goes on. But just don't expect it to be a miracle. Don't look for the electric brain stimulation where you're going to press a button and it's going to be there. Cause even if it works, it's actually, you know what, like it's, it's not satisfying, you know, it's like, do it yourself, build the strength yourself rather than trying to just press a button. Right. It's that compounding kind of get 1% better every day type of approach. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And on the point of goal setting, you know, I think there's something to be said for it's all, I think it's great to think big and have big goals, but I think it's a mistake to think big, have big goals, and then not stop to make an actual plan on, okay, what really needs to happen? And when am I going to be doing this?

Where am I going to be doing this? What's the system that I'm going to use to get there? And then a step further is what is that going to require in terms of sacrifice? Like, what am I going to have to, how much pain am I going to have to take? What types of pain am I going to have to take? Am I willing to do that? I mean, I think there's nothing wrong. I'd rather myself even, and I've done this actually. I've looked at certain, coming back to work things, projects where I'm like, ooh, that'd be cool to do this.

But then if I really look at, okay, here's my life right now, I realistically probably can't fit much more work in at all, actually. On average, I'm maybe around 60-ish hours a week. I have two kids. I have a family. There's only so much I can do. And I slow down and go, what would it take to do that? Okay. So it'd probably take six months of never not seeing my family at all. Am I willing to do that? I'm not willing to. That's a pain I'm not willing to experience. Not because I'm afraid of it, but because I think it actually would be a bad decision. I think it would be stupid. It just wouldn't make sense. If I had to do that to continue putting food on the table or something, yes, I'd do it. But if it's just a matter of like, hey, this would be personally gratifying if I did this project and then my wife wants to leave me,

maybe not worth it. So anyways, that's just something that I think is worth mentioning because take New Year's resolutions. Hey, I'm going to lose 30 pounds in my first month. Okay. Are you willing to eat 500 calories a day and do two hours of exercise a day? Then that's what it's going to take. Are you willing to do that? You're not willing to do that? Then that's a bad goal. Don't set that goal. There's nothing wrong with accepting a smaller goal that comes with less suffering. Yeah. I think it's interesting you said that. And I think it's kind of clear that we're both at similar life stages with kids and family. Because it's like of course i want to be immortal and accomplish a billion things and

and you know have massive statues built of me and yada yada yada but it's like yeah you start to reevaluate and say okay like you said that this would be an amazing work thing to pursue but wouldn't i rather have a couple weeks of vacation each year wouldn't't I rather go on a canoe trip with my buddies or achieve this goal? And it's like, I'm all for goal-oriented and I'm extremely goal-oriented, but I'm conscious these days of, like you said, trying to set good goals, not just trying to be the greatest possible, but actually trying to live a good life and find balance. So, yeah, that's an important point and something that shouldn't get lost in the sort of, you know, the frenzy to always get better and work harder.

Yeah. Did you, have you seen any of that Facebook documentary at Tom versus time? No, I haven't. So I watched one episode of it and it's about Tom Brady and he said something that is right along these lines that just resonated with me. And he was just talking about his career and that he said he's basically, he's given up everything for the last 18 years. Football has been his life for the last 18 years. And he said that if you want to compete with me, then you'd better be willing to give up your life because that's what I'm doing.

And it kind of comes down to that. Yeah, it's nice to say that you want to be the best in the world, but are you willing to give up your entire life? Because that's what it takes because you're up against people who every waking minute of every day is spent pursuing that goal. And there literally is nothing else in life but that. If you're willing to do that, maybe, and if you're young enough and you have all the right conditions, maybe, maybe that you can get to that level.

If you're not willing to do that, don't even bother trying. Yeah. And of course, we all face versions of that dilemma. And it's just a question of finding the right balance for you. And of course, I think when you're younger, making your way in life, I certainly was a much more fire-breathing go-getter when I was younger. And it's not that I can't do that anymore or that I'm physically incapable. I'm just conscious now of, you don't get two chances to bring your kids up and to make your marriage work and things like that and to get out and see the world. So yeah, balance is a good thing. I agree. Okay. So the book is Endure. And of course you can find it wherever you buy books, bookstores, find it online. Anything else that you want to share, Alex, like where can people find your other work and like, what's your online hub?

Best place to find me is probably on Twitter. My handle is at Sweat Science. I have a website, alexhutchinson.net too. And Facebook is Sweat Science 1. But yeah, Twitter is where anytime I have a new article, like I write for Outside Magazine and a few other places, I'll post it there. And that's where the discussion happens and things like that. So that's probably the place to go. Awesome. Well, this was great. This was a great interview.

Great discussion. Thanks again for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don't mind doing me a

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be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the

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