Dr. Andy Galpin: How to Build Physical Endurance & Lose Fat

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series,

00:00:02.440 | where I and an expert guest discuss science

00:00:05.120 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:07.320 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:09.600 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.360 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.200 | Today's episode is the third in the sixth episode series

00:00:17.560 | on fitness, exercise, and performance.

00:00:20.060 | Today's episode is all about endurance and fat loss.

00:00:23.120 | That is the specific protocols required

00:00:25.360 | to achieve the four different kinds of endurance

00:00:27.720 | and how to maximize fat loss.

00:00:30.380 | Dr. Andy Galpin, great to be back.

00:00:32.360 | Today, we're going to talk about endurance,

00:00:35.160 | and I'm very interested in this conversation

00:00:37.020 | because I, like many other people,

00:00:39.680 | strive to get a certain amount

00:00:41.120 | of cardiovascular work in each week,

00:00:43.680 | maybe a long-ish jog, maybe a swim, ride the bike, et cetera.

00:00:49.760 | But when I think about the word endurance,

00:00:52.360 | the idea that almost immediately comes to mind

00:00:54.480 | is about doing something for a long period of time,

00:00:57.240 | repeatedly, but I have a feeling

00:00:59.080 | that there are other ways to trigger this adaptation

00:01:01.960 | that we call the endurance adaptation.

00:01:04.200 | I'm excited to learn about that.

00:01:05.360 | I'm also excited to learn about the fuel systems

00:01:08.600 | in the body that allow for endurance

00:01:11.360 | and other modes of repeated activity.

00:01:13.760 | So in order to kick things off,

00:01:15.620 | I'd love for you to frame the conversation

00:01:17.880 | by telling us what is endurance,

00:01:20.800 | and are there indeed a large variety of ways

00:01:23.960 | to induce what we call this endurance adaptation?

00:01:27.100 | - Sure, the way I want to start actually here

00:01:29.880 | is calling back to some of the things

00:01:31.600 | we talked about in our previous conversations,

00:01:33.320 | which are really, people exercise for three reasons.

00:01:36.820 | Number one, you want to feel better.

00:01:39.140 | Number two, you want to look a certain way.

00:01:41.240 | And then number three, you want to be able

00:01:42.200 | to do that for a long time, right?

00:01:43.740 | So you need, the way that we say it in sports

00:01:45.840 | is look good, feel good, play good, right?

00:01:47.760 | So I want some sort of functionality

00:01:49.320 | to be able to perform a certain way,

00:01:50.700 | whatever that is, for you.

00:01:52.360 | You want to be able to look a certain way,

00:01:53.620 | that whatever that matters for you,

00:01:54.460 | and then you want to be able to do that for a long time.

00:01:56.720 | So when it comes to endurance,

00:01:57.840 | we have a bunch of misnomers here,

00:01:59.160 | which is the same thing with the strength training

00:02:01.600 | or resistance exercise side,

00:02:02.980 | where we wanted to dispel this myth that,

00:02:05.640 | I lift weights only because I want to gain muscle

00:02:08.440 | or play a sport.

00:02:09.880 | And I want to do cardio because I want to either lose fat

00:02:13.340 | or for long health's sake.

00:02:15.400 | And just like we smashed that myth

00:02:17.080 | from the strength training side,

00:02:18.040 | I want to smash it from the endurance training side.

00:02:20.200 | There are so many other reasons

00:02:22.600 | that you want to perform endurance training.

00:02:25.620 | Regardless of your goal, right?

00:02:27.180 | Whether it is longevity, whether it is performance,

00:02:29.420 | or whether it is aesthetics.

00:02:30.520 | And so I want to cover all those reasons,

00:02:33.980 | exactly what to do, protocols of course,

00:02:36.700 | and why those things are working that way.

00:02:39.280 | In general though, the quick answer is,

00:02:42.440 | really endurance comes down to two independent factors.

00:02:45.520 | Factor number one is fatigue management,

00:02:48.720 | and then factor number two is fueling.

00:02:51.780 | And that's all it really comes down to.

00:02:53.320 | So all the different types of training

00:02:55.600 | are going to reach a limitation,

00:02:57.020 | which are either again,

00:02:58.440 | your ability to deal with some sort of fatigue,

00:03:01.580 | and that's generally a fatigue signal.

00:03:03.280 | The other one is managing some sort of restriction

00:03:06.360 | of energy input.

00:03:07.320 | And a lot of, the spoiler here is,

00:03:09.660 | a lot of the times people think it's a fueling issue

00:03:11.840 | and really it's a fatigue management issue, or the opposite.

00:03:15.840 | And to have a complete health spectrum,

00:03:19.160 | regardless of whether you're a high performance athlete

00:03:21.220 | like I typically deal with, or general public,

00:03:23.920 | you need to be able to do both.

00:03:25.680 | Manage fatigue, as well as understand fuel storage.

00:03:28.320 | So that's really what we're going to get into today.

00:03:30.720 | - Fantastic, I can't wait.

00:03:32.340 | Before we dive in, I'm going to ask you

00:03:34.920 | what I often ask people who are expert

00:03:37.080 | in their respective fields, which is,

00:03:39.920 | is there any non-obvious tool,

00:03:44.360 | or mechanism, or tool and mechanism

00:03:47.640 | that can allow people to access better endurance?

00:03:51.280 | You know, when I think about training for endurance,

00:03:52.760 | again, I think about trying to run longer and longer

00:03:55.920 | each week, or swim further and further, and so on.

00:03:59.700 | But I do wonder whether or not there are other forms

00:04:02.540 | of training that can amplify the endurance adaptation

00:04:07.540 | that I or most people perhaps don't think of as endurance.

00:04:11.780 | - Sure, the way I want to answer this is,

00:04:13.760 | if we look back and think about how we've answered

00:04:17.000 | that question with power and strength, and force production,

00:04:20.760 | it is really about how much can you produce maximally once.

00:04:25.760 | What you're asking now is, how can I repeat

00:04:28.560 | that same quality of performance?

00:04:30.680 | If that's the case, endurance really comes down

00:04:34.640 | to your ability to maintain proper mechanics.

00:04:38.300 | That's going to, like the biggest way we can increase

00:04:41.480 | your endurance exponentially, very quickly, is mechanical.

00:04:45.660 | And this is starting with breathing.

00:04:47.580 | And so we need to be breathing properly,

00:04:49.160 | we need to have proper posture and positions,

00:04:51.200 | and then we need to be moving well.

00:04:52.760 | Efficiency is going to trump force, always, for endurance.

00:04:57.760 | The other side of the equation is not that.

00:05:01.040 | You can have a little bit of leaks in your mechanics

00:05:03.680 | and still squat well or jump high and be fine,

00:05:06.800 | because you don't have to suffer

00:05:08.040 | those consequences repeatedly, right?

00:05:10.240 | That's going to drain you over time.

00:05:11.780 | So the quickest way to improve endurance

00:05:13.920 | is to improve mechanics.

00:05:15.800 | And the mechanical thing I would go after first

00:05:17.560 | is your breathing techniques, your pattern,

00:05:19.200 | your entire approach, as well as your posture.

00:05:22.080 | And then from there, the third one

00:05:23.320 | would be your movement technique.

00:05:25.040 | - Is it possible to describe the best way to breathe

00:05:27.960 | when doing endurance training,

00:05:29.280 | or is it far more complex than that?

00:05:30.720 | And if it is far more complex than that,

00:05:32.200 | then certainly we can get into it during today's episode.

00:05:35.000 | - Yeah, it is, both of those.

00:05:36.420 | I will give you a quick answer though.

00:05:37.800 | A lot of the times you can kind of hit the cheat code,

00:05:41.260 | which is nasal breathing.

00:05:42.640 | There's plenty of times when you don't want a nasal breathe,

00:05:44.960 | you don't need to nasal breathe.

00:05:46.300 | But just, again, is that like a one tool

00:05:48.840 | that is a pretty general answer?

00:05:51.540 | If you can do that, a lot of the times

00:05:53.880 | that will fix breathing mechanics, just by default.

00:05:56.360 | And we can maybe talk about why that is later,

00:05:58.180 | but that would be my sort of one sentence bullet point

00:06:00.960 | answer immediately of how to get in the right position.

00:06:03.660 | So the second one would be simply looking at your posture.

00:06:07.380 | So whether you're on a bike or you're doing a lift

00:06:10.400 | or you're running, if you're literally hunched over

00:06:13.520 | and your ribs are touching your femur

00:06:15.800 | or getting closer and closer,

00:06:17.100 | like tends to happen on a bike or an air assault thing

00:06:20.720 | for somebody I've seen recently.

00:06:22.660 | - This morning, I was on the assault bike doing a sprint

00:06:26.460 | and I asked Andy, Dr. Galpin, to critique my form

00:06:31.120 | and anything else he wanted to critique

00:06:33.060 | so that I could improve.

00:06:34.380 | And he did comment on my rather C-shaped posture,

00:06:37.820 | encouraged me to be more upright,

00:06:39.680 | which I should probably do now as well.

00:06:41.520 | And he also cued me to the fact

00:06:43.220 | that during a one minute sprint,

00:06:44.700 | there is something that is quote unquote magic

00:06:46.980 | that happens right about the 40 second mark.

00:06:49.180 | And I use that as a milestone to look for.

00:06:53.380 | And indeed something does happen at the 40 seconds

00:06:56.340 | into a one minute sprint where all of a sudden

00:06:58.720 | it does seem to get much easier

00:07:01.420 | for reasons I don't understand.

00:07:02.460 | Maybe you can tell me that,

00:07:03.580 | but it certainly had nothing to do with my posture.

00:07:05.160 | My posture needs improvement.

00:07:06.340 | Thank you.

00:07:07.180 | - Yeah, so breathing mechanics and breathing strategies.

00:07:11.180 | People tend to be over-breathing early on.

00:07:14.340 | And this is gonna lead to problems later.

00:07:16.260 | So having a more strategic breathing pattern

00:07:20.020 | and approach is, again, a very quick solution.

00:07:22.860 | - I know that we're going to dive very deep

00:07:24.700 | into the mechanisms of energy and metabolism

00:07:28.740 | and endurance today.

00:07:30.340 | But as long as we're having a discussion

00:07:32.620 | about these brief sort of tidbits

00:07:35.260 | of how to improve endurance,

00:07:37.520 | are there any other ways to improve endurance

00:07:39.900 | that are of relatively short time investment,

00:07:43.180 | even if they require a lot of energy?

00:07:46.740 | - Sure.

00:07:47.580 | The classic paradigm you're gonna find here

00:07:49.540 | is steady state long duration,

00:07:52.660 | posed up against what a lot of folks

00:07:54.220 | will now call higher intensity,

00:07:56.220 | interval training specifically.

00:07:57.820 | And there's a lot of misconceptions here.

00:08:00.060 | The quick answer is you need to be doing both.

00:08:01.840 | And there's probably a bunch of stuff in between

00:08:03.780 | that you should be practicing.

00:08:04.840 | If you honestly wanna maximize those three factors

00:08:07.260 | we talked about at the beginning,

00:08:08.780 | you need to be training across this full spectrum.

00:08:11.060 | Just like I told you to train across the full spectrum

00:08:13.220 | of your lifting,

00:08:14.060 | we wanna be doing the same thing here.

00:08:15.920 | So are there independent special factors

00:08:18.820 | that can happen with the shorter time length,

00:08:21.440 | higher intensity stuff?

00:08:22.460 | Absolutely.

00:08:23.460 | There's also magic that happens

00:08:24.800 | on the other end of that spectrum.

00:08:26.040 | So it's very important that people

00:08:28.180 | don't just choose one side.

00:08:29.700 | Because what tends to happen is people either go with,

00:08:32.180 | oh, I'm gonna do 30 or 45 minutes of steady state stuff.

00:08:35.100 | That's it.

00:08:36.880 | Or I'm gonna do the opposite,

00:08:38.300 | which I'm gonna leave that stuff on the table,

00:08:40.080 | not do it 'cause I only wanna do high intensity intervals

00:08:42.660 | 'cause I can get it done in five minutes.

00:08:44.060 | So there's magic on both sides of the equation.

00:08:46.500 | We wanna get into all of that.

00:08:48.140 | But just to answer your question directly,

00:08:50.620 | there's a whole bunch of things you can do

00:08:53.620 | in under one minute that are convenient to do.

00:08:56.460 | And there's a wonderful set of papers

00:08:59.360 | out of a couple laboratories in Canada

00:09:01.200 | that championed this idea that's called exercise snacks.

00:09:04.500 | So there's a series of studies that have been done here

00:09:06.580 | that are really interesting.

00:09:07.780 | And they've looked at a couple of things

00:09:09.260 | that are noteworthy.

00:09:10.160 | One of them is a 20-second bout of all-out work.

00:09:14.140 | And this is actually done in workers in an office.

00:09:16.860 | And so what they had them do is run upstairs.

00:09:19.240 | And I believe it was about 60 steps is what it took them.

00:09:22.820 | Something along the order of 20 seconds exactly.

00:09:25.120 | And they repeated that about once every four hours.

00:09:28.820 | So really it's you go to work,

00:09:30.100 | you put your coffee in your bag down or whatever,

00:09:32.740 | you run up a flight of stairs 20 seconds later,

00:09:34.820 | then you go right back to work at lunch.

00:09:36.500 | And before you go home, you sort of repeat it there.

00:09:38.720 | And if you repeat that,

00:09:39.760 | that's multiple times a week you're gonna do that.

00:09:41.860 | I think they, in one of the interventions,

00:09:43.800 | it was three times a week for six weeks.

00:09:46.420 | 18 total times you did that.

00:09:49.360 | And what you'll see is a noticeable improvement,

00:09:52.360 | and this is statistically significant,

00:09:53.680 | improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness,

00:09:55.540 | specifically VO2 max,

00:09:57.260 | as well as a number of cognitive benefits,

00:09:59.640 | work productivity, et cetera.

00:10:01.380 | That can happen in as little as 20 seconds.

00:10:04.000 | You don't have to go to the gym, you don't have to shower,

00:10:06.400 | you don't have to do anything like that.

00:10:07.920 | Just find the stairs, run up and down them a few times.

00:10:11.060 | Now you may have noticed,

00:10:12.580 | you actually sort of caught me yesterday.

00:10:15.100 | I did that right here, right?

00:10:16.060 | I was just, we had a little bit of a break,

00:10:18.480 | I was feeling an energy lull.

00:10:20.820 | I ran up the stairs three or four times, felt a lot better.

00:10:24.160 | So that can actually also help.

00:10:26.180 | They ran another study where they looked at that

00:10:28.400 | following a giant high glycemic index meal.

00:10:31.940 | And what they saw, and then they took insulin measures

00:10:34.380 | and a whole bunch of other biological markers associated

00:10:38.920 | that you want to pay attention to

00:10:40.340 | with the high glycemic index meal.

00:10:42.020 | And they looked at those immediately,

00:10:43.740 | an hour, three hours, six hours, as opposed.

00:10:46.020 | And it was very clear that same intervention

00:10:48.380 | was able to improve post-planed yolk, glucose control,

00:10:51.700 | insulin, and a whole bunch of other factors

00:10:54.560 | in addition to that.

00:10:55.400 | So if you are the sort of type who's like, wow,

00:10:58.100 | I'm in an office all day,

00:10:59.620 | maybe also had a giant high glycemic index meal,

00:11:04.120 | not the best approach, but a little bit of mitigation there

00:11:06.940 | can just be running up a flight of stairs

00:11:09.080 | or doing something like that for as little as 20 seconds.

00:11:11.580 | So there's a lot of magic and power and maximal exertion.

00:11:16.000 | - If one does not have access to a flight of stairs at work,

00:11:20.060 | could they do jumping jacks?

00:11:21.960 | - Absolutely.

00:11:22.860 | I mean, you could do anything you really wanted.

00:11:25.100 | It's not the mode of exercise that matters here.

00:11:28.420 | It is simply the exertion.

00:11:30.460 | You just get up as hard as you can.

00:11:32.480 | You could do burpees, you could do any number of things.

00:11:35.420 | You could sprint down your road,

00:11:37.220 | down the hallway back and forth.

00:11:38.880 | The mode is just something that was easy

00:11:43.900 | for the scientists to control.

00:11:46.220 | And X number of steps, people could do it.

00:11:48.420 | You're not going to fall, hurt yourself, things like that.

00:11:50.740 | - Just to remind me, it's once every four hours,

00:11:53.920 | one minute of all out.

00:11:55.540 | - 20 seconds.

00:11:56.380 | - Oh, 20 seconds, excuse me.

00:11:57.700 | 20 seconds of essentially all out exertion

00:12:00.860 | while remaining safe, not going so fast up the stairs

00:12:03.380 | or doing jumping jacks so fast.

00:12:04.400 | - And certainly not down the stairs, up the stairs please.

00:12:07.400 | - Escalators don't count.

00:12:10.280 | Well, I suppose they count if they're,

00:12:12.620 | if you're moving, if you're not remaining on the same steps.

00:12:16.920 | In fact, in an airport recently,

00:12:18.920 | I saw somebody walking against the conveyor

00:12:23.280 | while talking on the phone

00:12:24.440 | while waiting for their flight to take off.

00:12:25.960 | And I thought it's genius, right?

00:12:27.280 | It looked a little awkward.

00:12:28.640 | - Who cares?

00:12:29.480 | - Yeah, but it was-

00:12:30.320 | - I have looked awkward in every airport I've been in

00:12:32.300 | for the last 15 years, for those exact reasons,

00:12:34.700 | doing wild stuff like that.

00:12:36.360 | - Yeah, well, nothing's more awkward

00:12:37.520 | than not being able to walk to the end of the terminal

00:12:39.920 | simply because one isn't familiar with walking that far

00:12:43.040 | carrying a couple of suitcases.

00:12:44.420 | - There you go.

00:12:45.260 | - Yeah, that's the other fit test.

00:12:46.700 | - 100%.

00:12:47.540 | - The suitcase carrier in the airport.

00:12:49.900 | I love this.

00:12:50.740 | So once every four hours, 20 seconds.

00:12:52.060 | So maybe once when arriving to work,

00:12:54.540 | once four hours in and then four hours,

00:12:57.240 | and most people are probably at work somewhere,

00:12:59.360 | eight plus or minus two hours.

00:13:00.920 | - Now, one thing I actually really want to make clear

00:13:03.300 | because your audience is so incredible,

00:13:05.480 | they tend to be really excited about these protocols

00:13:09.100 | and they follow them exactly as written.

00:13:11.300 | That's not exactly how science works.

00:13:13.100 | So it doesn't necessarily have to be every four hours.

00:13:16.260 | It doesn't have to be three times a day.

00:13:17.620 | It doesn't have to be 20 seconds.

00:13:19.620 | They literally built that protocol

00:13:21.220 | because they're trying to replicate a real life scenario.

00:13:24.380 | Maybe you're in an office building,

00:13:25.940 | you're generally there for eight hours.

00:13:27.300 | Let's see if you did one every sort of,

00:13:29.740 | so if you want to do it four times a week, great.

00:13:31.540 | If you can do it only 10 seconds, amazing.

00:13:33.820 | You're probably going to get the same benefits.

00:13:35.620 | Those are not the details to pay attention to.

00:13:37.580 | The detail to pay attention to is every so often,

00:13:40.900 | multiple times a day,

00:13:42.660 | try to get your heart rate up really quickly.

00:13:44.680 | Doesn't require sweating, doesn't require anything else.

00:13:46.580 | There's no warmup associated with it.

00:13:48.940 | Again, you need a minute break

00:13:50.820 | in between meetings or whatever, and you can sprint up them.

00:13:52.940 | I do this all the time in my house.

00:13:55.200 | When you have those days when you're on like seven straight

00:13:57.840 | hours of zooms, et cetera, you can get out of 20 seconds.

00:14:01.020 | I run to my garage, which is over there.

00:14:02.940 | I hop on the air bike and I will just smash out 30 seconds

00:14:06.200 | as fast as I can, and then walk right back in.

00:14:08.860 | - Love it.

00:14:09.700 | - Yeah.

00:14:10.740 | - I'm going to start.

00:14:12.140 | - Yeah, just also, you can just put one of those things,

00:14:14.420 | which I do also, just put one in your office

00:14:17.240 | and hop over out of there.

00:14:18.660 | The whole entire thing now literally takes 23 seconds.

00:14:21.540 | - Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

00:14:23.180 | that this podcast is separate from my teaching

00:14:25.060 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:14:26.500 | It is also separate from Dr. Andy Galpin's

00:14:28.480 | teaching and research roles at Cal State Fullerton.

00:14:31.080 | It is, however, part of our desire and effort

00:14:32.940 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:14:35.320 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:14:37.820 | In keeping with that theme,

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00:16:18.200 | exercise, and timing of food relative to exercise,

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00:16:22.740 | impact my blood glucose levels.

00:16:24.420 | And I've learned a tremendous amount from using Levels.

00:16:27.780 | It's taught me when best to eat, what best to eat,

00:16:30.900 | when best to exercise, how best to exercise,

00:16:33.780 | and how to modulate my entire schedule

00:16:36.500 | from work to exercise and even my sleep.

00:16:39.460 | So if you're interested in learning more about Levels

00:16:41.220 | and trying a continuous glucose monitor yourself,

00:16:43.840 | go to levels.link/huberman.

00:16:46.060 | That's levels.link/huberman.

00:16:48.640 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Element.

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00:18:02.160 | So tell me about endurance.

00:18:03.520 | What is endurance?

00:18:04.880 | How do I get more endurance?

00:18:07.060 | And how does it work?

00:18:09.100 | - When we think about endurance,

00:18:10.200 | I would like to open up the conversation

00:18:11.840 | to include more things than people generally do

00:18:14.720 | when they hear the word endurance.

00:18:16.240 | So if we just think about

00:18:17.840 | what you typically ask your body to do,

00:18:20.520 | or would like to ask your body to do,

00:18:22.680 | and we just walk through them,

00:18:24.680 | it's gonna be things like this.

00:18:25.760 | Number one, I wanna have energy throughout the day.

00:18:28.200 | That's actually a form of endurance.

00:18:30.460 | Great, I don't wanna have these lulls and fatigue,

00:18:32.680 | and I wanna feel fantastic

00:18:33.960 | as I move throughout my activities of daily living,

00:18:36.200 | whatever those may be.

00:18:37.320 | Work, exercise, enjoyment, paying attention, focus,

00:18:42.320 | all that stuff, great, that's one thing.

00:18:44.880 | Another thing you wanna ask your body to do

00:18:46.920 | is I wanna be able to repeat some small effort

00:18:50.720 | in a muscle group and feel great about that.

00:18:53.080 | This is what we generally call muscular endurance.

00:18:55.180 | So this is something like,

00:18:56.440 | I wanna be able to walk up those 10 flights of steps

00:18:58.960 | and my quads aren't burning at the end of it, right?

00:19:01.940 | Or it even gives me energy.

00:19:04.100 | Another thing you'll wanna ask your body to do

00:19:06.320 | is to be able to perform a tremendous amount of work

00:19:09.080 | for a longer period of time,

00:19:11.380 | something in the realm of 20 to 80 seconds.

00:19:14.400 | So this could be something like if you're surfing

00:19:17.120 | and you've gotta paddle extremely hard for a minute

00:19:19.440 | to get on top of a wave,

00:19:20.760 | or you're out riding your bike

00:19:23.360 | and you need to be able to get up a hill

00:19:24.560 | and it's a very steep hill.

00:19:26.080 | These are gonna take maximal effort

00:19:28.640 | for some small amount of time

00:19:30.360 | and then you'll get back up there.

00:19:31.320 | We tend to call that maximum anaerobic capacity,

00:19:33.960 | so that the max amount of work you can perform

00:19:36.280 | at a high rate for some amount of seconds,

00:19:39.600 | like maybe a minute.

00:19:41.380 | Past that is your ability to repeat an effort

00:19:44.480 | kind of like that for something like five to 15 minutes.

00:19:48.020 | And this is the example would be run a mile, right?

00:19:50.920 | Some interval like that which is a longer distance, right?

00:19:54.340 | That is gonna be your maximum aerobic capacity.

00:19:57.120 | Another thing you're gonna want your body to do

00:20:00.180 | is what we call sustained position.

00:20:02.300 | So this is you wanna be able to sit in your chair at work

00:20:05.500 | and have perfect posture for 20, 30, 40 minutes, right?

00:20:09.440 | You wanna be able to stand in line at a grocery store

00:20:11.640 | for 15 minutes and not have a breakdown in posture.

00:20:13.880 | So you wanna be able to maintain position

00:20:15.720 | when you're riding your bike, you're not collapsing,

00:20:17.580 | you're doing any of these activities

00:20:19.520 | and you don't get hurt or lose efficiency

00:20:22.760 | simply because you couldn't sustain basic positions, right?

00:20:26.480 | Whatever those shapes and positions seem to be.

00:20:29.300 | And then the last one is a maximum distance.

00:20:32.460 | So you wanna be able to go for a longer hike

00:20:35.360 | or have just a long day at Disneyland

00:20:37.060 | for whatever it needs to be and feel great at the end of it.

00:20:40.740 | So the goal with all of these things

00:20:42.580 | is not can you just do them, but can you do them

00:20:45.240 | and then you feel good afterwards.

00:20:47.460 | So we're back in a right position

00:20:48.900 | where they give you energy, you feel good about it

00:20:51.560 | and it's not just something you had to do

00:20:53.360 | and you regretted and you felt awful.

00:20:54.860 | So those are the factors I think about

00:20:57.700 | when someone says I want better endurance

00:20:59.300 | is I wanna walk backwards and say,

00:21:00.760 | okay, when you say endurance, what do you mean?

00:21:02.380 | And that's generally the things I've come across

00:21:04.440 | is if you can handle all of those things,

00:21:07.160 | you're gonna feel like you're in fantastic shape.

00:21:09.600 | You're gonna feel your recovery is going to be excellent

00:21:12.520 | and your physical performance in the gym

00:21:14.400 | or in any of the sporting activities you do

00:21:16.160 | will be enhanced.

00:21:17.480 | - Given what you told us a little bit earlier,

00:21:19.480 | that endurance really reflects fatigue management

00:21:23.280 | and energy production, how do each and both of those things

00:21:28.260 | relate to endurance at a mechanistic level?

00:21:31.080 | - Sure.

00:21:31.920 | - And really what I'm asking is what is fatigue management

00:21:34.120 | and what is energy production?

00:21:36.040 | - In order to do that, it's important that we understand

00:21:38.400 | all of those functional capacities

00:21:40.600 | that I just talked about.

00:21:42.240 | They all have different points of failure.

00:21:44.640 | So in order to then work backwards and say,

00:21:48.240 | well, how do I optimize my performance

00:21:50.360 | in all those categories?

00:21:51.500 | We need to go through each one and figure out,

00:21:53.140 | well, where am I failing?

00:21:54.300 | Some of them are gonna be failing

00:21:55.920 | because of fatigue management

00:21:57.360 | and some of them will be failing

00:21:58.640 | because of energy production issues.

00:22:00.400 | So if we walk through a little bit of how we make energy

00:22:03.460 | and how we handle fatigue,

00:22:05.640 | then we're gonna have a better understanding

00:22:06.740 | of exactly what to do for each one of these categories

00:22:09.720 | if you feel like one of them in particular

00:22:11.400 | is worse for you or lagging behind,

00:22:13.920 | or if in general you just wanna improve all of them.

00:22:16.840 | All right, now I wanna make a little bit

00:22:17.940 | of a 90 degree turn here.

00:22:19.880 | I'm gonna do it with strategy though, I promise.

00:22:21.520 | And I wanna ask you a very simple question.

00:22:24.360 | How do you lose weight?

00:22:25.620 | - I was taught that the calories in, calories out,

00:22:31.840 | thermodynamics of energy utilization

00:22:34.860 | governs most everything.

00:22:36.420 | That is, if I'm ingesting less caloric energy than I burn,

00:22:41.160 | then I'm going to lose weight.

00:22:43.380 | And if I'm ingesting exactly as much as I burn,

00:22:46.280 | I'll maintain weight.

00:22:47.120 | And if I ingest more than I burn, then I'll gain weight.

00:22:51.320 | - Sure, that is the approach you would take.

00:22:54.600 | What I'm asking really is,

00:22:56.180 | how are you actually physically losing the weight?

00:22:59.420 | - So my understanding is that we have

00:23:01.160 | different fuel sources in the body.

00:23:03.360 | Glycogen, which is stored in muscle and liver.

00:23:06.960 | Body fat, which is stored in mainly white adipose tissue,

00:23:10.920 | and which is subcutaneous and around our organs,

00:23:14.000 | intra-visceral fat.

00:23:15.540 | And that we can also use protein as a fuel.

00:23:18.460 | And then as I recall,

00:23:20.040 | there's also a phosphocreatine system.

00:23:23.160 | And I think you're going to tell me

00:23:24.960 | that each of these systems is tapped into

00:23:28.060 | on different timescales.

00:23:29.760 | And perhaps according to different levels of exertion.

00:23:33.000 | And I'm certain that what I just said is not exhaustive,

00:23:37.740 | but hopefully it is most or entirely correct.

00:23:42.160 | - Pretty correct.

00:23:43.240 | What's that got to do with fat loss?

00:23:45.800 | - At some point, body fat stores, adipocytes, fat cells,

00:23:50.800 | are going to start liberating fat as a fuel source.

00:23:55.040 | And the stimulus for that, I'm assuming,

00:23:58.080 | is going to be that other fuel sources are either depleted

00:24:01.760 | or that the energy and metabolic systems of the body,

00:24:05.300 | I don't want to say decide,

00:24:07.560 | because they don't have their own consciousness,

00:24:09.000 | but are-- - Signaled?

00:24:11.640 | - Are signaling in a way that registers that body fat

00:24:15.840 | would be the optimal fuel source,

00:24:18.200 | given how long and/or intensely a given activity

00:24:23.020 | has been performed.

00:24:25.460 | - Okay, we have some stuff to clean up there,

00:24:27.280 | but we're still not really answering the question.

00:24:30.460 | How am I actually losing that body fat?

00:24:32.800 | - How is it actually leaving the body?

00:24:34.340 | - Correct.

00:24:35.180 | - My understanding is that it leaves the body

00:24:37.520 | through respiration.

00:24:38.720 | - Aha.

00:24:39.660 | So now we have some interesting things to talk about.

00:24:43.160 | How am I actually losing fat via respiration?

00:24:46.180 | What the hell does that even mean?

00:24:47.720 | How is something that occupied this physical space

00:24:50.760 | on the side of me, leaving my body through my mouth?

00:24:54.320 | And that is a very clear answer there, right?

00:24:55.840 | Which I'm sure you're cued up to.

00:24:57.920 | When you take a breath in,

00:24:59.420 | you're generally breathing in oxygen, O2.

00:25:01.920 | There's some other things, but we'll just stick to oxygen.

00:25:04.000 | When you exhale, you're breathing out CO2.

00:25:07.220 | The difference between those two is that carbon molecule.

00:25:10.140 | Well, one of the things that's important to understand here

00:25:12.000 | is all of your carbohydrates,

00:25:14.940 | which is, that word itself is a carbon

00:25:17.760 | that has been hydrated.

00:25:18.720 | So it is a carbon molecule attached to a water molecule.

00:25:21.540 | It is a simple chain of carbons.

00:25:23.460 | Your fat molecules are also chains of carbon.

00:25:26.640 | All of metabolism really, in terms of energy production,

00:25:30.360 | is simply trying to figure out a way

00:25:32.600 | to break those carbon bonds.

00:25:35.000 | As a result, we get energy from that.

00:25:36.520 | We use that energy to create a molecule called ATP,

00:25:38.960 | which is the central source of energy for any living being.

00:25:42.220 | That carbon is then floating around in free form,

00:25:46.340 | which is bad news internally.

00:25:49.200 | So we've got to figure out a way

00:25:50.380 | to get that carbon out of our system.

00:25:52.520 | So all of energy production, all of fatigue management,

00:25:55.280 | really comes down to this core issue

00:25:56.940 | of how are we handling carbon?

00:25:59.200 | And how are we moving it around the body?

00:26:01.220 | And so what we do is we do this sneaky thing.

00:26:03.280 | So another question I like to ask people is,

00:26:04.780 | why do we breathe?

00:26:05.880 | - Well, for two reasons.

00:26:10.580 | To bring oxygen into the system

00:26:12.180 | and to offload carbon dioxide,

00:26:13.720 | but the neural trigger for breathing

00:26:16.660 | is when carbon dioxide hits a threshold level

00:26:19.820 | in the set of neurons in the brainstem

00:26:22.180 | and elsewhere activate the phrenic nerve

00:26:25.660 | or the gas reflex or a combination of things

00:26:27.660 | and we inhale or inhale.

00:26:30.320 | - Right, so a reduction of oxygen intake

00:26:32.740 | generally doesn't stimulate ventilation

00:26:34.500 | unless you're at altitude.

00:26:35.940 | Then that sort of changes, right?

00:26:37.300 | In general, it's an elevation in CO2

00:26:39.620 | that's going to stimulate breathing out.

00:26:41.460 | The only reason you bring in O2 for the most part

00:26:44.920 | is to get rid of the CO2.

00:26:47.380 | Oxygen is not a fuel source.

00:26:49.700 | It works the same with fire, by the way.

00:26:52.780 | So you know you have to have oxygen present for a fire to go

00:26:56.020 | and if you squelch oxygen, the fire will go out, right?

00:26:58.020 | That's sort of half of how those fire extinguishers work.

00:27:03.020 | But we think then that means oxygen is the fuel.

00:27:06.280 | It is not the fuel.

00:27:07.460 | It is something entirely different.

00:27:08.640 | It is a product that is necessary

00:27:11.880 | for the metabolism process to actually occur.

00:27:14.740 | All right, so we're kind of dancing around an idea here,

00:27:17.480 | which is this carbon cycle of life.

00:27:20.500 | So what happens in plants

00:27:23.220 | is they generally will breathe in the opposite

00:27:25.880 | and breathe out the opposite of humans.

00:27:27.280 | So a plant will breathe in CO2 and exhale O2, right?

00:27:31.040 | This is why we have to have a certain amount of these things

00:27:33.180 | and algae and forests and trees and stuff

00:27:35.720 | to maintain this O2 CO2 balance in our atmosphere.

00:27:39.220 | We do the opposite.

00:27:40.140 | And so we have this wonderful circle of life.

00:27:41.840 | We breathe in O2, breathe out CO2, they do the opposite.

00:27:45.620 | Well, what happens is because carbohydrates

00:27:48.380 | are long chains of carbon and fats are as well.

00:27:51.380 | Generally, when we think about fats, by the way,

00:27:53.540 | it's important to understand that structure a little bit.

00:27:55.840 | So if we think about triglycerides,

00:27:58.120 | it is a three carbon backbone chain of glycerol.

00:28:01.260 | So it's one, two, three.

00:28:02.580 | And horizontally running off of each one of those

00:28:06.120 | are fatty acid chains, right?

00:28:07.700 | And so we form this structure that looks like an E, right?

00:28:10.140 | Like the letter E, three in the back

00:28:11.900 | and then three chains coming off of it.

00:28:13.760 | Each of those chains are called fatty acids

00:28:15.860 | and each of those fatty acids are a length of carbon, right?

00:28:19.240 | Or a number of carbons strung together.

00:28:21.320 | However many carbons are there determines

00:28:23.400 | which type of fatty acid it is, right?

00:28:24.960 | So steric acid, linoleic acid,

00:28:26.480 | like any different number of things.

00:28:28.280 | It's also what determines whether or not

00:28:29.740 | is a monounsaturated or polyunsaturated

00:28:32.280 | is if carbon requires a special thing called a double bond.

00:28:35.920 | So if there's a double bond across every carbon to carbon,

00:28:38.500 | then they're all fully saturated and you're great.

00:28:40.600 | If there's any of them that are not double bonded,

00:28:43.220 | I mean, in fact, an example,

00:28:44.340 | if there is one that doesn't have a double bond,

00:28:46.400 | that is now called monounsaturated.

00:28:48.540 | And if there are many, it is called polyunsaturated.

00:28:51.340 | So there's pros and cons to all of these things, right?

00:28:53.720 | In either case, we're still talking long carbon chains.

00:28:56.980 | So what a plant will do is bring in carbon

00:29:01.100 | and then it has this wonderful ability to use energy

00:29:03.440 | from the sun called photosynthesis.

00:29:05.520 | And it can take those carbons that it inhales

00:29:08.640 | and use the energy from the sun to form a bond.

00:29:11.700 | Now, in our prior discussion, when we were going over

00:29:14.560 | hypertrophy, we talked about the energy

00:29:16.220 | is required to go through protein synthesis.

00:29:18.620 | That's because forming a new atom or a new bond

00:29:21.940 | between atoms oftentimes takes energy.

00:29:23.780 | In these cases, it does.

00:29:25.600 | The same thing happens here.

00:29:26.740 | So if a plant does not have oxygen

00:29:29.000 | or does not have carbon dioxide in the air, it has no fuel.

00:29:32.020 | They basically think about it as that's what it eats.

00:29:34.500 | It needs to get nitrogen from the ground and the soil.

00:29:37.060 | Just like we need to get nitrogen from our protein,

00:29:39.280 | but fuel wise, it needs to get carbon dioxide.

00:29:41.520 | Then it needs sun to give it energy

00:29:43.760 | so that it can actually form that bond.

00:29:46.020 | That's what it's getting its fuel from.

00:29:47.920 | So if we think about a classic plant

00:29:53.380 | that produces either a starch or a fruit,

00:29:58.060 | here's what happens.

00:29:59.900 | It inhales that carbon and then it starts packing it away.

00:30:03.360 | Now, in a root vegetable, what it does

00:30:05.500 | is it stores those things together.

00:30:07.040 | And if we store that thing and we grow fruit

00:30:08.700 | at the bottom of it, we tend to call those things starches.

00:30:11.640 | It's going to then take the carbon

00:30:14.380 | that is packed away in its root and send it up the tree.

00:30:18.360 | And it's gonna actually do that by breaking it down

00:30:20.240 | into a smaller form of carbohydrate

00:30:22.480 | that we tend to often call things like sucrose and glucose.

00:30:26.640 | It'll ship that up the tree.

00:30:28.020 | It'll go out to the leaves

00:30:29.200 | and it'll convert it into the fruit.

00:30:30.600 | And it's gonna eventually transform that stuff

00:30:32.920 | into smaller carbon things called fructose.

00:30:35.720 | And if we think about the fruit or the sugar in fruit,

00:30:39.080 | it's often in the form of fructose or sucrose

00:30:42.020 | or a combination and sometimes glucose.

00:30:44.120 | So we have these smaller carbon, six carbon chains

00:30:47.100 | generally in the form of glucose

00:30:49.340 | that are being made from this larger storage

00:30:53.200 | of carbohydrates that we call starch, right?

00:30:58.200 | So it's packed in together.

00:31:00.860 | Your body does the exact same thing.

00:31:03.820 | So if it's a potato and it has a whole bunch

00:31:07.840 | of glucose packed away, we call that starch.

00:31:10.900 | If it's in your quadricep

00:31:12.720 | and we pack about a whole bunch of glucose away,

00:31:15.940 | we now call it glycogen.

00:31:17.760 | If it's in your blood as that six carbon chain,

00:31:21.200 | we call it glucose.

00:31:22.480 | If it's in the tree and in the fruit, we call it fructose.

00:31:25.720 | Those are different molecules,

00:31:26.560 | but that's effectively the same thing happens.

00:31:28.240 | So the biology or the chemistry is almost identical.

00:31:31.840 | It just runs in the reverse order.

00:31:33.720 | And that's why again, tubers and potatoes and stuff

00:31:36.700 | tend to be starches and fruits tend to be glucose,

00:31:39.620 | fructose and sucrose.

00:31:40.920 | So we have this wonderful circle of light.

00:31:44.680 | The plants can survive on just breathing in the CO2

00:31:48.820 | and then getting the energy from the sun.

00:31:50.080 | We don't have that ability, at least to my knowledge,

00:31:52.840 | to run through photosynthesis.

00:31:54.240 | So the only way we can get carbon into our system

00:31:57.640 | is to actually ingest carbon,

00:31:59.880 | which means we have to eat the starch, the fruit,

00:32:03.840 | the animal, some other form of stored carbon

00:32:07.320 | to get that into our system.

00:32:09.160 | We then pack that away.

00:32:10.500 | We put the carbohydrates, as you mentioned earlier,

00:32:12.560 | either in our liver, our blood or in our muscles.

00:32:16.760 | We put the fat generally in adipose tissue.

00:32:18.920 | We'll put a little bit in muscle cells

00:32:20.680 | as intramuscular triglycerides.

00:32:22.680 | And then the protein we'll use as structure, right?

00:32:26.120 | To do different things.

00:32:26.940 | We don't like to use protein as material or fuel.

00:32:29.640 | It's better to use as structure.

00:32:31.680 | And what we have to do then is if all of a sudden

00:32:33.680 | we realize that storage is getting too much in our body,

00:32:36.920 | in other words, we're gaining too much weight,

00:32:38.840 | we have to figure out how to get the carbons

00:32:40.720 | out of our body.

00:32:42.320 | And that is metabolism, right?

00:32:44.960 | Anytime we're trying to break a carbon bonds

00:32:47.480 | that we can get energy to make ATP,

00:32:49.600 | that's gonna release the carbon out of our tissue

00:32:52.640 | into the blood.

00:32:53.480 | We have to bring in oxygen to bind that carbon molecule

00:32:56.720 | to make CO2 so we can exhale it

00:32:58.600 | and put it back into the atmosphere.

00:33:00.760 | - That's a beautiful description of the circle of life

00:33:03.840 | and energy utilization in the human body.

00:33:08.840 | I have to ask the question that I'm sure

00:33:10.680 | many people are wondering about,

00:33:12.440 | which is if indeed we exhale these carbons

00:33:16.340 | and as it relates to fat loss,

00:33:19.000 | that is the way that we lose fat

00:33:21.280 | if we're in a sub-caloric state, for instance.

00:33:24.700 | Has it ever been explored as to whether increasing

00:33:29.220 | the duration or intensity of exhales

00:33:31.560 | can accelerate fat loss?

00:33:32.940 | I mean, that's sort of the logical extension

00:33:34.360 | of what you described.

00:33:35.460 | And here, I'm actually interested equally

00:33:38.560 | in whether or not the answer is yes,

00:33:41.380 | as well as whether it could be no.

00:33:45.060 | Because I could imagine if the answer is yes,

00:33:48.020 | well, then there's some interesting protocols

00:33:49.460 | to emerge from that, but that if it's no,

00:33:51.540 | it will reveal to us some important bottlenecks

00:33:53.860 | about metabolism and energy utilization.

00:33:56.360 | - You ever seen those magicians who show up

00:34:00.860 | and they can tell your mom's name

00:34:04.700 | or something like that before you,

00:34:06.020 | 'cause they can sort of lead you down a path?

00:34:08.500 | - Yeah, I mean, not to take us down a deep dive tangent,

00:34:10.540 | but I once went to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles

00:34:13.660 | and I was one of the people called up front

00:34:16.080 | and an incredible magician named,

00:34:20.200 | I think his name was Ozzy Mind or something,

00:34:22.940 | I think that's right, had me write my name

00:34:24.780 | on a card in a Sharpie pen.

00:34:27.800 | I ripped up the card, I ripped it up,

00:34:30.860 | I put it in my pocket.

00:34:32.420 | And at the end of the 10 or 15 minute bout

00:34:36.620 | of him doing a bunch of other tricks,

00:34:38.700 | he asked me to look in my right shoe

00:34:41.220 | and under my foot in my right shoe was that card intact.

00:34:46.220 | And it was no longer in my pocket.

00:34:48.820 | And I swear on my life, I wasn't a collaborator with him.

00:34:52.520 | And to this day, it still gives me chills

00:34:55.340 | because I don't know how, magic.

00:34:58.780 | - Yeah, right, magic.

00:34:59.940 | Well, the reason I say that is I've given that little spiel

00:35:02.860 | that I just gave you countless times in my classes.

00:35:05.560 | And I would say 99% of the time, as soon as I stop,

00:35:08.820 | the very first question is,

00:35:11.100 | so can I just like do a bunch of exhales and lose fat?

00:35:15.780 | Which is wonderful 'cause I was really hoping

00:35:17.700 | you would do that and you rolled right into my trap.

00:35:20.300 | You landed perfectly, so I look like a magician over here.

00:35:24.360 | - I feel like I should look in my right shoe right now.

00:35:27.280 | No, I asked the question because it's the logical extension

00:35:30.120 | of what you laid out, but I know biology

00:35:33.280 | to be both diabolical and cryptic,

00:35:37.360 | but also exquisite in the way that things are arranged

00:35:41.120 | and you don't get something for nothing.

00:35:43.320 | - There are no free passes in physiology.

00:35:45.600 | That's the saying, no free passes.

00:35:48.000 | The answer to your question is yes.

00:35:50.120 | - A lot, 100% yes.

00:35:51.320 | In fact, that is the only way to go about it.

00:35:54.800 | You have two options.

00:35:56.180 | You can ingest less carbon or you can expel more carbon.

00:35:59.080 | People always say calories in, calories out.

00:36:00.640 | It's really carbon in, carbon out.

00:36:02.720 | That's what a calorie is, right?

00:36:03.920 | Calorie is the amount of energy we get

00:36:05.480 | per breaking carbon bond.

00:36:07.800 | So it's really less in, more out.

00:36:10.560 | Less in is fairly obvious, whether that comes in any form.

00:36:13.420 | And by the way, this is exactly why the percentage

00:36:17.120 | of your intake coming from fats or carbohydrate,

00:36:19.800 | it doesn't really matter that much.

00:36:21.560 | If you look at fat loss clinical trials,

00:36:24.880 | you guys may have covered this when Lane was in here.

00:36:27.100 | I'm sure like this is something he talks about a lot.

00:36:29.520 | It doesn't matter.

00:36:30.360 | It's irrelevant because it's not about that.

00:36:33.560 | There's nothing magic in those things.

00:36:35.280 | They are different.

00:36:36.120 | They have different physiological responses.

00:36:38.000 | Everything is different, right?

00:36:39.160 | No doubt.

00:36:40.160 | But in general, it's just simply about carbon intake.

00:36:42.760 | Turns out fat has a lot more carbons per mole

00:36:46.840 | than carbohydrates do.

00:36:48.160 | So there's more calories per mole in there.

00:36:50.880 | So if you, the physical amount of fat

00:36:53.120 | needs to come in as a smaller amount,

00:36:54.680 | physical amount of carbohydrates needs to come in,

00:36:56.680 | will come in as a larger amount.

00:36:57.700 | But you can play any number of very high carb, low fat,

00:37:02.540 | what matters, total calories, right?

00:37:04.440 | Again, it's not like the only thing that matters,

00:37:06.760 | but you know what I'm saying?

00:37:07.880 | Some percentages in the way can go.

00:37:10.000 | Fat loss works fantastic.

00:37:11.920 | High fat, low carbohydrate, why?

00:37:13.960 | Why do all these things work?

00:37:15.880 | Because it's not about that.

00:37:17.240 | It's about total intake of carbon, total exhalation.

00:37:21.160 | So absolutely can you lose fat by simply exhaling more?

00:37:25.360 | In fact, that is exactly what you did this morning.

00:37:28.400 | - When I hopped on the Airdyne bike for-

00:37:29.800 | - When you did anything, right?

00:37:32.100 | The question is, can you think of a scenario

00:37:34.160 | in which you could have a bunch of increased rates

00:37:37.560 | of exhalation that helps in fat loss?

00:37:40.880 | - Sure, I can think of a lot of things

00:37:42.080 | that will stimulate increased rates of exhalation.

00:37:45.160 | One thing could be simply going. (breathing heavily)

00:37:49.500 | Right, and so the question is like,

00:37:50.340 | can I literally do some breath protocols

00:37:52.000 | where I force exhale and lose fat?

00:37:54.000 | And the answer is yes.

00:37:55.120 | But what happens?

00:37:58.240 | What happens if you do hyperventilation training?

00:38:01.200 | - Well, my lab studies cyclic hyperventilation

00:38:04.280 | as one of our many deliberate protocols.

00:38:06.780 | And one of the most prominent things that one observes

00:38:10.000 | is that levels of adrenaline increase very quickly.

00:38:14.440 | - Extremely quickly.

00:38:15.280 | - People feel jittery, anxious, stressed.

00:38:17.300 | And unless they are consciously trying to anchor

00:38:20.480 | their thinking about what that means

00:38:22.480 | and the benefits set to persisting,

00:38:25.080 | typically they abort the cyclic hyperventilation protocol

00:38:28.200 | really quickly.

00:38:29.040 | - Within seconds, right?

00:38:30.320 | You will feel tingling, sweating, all kinds of things.

00:38:32.600 | You're hyperventilating, right?

00:38:33.840 | And we could talk in nauseum about how that changes

00:38:37.540 | everything from adrenaline to focus,

00:38:39.160 | to a whole bunch of things.

00:38:40.320 | So unfortunately, a strategy of sitting around,

00:38:43.840 | just exhaling more than you inhale,

00:38:45.640 | technically helps you lose more fat,

00:38:49.300 | but it's not going to last very long.

00:38:50.980 | So then the question is, well, how do I get into a situation

00:38:53.420 | or a scenario in which I can increase my rate of expiration

00:38:57.360 | where I'm not gonna pass out?

00:38:58.640 | I'm not going and altering hypocapnia and hypercapnia issues.

00:39:02.240 | Any idea of a situation in which you would have

00:39:04.760 | an enhanced rate of exclamation

00:39:06.580 | without worrying about passing out?

00:39:08.880 | - Sure, steady state exercise.

00:39:11.380 | Or not steady state exercise, lifting weights,

00:39:14.340 | intervals, moderate training, repeated.

00:39:17.060 | Any of these things, they all work equally for fat loss

00:39:21.180 | because all they're doing is increasing respiration rate.

00:39:23.860 | They're saying increased demand for energy,

00:39:26.620 | increased exhalation.

00:39:29.840 | That's the trick here.

00:39:31.300 | And when you equate these things to that,

00:39:33.140 | they have equal success in fat loss.

00:39:35.920 | It doesn't matter theoretically

00:39:38.040 | where you're getting it from.

00:39:40.800 | And so when we get into this idea of,

00:39:42.740 | well, what are the best training strategies for fat loss,

00:39:46.220 | it doesn't matter which one of these tactics you pick

00:39:51.060 | as long as you maintain a consistent adherence over time

00:39:54.020 | because of this exact fact.

00:39:56.700 | It doesn't matter if you're burning quote unquote fat

00:39:59.940 | in the exercise session,

00:40:01.620 | or if you're burning carbohydrates in the exercise session.

00:40:04.920 | It is totally irrelevant to your net fat loss over time.

00:40:09.940 | Hey, now there's some significant misconceptions there

00:40:13.220 | about what I just talked and I would love to come back

00:40:15.820 | and walk through that in more detail,

00:40:17.580 | but that's the main take home message here.

00:40:20.600 | It won't matter what's coming in

00:40:22.080 | and it won't matter what's coming out

00:40:23.380 | because in either case it is the same rate of oxygen in

00:40:27.320 | and CO2 out.

00:40:29.040 | That's the key metric.

00:40:30.720 | And hopefully this helps a lot of people have some relief

00:40:34.320 | because they're like, man, you're so tied up

00:40:36.140 | on what is the exact protocol for training

00:40:38.160 | for optimizing fat loss.

00:40:39.620 | What's the exact nutritional intervention I need

00:40:41.840 | for fat loss?

00:40:42.680 | And then you wonder why all these different diets

00:40:44.980 | can work effectively.

00:40:46.580 | And wonder why all these different training protocols,

00:40:48.460 | and surely you know somebody who lost a bunch of weight

00:40:51.460 | and the only thing they did is they just started running.

00:40:54.200 | There was no advanced protocol, they just started running

00:40:55.980 | and they ran five miles every day.

00:40:58.100 | That works.

00:40:58.940 | And then tons of people who tried that

00:41:00.100 | and didn't lose anything.

00:41:01.500 | And lots of people who went to,

00:41:03.060 | I went to cardio kickboxing class, lost weight.

00:41:05.860 | Oh, I just started doing intervals on my, why?

00:41:08.920 | Mysteriously you do all these things work.

00:41:11.220 | There have, something has, some spidey sense

00:41:13.540 | has to be going off in your brain.

00:41:15.020 | We're like, there has to be something linking these things.

00:41:18.060 | And what's linking it is simply carbon exchange.

00:41:21.960 | So put yourself in a position in which you are exhaling

00:41:24.640 | more than you and inhaling without passing out.

00:41:27.860 | The other problem is if you were to simply do

00:41:29.700 | a breathing protocol while the rate of exhalation

00:41:33.320 | would go up, after that you would correct

00:41:35.460 | and go in the opposite direction.

00:41:36.820 | So that's the problem is your net carbon

00:41:38.320 | and output over the course of the day is not going to change

00:41:40.220 | unless you increase the demand for energy.

00:41:43.540 | And that's how you get into that negative state.

00:41:46.660 | - Along these lines of exhaling carbons

00:41:50.140 | as the route for fat loss,

00:41:52.220 | it makes me wonder whether or not

00:41:55.580 | increasing lung capacity is possible.

00:41:58.260 | I'm guessing the answer is yes.

00:41:59.620 | And whether or not increasing lung capacity

00:42:02.900 | is a good goal and route to enhancing fat loss.

00:42:07.220 | Essentially what I'm asking is if you can offload

00:42:09.660 | more CO2 carbons per exhale,

00:42:14.660 | are you a more efficient fat loss machine?

00:42:18.380 | - It's a wonderful thought and the answer would be no.

00:42:21.240 | Not something you need to worry about

00:42:22.360 | because if you were to exhale more carbon

00:42:27.060 | than actually needed, now we're in a state of inefficiency.

00:42:31.220 | You're burning way more energy than needed

00:42:33.280 | to do your activity.

00:42:34.760 | The heart has a metric called cardiac output.

00:42:38.260 | This is in science, we abbreviate this as Q

00:42:41.460 | for some odd reasons, it's either CO or Q.

00:42:43.980 | And cardiac output is heart rate multiplied

00:42:47.120 | by stroke volume.

00:42:47.960 | So it's how many beats per minute you're having

00:42:49.400 | as well as how much blood's coming out of it.

00:42:50.940 | So cardiac output is actually very specific to energy needs.

00:42:55.940 | If you try to work around that,

00:42:57.720 | it's just going to adjust itself.

00:42:58.960 | So what I mean by this is if you were able

00:43:01.300 | to increase your stroke volumes,

00:43:02.640 | the amount of blood coming out per pump,

00:43:03.920 | you would automatically adjust to reduce your heart rate

00:43:06.760 | so that you keep cardiac output exact to energetic demands.

00:43:11.680 | So you're sort of pushing one end of the spectrum

00:43:14.400 | but your body will pull the other one back

00:43:15.880 | to keep you at that exact same neutral level.

00:43:18.200 | So if you look at, if you think about

00:43:20.300 | like cardiovascular adaptations to endurance training

00:43:23.480 | and any type of endurance training,

00:43:25.120 | a common thing people will understand is resting heart rate.

00:43:28.740 | And so what that number is is just how many beats per minute

00:43:31.560 | you're having when you're sitting here doing nothing.

00:43:33.520 | A very positive adaptation is a lowering

00:43:36.680 | of that resting rate over time.

00:43:38.900 | As general numbers, what you will hear

00:43:40.520 | is people will say things like a normal resting heart rate

00:43:44.140 | is between 60 to 80 beats per minute.

00:43:46.460 | And if any of the things I've talked about

00:43:49.340 | with the individuals I work with,

00:43:52.240 | I don't work with anybody with disease,

00:43:54.000 | just to clarify that.

00:43:55.020 | I don't do anything with disease management,

00:43:56.860 | treatment, anything.

00:43:57.700 | It's always about people who are in a good spot

00:44:00.480 | who want to optimize or get to the next level,

00:44:02.760 | whether this is professional athletes

00:44:04.460 | trying to peak for physical performance,

00:44:07.400 | or the folks in our rapid health optimization program

00:44:11.260 | that feel good, again, it's not disease stuff,

00:44:13.240 | and they want to feel incredible.

00:44:15.480 | One of the metrics we're gonna pay attention to

00:44:16.960 | is this resting heart rate.

00:44:17.980 | So here's what happens.

00:44:19.240 | As you improve your endurance,

00:44:20.820 | your resting heart rate will go down.

00:44:23.680 | If I see somebody over 70 beats per minute,

00:44:26.760 | unless something's going on, you're not physically fit.

00:44:29.600 | Regardless of whether or not that is quote unquote

00:44:31.280 | within the normative values,

00:44:32.520 | I want to see everybody sub 60 beats per minute, or close.

00:44:36.440 | That is not a difficult thing

00:44:38.080 | to really get to for most people.

00:44:40.240 | So if you train a lot, regardless of how you train,

00:44:43.460 | intervals, steady state, doesn't matter,

00:44:46.780 | that resting heart rate will come down.

00:44:48.600 | But since energy demands at rest haven't really changed,

00:44:53.040 | cardiac output stays the same.

00:44:55.200 | So what happens is stroke volume goes up.

00:44:58.880 | So literally, like we trained your quadriceps

00:45:01.600 | on the leg extension machine to get stronger,

00:45:03.960 | so you can produce more force per contraction,

00:45:06.580 | the heart will do the exact same thing.

00:45:08.600 | And so as you're able to get more of the blood

00:45:11.600 | out of your heart per pump,

00:45:13.840 | the heart realizes I don't need to pump as often.

00:45:16.800 | So that's the compensatory adaptation,

00:45:18.840 | which is saying, hey, look,

00:45:20.200 | I don't need to beat 60 times a minute,

00:45:21.760 | I now need to beat 55 times a minute

00:45:23.700 | because I'm getting the same amount of blood out per pump,

00:45:27.560 | chill.

00:45:28.400 | And this is why your resting heart rate goes down,

00:45:30.520 | your resting stroke volume goes up,

00:45:32.100 | but your cardiac output is identical.

00:45:34.800 | So that's not a good metric of fitness,

00:45:36.520 | it's going to stay the same.

00:45:37.680 | Cardiac output will only adjust per energetic changes,

00:45:41.520 | energy requirements in the acute moment.

00:45:43.540 | How much do I need?

00:45:44.860 | Go, which is gonna be determined by ventilation.

00:45:47.520 | How much air am I bringing in and putting out?

00:45:49.720 | That's gonna determine cardiac output,

00:45:51.280 | and that's gonna determine where we're at.

00:45:53.100 | If you were to do like a submaximal exercise test,

00:45:56.140 | when you were unfit to when you're fit,

00:45:59.600 | or when you're fit to where you're super fit,

00:46:02.000 | at submax, you're gonna see the same thing.

00:46:04.600 | Cardiac output will be identical,

00:46:06.040 | and you're like, damn, nothing happened.

00:46:07.600 | What you're not realizing is your heart rate

00:46:10.120 | at that same workload is now lower.

00:46:12.140 | And that's efficiency because your stroke volume is higher.

00:46:16.040 | Where it gets people tripped up is at max,

00:46:18.320 | because you may not see much of a change at max,

00:46:22.240 | because you don't really see an increase

00:46:23.980 | in maximum heart rate with fitness, that's not a thing.

00:46:26.200 | So maximum heart rate is not a good proxy

00:46:28.320 | for fit or unfit or anything like that.

00:46:31.080 | Stroke volume will get limited eventually

00:46:32.760 | by filling capacity of your heart.

00:46:34.800 | It has to have so much time to fill up with blood

00:46:36.840 | before it can contract again and squeeze the blood out.

00:46:39.200 | And when you have a heart rate of 200 beats per minute,

00:46:42.100 | that just doesn't leave much time to fill.

00:46:43.880 | And so it won't really push you past that.

00:46:45.680 | So don't worry about trying to increase

00:46:48.280 | your maximum heart rate.

00:46:49.640 | That's not necessarily a good thing,

00:46:50.680 | and it won't really change.

00:46:52.360 | But your cardiac output will,

00:46:53.480 | because stroke volume will be higher.

00:46:55.680 | - But that doesn't necessarily mean

00:46:56.960 | that I should avoid training

00:46:58.320 | that gets me up toward maximum heart rate, correct?

00:47:00.560 | - Oh, you should absolutely do it.

00:47:01.720 | - Right, that was my assumption.

00:47:03.860 | I'd like to take a brief break

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00:47:56.120 | Getting back to energy production and metabolism.

00:47:59.580 | So we've got these different modes of moving energy,

00:48:03.140 | but making and breaking energy bonds in the body,

00:48:05.520 | moving energy into different tissues

00:48:08.200 | and out of different tissues,

00:48:09.220 | and indeed out of the body through exhalation.

00:48:11.480 | How do each of these different modes of energy utilization

00:48:16.700 | relate to different modes of movement and exercise?

00:48:20.880 | In my mind, I'm starting to draw a bridge

00:48:23.520 | between, okay, when I walk for 60 minutes,

00:48:28.020 | if I'm talking, I'm breathing a bit more,

00:48:31.080 | maybe I'm burning a little more fat.

00:48:33.300 | After all, speech is a modified exhale.

00:48:36.420 | And if I'm sprinting, I'm breathing differently.

00:48:41.780 | And if I'm doing a 30 minute moderate,

00:48:45.240 | quote unquote, moderate jog, I'm breathing differently.

00:48:47.200 | So you've beautifully illustrated this bridge

00:48:49.660 | between energy production and utilization

00:48:52.180 | and carbon dioxide offload through exhalation.

00:48:56.140 | What are some of the specifics about energy utilization

00:48:59.800 | according to different modes of exercise?

00:49:02.560 | And if we could better define modes of exercise

00:49:05.360 | or types of exercise that trigger specific adaptations,

00:49:08.020 | I think this is where the bridge will move

00:49:09.740 | from being a mere line to a real structure.

00:49:12.580 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:49:13.780 | I want to lay one more foundational piece,

00:49:16.620 | and then it's going to be much easier to understand

00:49:21.080 | the limitations I put on some of these training protocols,

00:49:23.860 | as well as the lack of limitations.

00:49:26.300 | Okay, so it's really, really important.

00:49:28.220 | The way I want to start this is,

00:49:30.740 | we have this foundation now of carbon

00:49:35.100 | and basic energy production.

00:49:37.460 | That's not to say there's no difference.

00:49:39.000 | There is, and that difference is important.

00:49:41.020 | But maybe we can answer the question from earlier,

00:49:43.180 | which is actually something you asked me this morning

00:49:46.100 | when we were exercising.

00:49:47.900 | You're like, training fasted, right?

00:49:50.820 | Does training fasted enhance fat loss?

00:49:55.380 | And the logic is sound.

00:49:57.880 | If I don't have any fuel,

00:49:59.680 | then I should be burning more fat,

00:50:01.320 | therefore I shouldn't be losing more fat.

00:50:02.640 | It's sound.

00:50:03.480 | It's not true.

00:50:05.100 | It's this great idea.

00:50:06.740 | It's one of these classic things in science

00:50:08.260 | and exercise physiology where you're like, sounds good.

00:50:11.260 | Turns out it's not.

00:50:12.100 | It's actually a pretty gross

00:50:13.300 | misunderstanding of metabolism.

00:50:15.400 | So it's not to pick on that topic.

00:50:17.340 | I don't really care about that topic,

00:50:18.560 | but it's a common question.

00:50:20.940 | It also gives me an opportunity

00:50:22.500 | to just tell you more about metabolism.

00:50:24.620 | So here's what happens.

00:50:27.680 | You are breathing in O2 and breathing out CO2.

00:50:29.700 | However, the ratio to that is what we call

00:50:32.540 | the either RER, respiratory exchange ratio,

00:50:34.720 | or RQ, respiratory quotient.

00:50:36.380 | And I'm not gonna differentiate those two.

00:50:37.760 | They're not the same thing,

00:50:38.620 | but we're gonna skip past that for now.

00:50:41.020 | As you begin to increase exercise intensity,

00:50:44.260 | the percentage of O2 to CO2 rises in the favor of CO2.

00:50:48.420 | So you start breathing out way more CO2

00:50:50.860 | than you are breathing in O2.

00:50:53.400 | And so if we were to look at that number,

00:50:55.780 | what's the relationship, it goes up.

00:50:57.600 | So at rest, most people have a value

00:51:01.240 | that we would typically call something like 0.6.

00:51:04.760 | Okay, and that's, again,

00:51:06.100 | the relationship between O2 and CO2.

00:51:08.600 | Maybe 0.7.

00:51:10.280 | If you were to go for a walk, that increases slightly

00:51:12.760 | because you're now expiring CO2 at a higher rate.

00:51:16.120 | So now you've moved up to, say, 0.8 or something like that.

00:51:19.400 | One of the ways that we mark somebody achieving

00:51:22.340 | an actual VO2 max on a test is if that value exceeds 1.1.

00:51:27.000 | Now, any of you who are paying attention

00:51:30.860 | are thinking, well, wait a minute,

00:51:31.840 | how the hell can a ratio between two things

00:51:33.900 | ever get past one?

00:51:35.920 | Well, that's because you're getting to a place

00:51:37.260 | where you're actually offloading more CO2

00:51:40.580 | than is actually necessary.

00:51:42.080 | And this is what actually causes and explains

00:51:44.320 | a thing that people like to call EPOC,

00:51:46.600 | which is excess exercise post-oxygen consumption.

00:51:49.720 | This is another way to think about it.

00:51:51.920 | The only reason you're breathing is to bring in oxygen

00:51:54.960 | and offload CO2, right?

00:51:57.220 | If I'm no longer exercising, why am I still breathing?

00:52:01.220 | In other words, once you stop the demand

00:52:05.440 | or the need for energy, you should stop ventilating.

00:52:09.000 | But you don't, right?

00:52:11.760 | That's because in the case of low intensity exercise,

00:52:14.960 | the second you stop, you're right back down

00:52:18.720 | to respite ventilation.

00:52:20.200 | No problem, because you were able to match

00:52:22.240 | the need for energy with the offload of waste

00:52:24.960 | one to one during that exercise.

00:52:27.660 | When you start creeping up the intensity, you can't do that.

00:52:30.760 | So you have to basically start stealing

00:52:33.120 | a little bit of fuel here.

00:52:34.560 | So even though you're done exercising,

00:52:36.520 | you're still ventilating because you have to pay that back.

00:52:39.400 | And pay that back, by that I specifically mean

00:52:41.960 | you have to bring in oxygen.

00:52:43.980 | 'Cause you have a whole bunch of waste

00:52:45.280 | that's been accumulating in your tissue

00:52:47.320 | that you've got to deal with.

00:52:48.600 | And I'll walk you through what that waste is.

00:52:50.800 | It's a particular molecule that a lot of people

00:52:52.480 | have heard of but grossly misunderstand.

00:52:54.540 | So you gotta be able to handle that.

00:52:56.640 | So the reason that you sit there and go (panting)

00:52:59.800 | and continue to ventilate is because you're now

00:53:01.540 | trying to pay back that excess post-exercise oxygen debt.

00:53:05.320 | That's that oxygen debt we're specifically talking about.

00:53:07.800 | All right, so that being said,

00:53:10.560 | as we start cruising up that RQ starts going up,

00:53:13.000 | up, up, up, up, up, up.

00:53:14.040 | And if we get to one, you're 1.0, you're in a,

00:53:17.220 | like you're hurting.

00:53:18.060 | You're in a pretty good spot.

00:53:19.520 | All right.

00:53:20.520 | - I like that, you're hurting.

00:53:21.520 | You're in a pretty good spot.

00:53:22.960 | - Yeah.

00:53:23.800 | - There's a window into Dr. Andy Galpin's mind.

00:53:26.560 | Now you really want to be a subject

00:53:28.000 | in his laboratory studies.

00:53:29.680 | - Sure.

00:53:31.200 | - Masochists swarm to Andy's lab.

00:53:33.340 | - Absolutely.

00:53:34.280 | All right.

00:53:35.640 | So the idea that I will lose more fat

00:53:40.640 | by being in an exercise situation that is burning more fat,

00:53:44.960 | it seems to make sense, but it's a massive failure

00:53:48.120 | to understand the metabolism.

00:53:50.400 | It's the exact same explanation

00:53:51.920 | to why exercising fasted doesn't matter.

00:53:55.280 | So the exercising fasted issue under normal circumstances

00:53:58.080 | is irrelevant because you have plenty of fuel in the system

00:54:02.560 | even when you haven't eaten breakfast that morning.

00:54:05.040 | Now, if you're talking like extended fasting

00:54:06.900 | over multiple days, this is a different scenario.

00:54:10.220 | If muscle glycogen, liver glycogen, and blood glucose

00:54:13.660 | are at sufficient levels,

00:54:15.400 | then you absolutely have enough energy

00:54:17.180 | to perform almost any type of exercise

00:54:19.520 | that most people are doing.

00:54:21.400 | You know, maybe if you're Rob and you're at mile 20 today,

00:54:24.260 | it's a different story,

00:54:25.100 | but the vast majority of us

00:54:26.080 | have plenty of fuel sitting around.

00:54:27.520 | So we're not going to burn more into fat

00:54:30.320 | just because we didn't eat breakfast that morning.

00:54:31.960 | So that just doesn't make energetic sense.

00:54:33.800 | We have a lot of backup supplies and you're never out.

00:54:36.640 | The trick here is this,

00:54:38.040 | there's a concept here we call crossover concept.

00:54:40.280 | So as we are starting to move up exercise intensity,

00:54:44.320 | we start burning a higher percentage of our fuel

00:54:47.080 | from carbohydrates and a lower percentage of our fuel

00:54:51.060 | coming from fat.

00:54:52.080 | I'm sleeping.

00:54:54.600 | That's the highest percentage of your fuel

00:54:56.920 | that will be coming from fat

00:54:58.020 | of any activity you could ever do.

00:54:59.740 | So if the theory that I'm going to stay at a lower intensity

00:55:02.900 | to burn more fat was true,

00:55:05.040 | the optimal fat burning strategy would then be to sleep.

00:55:08.980 | Like that doesn't make sense.

00:55:11.300 | Of course it doesn't.

00:55:12.140 | So why would then going at a slightly elevated rate

00:55:14.800 | somehow all of a sudden magically make you lose fat?

00:55:18.160 | It doesn't actually make sense.

00:55:19.220 | When you think about that,

00:55:20.060 | where you're like, oh yeah, there's no way.

00:55:21.940 | So it's a percentage trick.

00:55:24.520 | It's a difference between absolute and relative.

00:55:26.880 | This is what this confusion is.

00:55:28.040 | So yes, as you start doing lower intensity to exercise,

00:55:31.320 | whether you're faster or not, it's irrelevant,

00:55:33.480 | but lower intensity exercise,

00:55:34.780 | a greater percentage of your fuel is coming from fat.

00:55:38.760 | However, your total fuel expenditure is very low.

00:55:43.220 | So that whole total carbon balance

00:55:46.860 | is not really being shifted much.

00:55:49.280 | As you start exercising at a very high intensity,

00:55:52.600 | you actually start getting a higher percentage of your fuel

00:55:55.140 | from carbohydrate and a lower percentage from fat.

00:55:57.780 | In fact, at rest, about the highest you can get

00:56:01.460 | in most people is about 60% of your fuel from fat.

00:56:05.360 | As you're sleeping, you might be 70%,

00:56:08.860 | but you'll never be in a position ever,

00:56:10.900 | no matter what sort of thing you've heard on the internet,

00:56:14.020 | you'll never be in a situation

00:56:16.480 | where fat is your only fuel source.

00:56:18.680 | The highest I've probably ever seen is like 70%.

00:56:23.180 | You should probably be at about that.

00:56:24.700 | That's a kind of a good number to think, honestly.

00:56:27.740 | But people who understand a little bit

00:56:29.500 | about metabolism to be dangerous, but not enough,

00:56:32.300 | will throw out these terms like fat adapted.

00:56:35.020 | And fat adapted is a real thing,

00:56:36.620 | but it is a massive misunderstanding oftentimes.

00:56:39.940 | It is this idea of thinking like I can get to a spot

00:56:42.020 | where I'm maximizing fat burning.

00:56:44.320 | Maximizing fat burning and maximizing fat for exercise

00:56:49.080 | and maximizing fat loss over time

00:56:51.500 | are not the same thing at all.

00:56:54.220 | That's the confusion.

00:56:55.360 | So if you enhance fat oxidation in an exercise,

00:56:58.580 | that does not enhance fat loss per se, right?

00:57:02.820 | So this is a lot of the confusion that's happening, right?

00:57:05.780 | So as we start moving up, we can never get in a position

00:57:08.760 | where we're using fat only as a fuel.

00:57:10.560 | Again, at best, you're at 70% fat, 30% carbohydrate.

00:57:13.980 | For a lot of reasons,

00:57:14.980 | we probably just don't have time to get into today.

00:57:17.320 | However, the opposite is possible.

00:57:19.600 | When you get into true high intensity exercise,

00:57:22.080 | you'll be basically 100% carbohydrate and 0% fat, right?

00:57:26.680 | That is very possible.

00:57:27.540 | That in fact is 1.0.

00:57:29.320 | That's what I'd argue.

00:57:30.160 | 1.1 is actually because your ventilation got so high,

00:57:32.780 | you actually exceeded that number,

00:57:34.780 | even though you're at 100% carbohydrate.

00:57:37.380 | This is what people came up with the idea then.

00:57:39.060 | It's like, well, I don't want to burn carbs.

00:57:40.540 | I want to lose fat.

00:57:42.140 | So my response to that is always like, okay, great.

00:57:44.940 | So it makes sense.

00:57:45.780 | Burning fat, losing fat.

00:57:46.980 | Burning carbs is losing what then?

00:57:48.680 | Like, do you think your liver shrunk?

00:57:51.180 | Like, wait a minute.

00:57:53.580 | What did you lose then?

00:57:55.240 | Where did it come from?

00:57:56.080 | It's all coming as carbon.

00:57:57.940 | Don't worry about where it came from for your fuel.

00:58:01.340 | It just has to come out as carbon, right?

00:58:04.440 | There are differences in exercise efficiency for performance

00:58:07.220 | with our professional athletes, of course.

00:58:09.480 | But if the only goal here is fat loss,

00:58:11.700 | it doesn't matter where you get it from.

00:58:14.060 | The last bridge we have to connect here is like,

00:58:15.740 | well, wait a minute.

00:58:16.700 | If I only burned carbohydrate,

00:58:19.860 | how did I actually lose that fat?

00:58:21.460 | There was that glove handle sitting on the side of me.

00:58:24.780 | How did that come out of me

00:58:26.340 | if I never burned that for my fuel?

00:58:28.360 | What you're failing to understand

00:58:29.700 | is there's a balance game that happens here.

00:58:31.860 | So if you were to do a bunch of high-intensity

00:58:34.020 | exercise training and you burned only muscle glycogen

00:58:37.940 | and blood glucose and maybe even you did it for so long,

00:58:40.620 | you burn some liver glycogen.

00:58:42.360 | The body understands that it has expelled a lot of energy

00:58:47.140 | from that side of the equation.

00:58:48.820 | It's going to do a couple of things.

00:58:50.020 | Now, it's very difficult to go through this fancy situation

00:58:53.380 | where you convert carbohydrates into fat and back and forth.

00:58:56.740 | Like that's actually like fairly hard.

00:58:58.500 | What's easier to do is something you said earlier

00:59:00.680 | is actually just bias energetics to a different fuel source.

00:59:04.460 | So in that scenario where you're down really low

00:59:08.540 | in your carbohydrate stores,

00:59:11.260 | any carbohydrates you bring in are going to go to storage.

00:59:15.380 | And since your net energy expenditure

00:59:17.540 | is something that your body regulates a lot,

00:59:19.580 | any fat that you then bring in

00:59:21.300 | is going to be utilized as a fuel source

00:59:23.660 | because it knows it doesn't need it anymore.

00:59:25.460 | That is an excess.

00:59:26.900 | So that's how you actually use fat as a fuel

00:59:31.360 | because you've burned down carbohydrate storages.

00:59:34.220 | - As I'm hearing this, a couple of things come to mind.

00:59:38.380 | First of all, thank you for that incredibly important

00:59:42.020 | description of what is otherwise

00:59:43.860 | a very confusing landscape for most people.

00:59:47.260 | One of the key points I took away,

00:59:48.980 | and I just want to say from the outset,

00:59:51.720 | this is not exhaustive by any stretch,

00:59:54.340 | is that burning fat does not equal losing fat from the body.

00:59:58.440 | - Correct.

00:59:59.280 | - And then burning fat has to be divided

01:00:01.180 | into burning of body fat stores.

01:00:04.340 | And we need to distinguish that from burning of dietary fat

01:00:08.340 | that is brought in.

01:00:09.580 | Oftentimes people don't disambiguate those.

01:00:12.500 | - Correct.

01:00:13.840 | - And I'm also understanding that reducing one's body

01:00:18.840 | carbohydrate stores, muscle glycogen, liver glycogen,

01:00:21.940 | et cetera, occurs during high intensity exercise.

01:00:24.600 | - Yep.

01:00:25.440 | - It goes other ways, but that is one very efficient way

01:00:27.720 | to tap into those stores, which makes me wonder,

01:00:32.260 | again, this is one of these things that

01:00:33.780 | does it lead to a protocol?

01:00:35.940 | Makes me wonder whether or not doing high intensity,

01:00:38.440 | let's say weight training for 45 to 60 minutes,

01:00:40.800 | 75 minutes of strength training, power training,

01:00:43.420 | hypertrophy training, which we've covered in an episode

01:00:46.140 | about those topics, and then doing some steady state

01:00:50.940 | cardiovascular exercise, is there any benefit

01:00:54.260 | to that arrangement that would, quote unquote,

01:00:58.540 | enhance body fat loss from the body,

01:01:02.860 | to be very specific now, because unlike the idea

01:01:07.300 | that training fasted would shift the bias

01:01:09.540 | towards fat loss, which it doesn't, you've told us,

01:01:12.740 | under those conditions, muscle glycogen

01:01:15.220 | and maybe even liver glycogen is going to be depleted.

01:01:18.340 | Put simply, can I enhance body fat loss

01:01:21.660 | by doing some cardio after a bout of weight training?

01:01:24.800 | - If you equate for total energy expenditure,

01:01:27.460 | it won't matter.

01:01:28.940 | Now, you did bring up a very important point

01:01:31.380 | that I want to clarify.

01:01:32.540 | If you look at the exercise modalities

01:01:35.700 | that we laid out in our previous conversations,

01:01:38.540 | we talked about nine different adaptations.

01:01:40.500 | One was skill, and then speed, power, strength,

01:01:44.780 | hypertrophy, muscular endurance, anaerobic capacity,

01:01:47.540 | aerobic capacity, and long duration endurance.

01:01:51.200 | Now, speed, power, and skill development

01:01:55.540 | have almost no benefit for fat loss.

01:01:58.620 | Because remember, those are low weight,

01:02:02.500 | a lot of rest, and low volume.

01:02:05.460 | They're not really going to be helpful.

01:02:07.300 | You can make a little bit of a case for strength,

01:02:10.420 | a little bit, but the total energy expenditure

01:02:13.140 | for strength training, even if it's an hour,

01:02:14.700 | if it's truly strength training, it's fairly low.

01:02:17.100 | - Because the repetitions are in the one to three range.

01:02:19.300 | - That's exactly, it's not enough for total work.

01:02:21.240 | So if you're trying to develop a protocol

01:02:23.940 | that sort of optimizes fat loss,

01:02:26.180 | which you want to do, you're close.

01:02:28.060 | In my opinion, is do a combination of something

01:02:31.060 | in the hypertrophy/muscular endurance

01:02:35.340 | strength training realm.

01:02:36.540 | - Okay, so six to 30 repetitions.

01:02:40.560 | - Something like that. - Of resistance training.

01:02:42.240 | - Great.

01:02:43.080 | - Deplete muscle glycogen, maybe even a bit

01:02:44.540 | of liver glycogen.

01:02:45.660 | - Maybe a little bit, depending on if you're doing it

01:02:47.140 | for a long time, but probably not a noticeable amount.

01:02:49.980 | - Okay, so an hour of hypertrophy type training.

01:02:53.180 | - If you're training hard with low rest intervals

01:02:54.820 | and you really did an hour, you would for sure get there.

01:02:56.820 | But most people don't.

01:02:57.900 | - Is that the reason why I crave large bowls

01:03:00.220 | of oatmeal and rice after I do weight training?

01:03:02.100 | - Yeah, I mean-- - I want to replenish

01:03:02.940 | muscle glycogen.

01:03:03.780 | - Totally, right?

01:03:05.800 | Then you maybe do a little bit of very high intensity,

01:03:09.860 | maximum heart rate, well over VO2 max,

01:03:13.160 | as hard as you can for 20, 30, 45, 60 seconds,

01:03:17.220 | something like that, with some recovery,

01:03:19.780 | a lot of recovery and repeated.

01:03:21.620 | And that's going to do a great job

01:03:23.300 | of replenishing muscle glycogen, right?

01:03:25.860 | And if you do that long enough, you'll get the liver,

01:03:27.560 | but again, most people don't,

01:03:28.680 | 'cause it's really, really hard to go that hard.

01:03:31.320 | - So liver is sort of last resort.

01:03:33.340 | - Yeah, basic mechanics here,

01:03:34.460 | which we'll actually get into as our third segment here,

01:03:38.660 | is energy production comes from local exercising muscle,

01:03:43.520 | first and foremost,

01:03:44.360 | from phosphocreatine and carbohydrate stores, right?

01:03:47.520 | And so again, and we store it in muscle,

01:03:48.980 | we call it glycogen, right?

01:03:50.820 | That's just your first sign of light of defense.

01:03:52.700 | If you need glucose, outside of that,

01:03:55.380 | you're going to start pulling it from the blood.

01:03:57.000 | But one of the things,

01:03:57.840 | your body regulates a handful of things

01:03:59.340 | over almost everything, blood pH, blood glucose,

01:04:01.820 | blood pressure, and electrolyte concentrations.

01:04:03.940 | Like it really does not want to mess

01:04:05.260 | with those things at all.

01:04:06.380 | It will change almost anything else in the body

01:04:08.100 | to keep those things standardized, right?

01:04:10.140 | You generally, because you need all those things

01:04:13.260 | for your brain to work, and your brain will stop working.

01:04:15.780 | If you lose blood pressure, it won't go up there.

01:04:17.620 | pH changes, you can't run metabolism.

01:04:19.260 | Electrolytes change, you can't think.

01:04:21.100 | And glucose is a primary fuel source for the brain.

01:04:23.900 | It's going to be a problem, right?

01:04:25.780 | So if that number starts to come down

01:04:27.200 | because you're grabbing glucose out of the blood,

01:04:29.060 | your liver is going to then kick in.

01:04:30.820 | It's going to break down its glycogen

01:04:32.400 | to put glucose in the blood

01:04:34.100 | to keep the blood number at the level.

01:04:35.860 | In fact, one of the things you'll see

01:04:37.500 | is blood glucose concentrations rise during exercise.

01:04:41.220 | They don't fall.

01:04:42.340 | In fact, they rise as an anticipatory state.

01:04:44.780 | If you train a lot, your blood glucose will start going up

01:04:46.920 | before you start moving.

01:04:48.100 | It knows it's coming, right?

01:04:49.700 | So you can play that game.

01:04:51.220 | You can rob Peter to pay Paul for a long time

01:04:53.320 | until your liver runs out.

01:04:54.580 | And that's what actually is a bonk

01:04:56.280 | in terms of like long duration endurance stuff.

01:04:58.700 | You're talking many, many, many miles,

01:05:00.100 | several hours typically, we say,

01:05:01.500 | "Oh, it's gotta be over two hours"

01:05:03.680 | before your liver starts to become a real problem

01:05:05.680 | or it has to be tremendously intense

01:05:08.240 | because of those reasons.

01:05:09.080 | You have to burn through just a lot of energy

01:05:12.200 | before your liver starts to get into a problem.

01:05:14.360 | You can continue to train

01:05:15.460 | when your muscle glycogen levels are low.

01:05:17.700 | In fact, people say glycogen depletion in muscle,

01:05:20.380 | but it's generally a misnomer.

01:05:22.660 | And you are going to just have tremendous signals of fatigue

01:05:25.320 | when that number gets lower than 75%.

01:05:27.860 | So people think that like their muscles are getting heavy.

01:05:30.180 | You're probably still 75% full.

01:05:32.200 | A lot of folks will quit around the 50%.

01:05:35.120 | The highest I've ever seen is like 95% true depletion.

01:05:38.260 | And that's an extremely high level cross country skiers

01:05:40.920 | and like their deltoid gets very, very low.

01:05:43.080 | Some very talented runners will get fairly low

01:05:45.700 | in their quads, but the vast majority of folks,

01:05:48.000 | by the time you're 50% depleted, you're gonna quit.

01:05:50.480 | It's going to be really, really challenging.

01:05:52.940 | So you're never really going to get that low.

01:05:55.100 | It's like a bit of a protective mechanism, right?

01:05:56.900 | But when your liver gets low, you're gonna be shut down.

01:06:00.080 | And that's the case if you've ever been to like a marathon

01:06:02.340 | and you've seen people run like 25 and a half miles.

01:06:04.980 | And then they just like bonk.

01:06:05.960 | They go into like baby deer walking stance

01:06:08.140 | and then they collapse.

01:06:08.980 | And you're like, how are you mentally weak?

01:06:10.820 | Like you ran 26 miles and you can't run the last point.

01:06:13.780 | It ain't mentally weak.

01:06:14.660 | It is, if your liver is done, it's gonna stop you.

01:06:17.300 | 'Cause there's no more backup reserves.

01:06:19.060 | Muscle you can get away with, you can push through it.

01:06:21.980 | Liver will not let you go any farther.

01:06:23.780 | - I find this fascinating because it makes me wonder

01:06:26.240 | whether or not the liver being depleted sends a neural

01:06:30.480 | signal to the brain.

01:06:31.540 | - Oh, absolutely.

01:06:32.380 | - Or the brain must register some signal.

01:06:34.380 | Like I would like to be alive tomorrow.

01:06:36.780 | Thank you.

01:06:37.620 | Whatever is happening right now.

01:06:39.780 | Stopping is going to be safer than continuing.

01:06:43.140 | And so that stop signal is one that I think a lot of people,

01:06:47.300 | including myself, are intrigued by.

01:06:49.220 | Because we always think that it's related to willpower.

01:06:52.100 | But the brain needs to preserve itself.

01:06:54.900 | And as the master computer, I mean,

01:06:57.020 | there are ways to go into kind of automaton type,

01:07:00.340 | not thinking, just doing type of behavior.

01:07:03.180 | - You have override switches, right?

01:07:04.620 | And you can play those cards and you can get better

01:07:07.000 | at learning and being less sensitive to that switch.

01:07:10.220 | That's exactly what happened when you first start training.

01:07:13.060 | You start to realize like, oh my gosh, I'm super tired.

01:07:14.860 | And then you realize really quickly like,

01:07:15.740 | oh, I'm totally fine here.

01:07:17.120 | And this is like the, pick your person who's made sayings

01:07:21.780 | like this, but it's like,

01:07:22.620 | you're really only 10% depleted or 30% or 40% or something.

01:07:26.860 | - We're all operating 40% of what we could do.

01:07:29.000 | - Of course.

01:07:29.840 | Any of those things are true

01:07:30.660 | because it is like a little bit of an override.

01:07:32.860 | You've just gotten very sensitive

01:07:34.040 | to being a small percentage depleted

01:07:35.900 | and you've learned, okay, I'm tired.

01:07:37.420 | And there is a long way to go past that.

01:07:40.660 | But once you get past that

01:07:42.000 | and you flip that override switch a lot,

01:07:44.060 | you just, you're going to break quickly.

01:07:47.100 | Because you've basically learned to ignore that signal

01:07:49.540 | and problems can happen really quickly after that.

01:07:52.540 | And that's even experienced endurance athletes.

01:07:55.100 | If you hit that level,

01:07:56.740 | it's like you're going to be hitting the concrete next.

01:07:59.100 | And that's potentially a problem.

01:08:01.260 | - I want to make sure I understand a concept

01:08:03.540 | that you referred to earlier correctly

01:08:05.900 | because I have a feeling that I don't.

01:08:08.020 | And that's this issue of how the body

01:08:12.540 | accesses body fat stores when in a sub-caloric state.

01:08:19.900 | And I'm doing mainly glycogen burning exercise.

01:08:23.500 | - Yeah.

01:08:24.700 | - What I heard you say,

01:08:25.780 | and please correct me where I'm undoubtedly wrong.

01:08:29.440 | What I heard you say was that,

01:08:32.900 | okay, I go into the gym and I start lifting weights.

01:08:37.900 | I'm burning muscle glycogen,

01:08:40.520 | mostly local to the muscles that I'm using.

01:08:42.620 | And then I start pulling glycogen from the bloodstream.

01:08:45.860 | Maybe there's some body fat stores that are mobilized,

01:08:50.040 | probably not dipping into my liver glycogen.

01:08:53.780 | Okay, I complete the workout.

01:08:55.180 | Maybe I even hop on the airdyne bike and do a little sprint.

01:08:58.620 | - Yeah. - I go for a jog.

01:08:59.500 | Maybe I eat immediately afterward.

01:09:02.660 | Maybe I don't eat for a few hours afterwards.

01:09:04.500 | But across the day,

01:09:06.540 | I ingest fewer calories than I burn.

01:09:12.260 | Is it the case that body fat is mobilized

01:09:17.040 | in order to replace the glycogen

01:09:19.320 | that my sub-caloric intake was insufficient to provide?

01:09:24.320 | In other words,

01:09:26.160 | because I didn't eat enough to fill the glycogen stores,

01:09:29.940 | am I using body fat converted into glycogen

01:09:33.380 | to fill those stores?

01:09:34.340 | - Right.

01:09:35.940 | - And if so,

01:09:37.300 | is that a case where I'm no longer exhaling carbons

01:09:41.140 | in order to burn body fat,

01:09:42.620 | but rather I'm repurposing body fat into muscle?

01:09:45.500 | Have I turned fat into muscle in that case?

01:09:48.580 | - Yeah, I'm really glad you asked this

01:09:50.860 | because I did a very poor job

01:09:52.940 | on that last point talking about it earlier.

01:09:55.380 | I'm realizing, playing back in my head,

01:09:57.260 | because that's so many really good questions.

01:09:58.980 | You cannot turn fat into muscle.

01:10:01.940 | - Can you turn muscle into fat?

01:10:03.120 | - No.

01:10:03.960 | - I'm so glad you said that because when I was in college,

01:10:06.620 | I don't want to out that person.

01:10:10.720 | The physiology teacher seemed to think still at that point

01:10:14.980 | that one could lift weights, get muscular,

01:10:18.560 | but then it would eventually turn into body fat.

01:10:20.740 | That myth has, I think, largely been dispelled.

01:10:23.580 | - I heard that so many times as a kid.

01:10:27.260 | I heard it so many times in college.

01:10:28.560 | I hear it so many times in our undergraduate students

01:10:33.360 | from other faculty and such.

01:10:35.160 | So no, they're not the same structures.

01:10:39.160 | - They are very different.

01:10:41.220 | Let me take a shot at answering this better.

01:10:43.280 | You were really, really, really close.

01:10:44.660 | So yeah, if you were to do that type of exercise

01:10:48.300 | where you've burned a lot of muscle glycogen,

01:10:49.980 | how is it I'm losing stored fat?

01:10:53.560 | That's really the crux of the question.

01:10:54.780 | And it doesn't even actually matter

01:10:56.880 | if you then went ahead and ingested carbohydrates

01:11:00.300 | or fat post-exercise.

01:11:02.560 | That's not really a thing.

01:11:03.780 | You hit on a couple of key things.

01:11:04.840 | Number one, this is all under the assumption

01:11:06.500 | that total caloric intake is still low, right?

01:11:10.920 | You have to have-- - Low total need.

01:11:12.460 | - Below total need, right. - Okay.

01:11:14.460 | - I also wanna flag calories in, calories out

01:11:17.420 | is not the only thing that matters.

01:11:20.220 | This is a very complex thing.

01:11:21.980 | Calories in is incredibly complicated.

01:11:23.900 | Calories out is even more complicated, okay?

01:11:26.500 | So we just, maybe another series we can spend on that alone.

01:11:31.500 | So don't go nuts about that.

01:11:34.100 | You have to be hypocaloric one way or the other.

01:11:36.860 | If you burn a bunch of muscle glycogen

01:11:39.320 | and you are hypercaloric, you're still going to add fat.

01:11:43.060 | If you burn a bunch of muscle glycogen

01:11:44.700 | and you're hypocaloric, you're going to lose fat, right?

01:11:48.260 | Think about it this way.

01:11:49.420 | You're in a negative calorie state.

01:11:52.020 | Where are those calories going to come from?

01:11:55.380 | Are you going to reduce

01:11:56.200 | your muscle glycogen storages permanently?

01:11:58.620 | - No. - No.

01:11:59.640 | Are you gonna reduce your glycogen storage in your liver?

01:12:03.100 | - No. - You wanna reduce blood glucose?

01:12:05.300 | - No. - No way, right?

01:12:07.180 | So where is that extra energy coming from?

01:12:10.100 | It's coming from your stored fat.

01:12:11.700 | It is your backup reserve energy system.

01:12:14.720 | The way that I wanna flag this here is

01:12:16.860 | people tend to think about it as like

01:12:18.280 | carbohydrates versus fat.

01:12:20.220 | That's not, it's more like a chain, more like a bicycle

01:12:23.060 | where there's a front gear and a back gear.

01:12:24.880 | You turn one gear, it turns the other one.

01:12:26.860 | These are complimentary systems.

01:12:28.260 | They are not and/or systems, right?

01:12:30.960 | You're turning one and when we go through carbohydrate

01:12:33.380 | metabolism, maybe here in a second,

01:12:35.840 | you'll understand why you have to have an anaerobic

01:12:38.480 | and an aerobic component to that.

01:12:39.820 | There is absolutely no way to complete

01:12:41.600 | carbohydrate metabolism without oxygen.

01:12:44.880 | That has to happen.

01:12:46.200 | The only way to engage in fat metabolism

01:12:49.120 | is aerobic and oxygen.

01:12:50.560 | There's no anaerobic component to it.

01:12:52.240 | There's a fundamental difference there.

01:12:54.240 | So your carbohydrates are meant to be incredibly flexible.

01:12:58.280 | It is the primary fuel source for a reason.

01:13:00.300 | Your fat is not meant to be flexible.

01:13:02.520 | It is meant to be unlimited.

01:13:04.920 | That's the basic point.

01:13:06.540 | So you want flexibility over here

01:13:08.340 | and an unlimited capacity over there.

01:13:10.100 | Now I'm safeguarded against any energetic need, okay?

01:13:14.460 | I need to run up a hill for safety.

01:13:16.880 | Cool, carbohydrates are there.

01:13:18.700 | I need to then run for 17 hours.

01:13:20.960 | Cool, fat is there.

01:13:22.640 | We want both of these systems.

01:13:24.620 | You wanna be able to have great energy throughout the day.

01:13:27.460 | You want a slow drip coming from fat.

01:13:29.560 | You don't want up and down, up and down.

01:13:32.220 | Feel great, up and down.

01:13:33.480 | Awesome.

01:13:34.320 | You wanna be able to think very quickly

01:13:35.560 | and get hyper focused.

01:13:36.740 | Boom, carbohydrates ramp right up, right?

01:13:38.700 | Get it into the brain, get thinking better,

01:13:40.340 | get thinking clearly fast.

01:13:41.180 | So we want all these, not just for exercise purposes,

01:13:43.880 | but for activities of daily living.

01:13:45.620 | We want an optimal system here.

01:13:47.300 | And when people use the terms like fat adapted,

01:13:50.080 | they're generally hijacking that and they're thinking.

01:13:52.500 | It used to be a thing we said all the time

01:13:54.920 | in like all of my undergraduate classes for years.

01:13:57.940 | And that idea of metabolic flexibility

01:14:00.820 | is using optimal fuel sources and optimal types,

01:14:03.460 | not maximizing fat usage.

01:14:05.540 | The people have co-opted that term

01:14:07.440 | of metabolic flexibility to be like,

01:14:08.800 | oh yeah, yeah, therefore learn how to maximize fat burning.

01:14:10.740 | That's not what that term means.

01:14:12.020 | That term means maximizing your ability

01:14:14.180 | to use whatever fuel is optimal in that time.

01:14:16.780 | Now I'll grant you, most people aren't fantastic

01:14:20.200 | at using fat as a fuel source

01:14:22.220 | relative to the other direction.

01:14:24.300 | But nonetheless, the gold standard here

01:14:26.420 | should be maximizing both.

01:14:28.380 | All right, finally answering your question.

01:14:30.180 | If I were to burn a bunch of muscle glycogen,

01:14:34.060 | how am I losing that fat?

01:14:35.520 | Well, the fuel you're ingesting in that hypochloric state

01:14:38.740 | is going to say, hey look,

01:14:40.060 | we have a lot of muscle glycogen we have to replenish.

01:14:43.120 | So any carbohydrate that comes in

01:14:45.280 | needs to be biased towards storage.

01:14:48.620 | It's gotta go into those tissue.

01:14:50.740 | Any fat that comes in or doesn't even come in,

01:14:54.000 | but any fat that we're using for fuel

01:14:56.220 | needs to be utilized for activity.

01:14:58.460 | And that's where the caloric expenditure from fat comes in.

01:15:01.900 | So you're basically saying your general physiology,

01:15:06.620 | the energy for that starts coming from fat.

01:15:10.020 | And the energy that's coming in from carbohydrate

01:15:13.040 | needs to be simply stored.

01:15:14.460 | And so what you see is your respiratory quotient changes.

01:15:17.140 | All right, the RER is going off.

01:15:18.860 | And so in the exercise moment,

01:15:20.740 | it shot way up for carbohydrates

01:15:23.020 | and shot way down for fat.

01:15:26.200 | As a compensatory response, it goes the other direction

01:15:29.980 | because your body's saying we are low on carbohydrates.

01:15:32.620 | Don't use them for fuel unless we absolutely have to, right?

01:15:36.800 | So use them for storage.

01:15:38.260 | Get our fuel from the fat side of the equation.

01:15:41.860 | And so what you're generally going to say is like,

01:15:44.180 | oh, I'm burning more fat just sitting around

01:15:47.420 | after things like that.

01:15:48.340 | And that's not even taking into the equation the epoch part,

01:15:52.860 | which is like, it's not actually as large as people think.

01:15:55.360 | It is, it's fairly small.

01:15:57.340 | But it is, it adds up sort of over time.

01:15:59.580 | So does that explain a little bit better

01:16:01.500 | about how you lose fat

01:16:02.820 | when you actually only burn carbs for exercise?

01:16:05.940 | - Yeah, you explained it beautifully.

01:16:08.540 | You talked about epoch, the post-exercise oxygen consumption,

01:16:12.700 | not being that significant in terms of energy utilization.

01:16:16.800 | Even though today we're talking about endurance

01:16:19.020 | and different forms of endurance,

01:16:20.660 | I do have to ask whether or not people consider

01:16:23.500 | the elevation in basal metabolism

01:16:28.080 | that occurs when there's more muscle around

01:16:31.320 | because muscle is such a metabolically demanding tissue.

01:16:34.300 | Is there a straightforward-ish equation?

01:16:40.180 | If one adds one pound of lean muscle tissue to their body,

01:16:45.180 | even if it's distributed across multiple muscle groups,

01:16:48.140 | does that equate to a caloric need

01:16:51.200 | of X number of calories per day?

01:16:53.400 | And is that because of the muscle protein synthesis needs

01:16:57.240 | of that muscle or its glycogen storage needs or both?

01:17:00.620 | - If you don't have enough muscle,

01:17:02.660 | you start to have problems with fat loss.

01:17:04.700 | It's a difficult challenge.

01:17:05.780 | If you have enough muscle

01:17:07.700 | and you're just trying to get extremely large,

01:17:09.660 | if your FFMI is 24 and you're 15% body fat,

01:17:13.260 | adding more muscle's not really gonna play a lot

01:17:14.900 | in the equation, and here's why.

01:17:17.100 | Muscle is more metabolically active at rest than fat,

01:17:21.200 | but fat is not inert.

01:17:22.380 | So fat is still going to burn a small number of calories.

01:17:25.860 | Muscle burns more,

01:17:26.700 | but it's not nearly what people think it is.

01:17:29.200 | I'm a muscle guy, I'm a muscle physiologist.

01:17:31.380 | I would love to get people to have more muscle

01:17:34.420 | for any excuse I can.

01:17:36.420 | It's not honest to say that though.

01:17:38.660 | You're talking about when I was in undergraduate,

01:17:41.700 | we would say numbers like 50 kcals per day per pound

01:17:45.260 | is what you can look at, right?

01:17:46.240 | So if you put on a pound of muscle spread across the body,

01:17:48.960 | your basal metabolic rate would go up

01:17:50.340 | by around 50 calories per day.

01:17:53.700 | I think that number is grossly exaggerated.

01:17:55.880 | It's probably a 10th of that, six to 10 calories.

01:18:00.880 | Maybe, it's hard to know exactly what that number is,

01:18:04.400 | but the more recent estimates are something like that.

01:18:07.260 | So now on one hand, you could say,

01:18:08.740 | oh my gosh, that is not even meaningful.

01:18:10.500 | The other hand, you could say that's super meaningful.

01:18:12.500 | It just depends on time domain you wanna put that out, right?

01:18:15.020 | So if you were to put on five pounds of muscle

01:18:17.420 | and your basal metabolic rate went up 30 or 40 calories

01:18:20.820 | a day, well, over the course of a thousand days,

01:18:24.280 | like that actually adds up.

01:18:25.580 | So you could slice this any way you want.

01:18:27.580 | Now, maybe that number is somewhere in between.

01:18:30.020 | I don't really know.

01:18:30.860 | It's not a field I paid that much attention to candidly

01:18:34.380 | because it's not a metric kind of like epoch

01:18:36.820 | where it's like, we used to really harp on it

01:18:41.180 | and now it's sort of like,

01:18:42.020 | well, maybe we exaggerated that like honestly just a bit.

01:18:45.580 | But to me, it doesn't change the equation much

01:18:47.160 | because if you don't have enough muscle, as I described,

01:18:49.700 | there are other consequences

01:18:51.000 | that are gonna make fat loss hard.

01:18:53.060 | And so you need to have sufficient muscle.

01:18:56.000 | If the additional caloric expenditure is the carrot, great.

01:19:01.300 | If it's something else, I don't really care.

01:19:03.500 | There's just enough evidence that you need to have it.

01:19:05.900 | Or I should say there's enough evidence

01:19:07.260 | that it will really help you in your path.

01:19:09.560 | Maybe a few calories here or there is not really the thing.

01:19:13.300 | Especially if you understand a normal food item,

01:19:17.700 | anything you pick

01:19:19.720 | is going to be probably a couple of hundred calories.

01:19:22.920 | One bad food choice a day will outkick

01:19:26.160 | almost any amount of coverage you got

01:19:27.800 | on adding muscle mass to you.

01:19:29.260 | So like you're really stepping over a dollar

01:19:32.040 | to pick up a dime if you're worried about

01:19:33.760 | how many calories you're getting from adding muscle.

01:19:36.440 | Fat loss is gonna be about regulating that carbon intake

01:19:38.640 | above and beyond anything else.

01:19:40.200 | - I'd like to take a brief break

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01:20:43.560 | So I've heard about this concept

01:20:45.360 | of metabolic flexibility mentioned a few times.

01:20:48.600 | Frankly, you're the first person who's ever explained it

01:20:50.640 | to me in a clear and concise way.

01:20:53.320 | How do I know if I am metabolically flexible

01:20:57.420 | and how do I increase my metabolic flexibility?

01:21:00.400 | - Sure, there's no specific standard,

01:21:03.200 | which is actually a good thing, right?

01:21:06.440 | And so if you have a level of specificity

01:21:10.160 | that you want or need metabolically,

01:21:13.880 | then you don't actually want to be in this middle ground.

01:21:16.360 | An example would be if you are performing

01:21:20.520 | in a type of exercise or an athlete who performs in a sport

01:21:23.420 | that is glycolytically dominated,

01:21:25.720 | you don't want to be optimally metabolically flexible.

01:21:29.500 | You don't wanna be super quote unquote fat adapted.

01:21:31.640 | You wanna be biased towards the energy you're going to use.

01:21:34.240 | The same could be true for the other end of the spectrum.

01:21:36.380 | So in those particular cases,

01:21:37.740 | it's not optimal to be equally effective

01:21:40.540 | because there are no free passes in physiology, right?

01:21:44.620 | Your energy producing systems

01:21:49.240 | will upregulate or downregulate accordingly.

01:21:51.680 | So you will actually limit your ability to say,

01:21:54.120 | maximally utilize carbohydrates as a fuel

01:21:56.840 | if you're trying to upregulate your ability

01:21:58.820 | to use fat as a fuel.

01:21:59.820 | And so this is like, there's a saturation point.

01:22:02.280 | Outside of that spectrum, most people would just say,

01:22:04.880 | "Hey, I wanna feel great throughout the day

01:22:06.600 | to be able to do a bunch of different things."

01:22:08.060 | How do you know?

01:22:08.900 | A couple of things.

01:22:09.880 | There's a lot of biological markers you can take.

01:22:12.880 | There's also just some practical takes.

01:22:15.080 | Now, none of these markers by themselves are any sign.

01:22:19.920 | What you wanna do is probably a couple of them

01:22:22.560 | and then say, "Okay, this is maybe a clue."

01:22:24.720 | So again, it's really important to emphasize

01:22:26.480 | not a single one of these tests

01:22:28.320 | that I'm about to walk you through

01:22:30.280 | automatically means you can't use fat as a fuel

01:22:32.560 | or the other case,

01:22:33.700 | which is maybe you're poor at using carbohydrate as a fuel.

01:22:36.220 | So disclaimers aside, we'll get into a couple of them.

01:22:41.220 | - So should we think about these as informative and useful,

01:22:45.760 | but not diagnostic?

01:22:47.140 | - Exactly.

01:22:47.980 | We would call this data-inspired or data-led

01:22:51.000 | and not data-driven.

01:22:52.040 | - Great.

01:22:53.760 | - Okay, cool.

01:22:54.580 | So number one, you wanna think about

01:22:56.180 | just overall functionality.

01:22:57.460 | Do you have a reasonable regulation of your energy

01:22:59.980 | throughout the day?

01:23:01.140 | Now, many things could be going into this,

01:23:02.640 | which is why these are not specific diagnostics.

01:23:04.540 | But as a basic measure,

01:23:07.400 | we talked about blood glucose levels.

01:23:09.200 | A lot of people will say,

01:23:12.580 | again, you want that to be something like

01:23:14.760 | between 80 and 90 milligrams per deciliter

01:23:17.460 | is a blood glucose level.

01:23:18.560 | And you can go look at the cutoff points

01:23:20.740 | for what determines to be pre-diabetic

01:23:23.620 | and type two diabetic, et cetera.

01:23:25.160 | What I can actually recommend,

01:23:26.720 | this is, there's a little bit of science here actually

01:23:28.880 | that I'll talk you through,

01:23:29.720 | but a lot of this is my personal preference.

01:23:32.360 | I generally want people to be at 85 or lower.

01:23:35.920 | And that's because of a couple of things.

01:23:37.100 | Number one, there's actually some papers

01:23:39.440 | that showed every single point increase above 85

01:23:44.440 | increases your likelihood of developing type two diabetes

01:23:48.300 | by about 6%.

01:23:50.600 | Okay, great.

01:23:51.440 | So technically, while maybe 90 or 95

01:23:53.360 | or even up to 100 are in the quote unquote normative values,

01:23:58.240 | that's one clue.

01:23:59.640 | Again, it's not definitive by itself.

01:24:01.680 | It doesn't mean anything.

01:24:03.080 | You need to really pay attention to what increasing

01:24:06.480 | by 6% actually means,

01:24:09.200 | but it's a data point where I'm looking at.

01:24:11.640 | If I actually then see symptomology

01:24:13.800 | and we run you through maybe some questionnaires,

01:24:15.640 | ask how you're feeling throughout the day,

01:24:17.080 | and we see uncontrolled energy bouts.

01:24:19.240 | So you're a lot of energy,

01:24:20.120 | then you get really, really tired and swings.

01:24:22.800 | Okay, another data point.

01:24:24.680 | All right, and we may patch a few of these things together.

01:24:26.900 | That may give me some clues.

01:24:29.880 | That being said, again, a lot of this rhetoric

01:24:33.440 | is used to then scare people off of carbohydrates.

01:24:35.500 | And that is, I wanna be as clear as possible.

01:24:37.320 | That is not, not truly the only thing

01:24:42.320 | people should care about, right?

01:24:43.840 | It can be a thing.

01:24:45.360 | It can also be unrelated.

01:24:46.680 | There are reasons you could have

01:24:48.400 | blood glucose concentrations at this level

01:24:50.440 | or energy swings that are unrelated

01:24:52.500 | to carbohydrate ingestion at all.

01:24:54.640 | All right, so one test you can either run.

01:24:57.780 | In addition to that,

01:24:58.620 | if you're gonna get blood glucose measured,

01:24:59.840 | you can look at some markers we talked about earlier,

01:25:01.980 | which are AST and ALT.

01:25:03.920 | We talked about how you can kind of look

01:25:06.160 | at that AST to ALT ratio before.

01:25:08.720 | You can actually do the inverse,

01:25:09.780 | which is look at ALT and AST.

01:25:12.280 | The kind of normative value there

01:25:13.580 | you're gonna look at is like 0.8.

01:25:15.340 | I actually like to see it lower than that.

01:25:17.360 | And that alone has been actually associated

01:25:19.680 | with blood glucose dysregulation.

01:25:21.820 | And so if you see multiple of these signs,

01:25:24.160 | again, we're looking for patterns and patterns and patterns

01:25:26.560 | in both, in our case, biomark,

01:25:29.640 | symptomology, and performance.

01:25:31.440 | And now if all three of those things are lining up,

01:25:34.480 | you may have an issue.

01:25:35.680 | So performance-wise, a couple of little tests you can run.

01:25:39.920 | Ideally, you have some sort of standard workout you do.

01:25:42.600 | Oh, and hopefully it's pretty objective.

01:25:44.960 | So in other words, like I run the same 15-minute loop

01:25:48.280 | every morning for my cardio.

01:25:49.800 | Oh, okay, great.

01:25:50.840 | How long does it take you to run that loop?

01:25:53.100 | Like you could pick whatever distance.

01:25:54.200 | It doesn't really matter.

01:25:55.520 | What's your heart rate during that thing?

01:25:58.360 | And then what's your perceived exertion?

01:26:00.480 | Now, you should be able to do that fasted

01:26:04.240 | with very little drop in performance.

01:26:07.280 | If you can do that, then that tells me you're fairly good

01:26:10.120 | at using fat as a fuel source.

01:26:12.700 | If, however, the one day you go to do your standard workout

01:26:16.260 | and you feel awful fasting, that may be another clue

01:26:20.580 | that perhaps you're not very good at dialing in that system.

01:26:24.100 | If your recovery afterwards,

01:26:26.000 | in terms of heart rate recovery, is very long,

01:26:28.800 | that may be another clue that you have a poor utilization

01:26:32.840 | of fat as a fuel source.

01:26:34.320 | The inverse can also be true.

01:26:36.520 | So if I give you something in the neighborhood

01:26:38.600 | of like 50 or so grams of carbohydrate,

01:26:42.360 | and 30 minutes later, your face is falling off the table,

01:26:45.120 | that's a good sign that you're in the opposite.

01:26:47.400 | You're actually very, very, very poor

01:26:49.360 | at utilizing carbohydrate as a fuel.

01:26:50.840 | And the reason I bring that up is that is equally a problem.

01:26:54.400 | We send, we hear people a lot make comments like,

01:26:57.880 | "Man, I have to stay away from carbs.

01:26:59.600 | "I crash really hard if I do them."

01:27:01.780 | That has, what that actually means is you're very poor

01:27:05.520 | at utilizing carbohydrates as fuel.

01:27:07.720 | You're getting a, your sensitivity is way off.

01:27:10.640 | We should be able to have carbohydrate

01:27:12.920 | at a reasonable dosage, 50 grams,

01:27:15.240 | and not fall asleep 30 minutes later

01:27:17.660 | or have to run to caffeine.

01:27:19.020 | So that is a sign, in our opinion,

01:27:21.640 | this is again now just my practical brain telling you,

01:27:25.040 | is that's a sign of dysfunction.

01:27:28.360 | We should be able to have plenty of carbohydrates

01:27:30.180 | through the day if we choose to, if we want to,

01:27:31.960 | for any reason.

01:27:33.700 | Now, of course, if you were to throw 150 or 200 grams

01:27:37.120 | of carbohydrate in your belly,

01:27:39.260 | you're probably gonna take a little bit of an energy hit

01:27:42.240 | after that, but we should be able

01:27:43.680 | to have a reasonable dosage and not, you know,

01:27:45.800 | have to fall asleep afterwards.

01:27:47.360 | - What is one way that people can enhance their,

01:27:51.440 | utilization of carbohydrates for exercise?

01:27:55.720 | The reason I ask is I think I fall into that category.

01:27:58.200 | - Yep.

01:27:59.040 | - I do consume some complex carbohydrates

01:28:02.360 | and fruit post resistance training.

01:28:05.560 | And that tends to be when I'm hungriest for them.

01:28:08.360 | But typically, unless I'm,

01:28:11.000 | I've just done some resistance training,

01:28:12.840 | I keep most of my daytime meals relatively low carbohydrate.

01:28:17.280 | And then in the evening I prefer slightly less protein

01:28:20.460 | and more carbohydrate because it has this effect

01:28:23.360 | of sedating me a little bit and I sleep well.

01:28:26.800 | And I know this runs against what everyone was taught,

01:28:29.920 | which is to not eat carbohydrates late in the day,

01:28:32.160 | but I like it because then I tend to wake up in the morning

01:28:35.000 | with, at least as far as I can tell,

01:28:36.760 | my glycogen stores not necessarily topped off,

01:28:39.520 | but certainly filled.

01:28:41.640 | And I'm able to train fasted in the morning.

01:28:45.400 | And my favorite pre-workout consists of water

01:28:49.400 | and caffeine and electrolytes,

01:28:51.260 | and maybe some supplementation as well.

01:28:53.140 | But I love training fasted.

01:28:55.260 | - So there's actually a number of things.

01:28:57.260 | One little sneaky thing you threw in there

01:29:00.040 | is actually the use of caffeine.

01:29:01.640 | So that's another sign.

01:29:02.580 | If you have to have caffeine to do your fasted training,

01:29:05.100 | that's generally another sign

01:29:06.020 | you're not very good at using fuel.

01:29:07.640 | - So I use caffeine prior to resistance training workouts.

01:29:11.440 | Generally, I don't need it

01:29:13.660 | for any kind of cardiovascular training.

01:29:16.400 | Yeah, and when I say that, it doesn't mean it's bad.

01:29:20.180 | It's just like another clue that's like,

01:29:21.880 | okay, you should be able to do this

01:29:23.980 | without having to have caffeine to execute it.

01:29:26.160 | Now, using caffeine to get a better result

01:29:29.160 | is sort of different as an ergogenic aid.

01:29:31.480 | We actually use a lot of high carbohydrate meals

01:29:35.560 | at the end of the day,

01:29:36.380 | a lot of the times for athletes who are cutting weight

01:29:38.600 | or trying to reduce weight.

01:29:39.440 | So it is a fantastic way to handle a lot of things.

01:29:42.180 | And that idea that if you eat carbs late at night,

01:29:45.160 | that'll increase fat.

01:29:46.080 | So like that all is so old and so well destroyed,

01:29:50.960 | scientifically, that's not a concern.

01:29:53.760 | There's just so much data showing.

01:29:55.240 | In fact, there's so much data on like eating timing

01:29:59.480 | is generally poorly understood

01:30:02.000 | about when you can eat and what you can't eat.

01:30:03.600 | Eating in the morning versus eating at night,

01:30:06.460 | like a lot of what we've heard in there is tough.

01:30:08.440 | And maybe we just save that for sort of another day

01:30:11.800 | 'cause we're gonna get really far down in the spot

01:30:13.740 | or we can dive into it.

01:30:15.240 | - Yes, I think our plan is to cover that

01:30:16.880 | in an episode on nutrition, which is in this series.

01:30:21.040 | The only thing that I would add to it is,

01:30:24.120 | when you hear about ingesting carbohydrate late at night,

01:30:27.220 | I should just say that at least in my case,

01:30:29.320 | I'm eating the majority of my carbohydrate

01:30:31.280 | unless I trained, resistance trained early in the day

01:30:35.120 | in which case I post resistance training

01:30:37.520 | in the last meal of the day.

01:30:40.840 | But for me, that's not really late at night.

01:30:42.360 | That last meal is somewhere between 6.30 and 7.30 p.m.

01:30:46.000 | - So it's three or so hours or something like that before-

01:30:48.240 | - I sleep around 10, 10.30 or so.

01:30:50.240 | So it's not, you know, midnight bowls of pasta.

01:30:53.440 | I've done that too, but typically it's not.

01:30:56.920 | So I think that people will be very interested,

01:31:00.640 | myself included, in how meal timing relates to all of this.

01:31:04.360 | But yeah, let's-

01:31:06.620 | - So how do you improve fat utilization?

01:31:09.120 | How do you improve carbohydrate utilization?

01:31:10.480 | Let's hammer both out really quickly.

01:31:12.840 | Enhancing fat utilization is as simple

01:31:17.320 | as doing a little bit of work

01:31:19.640 | in a either pre-fat ingested state.

01:31:23.700 | So anytime you ingest a nutrient prior to training,

01:31:26.520 | you're going to bias towards that nutrient, right?

01:31:29.920 | Which is almost what we were talking about earlier.

01:31:31.860 | So if you want to guarantee you burn more fat,

01:31:34.780 | eat more fat prior to a workout.

01:31:36.560 | Now you're not going to lose fat,

01:31:38.240 | but what you're effectively signaling

01:31:39.840 | is we have an overabundance of this fuel,

01:31:42.920 | preferentially target this fuel.

01:31:46.000 | Now the downside is that may actually

01:31:47.540 | hinder your performance.

01:31:49.600 | That's typically only a concern for people

01:31:51.440 | at a very high level.

01:31:53.220 | Fat is a slower fuel source.

01:31:56.180 | So if you're relying more upon that,

01:31:57.940 | your top end is going to come down a little bit.

01:32:00.520 | And so you wouldn't want to use that strategy

01:32:02.640 | prior to race if it is a carbohydrate-dependent race.

01:32:06.160 | All right.

01:32:07.880 | And in fact, we actually see long-term adaptations

01:32:09.440 | that would suggest that.

01:32:10.280 | So the enzymes responsible for carbohydrate metabolism

01:32:12.760 | will downregulate.

01:32:14.200 | And so you get worse at that.

01:32:16.200 | So not a great strategy there.

01:32:18.200 | Carbohydrate would be the opposite, right?

01:32:19.820 | So if you have carbohydrate prior to exercise,

01:32:22.000 | you're going to bias more towards that.

01:32:24.080 | So a handful of things you can do.

01:32:26.560 | If your total caloric intake is simply managed,

01:32:31.560 | that's going to take care of a lot of these problems.

01:32:33.760 | An appropriate eating strategy,

01:32:36.260 | so the types of food, the combinations of food,

01:32:38.980 | all of those things are going to make

01:32:42.180 | your post-carbohydrate ingestion bonk.

01:32:46.060 | A lot of those things can go away.

01:32:47.220 | So there's a little bit of physiology

01:32:48.680 | that has to be corrected for.

01:32:51.220 | So it's a little bit,

01:32:52.820 | in one hand, you can go very deep here, right?

01:32:54.500 | So the real answer of how we would do this

01:32:56.380 | is if we see a scenario like that,

01:32:57.800 | we're going to do a whole set of analyses.

01:32:59.980 | We're going to go full labs, right?

01:33:01.220 | Probably extensive blood panel, urine, saliva, stool even.

01:33:05.660 | And we're going to figure out

01:33:06.700 | where is that glucose dysregulation coming from?

01:33:09.500 | So a lot of people think like,

01:33:10.540 | "Oh, it's a metabolism issue."

01:33:12.020 | It might be.

01:33:13.220 | It also might just be a flag

01:33:15.540 | that something else is happening in the body.

01:33:17.060 | So we're going to actually work backwards a lot

01:33:18.660 | to try to figure out exactly why that's occurring.

01:33:21.720 | It may be as simple as,

01:33:23.620 | "Oh, you're eating a lot of your carbohydrates

01:33:26.420 | "without any fiber or protein."

01:33:28.700 | And we know that that's important

01:33:29.860 | because those will actually blunt the glycemic index,

01:33:32.820 | like the rise in blood glucose.

01:33:34.060 | So it could be a simple thing of just like,

01:33:35.260 | "Oh, your combination of food is doing it."

01:33:37.420 | It's not the total amount.

01:33:38.820 | It may be something, again,

01:33:39.820 | more endogenous to the actual system.

01:33:42.160 | It could be a heart rate issue.

01:33:46.260 | It could be a breathing issue.

01:33:47.900 | There could be a number of things.

01:33:49.020 | So the way to get better at it is to simply train it.

01:33:51.540 | And specificity is king here.

01:33:53.660 | So if you want to get better

01:33:55.180 | at managing your blood glucose throughout the day

01:33:59.340 | so that you're not feeling those things,

01:34:00.860 | it could be a fuel issue,

01:34:02.200 | but it could be a number of other things.

01:34:03.820 | It's just hard to go into all of them

01:34:05.540 | within our time constraint.

01:34:07.420 | So the practical tool that I would say here is

01:34:10.120 | if you want to get better at managing energy

01:34:12.460 | throughout the day,

01:34:13.300 | make sure that number one, your protein is stabilized.

01:34:16.140 | Make sure, number two, you're ingesting your food

01:34:19.140 | in the right combinations,

01:34:20.380 | ideally with some fiber or some protein or both.

01:34:24.980 | That alone will help stabilize a lot of the problems.

01:34:28.360 | Then you need to train at a high intensity.

01:34:30.020 | You want to get better at using carbohydrates as a fuel.

01:34:32.420 | Train at a higher intensity

01:34:33.500 | and have carbohydrates right before the workout.

01:34:36.500 | We'll do that a lot if we see folks who are,

01:34:41.320 | I kind of walked you through the test of identifying

01:34:43.140 | if you're not very good at using fat as a fuel.

01:34:45.120 | The test for not being good at using carbohydrate

01:34:48.260 | as a fuel is both that eating test I talked about,

01:34:51.260 | as well as performance.

01:34:52.660 | If you're a very, very, very slow starter,

01:34:54.860 | it's just like really hard to get going,

01:34:56.720 | that generally indicates you might be in a situation

01:34:59.860 | where you're not very good at using carbohydrates as fuel.

01:35:01.940 | So we're going to practice that.

01:35:03.460 | We're going to have a pre-carpa hydrate,

01:35:06.060 | pre-exercise carbohydrate meal,

01:35:07.260 | then we're going to do higher intensity stuff.

01:35:09.060 | Not to the point of making you sick

01:35:10.260 | and digestive issues, all that stuff.

01:35:11.500 | But we want to get better at using carbohydrates

01:35:13.660 | as a fuel faster.

01:35:15.580 | If you want to get better at doing the opposite,

01:35:17.580 | then you do that opposite strategy.

01:35:18.660 | Either, again, using fat prior to the workout,

01:35:21.220 | knowing your peak performance

01:35:24.140 | is going to go down a little bit,

01:35:25.680 | but you're investing in adaptation, right?

01:35:28.300 | So it's not about that workout.

01:35:29.540 | It's about what's going to happen six, eight, 10 weeks from now.

01:35:32.540 | Investment is what you want to think about.

01:35:34.120 | Or you could bring in some fasted training.

01:35:37.340 | And so I want to really make sure I clarify

01:35:38.900 | when we were talking about it earlier,

01:35:40.060 | I'm not at all against fasted training.

01:35:42.720 | It's not, it works.

01:35:44.620 | It just isn't required for fat loss.

01:35:47.940 | It isn't required for fat adaptation.

01:35:51.420 | It is a great option though, if you want.

01:35:54.260 | What I was hoping to do with that conversation,

01:35:56.200 | and maybe I didn't articulate that well,

01:35:57.560 | is to not restrict people, but is to open you up.

01:36:01.080 | And to let you say, you have a lot of options.

01:36:02.840 | If you like to do fasted cardio, amazing, it is great.

01:36:06.320 | If you hate it, you don't have to.

01:36:08.260 | You can reach the same performance goals,

01:36:10.320 | the same physique goals without ever doing it.

01:36:13.160 | If you love long duration steady state stuff, it is great.

01:36:16.200 | If you hate it, there are other options,

01:36:19.040 | higher intensity stuff.

01:36:20.000 | Again, if we're just talking about fat loss.

01:36:21.980 | So I hope now that that's a little clearer

01:36:25.320 | in terms of the same thing with nutrition.

01:36:27.180 | If you like higher carb, great.

01:36:29.200 | If you like lower carb, these are all great.

01:36:30.880 | You have options and you don't have to fret so much over,

01:36:33.880 | oh my gosh, I have to do this thing a certain way.

01:36:36.000 | And I absolutely hate it.

01:36:37.380 | You don't have to worry about it.

01:36:38.320 | Hit those concepts and you'll be fine.

01:36:41.620 | - A few minutes ago, you mentioned that

01:36:44.940 | if we ingest a given macronutrient fat,

01:36:48.120 | then the body will preferentially use that fuel source.

01:36:51.320 | If you ingest carbohydrate, we'll use that fuel source.

01:36:56.280 | Is it always the case that the body uses

01:36:58.820 | the ingested macronutrient prior to using glycogen?

01:37:02.880 | I have to imagine it's using both.

01:37:04.900 | I mean, if I were to have some carbohydrate

01:37:07.380 | before doing any kind of training,

01:37:10.800 | the muscles still burn glycogen, right?

01:37:13.280 | Or do they have some way to register

01:37:15.200 | the amount of circulating carbohydrate

01:37:17.500 | that would allow or available carbohydrate

01:37:19.620 | in the form of food stuffs

01:37:22.940 | that would allow them to not tap into their own

01:37:26.260 | muscle fiber stores of glycogen?

01:37:28.260 | - All right, so the way we derive energy

01:37:30.620 | for exercise or basic maintenance,

01:37:33.540 | a little bit about cellular physiology.

01:37:34.980 | So you've got a couple of organelle and structures

01:37:36.880 | that we need to pay attention to.

01:37:37.740 | The first one is the nucleus, that's whole-g DNA.

01:37:40.380 | The second one is the mitochondria.

01:37:42.260 | And then everything outside of that,

01:37:43.240 | you've got all these other organelle

01:37:44.460 | that do a bunch of things like ribosomes

01:37:46.280 | or protein synthesis, et cetera, et cetera.

01:37:48.420 | All right, now, when you wanna produce energy for exercise,

01:37:53.700 | anytime you hear the word anaerobic,

01:37:55.980 | you automatically understand

01:37:57.860 | what you're meaning without oxygen.

01:38:00.420 | All right, great.

01:38:01.300 | That all happens in the cytoplasm.

01:38:04.260 | The cytoplasm is that space

01:38:06.460 | that is not the mitochondria, not the nucleus.

01:38:09.660 | So it's the space in between everything else.

01:38:11.860 | This is like jelly-like substance that sounds there.

01:38:14.780 | So anaerobic metabolism happens there.

01:38:17.100 | Every single aerobic metabolic process happens there.

01:38:22.100 | All right, why is that important?

01:38:24.140 | If I go to create cellular energy

01:38:26.220 | and I need it the fastest possible,

01:38:27.980 | I'm going to go for phosphocreatine

01:38:29.820 | because it is stored directly in the cytoplasm.

01:38:32.220 | The stoichiometry is one-to-one there,

01:38:34.260 | which means for every mole of phosphocreatine I burn,

01:38:36.980 | I can create one ATP.

01:38:38.900 | It's one-to-one.

01:38:39.740 | It is incredibly fast, but it is very limited

01:38:42.420 | because think about it,

01:38:43.260 | how much of that could I possibly store

01:38:45.820 | in the small size of the cell?

01:38:47.820 | That's it.

01:38:48.860 | If I go to create cellular energy

01:38:50.100 | and I need it the fastest possible,

01:38:52.100 | I can create one ATP.

01:38:53.660 | So that's it.

01:38:55.580 | If I need energy past that point,

01:38:57.740 | now I'll start using muscle glycogen

01:39:00.340 | because that is also stored in the cytoplasm.

01:39:03.500 | So it is right there.

01:39:04.860 | The stoichiometry is not one-to-one.

01:39:06.420 | It's a little bit higher, probably like four-to-one.

01:39:09.260 | So for every molecule of glycogen you burn,

01:39:11.660 | you're going to get something like four-ish,

01:39:14.100 | some small number of ATP out of that, which is great.

01:39:17.140 | But again, you're running into a storage problem.

01:39:19.740 | Very, very fast, much more effective than phosphocreatine,

01:39:22.180 | but so there.

01:39:23.980 | If I then want to metabolize any form of fat,

01:39:28.380 | or if I want to complete the metabolization of carbohydrates,

01:39:32.060 | I have to start transferring into the mitochondria.

01:39:35.100 | Now I start getting whole hosts of ATP.

01:39:38.260 | If you were to fully run through this thing,

01:39:40.260 | which I'll talk about in a second,

01:39:41.980 | called the TCA cycle or Krebs cycle,

01:39:44.580 | you'll get now something like 28 or 30 or 35,

01:39:48.060 | kind of depending, ATP per.

01:39:50.620 | So the energetic output is much higher.

01:39:54.300 | Okay, so here's exactly what happens,

01:39:55.740 | and I'm going to walk you through this

01:39:56.900 | in the form of carbohydrate,

01:39:58.260 | and then I'll come backwards and go through fat.

01:40:02.340 | So remember, carbohydrate,

01:40:04.900 | it is one carbon molecule that has been hydrated.

01:40:07.540 | So it is one-to-one.

01:40:09.700 | So the actual chemistry here, it is CH2O.

01:40:16.700 | One carbon, 2H10.

01:40:19.380 | Glucose is a six-carbon chain.

01:40:22.040 | So the chemistry here is C6H12O6.

01:40:26.400 | Six carbons, six waters.

01:40:28.480 | Very simple, that's a carbohydrate.

01:40:30.460 | All right, so you can imagine,

01:40:32.240 | if you're watching on the video here,

01:40:34.140 | you'll see my fingers going nuts.

01:40:35.580 | I'll try to make sure I explain it to you all,

01:40:36.940 | just listening in an easy fashion.

01:40:38.300 | So you've got this chain of six carbons

01:40:40.460 | that is in front of you,

01:40:41.500 | and the very first step to metabolism

01:40:43.140 | is you snap that thing in half, right?

01:40:45.460 | So you break it into two separate three carbon chains.

01:40:48.460 | Now, in doing that, you've got a little bit of energy

01:40:50.940 | 'cause you broke that one bond,

01:40:52.420 | but not a tremendous amount.

01:40:53.860 | This is called glycolysis.

01:40:56.020 | So lysis being the split,

01:40:57.780 | and you know, you split glycogen up.

01:41:02.020 | Got a little bit of energy of that.

01:41:04.100 | All right, you formed this three-carbon chain

01:41:06.880 | called pyruvate, or pyruvic acid.

01:41:08.580 | Okay, there's differences there, but don't kill me.

01:41:11.380 | General audience, friends, all right?

01:41:12.900 | I gotta communicate this to everybody.

01:41:16.040 | So you got a little bit of that.

01:41:17.260 | Now, you can't do much past that

01:41:19.020 | besides rip one more carbon

01:41:21.260 | off of each of those three-carbon chains.

01:41:23.140 | So I've got two three-carbon chains.

01:41:25.220 | I gotta be careful how I do this with my fingers

01:41:27.140 | so I don't flip you off here in a second,

01:41:29.140 | but I burn one more off of each.

01:41:31.920 | I get a little bit of energy,

01:41:33.140 | and now that little two-carbon chain,

01:41:35.180 | I have two two-carbon chains,

01:41:36.500 | those are called acetyl-CoA.

01:41:38.420 | All right, amazing.

01:41:39.980 | I have now completed anaerobic glycolysis.

01:41:41.920 | I've got really nothing left I can do here.

01:41:43.740 | I made a little bit of ATP.

01:41:44.800 | Now, wait a minute.

01:41:45.880 | I have now freed two carbons.

01:41:51.540 | Because remember, I started with six,

01:41:52.880 | and I split them apart,

01:41:53.720 | but I had two three-carbon chains.

01:41:55.340 | I burned one each.

01:41:56.580 | I've got two free-floating carbons.

01:41:58.500 | I have to now do something with them.

01:42:01.140 | My body will not let me go through that last process

01:42:04.500 | unless I've got a plan for that free carbon,

01:42:07.020 | 'cause I can't break it in half.

01:42:09.380 | Amazing.

01:42:10.360 | Here's what's going to happen.

01:42:11.860 | If I have those three-carbon molecules,

01:42:14.760 | and I don't have anywhere I can put that carbon,

01:42:19.000 | you're not going to go through that process.

01:42:23.020 | It's going to stop it.

01:42:24.220 | You're gonna start building up pyruvate.

01:42:27.540 | Now, at the same time, you're breaking ATP for fuel.

01:42:31.720 | That's called ATP hydrolysis.

01:42:33.980 | Right, you have water that comes in.

01:42:35.660 | You have adenosine and three-phosphates.

01:42:37.660 | That's why it's called ATP.

01:42:38.820 | Adenosine triphosphate, one, two, three.

01:42:40.880 | You break one of those phosphates off.

01:42:43.840 | There you go, there's your energy.

01:42:44.940 | So now you have a free-floating inorganic phosphate

01:42:48.040 | and an adenosine diphosphate, so two over there.

01:42:51.440 | Amazing.

01:42:52.280 | That actually results, because you use water for it,

01:42:56.760 | results in a free-floating hydrogen ion.

01:42:59.160 | Okay, you just have to trust me, hydrogen H2O.

01:43:03.160 | Any idea what a free-floating hydrogen is?

01:43:08.440 | - It's gonna--

01:43:10.000 | - That's acid.

01:43:10.840 | - Yeah, I was gonna say it's gonna increase acidity.

01:43:12.800 | - That's what acidity is.

01:43:13.640 | - For anyone that's ever measured pH,

01:43:14.800 | what you're really measuring is the amount of hydrogen.

01:43:17.320 | - Potential hydrogen, that's what pH is, right?

01:43:19.800 | 100%, there's two definitions of pH,

01:43:21.960 | but you get it, that's one of the two.

01:43:23.120 | - So are you gonna tell me this is related to the burn?

01:43:27.600 | - We're gonna get close, right?

01:43:29.460 | So I've got a bunch of free-floating.

01:43:32.820 | You've got the phosphates, which are actually a problem,

01:43:34.920 | two, probably more of a problem than people realize,

01:43:37.720 | and that hydrogen.

01:43:39.000 | What are you going to do with that hydrogen?

01:43:41.960 | Well, one thing you can do is actually ship it over

01:43:43.880 | to pyruvate and bond it there.

01:43:46.380 | We have a special name for that little molecule

01:43:48.040 | when you have pyruvate

01:43:48.880 | and you have a hydrogen attached to it.

01:43:50.160 | Do you know what it's called?

01:43:51.320 | - Hydrogen peroxide?

01:43:54.440 | - Lactate.

01:43:55.260 | Lactate, lactic acid, this is that whole system, right?

01:44:00.440 | Again, I was skipping some steps,

01:44:01.960 | making a little bit of mistakes here,

01:44:03.280 | intentionally folks, just to make this assumed.

01:44:05.800 | So what happens when you start running

01:44:07.240 | a bunch of anaerobic glycolysis?

01:44:08.620 | You start seeing massive rises in lactate.

01:44:13.100 | Cool.

01:44:13.940 | - Not lactic acid.

01:44:14.860 | - Right, right?

01:44:15.960 | That's why we see associations

01:44:20.280 | between a lot of lactate and a lot of fatigue.

01:44:22.960 | But the lactate's actually not causing the fatigue.

01:44:25.360 | The lactate is actually sparing you

01:44:26.900 | from having a bunch of free-floating acid.

01:44:30.660 | It also can be then used directly back in the muscle

01:44:33.960 | because as soon as you bring in enough oxygen

01:44:37.040 | and you can take that hydrogen back off of it,

01:44:38.940 | you've now turned it right back into pyruvate

01:44:40.520 | and you can run it through this whole cycle

01:44:42.280 | as fuel that I'm about to do.

01:44:43.840 | You can actually actually ship it out of

01:44:45.520 | the exercising muscle and ship it into

01:44:47.400 | a non-exercising muscle and then go backwards

01:44:50.000 | and make glucose.

01:44:51.280 | - What actually liberates hydrogen from lactate?

01:44:54.980 | - Well, like chemically?

01:44:56.040 | - Yeah, so what liberates,

01:44:58.240 | well, what are the stimuli that can take hydrogen

01:45:00.600 | off the pyruvate and then, in other words,

01:45:05.040 | to reduce lactate and free up that hydrogen?

01:45:07.400 | - Oxygen availability.

01:45:08.440 | So, in fact, one of the major places

01:45:11.720 | that you ship hydrogen to,

01:45:13.160 | or one of the major places that you ship lactate to

01:45:14.800 | is your heart.

01:45:16.400 | Because it's what we call the ultimate sausage fiber,

01:45:19.120 | and it has a ton of freely available mitochondria,

01:45:22.680 | which have a ton of access to oxygen,

01:45:24.760 | so it can actually then go to it, form water,

01:45:27.980 | the H2O can be used to form water,

01:45:30.320 | and now we have a place to store the hydrogen.

01:45:32.840 | - Got it.

01:45:33.680 | - Right? Cool.

01:45:35.280 | So, as a result of anaerobic glycolysis,

01:45:39.320 | we have made a little bit of ATP.

01:45:41.180 | We've created a lot of waste,

01:45:43.480 | and we don't have anywhere to go with these end products.

01:45:47.280 | So, when you do anything of a higher intensity,

01:45:50.820 | and it says, "I need energy fast,"

01:45:53.640 | you're gonna go to this system first, right?

01:45:55.240 | Right past ATP.

01:45:56.540 | Because it is the fastest place to get energy,

01:45:58.360 | but you're not gonna get much of it,

01:45:59.300 | and you've gotta deal with the waste products.

01:46:02.640 | Bone.

01:46:03.840 | Right back to the beginning of our conversation.

01:46:06.000 | Endurance is about two things.

01:46:07.640 | Energy production and waste management.

01:46:09.920 | And we're fatigue buffering.

01:46:11.760 | This is it, right?

01:46:12.600 | How well can you handle the elevations in hydrogen,

01:46:15.920 | right, drop in pH,

01:46:17.320 | and then what are you gonna do with these products?

01:46:20.200 | If you want to fully metabolize a carbohydrate,

01:46:23.660 | you then have to do something with those pyruvates

01:46:26.440 | or those acetyl-CoAs,

01:46:27.880 | which are going to do, if oxygen is available,

01:46:30.260 | you will take those things

01:46:31.280 | and ship them into the mitochondria.

01:46:33.080 | They have to go through some cell walls

01:46:36.000 | and some other things like that,

01:46:37.520 | but they're going to get inside there.

01:46:39.740 | Once they're in there,

01:46:40.720 | that two carbon acetyl-CoA runs through this entire cycle

01:46:44.280 | that we call the Krebs cycle.

01:46:46.440 | And that's this really interesting place.

01:46:47.680 | That's where B6 and NMN people are,

01:46:51.080 | that's where that whole stuff starts to kick in.

01:46:52.820 | All your B vitamins basically run that entire circle.

01:46:55.660 | And you're gonna start off at the top.

01:46:57.200 | You have a bunch of fun stuff going on.

01:46:59.400 | But as a part of that circle,

01:47:01.200 | you're gonna pull off some of the hydrogen ions.

01:47:03.360 | You're gonna send these

01:47:04.200 | to what's called the electron transport chain.

01:47:05.600 | That's where you're gonna get a ton of ATP out of.

01:47:08.040 | And as a result, about halfway through the turn,

01:47:10.080 | you're gonna pull off one carbon.

01:47:11.960 | And about halfway through,

01:47:13.360 | almost the other way through the finish,

01:47:14.320 | you're gonna pull off the second carbon.

01:47:16.200 | So you're gonna take the second acetyl-CoA,

01:47:18.760 | run that entire thing same through as well.

01:47:21.400 | And so what we did is we started off

01:47:22.880 | with a six carbon glucose chain.

01:47:24.520 | We split it in half, we called those pyruvate.

01:47:26.660 | Made a little bit of energy

01:47:27.520 | 'cause we broke that one bond

01:47:28.920 | of those two carbons that are in the middle,

01:47:31.080 | cool.

01:47:31.920 | Those two, three carbon molecules,

01:47:33.080 | we pulled one carbon off of each.

01:47:35.360 | We brought in, sorry, we moved those into the mitochondria.

01:47:39.160 | We brought one off.

01:47:40.000 | We took a breath, brought in some oxygen, bonded that.

01:47:42.880 | Brett took out two CO2 exhales.

01:47:45.440 | We ran the acetyl-CoA through the Krebs cycle.

01:47:48.540 | One, two carbons per turn coming out of CO2.

01:47:52.840 | So we had six carbons total

01:47:54.240 | and we started and we exited with zero carbons.

01:47:57.020 | Now we have fully metabolized a molecule of carbohydrate.

01:48:01.080 | That required an anaerobic start and an aerobic finish.

01:48:06.080 | If you don't have a lot of mitochondria,

01:48:10.440 | large mitochondria, high functioning mitochondria,

01:48:13.080 | you're going to limit your anaerobic performance

01:48:15.300 | because you're going to get,

01:48:16.560 | they're gonna run that door full very, very quickly.

01:48:19.800 | You can't go past it

01:48:20.720 | because hydrogen will build up way too fast.

01:48:23.820 | And one of the things that we know

01:48:25.000 | is both temperature and pH run enzyme function.

01:48:30.000 | So they're going to stop.

01:48:31.200 | You won't even be able to run through, in fact,

01:48:32.800 | that ATP hydrolysis phase.

01:48:34.760 | Even if I gave you a whole infinite supply of ATP,

01:48:37.240 | if I put enough acid in there, it would stop working

01:48:39.160 | because the ATPase enzyme needed to split,

01:48:42.200 | it won't be able to run in a highly acidic environment

01:48:44.640 | or a hot environment.

01:48:46.080 | - Yeah, at some point, perhaps today,

01:48:47.940 | perhaps in the future discussion,

01:48:51.080 | but still not too far from now,

01:48:52.800 | we could talk about the role of temperature in pyruvate

01:48:56.960 | in terms of its regulation muscle contraction.

01:48:59.000 | But I want to make sure I understood something correctly.

01:49:03.040 | You mentioned these two parallel fuel systems, right?

01:49:07.400 | One is essentially anaerobic, right?

01:49:11.180 | And the other is aerobic.

01:49:12.900 | You said that if we can't pull enough,

01:49:15.840 | if we can't break enough bonds,

01:49:19.000 | then we limit our anaerobic capacity.

01:49:22.220 | - Correct.

01:49:23.480 | - I would have thought, given that the mitochondria

01:49:26.880 | are the site for essentially for aerobic metabolism,

01:49:30.040 | that we would be limiting our aerobic capacity as well.

01:49:34.600 | Perhaps you could just clarify for me

01:49:37.080 | how these two things are divided,

01:49:38.280 | or is there not a clean division?

01:49:40.000 | Is it not an either or?

01:49:40.840 | - No, in fact, again,

01:49:41.880 | I think it's better to think of these things

01:49:43.440 | rather as two separate parallel things as one big cycle.

01:49:47.660 | They're one gear turning the next.

01:49:49.920 | Being compromised in one will compromise the other.

01:49:52.840 | - That, I should say, reminds me of what you said earlier,

01:49:55.720 | which is the bicycle gear analogy.

01:49:58.400 | That works great.

01:49:59.600 | So if you short circuit one,

01:50:01.240 | basically the chain can't move.

01:50:03.000 | That's fantastic.

01:50:04.600 | Okay, so indeed they are running in parallel,

01:50:08.640 | but they are interdependent.

01:50:11.660 | - Yeah, well, they're actually not even running in parallel

01:50:13.760 | because they're actually funneling to the same end point.

01:50:17.080 | Which is like, if you're going to come

01:50:18.720 | from the anaerobic glycolysis route,

01:50:20.220 | or you're going to come from the fat route,

01:50:21.720 | which I'll talk about in a second,

01:50:23.040 | they're both going to be limited in the mitochondria.

01:50:26.120 | So when that thing's full, it doesn't matter.

01:50:27.840 | You can't run either system, right?

01:50:30.320 | So it is more of like, again,

01:50:32.400 | if you're running the bike gears,

01:50:34.040 | it doesn't really matter if the back one's larger or smaller

01:50:36.940 | because if either one is limited, you're toast

01:50:38.960 | 'cause they're running on the same system.

01:50:41.480 | You can sneak a little bit here and there, but not much.

01:50:44.920 | - You also really nicely highlighted how lactate

01:50:49.360 | this thing that we think of as a limiting factor.

01:50:52.960 | It's like the burn, it gets in the way,

01:50:54.580 | and it's the thing we need to stop and buffer

01:50:57.880 | and all sorts of things.

01:50:59.280 | - Sure.

01:51:00.240 | - It's actually really a fuel.

01:51:01.880 | - It's a tremendously effective fuel.

01:51:03.680 | It is a strongly preferred fuel, actually.

01:51:06.640 | It's interesting, this is a very classic case of association,

01:51:10.340 | correlation versus causation, right?

01:51:13.200 | So the original actually,

01:51:14.320 | there's a really cool history on lactate,

01:51:15.640 | but it was originally found, I think in Germany,

01:51:19.280 | pardon my history there,

01:51:22.800 | somewhere in Europe in hunted stags.

01:51:25.760 | So one of the things is they sort of realized

01:51:27.040 | is like if we harvested a stag in a rest estate

01:51:30.560 | when it didn't know we were there

01:51:31.560 | versus if we chased it and it was ran down,

01:51:33.440 | that these lactate concentrations were significantly higher

01:51:35.840 | in the latter situation.

01:51:37.680 | Therefore, lactate started immediately getting

01:51:40.360 | this association between high fatigue points

01:51:42.920 | and it is easy to measure.

01:51:44.380 | If you're to do any sort of lactate test,

01:51:46.920 | any sort of metabolic test,

01:51:48.080 | you will see as fatigue increases,

01:51:50.040 | lactate will also increase.

01:51:51.760 | The assumption there was then, oh my gosh, it's the cause.

01:51:56.260 | Now we know like, again, it's not the thing,

01:51:58.160 | it's in large part trying to buffer

01:52:01.000 | the negative consequences of ATP hydrolysis

01:52:05.100 | and some other things.

01:52:06.040 | So it is certainly playing a part in that role,

01:52:09.480 | but it is not the core driver.

01:52:11.020 | It's also why you don't need to worry about doing things

01:52:13.180 | to quote unquote reduce lactate in the muscle

01:52:18.000 | after exercise or to clear lactate or any of those things.

01:52:20.960 | You may still wanna do those activities,

01:52:22.560 | but not for that reason.

01:52:24.360 | Lactate's fine.

01:52:25.200 | You're actually gonna use it in, again,

01:52:26.640 | the neighboring exercise muscle fibers in the same muscle.

01:52:30.440 | Another muscle, you can send it actually to the liver

01:52:33.680 | and it can actually go through gluconeogenesis

01:52:35.520 | and it can actually replenish liver glycogen.

01:52:38.980 | Just does that feel sore?

01:52:39.920 | Sorry, you can send the harder, any number of sources.

01:52:41.940 | You can also just kind of put it in circulation,

01:52:43.920 | put it back in the muscle.

01:52:44.980 | And once enough oxygen is there,

01:52:46.640 | you can just kick it right back into either glucose

01:52:48.760 | or glycogen.

01:52:49.600 | It's totally fine.

01:52:50.640 | So it is obviously clear though.

01:52:54.080 | Once that number gets very, very high,

01:52:56.500 | other things are going to be happening

01:52:57.740 | that are causing a lot of hurt.

01:52:59.920 | And this is your managing waste, right?

01:53:02.340 | Is really an issue of managing,

01:53:04.280 | what am I gonna do with all this extra carbon?

01:53:06.740 | What am I gonna do with all this extra inorganic phosphate

01:53:09.040 | and some other nasty byproducts?

01:53:11.620 | But that's the thing you have to deal with.

01:53:14.240 | - I'd love for you to teach me how different ratios

01:53:16.300 | of fuel sources are used depending on how long

01:53:19.280 | I happen to be exercising.

01:53:21.400 | For example, if I do a very short bout of exercise,

01:53:26.200 | typically that's correlated with a higher intensity output.

01:53:30.900 | I mean, I suppose I could jog for one minute,

01:53:33.040 | but here I'm thinking about sprinting for one minute or less.

01:53:37.480 | Which fuels are used?

01:53:38.720 | Is that mainly driven by fat stores, by carbohydrate stores?

01:53:43.320 | Is it driven by dietary fat preferentially

01:53:46.060 | or carbohydrate that I've ingested?

01:53:48.320 | If indeed I've ingested those or protein for that matter.

01:53:52.100 | And then as we transition to exercise

01:53:55.060 | that goes a little bit longer,

01:53:57.060 | anywhere from three to five minutes,

01:54:01.240 | how do those ratios change?

01:54:02.960 | And as we transition to longer duration,

01:54:06.380 | what most people think of as endurance exercise,

01:54:08.360 | but long duration output of 20 minutes or more

01:54:12.800 | leading all the way up to full marathon.

01:54:15.040 | How does that change the ratio of fuel sources

01:54:17.120 | that are used?

01:54:18.100 | And I'd be particularly interested in distinguishing

01:54:21.200 | between carbohydrate fat and protein that's ingested.

01:54:25.860 | So coming from food sources or carbohydrate fat and protein

01:54:30.280 | that are coming from storage sites within the body.

01:54:33.060 | - Okay, great.

01:54:33.900 | Let's start at zero seconds

01:54:34.940 | and run all the way through marathon.

01:54:36.960 | And we'll flag the distinctions where they start changing.

01:54:40.240 | As soon as you want to create muscle contraction and power,

01:54:43.360 | the very first source of energy is phosphocreatine.

01:54:46.240 | That's going to power you for zero to maybe say eight

01:54:49.580 | to 15, 20 seconds of maximal exertion.

01:54:52.080 | - And that's coming from the muscle fibers themselves?

01:54:54.560 | - Yeah, that is actually stored

01:54:55.740 | in what's called the cytoplasm.

01:54:57.200 | So this is a little area or space in the muscle fiber

01:55:00.120 | that's sort of like in this jelly-like substance.

01:55:03.040 | And it's nice because one molecule of phosphocreatine

01:55:06.340 | gives you one molecule of ATP.

01:55:08.320 | So it's not a big energy output,

01:55:10.520 | but it's very fast because it is stored right there

01:55:12.860 | in the local exercising muscle.

01:55:15.440 | Now, if you need energy past that point,

01:55:18.320 | say 10 or 15 seconds up to maybe a couple of minutes,

01:55:22.360 | this is now you're going to have to transition

01:55:23.960 | because you're going to burn through that phosphocreatine

01:55:25.760 | and it's going to be out.

01:55:27.260 | You're going to have to move to now carbohydrate metabolism.

01:55:29.740 | This is what we call anaerobic glycolysis.

01:55:32.480 | So there's two phases of glycolysis.

01:55:34.560 | Now, glycolysis itself means glucose burning, all right?

01:55:39.000 | So it just means we're using carbohydrate as a fuel source.

01:55:41.880 | So initially, when we start off this cascade,

01:55:44.560 | which is going to take us again for a couple of minutes,

01:55:48.940 | carbohydrate utilization comes first

01:55:51.240 | from the exercising muscle.

01:55:52.680 | So it's very similar to phosphocreatine that way.

01:55:55.540 | If you start running low on it,

01:55:57.360 | you can actually start pulling blood glucose.

01:55:59.820 | And if blood glucose gets low,

01:56:01.140 | you'll have to start getting glycogen from the liver

01:56:02.980 | to keep that up.

01:56:03.820 | So we've sort of covered that conversation.

01:56:05.820 | All right, so a little bit of chemistry here,

01:56:07.140 | just give me a little bit of room here.

01:56:10.040 | So now remember a carbohydrate is a carbon molecule

01:56:12.760 | that has been hydrated.

01:56:14.140 | So one carbon attached to one water,

01:56:16.480 | and remember water is H2O.

01:56:18.840 | Most of the time when we're talking about glucose,

01:56:21.300 | it is in a six carbon chain.

01:56:24.040 | So six carbons attached to six water molecules.

01:56:28.000 | All right, great.

01:56:29.220 | When I go to split this up through anaerobic glycolysis,

01:56:31.820 | it works a little bit like this.

01:56:33.560 | So you've got this six carbon chain.

01:56:36.360 | The first step is to snap that thing in half.

01:56:38.540 | You're gonna make two, three carbon chains.

01:56:41.220 | Now we broke one bond right there,

01:56:43.060 | so we got a little bit of energy,

01:56:44.440 | but not a tremendous amount.

01:56:46.280 | At the end of anaerobic glycolysis,

01:56:47.940 | you're gonna net something like three or four ATP.

01:56:51.560 | - So more than you get from the phosphocreatine system?

01:56:53.320 | - Triple or quadruple, but still not very much.

01:56:56.620 | There's another major downside that's coming in a second

01:56:59.680 | to this system.

01:57:00.840 | The upside is it's fast.

01:57:03.120 | Now actually one adaptation we get to training in this style

01:57:07.620 | is you'll increase your ability to store glycogen

01:57:10.840 | in your muscle, which is great, right?

01:57:13.280 | We can actually biopsy you and measure the amount

01:57:15.160 | that you store and a training adaptation is awesome.

01:57:17.360 | So you're able to sustain the system longer.

01:57:20.140 | So perhaps 90 seconds into your interval training,

01:57:24.160 | you hit a fatigue point and now you maybe can extend that

01:57:26.980 | to 100 or 115 seconds simply because you're storing

01:57:29.520 | more glycogen in the muscle.

01:57:32.520 | Before we have to then go into the blood

01:57:34.280 | and get it in the form of glucose.

01:57:36.080 | So that's great.

01:57:37.000 | So we've got this six carbon molecule

01:57:38.760 | and we split this in half, we got that little bit of ATP.

01:57:41.160 | And now we're in this little tricky position

01:57:44.780 | because this three carbon molecule

01:57:47.000 | is what we call pyruvate, pyruvic acid.

01:57:49.040 | And again, chemistry folks, I'm skipping some steps.

01:57:52.640 | I'm gonna intentionally make some mistakes here.

01:57:54.560 | I'm making sure the entire world listening,

01:57:57.220 | regardless of where they come in, can follow me here, okay?

01:57:59.960 | So don't burn me on the details.

01:58:02.400 | Right, you've got this pyruvate.

01:58:03.960 | The problem is you can no longer do anything

01:58:06.280 | with that glycolysis is over.

01:58:08.400 | You've got to make a choice, right?

01:58:10.820 | In order to make something out of those three carbon

01:58:13.200 | molecules, you've got to shift them to the mitochondria.

01:58:15.440 | As you said, that is the only place of aerobic metabolism.

01:58:19.340 | We cannot do aerobic metabolism anywhere else

01:58:22.600 | until we enter the mitochondria.

01:58:23.760 | So anytime we cross that barrier,

01:58:25.280 | we know we've automatically switched

01:58:26.520 | from anaerobic to aerobic.

01:58:28.080 | Well, here's the problem.

01:58:30.120 | If you were to take one more carbon

01:58:32.420 | off that three carbon pyruvate,

01:58:34.720 | you have to now do something with that carbon waste, okay?

01:58:39.380 | So before, when we split the six carbon chain,

01:58:41.500 | we didn't actually leave any carbons free floating.

01:58:44.140 | We just split a two molecule in half.

01:58:47.080 | When we go to split from pyruvate

01:58:48.760 | and make it into this two carbon molecule

01:58:50.320 | called acetyl-CoA or CoA,

01:58:52.900 | now we've got a free floating carbon.

01:58:55.560 | We have to have a strategy for that

01:58:56.720 | because that's going to increase the acidity level.

01:58:58.780 | Any enzyme in our body that works to create fuel

01:59:01.400 | is very pH sensitive, right?

01:59:05.100 | So if this thing, if pH gets off either high or low,

01:59:08.580 | these enzymes can't work.

01:59:09.640 | And that's really, really important

01:59:10.680 | because even if I were to give you a direct injection of ATP,

01:59:13.680 | remember that's that energy currency,

01:59:15.460 | that's the only way we can actually form energy.

01:59:18.040 | I guess, remember to clarify,

01:59:19.440 | anytime we're using phosphocreatine or glucose or fat,

01:59:23.220 | which we'll get to in a second,

01:59:24.380 | we're not actually getting energy for exercise

01:59:26.360 | by breaking those down.

01:59:28.060 | We're getting energy that we can use to then make ATP.

01:59:30.960 | We break that ATP down.

01:59:32.280 | That's what's actually powering muscle contraction.

01:59:34.680 | You can go back to our previous episode

01:59:36.200 | where we'll walk you through the detail

01:59:37.800 | of the muscle contraction, but that's what we're after, okay?

01:59:41.480 | So in the case of pyruvate, if we split that off,

01:59:45.200 | we have got to deal with that.

01:59:46.400 | And the only way and the best way

01:59:47.920 | we can deal with that is oxygen.

01:59:49.440 | Remember, we're going to breathe in O2.

01:59:51.500 | That O2 is going to combine with that free floating carbon,

01:59:54.340 | make CO2, we're going to exhale that thing out.

01:59:56.860 | That's our waste management strategy.

01:59:59.340 | But that has to happen in the mitochondria.

02:00:03.320 | Remember, if we're using oxygen,

02:00:04.960 | it has to be in the mitochondria.

02:00:07.080 | So if we have the ability to ship pyruvate

02:00:10.840 | into the mitochondria, we're golden.

02:00:13.560 | But what happens if we don't?

02:00:16.120 | Why do we not?

02:00:18.360 | Well, if we don't have enough mitochondria

02:00:20.360 | or our mitochondria are too small or they're too far away,

02:00:23.920 | or we don't have sufficient oxygen availability,

02:00:27.340 | why don't we have sufficient oxygen availability?

02:00:29.480 | Because we created the pyruvate too fast.

02:00:31.980 | And the demand in the mitochondria

02:00:35.260 | is exceeded by the buildup of pyruvate.

02:00:38.260 | And so now we're having this giant backlog

02:00:40.780 | and this thing fills up fast.

02:00:43.300 | We have a couple of strategies here.

02:00:45.100 | Well, when you're going through ATP and you're splitting,

02:00:48.740 | it's called ATP hydrolysis.

02:00:50.940 | In doing that, remember ATP is an adenosine molecule

02:00:55.160 | and then the T part is triphosphate, one, two, three,

02:00:57.920 | which means you have three phosphates attached at the end.

02:01:00.920 | When you break that phosphate off,

02:01:02.500 | that's where you get your energy.

02:01:03.460 | And so now you have an inorganic phosphate

02:01:05.640 | and an ADP, adenosine diphosphate, two.

02:01:08.620 | That process requires water, it's called hydrolysis.

02:01:13.580 | As a result of that, you then have a free floating hydrogen.

02:01:17.820 | And as you well know, that is acid, right?

02:01:20.700 | That's potential hydrogen.

02:01:22.080 | That's what that means.

02:01:22.920 | And so you've increased the acidity in the muscle

02:01:26.940 | by breaking up all this ATP.

02:01:29.180 | And so, uh-oh, we're building up acid.

02:01:32.060 | We are building up pyruvate.

02:01:33.700 | We don't have nowhere to go with it.

02:01:35.620 | And we can't cleave off a carbon

02:01:38.200 | because now we're just gonna exacerbate the acid increase.

02:01:43.100 | So what we can do is we can take those hydrogens

02:01:45.140 | that we're building up and store them on the pyruvate.

02:01:48.160 | A pyruvate that's holding an extra acid

02:01:50.300 | that has a special name, and we call that lactate, right?

02:01:54.060 | So that's why we see this buildup of lactate.

02:01:56.180 | So one of the downsides of anaerobic glycolysis

02:01:58.740 | is an incredibly high rate of waste production.

02:02:03.260 | Now lactate is not the cause of fatigue.

02:02:08.980 | In fact, if you think a little bit more carefully

02:02:10.620 | about what I just said, it's actually stopping you.

02:02:13.120 | It's what we call a acid buffer.

02:02:15.900 | You can actually use it for a bunch of other things.

02:02:17.240 | You can ship it to a neighboring muscle fiber

02:02:19.420 | in the same muscle that's not working.

02:02:21.140 | You can ship it to the liver.

02:02:22.140 | You can ship it to the heart and a bunch of other places,

02:02:24.500 | and then you can actually just work backwards.

02:02:26.020 | So if you ship it to, for example, the heart,

02:02:27.860 | and it's got a bunch of mitochondria that are free,

02:02:30.180 | you can bring in the oxygen,

02:02:32.300 | attach it to that hydrogen, make water,

02:02:34.660 | and now you're right back to pyruvate.

02:02:36.060 | You put two pyruvate back together,

02:02:37.600 | and now you just make glucose.

02:02:39.040 | So you can actually store it in the liver.

02:02:40.940 | This is a process called gluconeogenesis

02:02:43.700 | through this fancy thing called the Corey cycle,

02:02:45.540 | which is what the proper cycle here is.

02:02:49.540 | So you can use it as a very potent fuel source.

02:02:51.140 | In fact, a lactate is a tremendously valuable fuel source,

02:02:54.620 | not only for exercise, but for cognition

02:02:56.500 | and a bunch of other things.

02:02:57.580 | So lactates, in fact, this is why,

02:02:59.820 | if you've seen any of the research

02:03:01.940 | about pre-exam testing exercise,

02:03:06.240 | you'll see a noticeable increase in exam scores

02:03:08.180 | if you do a 20-minute bout of exercise prior

02:03:10.700 | to taking the exam, and it's largely in part,

02:03:13.460 | probably because of things like elevations and lactate.

02:03:16.020 | - How intense of exercise would be most beneficial?

02:03:21.020 | - I don't know that exact answer.

02:03:22.300 | I just know that generally any form of exercise is good,

02:03:25.800 | but if you were to reach a reasonably high heart rate,

02:03:28.220 | you're probably gonna see,

02:03:29.060 | and in fact, there's an acute and chronic adaptation here.

02:03:31.380 | So folks that exercise have better memory retention,

02:03:35.240 | score, and some exams, et cetera,

02:03:36.820 | but then also doing it prior to that exam,

02:03:39.840 | make sure you recovered and rested back down to straight,

02:03:41.700 | but you'll generally perform better.

02:03:43.320 | - Previous guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast,

02:03:45.880 | who's a psychology professor and neuroscientist

02:03:49.600 | and also Dean of College of Arts and Sciences

02:03:51.680 | at New York University, NYU, Wendy Suzuki,

02:03:54.940 | is religious about daily morning exercise,

02:03:59.940 | specifically for this purpose of enhancing learning

02:04:02.300 | and memory, and has a lot of really beautiful data.

02:04:05.260 | I consider her one of the real pioneers in this space.

02:04:08.000 | So if people wanna learn more,

02:04:10.380 | they can look to that episode or Wendy's work.

02:04:12.640 | We can provide a link to a couple of the papers,

02:04:14.660 | but this is fantastic in that it's incredibly clear.

02:04:19.460 | I think for the first time,

02:04:20.360 | I'm understanding what lactate is really doing,

02:04:24.200 | and it's dispelling a lot of myths

02:04:26.920 | that I think I and a lot of other people arrive

02:04:30.160 | to the discussion about lactate with.

02:04:32.960 | What happens when the bout of exercise extends longer?

02:04:37.960 | - Amazing.

02:04:38.940 | So if we wanna continue past that point,

02:04:42.120 | we have to have some sort of strategy to get through it.

02:04:45.080 | We're stuck, we're out of gas.

02:04:47.400 | We have to then ship it to the mitochondria,

02:04:49.120 | and now we're gonna enter what's called aerobic glycolysis.

02:04:52.540 | And this is gonna take us anywhere from, again,

02:04:55.060 | say that 90 seconds of all-out work

02:04:57.880 | up to really 20, 30 minutes.

02:04:59.440 | In fact, it really will take us to unlimited.

02:05:02.180 | If you look at a highly competitive marathon runner,

02:05:05.120 | even those that are running, say, your two-hour marathon,

02:05:07.580 | those folks are burning up to 80% carbohydrate.

02:05:10.980 | It is not a fat-burning thing,

02:05:14.260 | and the reason is fat metabolism is way too slow.

02:05:17.460 | It provides a lot of energy, but it is incredibly slow.

02:05:20.260 | If you're trying to run a 4 1/2 or so minute mile

02:05:23.780 | repeated 26 times, you have to be moving fast.

02:05:27.100 | - Are they ingesting carbohydrate

02:05:29.180 | as a fuel source during the race?

02:05:31.280 | - Unless you're on the team, you don't know.

02:05:34.780 | They won't really tell you.

02:05:35.680 | These are sort of trade secrets.

02:05:38.020 | It would be, I would say, fairly rare

02:05:40.940 | to not have something, right?

02:05:42.500 | There's a bunch of different strategies.

02:05:43.620 | If you're gonna go really long, like some of these,

02:05:46.780 | like cycling, where the races will be several hours,

02:05:50.300 | then you actually might go to some fat as fuel sources.

02:05:53.620 | I know a lot of cyclists are using ketones

02:05:56.540 | and things like that now.

02:05:57.620 | But traditionally, most endurance folks

02:05:59.620 | are gonna bias heavily towards carbohydrate.

02:06:01.820 | Now, in one respect,

02:06:06.360 | you're not going to run out of carbohydrates

02:06:08.940 | until you're many hours in.

02:06:10.540 | These folks are a unique case,

02:06:12.100 | but the average individual who's doing an hour,

02:06:15.140 | hour and a half cardio even,

02:06:16.660 | you're not going to be limited by your carbohydrate stores.

02:06:20.380 | You're gonna be just fine.

02:06:21.420 | You're gonna be limited by some other things,

02:06:22.840 | which we'll maybe sort of break down here in a second,

02:06:25.860 | but you're gonna be fine there.

02:06:26.900 | A lot of those folks will take carbohydrate, though,

02:06:29.320 | at very specific intervals.

02:06:30.480 | You do wanna be careful, though,

02:06:32.780 | of ingesting too many fast carbohydrates

02:06:36.140 | prior to your exercise spell.

02:06:38.880 | We have actually have this little thing

02:06:40.100 | that's called the insulin glucose double whammy.

02:06:43.080 | And what that means is when you ingest carbohydrates,

02:06:46.440 | immediately your blood glucose goes up,

02:06:48.360 | and that's depending on the type of carbohydrate

02:06:50.600 | and things like that.

02:06:51.480 | Well, the same thing happens with exercise.

02:06:53.340 | And so what happens is insulin

02:06:55.520 | wants to start pulling glucose out of the blood.

02:06:57.660 | At the same time, muscle wants to start pulling glucose

02:07:00.140 | out of the blood.

02:07:00.980 | And so we have this giant bolus of carbohydrate come in,

02:07:03.240 | and then all of a sudden our blood sugar crashes.

02:07:06.580 | And so if you're going to be doing so

02:07:08.540 | your first half marathon or something like that,

02:07:11.480 | and you're in those giant corrals

02:07:13.100 | where there's like 100 people waiting to go,

02:07:15.000 | and you're standing there for 45 minutes,

02:07:16.780 | you may or may not wanna slug down

02:07:19.100 | like three or four bananas and a bagel and honey.

02:07:22.180 | You probably don't need that.

02:07:25.020 | Now, not everyone experiences this double whammy,

02:07:27.620 | but it has been shown in the literature

02:07:28.940 | to happen to some people.

02:07:29.820 | So you wanna just be a little bit careful.

02:07:32.340 | An easy way to combat that is just practice

02:07:35.520 | exactly what you're going to do in your race

02:07:37.240 | in your training.

02:07:38.600 | That's like the simplest advice ever,

02:07:40.180 | but you'd be stunned how many people do things

02:07:43.420 | during the race that they've actually never done in training.

02:07:45.000 | - I suggest people do exactly what you describe

02:07:48.040 | also for any kind of cognitive testing.

02:07:50.580 | - Of course.

02:07:51.420 | - Before a big exam is not the time to discover

02:07:53.460 | whether or not you can handle twice as much espresso

02:07:56.260 | or take a nootropic for the first time or change anything.

02:08:01.020 | I mean, if indeed the score on that exam

02:08:03.780 | is meaningful to you, you keep things regular.

02:08:06.580 | - So to recap what we've done here

02:08:08.140 | is we started off in the cytoplasm

02:08:10.180 | with this glucose molecule that is six carbons.

02:08:12.140 | We took that thing, we split it in half.

02:08:13.960 | We call that thing anaerobic glycolysis.

02:08:15.620 | We made a little bit of energy, but not much.

02:08:17.980 | We take those three carbon molecules,

02:08:19.460 | we ship them into the mitochondria.

02:08:21.180 | We take each one of those, we clear off one carbon each.

02:08:24.340 | Those carbons, we take a breath in,

02:08:26.060 | we attach them to oxygen, we exhale them,

02:08:28.460 | get rid of that energy.

02:08:29.300 | We are now fully into aerobic glycolysis.

02:08:32.360 | Each one of those two carbon molecules

02:08:33.900 | we run through the Krebs cycle.

02:08:36.540 | Each round of the Krebs cycle burns one, two carbons.

02:08:39.620 | So we go one, two, one, two,

02:08:41.860 | and now we've gone from six carbon molecule

02:08:43.900 | all the way down to zero.

02:08:44.900 | We used the hydrogens that we pulled off of that

02:08:48.260 | Krebs cycle run to go to the electron transport chain.

02:08:50.620 | From there, we made a whole bunch of ATP.

02:08:52.900 | And so we have now fully metabolized

02:08:54.880 | one molecule of carbohydrate,

02:08:56.480 | and the end product of all of it is simply ATP, water,

02:09:01.020 | and CO2.

02:09:01.860 | - Beautiful.

02:09:04.000 | And leads me to the conclusion that most everything

02:09:09.800 | is really about utilization of carbons and exhaling CO2.

02:09:15.300 | Is that how I should think about bookending,

02:09:18.180 | what you just described?

02:09:19.420 | - This is why we started off the conversation

02:09:21.260 | with the circle of life.

02:09:23.160 | This is really a carbon game.

02:09:24.680 | This is why we call chemistry with carbon organic chemistry.

02:09:29.680 | That's what this whole thing is about.

02:09:31.380 | Any living being has to run through metabolism.

02:09:35.540 | It's all a carbon game.

02:09:37.580 | Any living being has to use ATP.

02:09:39.860 | This is all just a big fancy game

02:09:42.300 | of how do I make ATP and handle the waste?

02:09:45.140 | Remember, endurance is all about waste management,

02:09:49.240 | fatigue resistance, the same thing, and energy production.

02:09:53.180 | We're playing a game here.

02:09:54.980 | The whole game, bring in energy, use it,

02:09:58.640 | mitigate waste products.

02:10:00.560 | - So when thinking about aerobic exercise

02:10:02.580 | or long duration exercise, in this case,

02:10:05.140 | anything longer than five minutes for that matter,

02:10:07.880 | five minutes all the way up to an ultra marathon,

02:10:10.420 | the breathing associated with endurance exercise,

02:10:15.720 | the heart beating, which of course is associated

02:10:17.620 | with the breathing and vice versa,

02:10:20.040 | it's really all about bringing oxygen into the system

02:10:23.380 | that then allows those carbons to be used

02:10:26.560 | and within the mitochondria specifically,

02:10:30.560 | and then carbon dioxide to be exhaled

02:10:33.840 | as we work through the carbons

02:10:36.040 | on the sort of beads on a string.

02:10:38.040 | Is that right?

02:10:38.920 | - Unless you're moving incredibly fast

02:10:41.120 | for a very long time,

02:10:42.320 | and we're talking probably north of 90 minutes,

02:10:45.120 | endurance is really not a game

02:10:48.940 | of making sure I have enough fuel.

02:10:50.960 | It is simply managing the waste production,

02:10:54.320 | and that's exactly what you described.

02:10:55.680 | You need to bring in the oxygen

02:10:57.480 | so you can handle the carbon that's building up

02:10:59.520 | as a result of both the anaerobic glycolysis.

02:11:03.740 | That's our game here.

02:11:05.480 | If we start talking about endurance events longer than that,

02:11:07.940 | now we do have to start worrying

02:11:09.600 | about running out of muscle glycogen,

02:11:11.320 | running out of liver glycogen, et cetera,

02:11:13.420 | or if we are at that two hour mark or so

02:11:15.280 | and we're moving very, very, very fast,

02:11:17.280 | but anything south of that

02:11:19.260 | is just managing carbon buildup,

02:11:22.980 | and we do that best through oxygen utilization

02:11:25.100 | or getting more efficient,

02:11:27.540 | having a higher capacity for our anaerobic side.

02:11:31.220 | So we can do that by having either more glycogen

02:11:33.860 | in our muscle so that lasts longer

02:11:36.460 | or building better acid buffering systems.

02:11:40.620 | And there's a whole line of supplementation

02:11:42.720 | that are specifically acid buffers.

02:11:44.580 | There's a whole line of training.

02:11:46.380 | There's a whole line of breathing to manage this, that.

02:11:49.160 | So we have a lot of strategies

02:11:50.940 | where we can maximize endurance.

02:11:52.440 | All we have to do is go back

02:11:54.720 | to the earlier part of our talk,

02:11:56.020 | which is figure out what's the actual limiting step

02:12:00.160 | and then train according to that,

02:12:02.420 | or do your strategy, your nutrition, your supplementation,

02:12:05.900 | that defeats that limiting factor.

02:12:08.340 | For an example, if you were trying to maximize

02:12:11.460 | your performance in this 20 second maximal burst

02:12:15.740 | and your strategy for that was to make sure

02:12:17.900 | your muscle glycogen is saturated,

02:12:20.580 | it's probably not gonna help a ton

02:12:22.700 | 'cause you're not going to be limited by total fuel.

02:12:24.820 | You're going to be limited by your ability to buffer acid.

02:12:27.620 | However, storing more glycogen in your muscle

02:12:31.460 | in preparation for a marathon

02:12:33.020 | is a tremendously effective strategy

02:12:35.260 | because that will become a limiting factor.

02:12:37.860 | So what we can do actually next, if you'd like,

02:12:40.020 | is we can just walk through these

02:12:41.420 | and look at the individual limitations

02:12:43.500 | where the failure point happens,

02:12:45.220 | and then that effectively will outline your strategy

02:12:48.420 | for improving them.

02:12:49.660 | - So you taught us about carbohydrate utilization

02:12:52.060 | as a fuel source.

02:12:53.780 | What about fat and what about protein?

02:12:56.300 | - Great, I'll start with protein because it's easy.

02:12:59.580 | It is generally at best going to represent 10%

02:13:04.620 | of your energy output.

02:13:05.860 | Now that will grow over time in terms of

02:13:08.980 | if you did a several hour amount of exercise.

02:13:12.180 | When you started doing it,

02:13:13.260 | you might be using 5% of your energy from protein

02:13:15.940 | and then that might grow to 10 or so.

02:13:18.860 | And that happens because you start running low

02:13:21.220 | on muscle glycogen.

02:13:22.660 | You start running low on liver glycogen.

02:13:25.620 | You start then having to pull in energy from another place.

02:13:28.340 | So like as those numbers go down,

02:13:30.060 | you'll see an increased uptick of energy from fat

02:13:33.860 | as well as protein.

02:13:34.900 | Having said that, it's not a tremendous fuel source.

02:13:38.900 | It is only aerobic.

02:13:40.700 | So it has to be oxidized.

02:13:42.380 | Those are the same thing.

02:13:43.780 | When I say oxidized, you use oxygen to burn something

02:13:47.580 | to make a fuel.

02:13:49.340 | So it's not a significant contributor to energy

02:13:52.300 | in that regard unless you're talking ultra marathons

02:13:55.620 | or longer and it is also not something

02:13:57.680 | that can enhance performance.

02:13:59.960 | And so we don't really need to talk much more about it

02:14:01.980 | than that.

02:14:03.180 | In terms of fat as a fuel source,

02:14:05.680 | now here's the fundamental difference.

02:14:08.280 | While carbohydrate starts anaerobically

02:14:11.420 | and finishes aerobically in the mitochondria,

02:14:14.340 | you're using mostly the carbohydrate

02:14:16.500 | in the exercising muscle tissue.

02:14:19.420 | Eventually you can pull from blood

02:14:21.300 | and then you can pull from the liver.

02:14:22.640 | With fat, you have a tiny amount stored in the muscle,

02:14:26.180 | intramuscular triglycerides.

02:14:27.580 | But the overwhelming majority of fuel you get from fat

02:14:31.360 | comes systemically.

02:14:33.500 | And so now we have a fundamental difference.

02:14:34.820 | We actually literally have a time problem.

02:14:38.040 | I can get energy from carbohydrates faster

02:14:40.580 | because it is directly there.

02:14:41.900 | If I go to pull it from fat,

02:14:43.620 | I've gotta pull it from the rest of the body,

02:14:45.540 | which is why somebody who loses fat

02:14:48.640 | loses it from their entire body,

02:14:50.720 | despite the fact that they may be only exercising

02:14:53.460 | a couple of parts.

02:14:54.300 | So think about a runner,

02:14:56.080 | someone who lost a lot of fat running.

02:14:58.420 | You don't see them just lose fat in their legs.

02:15:00.900 | It comes from their face and their neck and everywhere.

02:15:03.160 | Why?

02:15:04.000 | Because what you're going to do is pull fat

02:15:05.300 | from the entire system.

02:15:07.380 | You're going to break it down

02:15:08.460 | through a process called lipolysis,

02:15:10.700 | which means you break it down from the stored form.

02:15:13.140 | You put it in the blood as that glycerol backbone,

02:15:15.480 | which is that three carbon backbone

02:15:17.860 | in the individual fatty acids.

02:15:19.620 | It's going to float through the blood.

02:15:20.780 | There's a seven step system here,

02:15:22.200 | but we'll skip it for now.

02:15:23.780 | It's going to have to get then uptaken into the muscle.

02:15:26.500 | In the muscle then it has to get taken up

02:15:28.220 | and run into the mitochondria.

02:15:29.900 | Now that backbone, that three carbon glycerol backbone

02:15:34.180 | is actually going to function almost exactly

02:15:36.060 | like the three carbon pyruvate.

02:15:37.940 | Just get it into the mitochondria, cleave off one carbon,

02:15:40.940 | run it as acetyl-CoA, bada bing, bada boom.

02:15:43.140 | Exact same thing, super easy to metabolize,

02:15:45.420 | small enough to go through the mitochondria membrane.

02:15:48.220 | The fatty acid chains become a problem.

02:15:51.060 | So if you have a chain that's longer

02:15:53.860 | than our eight or so carbons,

02:15:56.380 | it has to actually go through a special transporter

02:15:58.700 | on the cell wall to get in.

02:16:00.200 | And that's going to be limited by a thing called carnitine.

02:16:03.420 | And you're probably familiar with that as a supplement.

02:16:05.460 | You may have talked about it.

02:16:06.680 | There's a lot of places that make it.

02:16:09.060 | That's going to be a limiting factor.

02:16:11.100 | If it is a smaller, what we call a short chain,

02:16:14.320 | or even a medium chain, triglyceride,

02:16:16.780 | which a lot of folks have heard of MCT,

02:16:19.020 | that's what we're talking about,

02:16:19.960 | that can actually go directly through,

02:16:21.900 | 'cause it's small enough to pass through,

02:16:23.340 | and you can use it immediately as an energy source.

02:16:25.620 | In either case, the way that you finally metabolize

02:16:29.540 | a fatty acid is a process where you would go through

02:16:32.460 | and cut off two carbons at a time.

02:16:35.300 | Why would you cut off two?

02:16:37.300 | Because you're trying to make that two carbon acetyl-CoA,

02:16:40.080 | so you can run through that Krebs cycle again.

02:16:43.620 | Because you're cutting off two carbons at a time,

02:16:46.040 | we have a special name for that oxidation process.

02:16:49.420 | It's called beta oxidation.

02:16:52.080 | That's exactly why we call it beta oxidation.

02:16:55.120 | Two carbons in, you cut it off to make that acetyl-CoA.

02:16:58.180 | So you can notice the oxidation pathway,

02:17:00.380 | the electron transport pathway, is identical,

02:17:04.100 | whether you're talking about the carbohydrates or the fat.

02:17:07.080 | In fact, it doesn't even matter.

02:17:09.180 | More to our point, if we're talking about simply fat loss,

02:17:12.620 | it really just is about running

02:17:14.780 | that electron transport chain.

02:17:16.240 | Whether it came from a carbohydrate original source,

02:17:19.580 | or a fat original source, it ends up in the mitochondria

02:17:22.700 | as basically the exact same thing.

02:17:25.340 | It then ends the end of metabolism as the same thing.

02:17:29.140 | Remember, the final end point of carbohydrate metabolism

02:17:33.260 | is water, ATP, and CO2.

02:17:36.500 | Do you wanna guess the final end point of fat metabolism?

02:17:40.060 | It's water, ATP, and CO2.

02:17:43.740 | So, practical applications here.

02:17:48.560 | If you want to maximize fat loss,

02:17:51.220 | what type of training is best?

02:17:52.880 | It really doesn't matter.

02:17:55.840 | If you enjoy longer steady-state stuff, fantastic.

02:17:58.640 | If you enjoy intervals, amazing.

02:18:00.420 | If you would like to do a combination,

02:18:02.660 | that's my personal preference, that's great too.

02:18:05.340 | You have a ton of options.

02:18:07.500 | Pick what you think is a combination of challenging.

02:18:10.580 | Not all exercise should be easy,

02:18:13.880 | but you will actually enjoy somewhat,

02:18:15.500 | or you're willing to accept.

02:18:17.700 | And anything that you absolutely hate, don't do it.

02:18:20.380 | Sometimes it is very, very, very difficult

02:18:23.320 | to do high-intensity training.

02:18:25.180 | You have to really be interested in doing it.

02:18:26.700 | If not, it ends up turning

02:18:27.620 | into like moderate-intensity training.

02:18:29.660 | You sorta just check the box.

02:18:31.300 | And it doesn't work that well if you're just checking

02:18:32.980 | the box.

02:18:33.880 | So, if you're like, man, mentally, I don't have it

02:18:35.900 | in me today to get to a high heart rate and throw up

02:18:39.180 | and all that stuff, cool.

02:18:40.700 | But you can just do some moderate steady-state stuff,

02:18:43.180 | well, that's a win.

02:18:44.320 | Great.

02:18:45.160 | If you're like, oh my gosh, more than 10 straight minutes

02:18:47.680 | and I'm so bored, and you're all, maybe you're also like,

02:18:51.160 | I don't have 45 minutes, I gotta get this done

02:18:53.020 | in eight minutes, great.

02:18:54.460 | Go do some high-intensity intervals.

02:18:56.340 | Either option will be equally effective.

02:18:59.060 | - As you mentioned earlier, exercise is useful

02:19:02.380 | for aesthetic changes, functionality, and for longevity.

02:19:07.180 | But when thinking about exercise specifically for fat loss,

02:19:11.820 | I do have to ask this question.

02:19:15.020 | I often hear from people that they prefer one type

02:19:17.460 | of exercise versus another for sake of fat loss

02:19:20.820 | because certain forms of exercise make them very hungry.

02:19:24.880 | I'm wondering whether or not there's any relationship

02:19:26.800 | between the intensity or type of exercise

02:19:29.460 | and the hunger stimulus.

02:19:31.780 | Now, I don't have this problem

02:19:33.220 | because basically everything makes me hungry.

02:19:36.220 | And yet I'm also okay fasting for part of the day.

02:19:39.020 | I'm one of those pseudo intermittent fasters.

02:19:42.900 | Talk about what I mean by that,

02:19:43.920 | I just happen to eat between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. naturally.

02:19:48.460 | I'm not religious about it,

02:19:49.720 | but I don't do it for any other reason,

02:19:52.820 | except that that tends to be when I'm hungry

02:19:54.460 | and I exercise outside of that in the morning typically.

02:19:58.420 | In any case, is there a way that people can determine

02:20:04.080 | what type of exercise might be better or worse for them

02:20:06.140 | based on its appetite stimulating or inhibiting effects?

02:20:09.440 | Because I also hear that some people will go for a long run

02:20:13.300 | and then they are "not hungry" for several hours afterwards.

02:20:16.340 | Does that have anything to do with which fuels

02:20:18.560 | are being utilized during different forms of exercise?

02:20:21.180 | - That's actually a really good question.

02:20:22.240 | I don't know the mechanisms that could explain that answer.

02:20:26.340 | What I can tell you is you hear the same comment

02:20:28.880 | for physical activity.

02:20:29.960 | In other words, people say,

02:20:31.660 | "Man, if I do this type of training,

02:20:32.980 | "then I just am exhausted

02:20:34.660 | "and I lay around the rest of the day.

02:20:36.320 | "So my total caloric expenditure is actually compromised

02:20:39.060 | "as an aggregate because I'm down."

02:20:41.400 | The data would suggest in general that doesn't happen.

02:20:44.840 | So most of the time we don't see a reduction

02:20:46.760 | in physical activity with either high intensity

02:20:50.240 | or steady state training.

02:20:51.480 | In fact, you generally see equal, if not increased,

02:20:54.780 | what's called need.

02:20:55.820 | So it's the non-exercising part of your day

02:20:58.580 | in addition to the basal metabolic rate.

02:21:00.580 | So physical activity wise, you don't want it to be proper.

02:21:02.580 | Now hunger is a little bit of a different thing.

02:21:04.980 | The answer here is I don't think we have time

02:21:07.860 | to actually do justice on this.

02:21:09.900 | So perhaps best to not get into this one.

02:21:13.140 | - Yeah, why don't we punt this down the road

02:21:14.940 | to our discussion about nutrition specifically

02:21:17.940 | and weave back to it.

02:21:19.020 | So we'll earmark it for that.

02:21:21.240 | Meanwhile, it sounds like if one is thinking purely

02:21:24.260 | in terms of burning calories

02:21:28.180 | and getting the health benefits of exercise

02:21:30.460 | to create a caloric deficit, to create fat loss,

02:21:34.140 | it doesn't matter whether or not they burn those calories

02:21:37.100 | using a form of exercise that relies predominantly

02:21:39.620 | on carbohydrate, fat, or protein, correct?

02:21:42.740 | - It's not that it doesn't matter.

02:21:43.900 | It's that either one will work.

02:21:45.920 | Because when we say things like that,

02:21:47.700 | it doesn't mean they're actually identical.

02:21:50.380 | There are some slight differences

02:21:51.860 | and maybe those differences are important for some people

02:21:53.640 | and not others.

02:21:54.800 | I'd say it's either one is a viable strategy.

02:21:57.840 | - Great, what about protein as a fuel?

02:21:59.980 | - As an actual fuel.

02:22:01.700 | So let me give you an analogy.

02:22:03.100 | Imagine that you were with me a few weeks ago

02:22:06.960 | in Southern Montana and we were out in the wilderness

02:22:10.800 | for a week, okay?

02:22:11.640 | And it's cold out there and you needed to make a fire.

02:22:14.680 | And if I said, look, you can pick any of these things.

02:22:17.540 | There's some wood over there.

02:22:19.100 | We brought some newspaper and then we brought a match

02:22:21.140 | and we need to create a fire.

02:22:22.700 | We're gonna use that fire to energy and heat up.

02:22:26.100 | Okay, I said, great.

02:22:27.280 | The very first place you would probably start

02:22:29.260 | to make that fire is the match.

02:22:30.960 | You light the match and any match,

02:22:33.020 | hey, it's gonna light immediately,

02:22:34.440 | but it's probably gonna last five to 20 seconds,

02:22:37.780 | I don't know, before it burns out.

02:22:39.560 | That's fossil creatine.

02:22:40.760 | Real fast, real burns out.

02:22:43.360 | If you were smart, you would take that match

02:22:46.300 | and then light the newspaper on fire, right?

02:22:48.860 | Now, if you were to burn a whole newspaper,

02:22:51.100 | it is more energy, then you get to the match,

02:22:53.980 | but you still, you know, I don't know,

02:22:55.240 | what's it gonna take, a few minutes?

02:22:56.760 | Some number of minutes before an entire newspaper--

02:22:58.360 | - Say five minutes. - Burns up?

02:22:59.380 | Yeah, five, I don't know, right?

02:23:00.460 | Depends on the, yeah, which type of newspaper it is,

02:23:03.340 | I guess, right?

02:23:04.180 | Amazing.

02:23:05.440 | That's carbohydrate, right?

02:23:07.960 | If you were really smart, you would use that

02:23:10.280 | to then light a piece of wood on fire.

02:23:12.120 | And a wood, if you've been in the wilderness,

02:23:13.960 | it could last hours, days.

02:23:15.820 | It's really quite unlimited.

02:23:17.460 | Your phosphocreatine storage is very limited, small.

02:23:22.120 | Glycogen is a lot higher, 'cause you can store it in muscle,

02:23:25.080 | you can store it in other places,

02:23:26.280 | so you have more, but not a lot.

02:23:28.040 | Fat is unlimited.

02:23:29.360 | The average person, if you're around, say, 70 kilos,

02:23:32.280 | up 170 pounds or so, and you're moderately lean,

02:23:36.160 | maybe 15% body fat, nothing crazy.

02:23:38.660 | You probably have enough stored fat

02:23:41.660 | to create enough energy to survive for more than 30 days.

02:23:46.720 | Right, this would literally be,

02:23:47.800 | if you ingested zero calories,

02:23:50.120 | you have enough fuel in your stored fat

02:23:52.600 | to keep you alive for certainly 30 days.

02:23:55.000 | You wouldn't feel good and all those things.

02:23:57.700 | But energetically, basically, fat will never,

02:24:02.700 | ever be your limiting factor to performance.

02:24:05.960 | So when we start talking about,

02:24:06.880 | well, what limits my performance in these areas,

02:24:08.960 | you can just wipe fat off the list.

02:24:10.820 | It will never be your limiting factor

02:24:12.960 | to any type of endurance performance.

02:24:14.200 | You simply have way too much.

02:24:16.320 | The only problem with fat is it's just too slow.

02:24:20.720 | I've gotta mobilize it, I've gotta get in the blood,

02:24:22.800 | move it, that whole thing, too slow.

02:24:25.000 | So if I wanna go faster, I will never be able

02:24:27.280 | to fully utilize fat, which is why we talked about earlier.

02:24:31.260 | You'll never see a situation in which somebody

02:24:33.400 | is 100% burning fat as a fuel and no percent carbohydrate.

02:24:37.640 | It's always going to be too slow.

02:24:40.040 | Highest you'll get, maybe 70 or so percent.

02:24:42.840 | Protein in this equation is none of that.

02:24:45.640 | Now, you may notice, how do you make paper?

02:24:50.160 | - What's fibrous?

02:24:51.080 | You combine it with water, it gets pressed, it compressed.

02:24:55.920 | - Yeah, it's made from wood.

02:24:57.760 | How do you make a match?

02:25:00.280 | It's made from wood.

02:25:01.280 | What's carbohydrate?

02:25:03.840 | A chain of carbon.

02:25:04.960 | What's fat?

02:25:06.240 | A chain of carbon.

02:25:07.640 | These are similar molecules, right?

02:25:09.860 | They're meant to give you pros and cons.

02:25:11.800 | It's very difficult to just light a log on fire

02:25:14.280 | without a lot of work, you'd have to burn,

02:25:16.080 | burn, burn, burn, burn.

02:25:17.200 | So these are complimentary systems

02:25:18.800 | that are really close to the same thing.

02:25:21.340 | Protein is none of those things.

02:25:24.040 | Protein is more like a piece of metal.

02:25:26.680 | So if you were out in the woods with me

02:25:27.900 | and we were trying to make a fire and you're like,

02:25:29.300 | "Hey, look, I found some old railroad over there.

02:25:33.040 | Let's throw that on there."

02:25:33.880 | I would probably look at you like crazy.

02:25:35.440 | Now, technically, can you melt metal?

02:25:38.480 | Sure, but you're gonna burn a lot of energy

02:25:41.700 | to try to get a little bit back out of the metal

02:25:43.940 | and now you've also cost yourself

02:25:45.480 | a very, very valuable structure.

02:25:48.620 | So protein is a fuel source for exercise or metabolism.

02:25:51.920 | It's just an incredibly poor choice.

02:25:53.840 | Your body will do it, again, maybe five to 10%,

02:25:57.160 | but now you're burning a very valuable supply

02:25:59.480 | in a situation in which you don't know

02:26:01.040 | where there's ever gonna be anymore.

02:26:03.020 | Remember, protein is fairly transient.

02:26:04.960 | It's not very good at storing it.

02:26:06.420 | You can store a ton of carbohydrate

02:26:08.880 | and an unlimited, literally, amount of fat.

02:26:12.320 | So you just really need to disregard

02:26:14.680 | thinking about protein as a fuel source.

02:26:17.300 | Your body does not wanna do it.

02:26:18.580 | You're not good at it.

02:26:20.100 | You can go through a process of gluconeogenesis

02:26:22.560 | from protein, make glucose from it.

02:26:25.200 | It's just very poor.

02:26:27.080 | You're not gonna get much out of the exchange

02:26:29.840 | and you've burned your supply of metal,

02:26:32.800 | which is gonna be very difficult.

02:26:34.960 | It's a very high commodity in the woods

02:26:36.740 | or the wilderness to have something like metal.

02:26:39.560 | - For people that consume very low carbohydrate

02:26:41.940 | or zero carbohydrate diets,

02:26:43.960 | are they pulling more energy from muscle,

02:26:48.500 | which I imagine is a conversion of amino acids

02:26:50.640 | into ready carbon chains?

02:26:52.460 | - Yeah, I mean, in this particular case,

02:26:54.140 | once you've reached a certain level of adaptation,

02:26:57.680 | you've just gotten extremely good at generating glucose

02:27:00.640 | from other fashions, right?

02:27:02.220 | So you can bias heavily towards fat adaptation.

02:27:05.520 | The downside is, and we've seen this born in the literature,

02:27:08.520 | you're going to perform slower.

02:27:10.920 | So if you don't care about maximizing performance,

02:27:13.500 | especially over something where it is a maximal effort

02:27:16.120 | for a few minutes or something,

02:27:17.740 | then maybe you're not concerned.

02:27:18.900 | And that's absolutely great,

02:27:19.940 | especially for people just don't exercise.

02:27:22.720 | Then, hey, geez, very little concern here.

02:27:24.860 | But if you're interested in your performance

02:27:26.180 | and you're wondering why you're just like slugging it down,

02:27:28.940 | well, what you've done is you've down-regulated the ability,

02:27:31.700 | literally the enzymes responsible

02:27:33.200 | for that entire anaerobic glycolysis portion,

02:27:36.640 | they get down-regulated,

02:27:37.600 | which means there's not as much around anymore.

02:27:39.180 | And so you get really bad and slow

02:27:41.320 | at using carbohydrates as a fuel source.

02:27:42.900 | So it's a very poor strategy

02:27:44.600 | for people in an anaerobic-based sport

02:27:46.840 | or who like that type of activity.

02:27:48.260 | Again, if you don't care, no problem.

02:27:50.140 | If you don't exercise at all,

02:27:51.860 | then you really have no problem there,

02:27:53.300 | which is actually why a high-fat,

02:27:56.340 | low-carbohydrate nutrition strategy

02:27:58.700 | for people who don't do much physical activity

02:28:00.980 | is probably, well, it's very effective.

02:28:04.140 | It is a really good strategy for weight management,

02:28:07.700 | for energy stabilization throughout the day.

02:28:09.700 | And the research would very much support that.

02:28:11.860 | - In my observation, I would agree.

02:28:13.460 | I've tried low-carbohydrate diets

02:28:15.180 | of severely limiting or completely eliminating carbohydrate.

02:28:19.100 | And after about two or three days, I feel pretty lousy,

02:28:23.840 | but mostly because I want to train very intensely

02:28:26.820 | in the gym.

02:28:27.900 | In addition to doing longer runs,

02:28:29.520 | I tend to do all of those things across the week.

02:28:31.900 | - Yeah.

02:28:33.040 | - But I've also observed,

02:28:34.300 | and in fact know several people that love the

02:28:38.580 | very low-carbohydrate, AKA ketogenic type diet.

02:28:41.600 | They're not doing ketogenic diets

02:28:42.820 | for mental health reasons per se,

02:28:45.640 | but indeed those people tend to do very limited exercise

02:28:49.040 | or they tend to do a lot of long endurance,

02:28:51.980 | but low-intensity long endurance.

02:28:54.380 | These are the, I walk to get my exercise types,

02:28:57.340 | and they do indeed walk a lot.

02:28:58.900 | And some of them manage to control their weight

02:29:01.220 | very readily and like that diet for that reason.

02:29:04.040 | When we had Layne Norton on the podcast,

02:29:06.000 | he pointed out quite aptly that in order to lose weight,

02:29:09.440 | you have to restrict something,

02:29:10.600 | either time or macronutrients, et cetera,

02:29:13.640 | to arrive at that sub caloric threshold,

02:29:17.000 | get below the sub maintenance threshold.

02:29:19.980 | - I guess one of the things I want to point out is

02:29:22.280 | this should be used received as, again,

02:29:25.280 | not a this is better or worse.

02:29:27.020 | This is just, you now have a ton of options.

02:29:30.000 | So whatever personal preference, other factors,

02:29:32.340 | you get to craft this strategy of performance,

02:29:36.260 | aesthetics, and health based on your personal preferences.

02:29:40.500 | - At this point, I'd like to go back to our classic list

02:29:43.740 | of nine adaptations that exercise can induce.

02:29:47.280 | The first four, of course, being largely,

02:29:51.420 | largely unrelated to today's conversation,

02:29:53.540 | but that were covered in the episode

02:29:56.220 | that we did on strength, speed, and hypertrophy.

02:30:00.460 | So just to remind people, the nine adaptations

02:30:03.620 | are number one, skill and technique,

02:30:05.080 | two, speed, three, power, which is speed times force,

02:30:09.320 | four, strength, and five, hypertrophy.

02:30:12.060 | Today, we're talking about the remaining adaptations

02:30:13.920 | on that list, starting with muscular endurance,

02:30:17.340 | followed by anaerobic capacity,

02:30:20.340 | followed by maximal aerobic output,

02:30:23.340 | and finishing at number nine with long duration exercise.

02:30:27.540 | So if we could start with muscular endurance,

02:30:30.940 | this would be number six on the list of nine adaptations.

02:30:35.940 | Muscular endurance, how do I build muscular endurance?

02:30:41.860 | Why should I build muscular endurance?

02:30:44.220 | And just to remind me what fuel sources

02:30:48.260 | are predominating when I'm training for muscular endurance.

02:30:53.260 | - Great, so remember, muscular endurance

02:30:55.100 | is something that's going to be generally

02:30:56.900 | in a local muscle.

02:30:58.660 | It is not a cardiovascular or systemic issue,

02:31:01.580 | and it tends to be something in the neighborhood

02:31:03.500 | of, say, five to maybe even up to 50 repetitions.

02:31:08.260 | So this is, the classic example we'll give here

02:31:10.320 | is how many pushups can you do in a row?

02:31:12.580 | Most people are gonna land somewhere in that range,

02:31:14.300 | I just said.

02:31:15.140 | How many sit-ups can you do in a minute?

02:31:16.500 | How many pull-ups?

02:31:17.380 | How long can you hang on a bar as a dead hang?

02:31:20.860 | Things like that, that's muscular endurance.

02:31:22.340 | Muscular endurance is not a mile run

02:31:25.360 | or a marathon or anything like that.

02:31:26.700 | So how long can I stand without breaking posture?

02:31:31.460 | This is muscular endurance.

02:31:32.660 | - A plank, a wall sit?

02:31:34.380 | - Great, yes.

02:31:35.640 | Love all these things, okay?

02:31:37.460 | Now, the reason I took you on that big,

02:31:40.260 | long metabolism journey is so I could help you

02:31:43.380 | understand exactly how to train this factor,

02:31:46.860 | any of these factors, with a more comprehensive

02:31:49.980 | understanding of what's happening.

02:31:51.000 | Meaning, thinking back to the metabolism,

02:31:53.900 | if I'm gonna ask my triceps to do 50 pushups in a row,

02:31:58.260 | what's going to be my limiting factor?

02:32:00.020 | Am I gonna run out of fat?

02:32:02.100 | No chance.

02:32:03.380 | Am I going to run out of glycogen?

02:32:06.500 | No chance.

02:32:07.740 | That's way too few of repetitions.

02:32:10.540 | You have a lot left there.

02:32:11.740 | So what's gonna be the thing that stops me

02:32:13.340 | from getting 51 repetitions?

02:32:15.660 | Either you're gonna have too high of a pH rise,

02:32:19.540 | so too much acid buildup,

02:32:23.660 | or you're gonna have a problem clearing the waist.

02:32:27.180 | So really, this is two factors,

02:32:29.380 | dealing with acid buildup and getting acid out

02:32:33.800 | of the muscle tissue and in the circulation,

02:32:35.700 | 'cause you have plenty of ability to handle

02:32:37.460 | that small amount of acid buildup in your entire body.

02:32:41.460 | It's just you can't handle it in that tiny spot.

02:32:43.660 | Now, I picked the tricep for a very specific reason.

02:32:46.700 | You're gonna deal with more pain

02:32:49.140 | when you use a large muscle group,

02:32:50.940 | like your quads or your glutes,

02:32:52.260 | than you are with a small muscle group.

02:32:53.900 | For example, nobody ever threw up after arm day,

02:32:58.220 | but a lot of people throw up after leg day.

02:33:00.860 | Why is that?

02:33:01.960 | Look at the total amount of waste

02:33:03.620 | that you're dumping into your system

02:33:05.240 | when you have quadrupled or 10X the muscle size.

02:33:08.460 | Small muscle groups are only really going

02:33:10.940 | to be challenged in that local area.

02:33:12.500 | Large ones will dump so much waste into the system

02:33:15.540 | that you'll wanna avoid that as quickly as possible,

02:33:18.140 | and that's one of the reasons why you throw up

02:33:20.500 | after a hard exercise.

02:33:22.100 | - Great, so the reason I'm laughing

02:33:25.780 | because I don't think I've ever thrown up

02:33:28.860 | from a weight training session,

02:33:30.460 | and so it's making me wonder if I've ever trained that hard.

02:33:33.460 | I've received or obtained the progress

02:33:36.920 | that I've wanted to generally over time,

02:33:38.940 | not every week, every workout, every month,

02:33:41.720 | but certainly over the 30 plus years

02:33:44.100 | that I've been weight training,

02:33:44.940 | I've achieved the results I've wanted.

02:33:46.620 | I have, however, vomited after a long run

02:33:51.260 | when I didn't hydrate well, or if I drank too much water.

02:33:54.660 | - Sure, oh, sure, too much water,

02:33:56.340 | yeah, you'll get that out quick.

02:33:57.660 | - Right, I just wanna be clear

02:33:58.940 | 'cause I think some people are getting the picture

02:34:00.360 | that if they're not vomiting at the end

02:34:02.160 | after their leg workout that they're not training

02:34:04.340 | according to your standards.

02:34:06.140 | Again, by the way, Dr. Andy Galpin runs experiments

02:34:08.980 | in his lab, he's recruiting subjects all the time.

02:34:11.100 | (laughing)

02:34:13.220 | - Also known as my graduate students.

02:34:15.140 | - That's right.

02:34:15.980 | In any event, sorry to interrupt,

02:34:17.820 | but I felt it was a necessary interruption.

02:34:19.740 | So muscular endurance, there's plenty of fuel.

02:34:23.980 | - Plenty of fuel, you manage acid buildup,

02:34:27.280 | and you also need to get that fuel out of you.

02:34:29.060 | That's gonna be a capillarization issue.

02:34:31.420 | So the way that we can think about this

02:34:32.940 | is capillaries surround your muscle,

02:34:36.500 | and the whole point of them is so that blood

02:34:38.440 | can come into them, they hit this capillarization,

02:34:41.140 | that actually slows the diffusion rate of blood down,

02:34:44.540 | and so you can exchange nutrients in

02:34:46.700 | and get waste products out,

02:34:48.660 | and then we get things back into circulation.

02:34:50.340 | So the more of those you have,

02:34:52.060 | the better you are at dispersing

02:34:54.280 | any of these waste products buildup,

02:34:55.780 | whether it's CO2 or the acid.

02:34:57.780 | So the adaptation you're looking for here

02:34:59.500 | is an increase in capillarization,

02:35:00.900 | potentially a slight increase in mitochondria,

02:35:04.000 | but the time is too fast, right?

02:35:06.720 | So we're gonna be able to need to do these 50 repetitions

02:35:09.060 | in, say, under a minute or something like that.

02:35:10.980 | So getting the mobilization into the mitochondria,

02:35:13.540 | getting fuel that way, too slow.

02:35:15.900 | That's not really gonna get our performance here.

02:35:18.240 | So what are strategies to increase acid buffering ability

02:35:22.880 | and then capillarization?

02:35:24.920 | So on the capillarization side,

02:35:26.500 | you simply need to train at that ability.

02:35:29.720 | So you go close to failure and practice that often.

02:35:32.220 | That alone will increase blood flow to that local area,

02:35:35.520 | which will take you through your process

02:35:37.820 | of increase in capillarization.

02:35:39.760 | Easy peasy, specificity.

02:35:41.860 | That's my idea there.

02:35:42.700 | - Just to briefly interrupt, I find it remarkable,

02:35:47.300 | although not surprising,

02:35:48.560 | given how amazing the human body is,

02:35:51.660 | that simply by doing some movement repeat,

02:35:54.800 | like a wall sit or push-ups or dips for that matter,

02:35:59.720 | repeatedly over and over and over

02:36:01.140 | until you reach that failure point

02:36:03.940 | or that quaking point in the case of a wall sit,

02:36:07.740 | that provides a stimulus for more capillaries

02:36:10.860 | to be built into the system.

02:36:12.540 | Literally, the production or the trafficking

02:36:17.140 | of endothelial cells, which make up the capillaries

02:36:19.380 | and allow basically more little pipes

02:36:22.060 | to feed the system with oxygen and remove waste products.

02:36:24.980 | - It's like irrigation, right?

02:36:26.120 | Imagine you had a giant field

02:36:27.280 | and you had two big pipes running down the outside.

02:36:29.820 | Well, in fact, if you want to make sure water

02:36:31.520 | gets evenly dispersed across the entire field,

02:36:33.740 | you'll have a bunch of off-shooting little pipes.

02:36:35.980 | And the more of those you have, the more coverage you get.

02:36:38.880 | - Do we know what the specific signal is that says,

02:36:44.260 | "Hey, I failed at this, we need more capillaries."

02:36:48.020 | - I actually don't know what that is.

02:36:49.580 | I would speculate it's a combination of acidity

02:36:53.980 | as well as carbon dioxide

02:36:55.420 | and probably some nitric oxide stuff happening there,

02:36:57.500 | but I actually don't know.

02:36:58.800 | - I'm guessing nobody knows for sure

02:37:00.580 | because we still don't know, for instance,

02:37:01.940 | what the exact signal is for hypertrophy.

02:37:04.220 | It's kind of an amazing situation.

02:37:05.500 | We know the requirements for getting the result we want,

02:37:08.800 | but we still don't know what the specific signal is.

02:37:11.860 | In any event, what I'm hearing is

02:37:13.980 | building more capillaries is great

02:37:15.840 | for enhancing muscular endurance.

02:37:18.220 | And the way to get more capillaries into those muscles

02:37:21.420 | is to train for muscular endurance

02:37:24.460 | by getting close to failure or to some point

02:37:27.580 | where you simply can't continue for whatever reason.

02:37:30.460 | Could you give us an example

02:37:31.940 | of what a reasonable training protocol might be

02:37:34.080 | in terms of the classic Galpin list now of exercise choice,

02:37:40.220 | maybe a few options, order, volume, and frequency.

02:37:45.220 | - Great. - What should we be doing?

02:37:46.500 | How often should we be doing it?

02:37:48.060 | And for instance, should I do wall sits to failure,

02:37:50.900 | then pushups to failure?

02:37:52.540 | Given that this is a local process,

02:37:54.980 | I'm guessing that if I do pushups to failure,

02:37:57.160 | I'm not going to increase the number of capillaries

02:37:58.660 | in my legs very much.

02:37:59.980 | - Correct.

02:38:01.020 | So you nailed it.

02:38:02.380 | Exercise choice is high precision here.

02:38:04.520 | So pick the muscle group and the exact sequencing

02:38:09.420 | and movement pattern you want.

02:38:12.100 | High precision, this is the thing.

02:38:13.740 | If you want to get better at a plank, hold a plank.

02:38:15.380 | If you want to do more pushups, do more pushups.

02:38:17.220 | You can do some other stuff that's complimentary,

02:38:20.180 | but really this is a high precision game.

02:38:21.920 | Do the exact same thing for exercise choice.

02:38:23.900 | Very simple there.

02:38:25.460 | - Okay, in terms of exercise order,

02:38:27.820 | I suppose this dovetails with volume.

02:38:29.780 | Can I combine training,

02:38:32.940 | let's say wall sits for my quads and nearby muscle groups,

02:38:36.940 | and then do pushups to failure,

02:38:39.900 | and then also do some sort of pulling exercise to failure?

02:38:43.920 | - Yep, absolutely.

02:38:44.760 | Again, pick the exercises you want,

02:38:46.140 | the movement patterns you want to do, and do them.

02:38:48.100 | The order almost doesn't matter with the one caveat.

02:38:51.100 | With larger muscle groups,

02:38:52.840 | particularly again, multiple leg activities,

02:38:55.860 | that will induce a small amount of systemic fatigue.

02:38:59.640 | And so if you, I guess,

02:39:00.640 | theoretically wanted to maximize your pushup number,

02:39:03.860 | and you did a whole bunch of, say, split squats,

02:39:07.380 | and you just did those,

02:39:08.660 | and you did lunges for a mile or something like that,

02:39:13.240 | you might actually slightly compromise.

02:39:14.980 | You might not, but you might slightly compromise

02:39:17.200 | your ability to do as many pullups in a row,

02:39:19.460 | or hold a bent over row or something like that.

02:39:21.040 | So if you really cared about that level,

02:39:23.380 | then you maybe want to do the one

02:39:24.500 | that's most important first.

02:39:25.480 | In general, my recommendation though

02:39:26.980 | is to do the bigger muscle group first.

02:39:29.300 | How many sets and how often should one perform training

02:39:34.300 | for muscular endurance, and when?

02:39:37.660 | - Now, the lovely part here

02:39:39.140 | is we've moved down the spectrum past hypertrophy.

02:39:42.780 | You don't need a lot of load here.

02:39:44.540 | In fact, the load only needs to be at

02:39:46.900 | or slightly above what you want to move.

02:39:50.380 | So if you want to get better at moving 50% of your one

02:39:54.180 | or at max, you don't really need to train much more than 50,

02:39:56.980 | maybe 55 or 60% of your one or max,

02:39:59.460 | because if you go higher than that,

02:40:01.820 | the repetition count's going to fall,

02:40:03.960 | and you're no longer going to be training

02:40:05.300 | muscular endurance.

02:40:06.600 | So you just need to stay right around that number

02:40:09.140 | that you want to work on.

02:40:09.980 | So again, if the target is doing more pullups,

02:40:12.600 | and assuming that you have the strength to do it,

02:40:15.940 | you check that box, you simply need to practice

02:40:18.280 | the repetition range that you want to be in.

02:40:21.400 | That's all it takes.

02:40:22.480 | You can repeat that a number of times,

02:40:24.820 | but because, remember, the volume is fairly low,

02:40:29.320 | the load is very, very low,

02:40:31.660 | you can actually repeat these quite frequently.

02:40:33.840 | So you won't get extremely sore from muscular endurance

02:40:36.700 | relative to traditional hypertrophy training,

02:40:39.020 | because the load is very, very light.

02:40:40.700 | So you can do these more frequently if you would like.

02:40:44.020 | - More frequently, such as?

02:40:46.200 | - You could do it three or four times a week, easy,

02:40:48.360 | if you would like.

02:40:49.200 | You don't necessarily need to.

02:40:50.040 | Three days a week per muscle group is probably fine here.

02:40:53.780 | If you wanted to do more sets on a given day

02:40:57.460 | and do less days, that would be fine.

02:40:59.900 | So if you wanted to do two days a week,

02:41:01.760 | and you, say, wanted to do,

02:41:03.540 | let's say you could do 25 pushups,

02:41:05.920 | and the goal is to get to 30 pushups, just as an example.

02:41:09.740 | You might say, okay, I'm gonna do sets of 17,

02:41:13.880 | and I'm gonna do three sets of that.

02:41:15.780 | I'm gonna do that three days a week.

02:41:16.860 | That's gonna build up quite a bit.

02:41:18.820 | Or you could say, look,

02:41:20.300 | I'm gonna do a set basically to failure.

02:41:22.940 | I'm gonna recover and do one or two sets at, say, 80%,

02:41:27.260 | and I'll do that twice a week.

02:41:29.380 | That's gonna push the pace pretty well.

02:41:30.620 | You're gonna have a lot of gains from that.

02:41:33.180 | - And again, this is not about hypertrophy.

02:41:35.220 | This is about muscular endurance.

02:41:37.220 | So I do wanna emphasize, and again, please correct me

02:41:40.620 | if I'm talking out of line here.

02:41:42.860 | I do wanna emphasize that, so we mentioned pull-ups.

02:41:47.300 | If you can't get 25 pull-ups, and you're doing 10,

02:41:52.460 | you're training for hypertrophy.

02:41:53.780 | You're not training for muscular endurance per se.

02:41:55.540 | - Well, remember, there's a big crossover here.

02:41:57.680 | So anytime we're talking past like 15 reps,

02:42:01.580 | we're technically in hypertrophy and muscular endurance.

02:42:04.860 | So here's the common mistake.

02:42:06.940 | I don't wanna get bulky.

02:42:08.940 | So I'm gonna go lighter and do more reps.

02:42:12.060 | - And then people grow.

02:42:13.040 | - And then you landed still right

02:42:14.580 | in the middle of hypertrophy range.

02:42:16.000 | So for people who are like, oh my gosh,

02:42:18.060 | every time I lift weights, I blow up,

02:42:19.380 | I go lighter, I do more reps.

02:42:21.400 | You're still right in the hypertrophy zone.

02:42:22.920 | - They'd actually be much better off training

02:42:24.840 | very, very heavy in the one to three rep range.

02:42:27.320 | They'd get really strong and they wouldn't grow much.

02:42:29.560 | - Exactly.

02:42:30.400 | - So tell me if this is a reasonable protocol

02:42:33.700 | for what I'm gonna call the typical person.

02:42:36.460 | In my mind, the typical person is somebody

02:42:38.500 | who hopefully is doing resistance training,

02:42:41.220 | hitting that 10 sets per muscle group per week minimum

02:42:45.860 | to maintain or build strength and hypertrophy.

02:42:51.400 | But is also doing some long duration training

02:42:54.520 | that we'll talk about in a little bit.

02:42:55.760 | Maybe throwing in a high intensity workout here or there,

02:42:59.580 | some sprints, maybe some plyometrics,

02:43:02.840 | some skill-based training,

02:43:04.160 | and doing a bunch of different things

02:43:05.700 | to be what I would call all around fit.

02:43:08.800 | They're not training for any specific event

02:43:10.400 | or trying to maximize any one of the nine adaptations

02:43:13.140 | to the exclusion of the others.

02:43:16.180 | That person decide, okay, after they do their longer run,

02:43:21.000 | they're gonna do a plank to max duration.

02:43:26.000 | They're gonna do a wall set to max duration,

02:43:28.240 | and they're gonna do pushups to max duration.

02:43:30.280 | And then also do that same workout

02:43:33.080 | before they do their high intensity interval training,

02:43:37.160 | some other point during the week,

02:43:38.800 | and then maybe even do it again

02:43:41.480 | on their so-called rest day.

02:43:44.560 | - Just a real quick five minutes.

02:43:46.740 | And in doing so, build more capillaries

02:43:48.880 | into the relevant muscle groups

02:43:50.600 | and build their muscular endurance

02:43:52.900 | without eating into their overall recovery too much.

02:43:55.340 | - Too much, yeah.

02:43:56.180 | So again, the nice part about this

02:43:57.360 | is they don't hammer you too much.

02:43:59.080 | You're not gonna get tremendously sore

02:44:00.860 | if you keep the load light.

02:44:02.400 | The only switch I would make there

02:44:03.480 | is I would probably do them after your interval

02:44:06.200 | rather than before.

02:44:07.040 | So you can make sure you keep quality there

02:44:09.200 | and you're not compromised by a local muscular endurance

02:44:11.560 | when you're actually trying to get a more systemic fatigue

02:44:14.440 | with something like a higher intensity interval training.

02:44:16.940 | So that would work fantastic.

02:44:18.820 | The only other variable we haven't hit on here

02:44:21.020 | is progression.

02:44:22.440 | And this is very simple.

02:44:23.680 | Try to add a rep or two per week.

02:44:27.060 | That's really all you have to go after.

02:44:28.220 | So if you're up to 22 this week,

02:44:30.120 | try to hit 23 next week.

02:44:32.080 | - For wall sets and planks, that would be add time.

02:44:34.360 | - Time, yep.

02:44:35.260 | And if you run into a wall there,

02:44:37.600 | just like the same concepts we talked about

02:44:40.700 | with strength and hypertrophy,

02:44:42.120 | back it down to more like in the 80 or 85% range

02:44:45.880 | and accumulate a lot more practice.

02:44:48.600 | That's gonna help a lot with capitalization

02:44:50.680 | as well as acid buffering.

02:44:52.060 | So you're gonna continue to give yourself signals

02:44:53.960 | for upregulation of the processes needed for that.

02:44:58.280 | And it's not always pushing you to the end of failure.

02:45:00.260 | Just like we don't wanna always go to failure with strength.

02:45:02.340 | We don't wanna always go to failure

02:45:03.660 | with high intensity intervals either.

02:45:05.400 | Same thing would be happening here.

02:45:07.360 | - What about anaerobic capacity?

02:45:09.560 | How should people train for anaerobic capacity?

02:45:12.600 | What exactly are they training for?

02:45:14.680 | Meaning what is the structural or cellular adaptation

02:45:17.920 | or adaptations that are occurring

02:45:19.120 | that allow for increases in anaerobic capacity?

02:45:21.800 | And why are increases in anaerobic capacity good for us?

02:45:25.840 | Even if we're a quote unquote endurance athlete

02:45:29.880 | or we are a recreational exerciser

02:45:32.640 | who is not interested in building more muscle speed

02:45:35.760 | or things that I typically associate

02:45:37.320 | with anaerobic capacity.

02:45:38.960 | - Yeah, so this is really, really fun.

02:45:40.840 | Remember anaerobic capacity is the total amount of work

02:45:45.940 | you can do for something like seconds to a few minutes.

02:45:49.400 | And this is extremely high levels of fatigue.

02:45:51.640 | The highest you're really going to see.

02:45:53.280 | And by fatigue here, I mean acid buildup byproducts.

02:45:57.540 | Not fatigue as in like mentally,

02:45:59.120 | I don't wanna do this anymore.

02:46:00.840 | So if we just think about the energetics for a second,

02:46:03.520 | I'm gonna do say, let's take a really easy example

02:46:08.080 | of people have done that thing where you'll go to the track

02:46:12.040 | and you sprint the straightaways and you walk the corners.

02:46:15.160 | Remember that sort of thing?

02:46:17.280 | Tabatas, 30 on, 30 off.

02:46:20.780 | Things like this, like this is what we're talking about

02:46:23.400 | in this kind of anaerobic capacity area.

02:46:25.360 | Now, here's what's gonna happen.

02:46:28.840 | Is fat going to be your limiting?

02:46:31.140 | No, we've already made that clear, right?

02:46:33.600 | What about carbohydrates?

02:46:35.320 | Well, if it's a single bout or two or three bouts,

02:46:38.480 | probably not.

02:46:39.400 | But if you're doing this for a long time,

02:46:41.120 | say you're gonna go 30 on, 30 off for 20 rounds,

02:46:44.840 | you may actually start reaching a point

02:46:46.520 | of running out of muscle glycogen.

02:46:48.780 | In any of those cases though,

02:46:51.280 | you're going to be running into an acid problem.

02:46:54.500 | If you were to continue to do this multiple repetitions,

02:46:57.540 | in addition to running low on muscle glycogen,

02:47:00.400 | you're also gonna start running

02:47:01.360 | into oxygen transportation problems

02:47:04.880 | because you're building up a lot of byproducts,

02:47:07.000 | you've gotta continue.

02:47:07.840 | You will actually cruise into aerobic glycolysis.

02:47:11.520 | This is exactly why the community

02:47:13.800 | that I have worked a lot with, professional fighters,

02:47:16.840 | very high level boxers, world champions, UFC fighters.

02:47:20.700 | It is a five minute round that you're going to do five times

02:47:24.520 | for world championship fights.

02:47:25.800 | You get one minute break in between.

02:47:27.100 | So imagine going like 30 on, 30 off for five minutes,

02:47:30.320 | getting a one minute break and doing that five times.

02:47:33.000 | Even though the individual bouts are 30 seconds long,

02:47:36.240 | the entire thing lasts so long, it is primarily aerobic.

02:47:40.800 | You have to have both capacities.

02:47:42.460 | You gotta get really high anaerobic.

02:47:43.880 | You also have to have a lot of aerobic going on.

02:47:46.440 | You're going to start running into limitations

02:47:49.420 | because of heart rate, stroke volume,

02:47:52.320 | and then even potentially ventilation.

02:47:55.200 | The need for oxygen to be able to come in

02:47:57.120 | and clear the carbon dioxide totally out of the system

02:48:00.960 | becomes a problem because not only

02:48:02.680 | are you having so much buildup for such a long time,

02:48:05.280 | you're also using multiple muscle groups.

02:48:07.640 | So now this is a very important distinction.

02:48:09.440 | Muscular endurance tends to be localized.

02:48:12.280 | This is not.

02:48:14.080 | If you're doing these intervals, you're on an assault bike,

02:48:16.240 | you're sprinting up a hill, you're grappling with somebody,

02:48:18.760 | you have a lot of muscles being involved,

02:48:20.320 | which means all of that waste

02:48:21.500 | is being dumped into the central part.

02:48:23.300 | You have to clear it.

02:48:24.280 | And by clear it, I now mean not out of the muscle,

02:48:26.580 | I mean out of the body.

02:48:28.440 | So your ability to bring in and utilize oxygen

02:48:30.540 | is going to be a major limitation

02:48:33.300 | to your ability to handle this stuff.

02:48:34.900 | So what do you do?

02:48:36.000 | Well, specificity wins.

02:48:39.500 | Practice the exact thing you're talking about.

02:48:41.660 | So if you want to get better at sprinting the straightaways

02:48:44.700 | and walking the corners, do that.

02:48:46.800 | You can't always do it though.

02:48:49.540 | You're going to run into limitations.

02:48:50.820 | So this is when backing off to a lower intensity

02:48:54.060 | is going to give you a lot of benefits.

02:48:55.440 | We know very clearly

02:48:57.060 | if you want to improve cardiovascular fitness,

02:49:00.580 | high intensity, moderate intensity,

02:49:02.420 | and low intensity are effective.

02:49:03.760 | And you actually probably want to do

02:49:05.420 | a little bit of all of them.

02:49:07.020 | This is why none of our fighters

02:49:09.100 | would ever just do high intensity training.

02:49:11.500 | There's going to be some moderate.

02:49:13.820 | We tend to call this like cardiac output training.

02:49:16.900 | You can think of this as like anywhere

02:49:18.900 | between zone two to zone four.

02:49:20.780 | If you like zones, I don't use them personally.

02:49:23.500 | So I'm just going to intentionally interrupt you

02:49:26.760 | because this issue of zones has come up a few times.

02:49:29.920 | I want to make sure everybody's on the same page.

02:49:32.220 | You also mentioned that you don't necessarily

02:49:34.100 | favor the zone nomenclature.

02:49:36.460 | But for those not familiar, zone one, two, three, four,

02:49:41.460 | all the way up to five is a kind of back of the envelope

02:49:46.540 | type verbiage for some people

02:49:49.160 | and is more precisely followed for other people.

02:49:52.260 | Meaning for me, zone one is simply walking, easy walking.

02:49:57.260 | Zone two would be for anybody,

02:50:02.040 | the pace or intensity of exercise that one could perform

02:50:05.940 | while still maintaining a conversation, but just barely.

02:50:10.180 | Meaning if you were to push any harder,

02:50:12.920 | then it would be difficult to hold that conversation.

02:50:16.600 | Then you'd be in zone three.

02:50:17.820 | And then zone three, four, five, as I understand them,

02:50:21.040 | are a little bit vague, but maybe you could give us

02:50:24.480 | a sense of the breathing patterns associated

02:50:27.080 | with each of the zones so that people could map to those

02:50:31.880 | when we discuss zone one through five.

02:50:34.600 | And as I say all this, I certainly tip my hat

02:50:39.820 | to all of those people out there who like to measure

02:50:42.920 | percent of maximum heart rate.

02:50:44.900 | They like to use heart rate monitors.

02:50:47.100 | They're using any number of different devices.

02:50:49.140 | I sometimes use those devices, but in general,

02:50:51.280 | I tend not to, and I use my breathing as a rough guide

02:50:54.120 | of which zone I'm in.

02:50:55.580 | So before we go back to specific protocols

02:50:58.460 | for anaerobic capacity, tell me how you think about

02:51:02.780 | zone one through five and how people might be able to assess

02:51:05.840 | whether or not they are in zone one, two, three, or four,

02:51:08.960 | or five.

02:51:09.800 | - Great, so zone five is that absolute top thing,

02:51:13.360 | and we can flag ourselves there.

02:51:14.620 | I liked how you flagged one and two.

02:51:16.260 | The distinction between three, four, and five,

02:51:17.800 | I'm less concerned with either.

02:51:20.020 | We will do some heart rate stuff,

02:51:22.060 | but not to identify what zone we're in.

02:51:25.020 | The fact is the distinction between those zones

02:51:26.680 | is basically just made up, right?

02:51:29.440 | Not that it's fake, but there's no like rationale there.

02:51:33.060 | - It's a little bit like perceived effort in weightlifting.

02:51:36.140 | Are you at 100% output or 70%?

02:51:39.060 | You know when you're at zero and you know when you're

02:51:41.740 | at a hundred in that moment,

02:51:43.540 | but the difference between 60 and 70 is anybody's guess.

02:51:47.420 | - Totally, so we use, or the relevance, right?

02:51:49.660 | So why does it matter if I'm at 60 or 70?

02:51:51.960 | Is there actually a difference?

02:51:52.880 | There's not, right?

02:51:54.120 | So it doesn't really matter in that regard.

02:51:56.320 | If you're a very highly trained, particularly cyclist,

02:51:59.440 | things like that, then,

02:52:00.280 | and you can control a lot of circumstances,

02:52:02.640 | those things start to make a lot more sense.

02:52:04.720 | But when you're in an open environment

02:52:05.960 | like the athletes I deal with,

02:52:07.980 | it's just not gonna matter that much.

02:52:09.920 | So the way that I approach this is,

02:52:13.700 | and I will use this word intentionally, stolen,

02:52:16.580 | directly from Brian McKenzie and his company, Shift Adapt.

02:52:21.360 | They use what's called a gear system,

02:52:23.140 | and I absolutely love it.

02:52:24.220 | It's what we've been using for a long time.

02:52:26.300 | So with Brian, with your permission,

02:52:27.620 | I'm gonna take it right now.

02:52:28.580 | Thank you, Brian, you gave me the permission to stop.

02:52:29.900 | - Thank you, Brian.

02:52:30.740 | Brian's a good friend of ours.

02:52:32.920 | And I do think the breathing gear system is a terrific way

02:52:36.780 | to think about the zones and to get a good sense

02:52:40.480 | of what zone one happens to be in.

02:52:41.900 | - Yeah, great.

02:52:42.740 | So the first gear is your ability

02:52:45.020 | to simply breathe in and out through your nose

02:52:48.060 | at a set cadence.

02:52:49.360 | So basically, regardless of how hard you're working,

02:52:52.220 | can you restrict your breathing

02:52:53.540 | to like a two to three second inhale,

02:52:56.400 | and then a two to three second exhale?

02:52:58.700 | And this is really clever, actually,

02:53:00.640 | because a lot of folks will jump immediately

02:53:04.380 | into an over-breathing strategy,

02:53:06.020 | which means you'll be ventilating more than you need,

02:53:08.060 | which actually sends that RER up higher than it needs to be,

02:53:11.980 | which kicks you higher into carbohydrate utilization.

02:53:15.500 | If you're supposed to be in quote unquote zone one,

02:53:18.380 | you're trying to be efficient, not fast.

02:53:21.620 | So using more carbohydrates than you need

02:53:24.100 | is not beneficial here.

02:53:26.140 | You're walking for the day, you're out on a longer hike,

02:53:28.840 | you're enjoying the day,

02:53:29.760 | you shouldn't be trying to ramp up carbohydrate metabolism,

02:53:32.620 | it should be efficient.

02:53:34.760 | - Ah, and so this would be getting into an argument

02:53:37.580 | with somebody while on a long walk,

02:53:39.520 | you feel exhausted afterwards, even over-breathing.

02:53:41.940 | - Yeah, totally, right?

02:53:43.500 | So you should be able to breathe at a specific cadence,

02:53:45.820 | and generally people are doing that

02:53:48.720 | more frequently than they need.

02:53:50.700 | Zone two, rather gear two,

02:53:54.440 | is inhaling and exhaling at whatever rate you need it to be,

02:53:58.220 | but still nasal only.

02:53:59.900 | So it is a force, right?

02:54:03.620 | Whatever you need to do,

02:54:05.200 | but your mouth is closed the entire time.

02:54:07.900 | You shifted higher up,

02:54:09.200 | you're burning more and more carbohydrate as a fuel source,

02:54:12.240 | but you're still able to control that

02:54:14.300 | and restrict it through nasal breathing.

02:54:16.080 | Now, gear three and four, which is our final ones,

02:54:19.080 | there's no gear five,

02:54:20.480 | gear three and four is like a subtle distinction.

02:54:22.920 | I actually don't even care about the difference there.

02:54:24.800 | I basically use gear one, two, and then that's four,

02:54:27.540 | but you're basically talking about

02:54:28.600 | either a nose-to-mouth strategy

02:54:31.520 | or a straight up mouth-to-mouth, right?

02:54:33.120 | - So breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth.

02:54:35.460 | - If you can control it that way,

02:54:36.480 | you can do the opposite actually, right?

02:54:37.980 | Can you breathe in and out through your nose?

02:54:40.440 | But the classic one people will do

02:54:41.740 | is into the nose, out through the mouth.

02:54:43.780 | Again, I really don't even care about the distinction.

02:54:45.280 | I basically jump from two to four.

02:54:48.160 | Brian may do it differently, I don't actually know.

02:54:50.540 | Four is just mouth-to-mouth, right?

02:54:51.980 | And this is the case in most sporting applications.

02:54:54.620 | You're gonna be breathing

02:54:56.400 | because the nose is restricted, right?

02:54:58.600 | There's only so much space.

02:54:59.680 | And as we talked about earlier,

02:55:00.920 | the consequences of not having enough oxygen in

02:55:04.040 | or CO2 exhalation, if you're restricting that,

02:55:07.200 | this is gonna be problematic.

02:55:08.700 | So in your actual competition,

02:55:10.740 | please go to the mouth if you need to, right?

02:55:13.480 | We've practiced a lot trying to stay nasal only

02:55:16.040 | for as long as possible,

02:55:17.580 | but that's going to eventually happen.

02:55:20.040 | When you're doing your high intensity intervals

02:55:21.600 | and you're really going as hard as you can,

02:55:23.560 | you're gonna have to go to your mouth

02:55:24.780 | unless you're an absolute freakazoid

02:55:26.920 | and you can stay in your nose,

02:55:27.980 | but that's not gonna happen, right?

02:55:29.840 | Most people can't get past say 70 or 80%

02:55:33.840 | while breathing through your nose.

02:55:35.440 | I know some people can get higher,

02:55:36.320 | but that's the general distinction.

02:55:37.620 | So we pay much more attention to those particular gears

02:55:41.440 | than we do heart rate zones.

02:55:43.260 | - And zone five would be just pure mouth breathing all out,

02:55:46.840 | running for your life.

02:55:48.040 | - The gear system is just one to four.

02:55:49.560 | There's no fifth gear.

02:55:50.560 | - Got it.

02:55:51.400 | - So the gear four would again be mouth mouth,

02:55:53.480 | breathing as much in as you can,

02:55:54.600 | breathing as much as you can out.

02:55:55.760 | - Got it.

02:55:56.600 | And I appreciate your description of the gear system

02:55:59.320 | and how it roughly relates to the zones

02:56:01.960 | we've been talking about.

02:56:03.240 | I also am reminded if anyone wants to experience

02:56:08.120 | the relationship between breathing

02:56:09.680 | and the offloading of carbon dioxide

02:56:11.400 | and your ability to exert effort in anything,

02:56:13.640 | a game that a friend of mine sometimes likes to play

02:56:16.240 | when we walk or jog and talk is he'll say,

02:56:19.240 | let's just hold our breath now until we hit that piling

02:56:22.880 | or that lifeguard stand on the beach.

02:56:26.480 | And within seconds you actually can start to panic.

02:56:30.920 | It also becomes very hard to coordinate your action

02:56:33.800 | after a little while.

02:56:34.640 | Again, be really careful with this,

02:56:35.940 | but it will teach you in a moment in a very real world way

02:56:40.240 | how important it is to be able to offload carbon dioxide

02:56:42.560 | because you're probably not running out of oxygen

02:56:45.000 | at those lower intensities.

02:56:46.080 | - No question.

02:56:46.900 | - You're simply building up carbon dioxide

02:56:48.280 | and that gas reflex is screaming to go off

02:56:50.920 | and you're actively suppressing it.

02:56:52.200 | - Yeah, so the interesting test here is your CO2 tolerance.

02:56:55.920 | On Brian's website, you can go directly there.

02:56:58.500 | There's a video to how to run this test

02:57:00.600 | and then you can put in your numbers

02:57:01.960 | and it'll tell you sort of exactly what to do

02:57:04.520 | as a result of it.

02:57:05.620 | But the CO2 tolerance test is a test

02:57:07.440 | of exactly what you just mentioned.

02:57:09.220 | So you should be fairly tolerant.

02:57:11.760 | In other words, non-reactive.

02:57:13.820 | You can be responsive, but non-reactive

02:57:16.900 | to elevations in CO2.

02:57:18.260 | So you should see them and feel them,

02:57:20.000 | but you should be choosing how you respond

02:57:21.920 | rather than an inert reaction.

02:57:23.720 | There are interesting data looking at things

02:57:26.480 | like out of the blue panic attacks.

02:57:28.760 | You can actually notice those in blood

02:57:31.480 | via rises in CO2 up to 45 minutes

02:57:33.880 | prior to the event happening.

02:57:35.820 | So there are signals happening in your body

02:57:38.840 | that you may be sensitive or not sensitive to.

02:57:41.560 | The more in tune you can get with that,

02:57:44.120 | the better your life is gonna be.

02:57:45.860 | And even if we're specifically

02:57:47.320 | just talking about exercise performance.

02:57:49.240 | So it's okay for CO2 to rise.

02:57:51.880 | It's going to rise.

02:57:52.880 | It's a by-product of anaerobic anaerobic metabolism.

02:57:55.960 | It's a by-product of carbohydrate and fat metabolism

02:57:59.220 | as we've established.

02:58:00.280 | It's going to get there.

02:58:01.520 | You're going to feel that.

02:58:02.760 | However, if you immediately go into a panic

02:58:06.140 | because of a small increase in CO2, this is a problem.

02:58:10.720 | - So we're turning to anaerobic capacity.

02:58:13.040 | This morning we were training, not together.

02:58:15.400 | I couldn't keep up with your workout,

02:58:17.880 | but in the same general space.

02:58:20.280 | And I did my once a week, maximum heart rate,

02:58:23.840 | one minute sprint on the assault bike.

02:58:25.760 | Sometimes I'll do more minutes,

02:58:27.920 | meaning I will do one minute then take some rest

02:58:30.680 | and do another minute after some rest.

02:58:32.600 | But I decided to do that one minute with you there

02:58:34.680 | so I could learn from you.

02:58:35.960 | And indeed, I have to assume that that was largely

02:58:40.340 | within the anaerobic capacity realm.

02:58:43.740 | The first 30 seconds or so were manageable.

02:58:47.120 | We're getting more and more painful.

02:58:48.980 | There was a quit signal going off in my head.

02:58:51.160 | You said there's real magic that occurs around second 40

02:58:54.180 | and indeed somewhere around second 40

02:58:55.840 | for whatever reason, it seemed easier.

02:58:57.240 | But at the one minute mark, I was happy to stop

02:58:59.160 | because that was really at least what felt to me 100% output.

02:59:04.160 | Is that a good protocol for building up anaerobic capacity?

02:59:07.800 | Keeping in mind what you said before,

02:59:09.420 | which is that specificity or precision as you raised it

02:59:13.660 | is important.

02:59:14.520 | That is if I want to train anaerobic capacity for sprinting,

02:59:18.280 | I probably should have been sprinting.

02:59:19.600 | Cycling, I was on the assault bike and so on.

02:59:24.700 | How many of those one minute all out sprints

02:59:27.820 | or 30 second all out sprints on the bike

02:59:31.740 | could and should one perform per workout and per week?

02:59:35.580 | So marching through exercise choice.

02:59:37.940 | - Yep, let's do it.

02:59:39.080 | - Order, volume, frequency and progression.

02:59:41.980 | - Yep.

02:59:42.820 | - Choice of exercises,

02:59:44.580 | train for what you want to improve, is that right?

02:59:47.780 | - Not necessarily.

02:59:49.240 | So in this particular case, if you have a specific goal,

02:59:52.200 | yes, of course, do it.

02:59:53.980 | Exercise choice, a couple of things you want to look for.

02:59:57.060 | You want to pick something that you feel extremely confident

03:00:00.580 | in the movement with.

03:00:02.200 | Because you're going to forget your brain very quickly here

03:00:04.820 | because you're going to go into our pain cave.

03:00:07.060 | So if you're not comfortable running, don't go run here.

03:00:11.980 | You're never going to get to the spot we need to get to it.

03:00:14.140 | If you're not comfortable or if every time you go on a row

03:00:17.220 | or your low back hurts the next day, don't do it.

03:00:20.580 | If you're not comfortable using kettlebell swings,

03:00:23.000 | you get the point.

03:00:23.840 | Don't do an exercise you're not comfortable with.

03:00:25.080 | You also secondarily want to be careful and cautious

03:00:27.840 | of heavy eccentric loads.

03:00:30.920 | Because you're going to be doing a lot of repetitions

03:00:32.540 | at a high intensity.

03:00:33.380 | So this is where I love an assault bike.

03:00:35.280 | This is why a rower is great.

03:00:36.640 | Swimming is amazing.

03:00:37.640 | Running uphill, generally more favorable

03:00:40.620 | than running on normal ground,

03:00:43.680 | especially if you're not a runner.

03:00:44.860 | Don't run downhill.

03:00:46.140 | That's a lot of eccentric load.

03:00:47.560 | I don't love things like box jumps here.

03:00:50.980 | Because again, a lot of eccentric loading.

03:00:53.300 | Suppose you can jump up, land in the box, step down,

03:00:55.340 | but now you're, again, too many things

03:00:57.180 | are going through your mind.

03:00:58.020 | I don't want to slip and fall.

03:00:58.940 | I want to smash my shin in the box.

03:01:00.400 | What happens if I, too many variables.

03:01:02.680 | Pick something that is safer where you can really focus

03:01:06.080 | on your breathing and your posture and the performance.

03:01:09.300 | All right, so that's exercise choice.

03:01:11.400 | And then within that, if there's some specific thing

03:01:13.060 | you want to get better at, go ahead and do it.

03:01:15.380 | - Okay.

03:01:16.680 | - How many different movements, meaning should I do

03:01:20.480 | the assault bike and then some form of safe,

03:01:24.680 | executable overhead pressing?

03:01:27.440 | It's a little hard.

03:01:29.220 | It's a little harder to imagine anaerobic capacity

03:01:31.940 | for the upper body unless you have access to a skier

03:01:34.300 | or one of these, or what are those things called?

03:01:37.140 | The climber machines?

03:01:38.260 | - Yeah, the VersaClimber.

03:01:39.100 | - The VersaClimber.

03:01:40.060 | That's the one, the VersaClimber.

03:01:41.660 | You can tell how often I do that one.

03:01:44.980 | - It's a great exercise.

03:01:46.180 | - Great piece of exercise equipment.

03:01:47.500 | - Yeah, so we're thinking how many exercises

03:01:52.020 | and in what order?

03:01:53.220 | Is it going to be two or three exercises

03:01:54.940 | since you're involving a lot of muscle groups typically?

03:01:57.460 | - That's a really distinction.

03:01:58.780 | Generally, these are going to be total body movements.

03:02:01.420 | So you can do something like a SkiErg

03:02:03.060 | if you want to really isolate your upper body.

03:02:05.220 | Great, love that.

03:02:06.260 | You can do lower body isolation like cycling, right?

03:02:09.260 | Where your upper body's not involved.

03:02:10.520 | You can use weights here.

03:02:12.380 | You can do some barbell movements and stuff like that.

03:02:16.440 | They're just not my favorite choices for most people.

03:02:20.000 | Too many complexity things going on.

03:02:21.520 | So I generally am going to pick total body movements,

03:02:24.780 | pushing a sled, dragging a sled, sprinting uphill,

03:02:28.420 | swimming, these things like that are going to be good.

03:02:31.280 | - I'm seeing now why the assault bike

03:02:33.100 | is such a powerful tool,

03:02:34.140 | because you're using your arms

03:02:35.580 | with some degree of resistance,

03:02:36.960 | but not a lot of eccentric load, plus legs,

03:02:39.700 | some resistance, not a lot of eccentric load,

03:02:41.820 | and yet one can go "all out" for 30 to 60 seconds.

03:02:46.180 | - Yep.

03:02:47.020 | And the consequences of a technical breakdown are minimal.

03:02:50.900 | It's more like you're going to actually

03:02:52.180 | have a worse performance rather than an injury rate.

03:02:54.540 | So there's just a wonderful invention because of that.

03:02:58.020 | Where other things, the consequences,

03:03:00.380 | like say if you were going to be doing a barbell

03:03:01.940 | or kettlebell activity,

03:03:03.340 | the consequences of making a technical mistake,

03:03:06.620 | you might actually get an acute injury right there.

03:03:08.880 | So they're just a little bit higher in the risk scale.

03:03:11.600 | - How many sets, or sometimes referred to as repeats.

03:03:14.780 | So how many 30 to 60 second all out sprints,

03:03:19.240 | again, doesn't have to be running sprinting,

03:03:21.140 | but all out effort would be the better way to phrase it,

03:03:24.280 | should I perform, let's say per week,

03:03:28.880 | and then decide whether or not we can divide those up

03:03:31.220 | across multiple workouts,

03:03:32.240 | or whether or not it's better to do them in the same workout.

03:03:34.880 | - If you're staying with the same exercise

03:03:36.500 | for all of your workouts,

03:03:38.040 | that's a little bit different answer

03:03:38.920 | than if you're modifying them.

03:03:40.620 | So say you're going to do this three times a week,

03:03:42.620 | and you're going to do an air bike one day,

03:03:44.900 | you're going to do some hill sprints another day,

03:03:46.900 | and then you could do some swimming another day.

03:03:48.960 | - For sake of example, I'm going to say same movement,

03:03:53.380 | because I think most people are going to be most comfortable

03:03:55.760 | with one or two types of movements,

03:03:58.500 | unless they are really coordinated or an excellent athlete.

03:04:02.380 | I think most people can probably find a hill

03:04:04.460 | that they could run up and an air dine or a salt bike,

03:04:08.800 | a rower, things of that sort.

03:04:10.680 | - Yep, you're going to have a pro and a con here.

03:04:14.280 | So the pro of doing less sets

03:04:17.100 | is you can actually train much closer to truly 100%.

03:04:21.840 | The downside is volume's low, okay?

03:04:24.600 | So a major mistake people make here

03:04:27.520 | is they'll do something like,

03:04:29.040 | I'll do 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off,

03:04:32.240 | and I'll do that for 40 rounds.

03:04:34.660 | You're not really actually going that hard

03:04:36.120 | in those 20 seconds.

03:04:36.960 | So a key, in fact, if you look at the literature

03:04:38.880 | and all the positive benefits

03:04:42.020 | of high intensity interval training,

03:04:43.720 | that assumes you are actually hitting very close to 100%.

03:04:48.400 | If you're sliding down into, again, moderate training stuff,

03:04:51.820 | you start to actually be in a spot

03:04:53.200 | where you're not getting the total high end stuff,

03:04:57.880 | but you're not doing it long enough

03:04:59.080 | to get the low end stuff either.

03:05:00.320 | And so you end up in this, you burn some calories,

03:05:03.500 | you probably still enhanced mitochondrial biogenesis

03:05:06.120 | and a little bit of capitalization,

03:05:07.480 | but you didn't really justify only doing three rounds.

03:05:11.160 | That's where the problem comes in.

03:05:13.440 | So in terms of a couple of protocols I'll give you,

03:05:16.180 | how many sets per week, it's really hard to give a number,

03:05:19.260 | unlike the strengthening stuff,

03:05:20.780 | where it was easy to kind of land some stuff on.

03:05:23.760 | A typical thing you'll see is like a minimum bill

03:05:25.680 | tends to be something like four rounds per day,

03:05:28.480 | three times per week.

03:05:29.920 | - Wow, that's a lot.

03:05:30.980 | So my once a week all out effort

03:05:35.740 | of sprinting on the assault bike,

03:05:37.940 | the so-called Airdyne bike, for 60 seconds,

03:05:42.440 | one to three rounds of that,

03:05:46.220 | might be doing something useful for me,

03:05:47.980 | but I should probably be doing that

03:05:50.500 | two or three times a week.

03:05:52.260 | - If you're going to get to a max heart rate,

03:05:53.700 | I generally like to say,

03:05:54.700 | give me a minimum of one day a week, two is better.

03:05:58.420 | - Days per week, how many rounds?

03:06:00.620 | - Whatever it takes you to get to that maximum heart rate.

03:06:03.020 | Right, so in your case, you did one minute.

03:06:04.900 | - Okay, good.

03:06:05.740 | If you're going to extend past a minute or two,

03:06:08.460 | one round might be enough.

03:06:10.900 | So for example, if you want to just do something

03:06:13.680 | where I'm going to run a mile as fast as I can,

03:06:17.100 | that's all you need to do for the day.

03:06:18.940 | You don't need to do multiple,

03:06:20.100 | you can do mile repeats if you'd like,

03:06:21.660 | but that is really, really challenging.

03:06:22.940 | I know we've extended the time duration here,

03:06:25.160 | but I wanted to go there to show you

03:06:27.940 | the time domain matters here.

03:06:29.200 | If you're doing something like a 20 second burst,

03:06:31.680 | you're going to need more rounds.

03:06:33.460 | If you're doing something longer, like multiple minutes,

03:06:35.500 | you don't need as many rounds to get there.

03:06:38.100 | So in addition, if you're really reaching past

03:06:43.100 | this 90 seconds of hell window,

03:06:48.080 | it's just going to do a lot more damage to the system.

03:06:51.060 | Not damaged and then bad,

03:06:52.180 | but as in there's a lot to recover here.

03:06:53.900 | So we need more recovery time from that.

03:06:56.780 | A 20 second burst doesn't really challenge you.

03:07:00.220 | It challenges you in that 20 seconds,

03:07:01.700 | but you'll be recovered and fine.

03:07:03.460 | A three minute thing is going to hurt

03:07:05.980 | and it's going to hurt for many, many, many minutes

03:07:07.900 | after that and you're going to still see

03:07:09.500 | maybe some performance decrements the next day,

03:07:12.100 | depending on what your recovery stuff looks like.

03:07:14.140 | So a couple of things to play with

03:07:16.940 | would be something like this.

03:07:18.800 | If you want to try like a classic 30 seconds on,

03:07:21.180 | 30 seconds off protocol,

03:07:22.900 | the literature will show like a minimum of four rounds

03:07:25.240 | of that probably three days a week.

03:07:27.160 | - So 30 seconds all out, 30 seconds rest is one round.

03:07:30.820 | Repeat that four times, at least once a week.

03:07:34.340 | - At least, two would be better.

03:07:36.120 | - Great.

03:07:36.960 | - Right?

03:07:37.780 | If you want to go something a lot longer than that,

03:07:39.380 | you might be able to get away with one.

03:07:41.760 | But generally two days a week of this is better.

03:07:44.660 | If you start actually pushing past

03:07:46.360 | like three to four days a week, up to five or six,

03:07:48.500 | you may actually be causing some problems.

03:07:51.080 | There's just a little bit of excess fatigue

03:07:54.920 | that's going to happen there

03:07:55.760 | that you maybe want to stay away from.

03:07:57.160 | In fact, you can see a lot of endocrinological problems

03:08:00.620 | and some other sleep issues and some other things kick in.

03:08:03.560 | And we'll talk about more of those things later.

03:08:06.440 | But that's the number to get with.

03:08:08.280 | If you want to try something more like a 20 second burst,

03:08:11.420 | I actually would recommend giving yourself more rest.

03:08:14.680 | So you can actually do a higher rest than work ratio.

03:08:19.560 | Most people tend to think of this as doing like one to one,

03:08:21.880 | 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off or lower.

03:08:24.520 | I love doing like 20 seconds on, 40 seconds off.

03:08:28.320 | The quality of that 20 seconds becomes extraordinarily high.

03:08:31.520 | And it's also possible to now get like six to eight rounds.

03:08:35.140 | - So as I'm hearing this, I'm going to wager an offer.

03:08:39.420 | To you and if you say okay, then to those listening.

03:08:44.420 | Based on what you're telling me about the relationship

03:08:46.800 | between intensity and quality

03:08:49.600 | and the need for sufficient duration of this anaerobic work,

03:08:55.440 | how is five to six minutes per week of all out work?

03:08:59.860 | - That's pretty good.

03:09:00.700 | - So what that means for me is I would do

03:09:03.660 | three all out one minute sprints on one workout

03:09:08.660 | separated by a minute or two, maybe more.

03:09:13.560 | And I would do that two or three times per week,

03:09:18.240 | just trying to hit that five or six minute

03:09:20.120 | per week threshold.

03:09:21.240 | - Yep, actually I think one of the, Marty Gabala

03:09:25.480 | is a scientist, a Canadian guy, amazing work.

03:09:30.120 | He's done a lot of the research

03:09:31.680 | on high intensity anaerobic stuff, right?

03:09:33.160 | And I think the number he actually threw out there

03:09:37.220 | in some of his original research was comparing

03:09:39.120 | six total minutes of work to upwards of like 180 minutes

03:09:43.260 | of work throughout the entire week.

03:09:46.600 | And then one of the classic studies

03:09:48.000 | was looking at VO2 max improvements

03:09:49.560 | and he saw equal if not greater improvements

03:09:51.320 | of VO2 max with that.

03:09:52.240 | So I think actually the name of his book

03:09:54.160 | might be like this six minute workout or something.

03:09:56.360 | And so you'd like may have nailed that directly on the head.

03:09:59.680 | - Purely by luck, but actually by--

03:10:01.440 | - I also may be wrong on the numbers,

03:10:02.320 | we should probably fact check that.

03:10:03.800 | - Well, and also by inference from what you were saying,

03:10:06.280 | if you're gonna do this 20 seconds on 40 seconds off

03:10:08.680 | and you're doing more rounds or one minute all out.

03:10:11.600 | So the way I'm going to think about this,

03:10:13.680 | if it's okay with you is for five to six minutes a week,

03:10:18.920 | I am sprinting for my life.

03:10:22.000 | - Correct.

03:10:22.840 | - But I'm sprinting for my life with good form

03:10:25.600 | in whatever movement I happen to be doing.

03:10:27.720 | And I can do all of that in one workout,

03:10:29.940 | but I'm separating out bouts of 20 seconds

03:10:34.660 | all the way up to one minute by the necessary rest

03:10:38.960 | in order to recover my breathing,

03:10:40.880 | get back to pure nasal breathing,

03:10:42.320 | maybe zone one zone two, and then hit it again.

03:10:45.400 | - If you're gonna do the one minute thing like you do,

03:10:47.320 | I actually generally encourage one to three minutes of rest

03:10:50.320 | before you do the next round

03:10:51.520 | and probably up to four to six rounds,

03:10:53.320 | that would be your six minute number there.

03:10:54.960 | Now, the caveat there is we don't worry

03:10:57.200 | about heart rate recovery,

03:10:58.480 | we worry about exactly what you mentioned,

03:11:00.120 | which is nasal only recovery.

03:11:02.000 | Once you can get back to that,

03:11:03.800 | give yourself another 30 seconds or so,

03:11:06.120 | and then you're ready to go for round two.

03:11:08.360 | - This is where it gets fun

03:11:09.180 | because I can imagine challenging myself

03:11:10.920 | to get on the assault bike for one minute of kind of warm up,

03:11:14.620 | very low intensity each morning,

03:11:17.080 | and then sprint for a minute,

03:11:19.040 | and then head off into my daily routine.

03:11:22.560 | - No. - Okay.

03:11:23.760 | - That, if you're going to do that though,

03:11:26.420 | you need to give me three minutes of nasal only breathing

03:11:29.000 | before you go back to work.

03:11:30.680 | We need to downregulate after that.

03:11:32.100 | - And there are people in my life

03:11:33.120 | that would love for me to engage in more nasal breathing

03:11:35.320 | 'cause it'll have me speaking less, so no problem.

03:11:38.120 | Chances are I'm going to use the two or three workouts

03:11:42.200 | per week of one minute all out.

03:11:44.600 | Maybe I'll try the shorter protocol.

03:11:46.080 | Can I give you one fun protocol to try here?

03:11:48.080 | - Please.

03:11:48.900 | - So if you have a, you can use this on any equipment,

03:11:52.120 | but I learned this from another mutual friend, Kenny Kane.

03:11:55.320 | This is a great little, it's a little test,

03:11:57.840 | a little game you can play with yourself,

03:11:59.240 | and the only way to play this game is you're going to lose,

03:12:02.980 | which is really, really lovely.

03:12:04.300 | So you can do this at any,

03:12:05.860 | you can do this for any duration of time,

03:12:09.200 | but two minutes is a good number.

03:12:10.920 | Okay, so you have to do this in somewhere

03:12:13.360 | where you can know distance.

03:12:15.080 | So this could be running, cycling,

03:12:18.020 | the air bike is what I use.

03:12:20.680 | The first two minutes, you're going to cover

03:12:23.840 | as much distance as you can possibly cover in two minutes,

03:12:27.560 | and you're going to note that.

03:12:30.000 | So let's say you covered 400 meters, right?

03:12:34.400 | Okay, great.

03:12:35.520 | You're going to rest for two minutes.

03:12:39.000 | Amazing.

03:12:39.840 | That next round, you're now going to go for distance.

03:12:42.020 | So you're going to cover the exact same amount of distance

03:12:44.040 | you covered in round one,

03:12:45.080 | which in this example was 400 meters,

03:12:47.960 | and it doesn't matter how long it takes you.

03:12:50.160 | It may take you two minutes and five seconds,

03:12:53.440 | two minutes and 10 seconds,

03:12:54.480 | 'cause you're a little bit fatigued from round one.

03:12:56.880 | Round three, you're going to now come back

03:12:58.460 | and do that exact same time domain

03:13:00.920 | that you did in round two.

03:13:01.820 | So if it took you two minutes and five seconds in round two,

03:13:04.960 | now round three is going to last two minutes and five seconds

03:13:08.160 | and you want to see if you can cover a greater distance,

03:13:11.800 | 405 meters, 410 meters than you did in round one.

03:13:15.520 | And the beauty of this little protocol,

03:13:17.600 | six minutes total of work, right?

03:13:20.680 | But if you slack in one of the rounds,

03:13:23.360 | you just make the next round harder.

03:13:25.680 | - Is there any rest between rounds?

03:13:27.080 | - Yeah, two minutes.

03:13:28.860 | - Always two minutes rest.

03:13:30.480 | - You don't have to, but this would be my recommendation.

03:13:32.920 | - Kenny Kane came up with this?

03:13:34.200 | - I don't know if he came up with it.

03:13:35.400 | He taught me this thing.

03:13:36.640 | - Well, we both know Kenny and he's an incredibly nice,

03:13:39.160 | an incredibly skilled trainer.

03:13:41.280 | I'm going to call it the sugar cane.

03:13:43.060 | - Yeah, it's so great because-

03:13:43.900 | - Because it sounds really painful.

03:13:45.760 | - And if you go out too hard in round one,

03:13:48.280 | you're in such big trouble round two.

03:13:50.520 | But if you go too easy in round one,

03:13:52.160 | you're going to get absolutely obliterated in round three.

03:13:55.240 | So it's like a wonderful thing.

03:13:57.060 | And you can pick that number as a standardization

03:13:59.560 | and then just try to improve that a little bit per week.

03:14:01.920 | So progression is the last part of this whole thing

03:14:04.460 | that we haven't gotten to yet before we move on.

03:14:06.800 | And the way you want to progress all of these things

03:14:10.120 | is you can timestamp, again, how much work you can do

03:14:13.120 | and then just try to do a slightly higher amount of work,

03:14:15.640 | 5% or so, every week.

03:14:18.340 | Or you can add a round, which is a really nice way.

03:14:21.840 | So in the research studies that have been done,

03:14:26.840 | they're going to do things like week one,

03:14:28.780 | you'll do three rounds.

03:14:30.000 | Week two, you'll do four rounds.

03:14:32.000 | Three, you'll go five rounds.

03:14:33.060 | So you'll add a round until you get up to, say,

03:14:35.640 | six or seven or eight rounds at the end of the protocol.

03:14:38.200 | So that's a really nice way to go about it.

03:14:40.160 | Or you can cap the rounds and just try to get more work done

03:14:43.480 | in that same amount of time.

03:14:44.800 | - Meaning go more intensely.

03:14:46.360 | - Correct.

03:14:47.560 | Get further distance in your 30 seconds

03:14:49.460 | or your 45 seconds or whatever.

03:14:51.780 | I want to encourage people to go as low as 20 seconds.

03:14:57.760 | That's going to allow you to go very, very, very fast.

03:15:00.080 | That's going to actually challenge

03:15:01.360 | that phosphocreatine piece a little bit.

03:15:04.040 | I want to encourage people to also go as high as 90 seconds.

03:15:07.300 | So the honest way, the way that I will do it,

03:15:09.300 | not that it's about me,

03:15:10.320 | but just as an example of something you could do,

03:15:13.320 | I do something in the 15 to 20 second burst range.

03:15:17.400 | And I will generally hedge towards

03:15:19.280 | a two to one rest to work ratio.

03:15:22.220 | So I'm probably going to rest 40 to 60 seconds.

03:15:25.460 | That's to make sure that 20 second burst

03:15:28.140 | is extremely high quality.

03:15:30.720 | Cool.

03:15:31.560 | I'm also going to do something

03:15:32.520 | in the 30 to 50 second range.

03:15:36.080 | I might go one to one work rest ratio.

03:15:38.920 | The quality of those 30 seconds is going to come down,

03:15:41.960 | but the acid buffering

03:15:43.460 | is going to be extraordinarily challenged.

03:15:46.320 | I also will do that with a triple or quadruple rest range.

03:15:50.900 | So again, 30 seconds on, maybe two minutes off.

03:15:54.600 | Now, I won't be able to be,

03:15:56.480 | I won't be working on my ability to handle

03:15:58.840 | the waste product buildup there,

03:16:01.540 | but I'll be working on my ability

03:16:02.940 | to produce more force over that time,

03:16:05.240 | which is another skill set.

03:16:06.600 | And then all the way up to say what you do,

03:16:08.120 | a minute, 70 seconds,

03:16:09.840 | and you can go one to one there or up to three to one.

03:16:13.280 | You're going to be working on

03:16:14.120 | a little bit of this different thing,

03:16:14.940 | but that's exactly how we hit both sides of this equation,

03:16:18.140 | working on dealing with waste,

03:16:19.480 | as well as actually working on bringing in nutrients

03:16:22.180 | and getting that system a little bit more effective.

03:16:24.080 | So you could set that up across your week

03:16:27.040 | and just, it could be something like

03:16:29.480 | day one is that 20 second burst window,

03:16:32.160 | day two is that maybe 60 second window,

03:16:35.380 | and then day three is maybe one all out effort.

03:16:38.980 | And we're done there.

03:16:40.960 | - Let's talk about the specific protocols and adaptations

03:16:44.240 | related to maximum aerobic output

03:16:47.340 | or maximum aerobic capacity, as it's sometimes called.

03:16:51.040 | - Sure.

03:16:51.880 | Now we're moving past like that couple of minute range

03:16:54.480 | into like the five to 15 minute range,

03:16:57.840 | but at a maximum intensity.

03:17:00.180 | So it's the highest you can go from there.

03:17:02.080 | We're not talking about our last category

03:17:04.180 | of long duration here.

03:17:05.560 | Well, the beautiful part is,

03:17:06.900 | we've already explained a lot of it

03:17:08.880 | 'cause it's very similar to what we just talked about

03:17:10.920 | with anaerobic capacity.

03:17:12.880 | It is primarily going to be a problem

03:17:15.840 | of dealing with waste products, especially at the end.

03:17:18.180 | It's not enough total distance

03:17:20.120 | to be running out of muscle glycogen,

03:17:22.320 | though it may start to creep down a little bit.

03:17:24.760 | Fat's not going to be an issue,

03:17:26.400 | but certainly more oxygen transportation

03:17:28.700 | is going to be an issue.

03:17:29.540 | So we're just hedging a little bit more towards

03:17:32.220 | that side of the equation,

03:17:33.900 | towards the end of that workout.

03:17:36.860 | No doubt about it,

03:17:37.840 | clearing out waste products is going to be a huge issue,

03:17:40.900 | but really oxygen demand and delivery

03:17:43.580 | is starting to take more of a prominent role

03:17:45.740 | because we have had more time to clear the waste.

03:17:49.120 | And if we're not good at that,

03:17:50.380 | we're going to be failing earlier than we need.

03:17:54.660 | So the training for that

03:17:56.380 | needs to be a little bit at that exact same.

03:17:59.380 | So a classic thing here is a one mile test.

03:18:02.980 | This is going to last for most people

03:18:04.400 | somewhere between five and 10 minutes.

03:18:06.660 | You're sort of right in this window.

03:18:08.780 | If you just want to practice that once a week,

03:18:10.660 | we're done here.

03:18:12.200 | Exercise choice, same thing we talked about.

03:18:15.380 | Pick an exercise you're comfortable with

03:18:17.060 | that you can actually do,

03:18:18.740 | and you can progressively increase

03:18:21.180 | in terms of the intensity.

03:18:22.860 | You're not going to have to stop and change your exercise.

03:18:25.940 | You're not going to move around.

03:18:26.780 | It's like a circuit isn't great here

03:18:28.560 | because you got to put one implement down,

03:18:30.640 | pick up another one.

03:18:31.600 | You want to be doing something

03:18:32.600 | where there is literally not a second of off switch.

03:18:35.560 | So similar exercise choice principles we just covered.

03:18:38.540 | If you're going to become a real savage

03:18:41.380 | and you want to do repeats here, you can.

03:18:43.460 | Endurance folks will do that a lot.

03:18:45.940 | One mile repeats, 800 meter repeats, things like that,

03:18:49.300 | or I'm not sure what the swimming distance equivalents

03:18:51.820 | would be, but swimmers, we do this constantly,

03:18:54.040 | but you don't need to.

03:18:55.600 | This is really hard.

03:18:56.620 | It's pretty hard in the system.

03:18:57.780 | It's very good for you.

03:18:58.800 | One to twice a week of hitting this,

03:19:00.960 | I think you'd be in a really, really good spot.

03:19:03.440 | Frequency we sort of just covered.

03:19:04.920 | We covered exercise choice.

03:19:06.700 | Volume we just sort of nailed,

03:19:08.100 | and intensity is basically running you up to the top there.

03:19:12.560 | Now, because you can only do that so often,

03:19:15.140 | you want to add in another 40 or so percent of your time

03:19:19.420 | being lower intensity support work for that.

03:19:22.440 | So this is something probably less than 85%

03:19:24.860 | of your heart rate, but higher than quote unquote zone two.

03:19:28.500 | You got to be working here.

03:19:29.540 | This is not, I could have a conversation pace.

03:19:31.420 | This is higher than that.

03:19:32.500 | It's in between conversation pace

03:19:35.280 | and the pace I need to be at

03:19:36.620 | to run my fastest mile I've ever done.

03:19:38.580 | That's that middle ground.

03:19:39.500 | And you need to train that so that you can continue

03:19:42.020 | to work on capitalization, oxygen transportation,

03:19:45.460 | but you're not burning down the house,

03:19:47.220 | getting all the way up to 100 plus percent of your VO2 max.

03:19:51.860 | Could I use a crude version of this where I say,

03:19:56.860 | okay, I'm going to exercise for 10 minutes.

03:20:00.580 | I'm going to go as fast as I safely can.

03:20:03.640 | And every week I'm going to measure how far I travel.

03:20:08.640 | - Yep, easy. - In that 10 minutes.

03:20:11.060 | - Love it.

03:20:11.900 | - Probably not on the same day

03:20:14.300 | that I'm doing the anaerobic capacity work.

03:20:16.620 | - Probably not.

03:20:18.180 | - Probably okay to do after a strength training

03:20:23.180 | or hypertrophy workout, as long as I didn't train legs.

03:20:27.060 | - You could, it's probably going to compromise recovery

03:20:32.060 | is the way.

03:20:34.040 | So I would, if you're going to do a session like this,

03:20:35.420 | I would probably do it on its own day.

03:20:37.380 | Unless you wanted to do something like speed or power,

03:20:40.540 | then you could roll right into this and have no problem.

03:20:43.300 | Maybe a strength day, a hypertrophy day.

03:20:46.660 | I'm not sure you would do there because again,

03:20:50.060 | especially if you did any sort of lower body exercise,

03:20:52.900 | you're going to be compromised here.

03:20:53.860 | But remember these tend to be full body movements.

03:20:57.760 | So even if you did arms that day,

03:20:58.940 | your arms are going to be compromised

03:21:00.420 | and you don't want to fail this

03:21:01.520 | because of local muscular failure.

03:21:03.300 | - All right, so now I've got my work cut out for me.

03:21:05.780 | I'm going to be doing five to six minutes per week

03:21:08.860 | of all out work divided into 20 to 60 second bouts

03:21:13.460 | with sufficient rest.

03:21:16.020 | And I'm going to give myself 10 minutes a week of,

03:21:20.000 | in my case, it'll probably be running as fast as I can

03:21:23.100 | 'cause I do enjoy running and I can do it safely,

03:21:26.280 | maybe uphill and see how far I go.

03:21:28.320 | - Yep, if you want to combine the two.

03:21:31.020 | So if you're just saying, hey, I'm bought in, Andy,

03:21:33.180 | like I want to do both of these things.

03:21:34.780 | They are similar, but they have independent benefits.

03:21:37.660 | I'm convinced.

03:21:38.500 | How would I build these into the same week?

03:21:40.480 | Maybe do one of each.

03:21:44.140 | That still gets you at quote unquote two days per week

03:21:46.260 | where you're going to hit a high maximum heart rate.

03:21:47.640 | So we already checked that box off.

03:21:49.100 | So one day can be a shorter length interval repeat one.

03:21:52.180 | And the other one can simply be a five to 15 minute

03:21:56.420 | maximum work and you're done.

03:21:58.940 | - Long duration endurance exercise,

03:22:02.140 | the stereotypical endurance exercise.

03:22:04.980 | - Sure.

03:22:06.520 | - How far, how long, how fast or how slow, rather,

03:22:11.520 | should I go?

03:22:12.880 | And here I'm going to venture that exercise choice

03:22:17.880 | is one that we could click off even at this point

03:22:21.840 | in the discussion, because obviously it's got to be

03:22:23.860 | something that I can do for a long while

03:22:26.020 | without getting injured, overuse injuries.

03:22:31.020 | - There's a little bit of novelty

03:22:32.140 | we can actually throw in here.

03:22:33.700 | So one of the things I love to do for long duration

03:22:38.380 | and endurance for people who don't love running,

03:22:40.600 | cycling or swimming is you can do the really cool workout.

03:22:43.780 | Any number of things where you can put a little circuit

03:22:45.700 | together, as long as there's not a lot of downtime

03:22:48.480 | between one circuit to the next time.

03:22:50.780 | You can actually do something as simple as like,

03:22:53.120 | maybe you're going to do farmer's carries

03:22:56.100 | and you'll do that for say three minutes

03:22:59.100 | and you'll set those down and you'll go straight

03:23:01.020 | into a plank for a minute and you'll pick that up

03:23:03.300 | and you go straight into maybe body weight squats

03:23:06.260 | for two minutes.

03:23:07.100 | Then you go straight into another exercise

03:23:08.540 | and you can sort of rotate things around.

03:23:11.000 | Maybe you can do even some like shadowboxing stuff

03:23:14.400 | or some jump rope.

03:23:15.980 | You can do different gymnastics movements

03:23:17.880 | and body weight movements and you can run that thing through

03:23:20.680 | and you can basically get the exact same thing accomplished

03:23:23.320 | and not feel like you're doing, oh my gosh,

03:23:26.240 | this mind numbing type of training,

03:23:28.160 | if it feels like that to you.

03:23:29.680 | Another way you can do that to actually even simplify it

03:23:32.080 | even more, we've done this at Kenny Kane's gym

03:23:34.920 | plenty of times where you just maybe even pick

03:23:36.680 | three machines.

03:23:37.500 | So you're going to, I'm going to go 10 minutes on the rower

03:23:39.840 | and I'm going to go 10 minutes on the treadmill

03:23:41.400 | and I'm going to go 10 minutes on the bike.

03:23:43.040 | You can actually knock a 30 minute, quote unquote,

03:23:45.400 | steady state session out in and not feel those problems

03:23:48.680 | if those things happen.

03:23:49.520 | So you can actually have a lot of fun there.

03:23:50.720 | We will do a lot of times with our fighters,

03:23:55.200 | we'll do things like put a very low load,

03:23:58.480 | I'm talking sub 50% of your max on a barbell

03:24:02.560 | and you're going to squat and you're going to do,

03:24:04.480 | you know, maybe a minute.

03:24:06.440 | You're going to put that down and then you're going to go over

03:24:08.360 | and do 50% of a bench press.

03:24:09.760 | You're going to put that down, you're going to go over

03:24:11.360 | and do 50% of a crab walk.

03:24:14.960 | And then you're going to go over and do another one

03:24:16.680 | and you can actually run through this entire thing.

03:24:19.120 | You don't hit that many reps in any individual movement.

03:24:21.880 | The load is very, very light.

03:24:23.700 | And you can keep heart rate basically at a steady state

03:24:26.380 | and do 15 or 20 or 30 different exercises.

03:24:29.640 | And it's actually like fairly fun and engaging to do.

03:24:32.600 | And it's a little bit more specific than trying to get

03:24:35.600 | a 275 pound NFL player to run for 30 minutes,

03:24:39.880 | which is not going to be good.

03:24:41.640 | - I'm just chuckling because I love to run outdoors

03:24:44.600 | and I've enjoyed runs on all my travels

03:24:48.720 | and I find it to be a great way to see different places.

03:24:51.880 | And I like moving through space,

03:24:53.360 | but there are weather conditions

03:24:55.640 | and times when that's not an option.

03:24:57.400 | So what you described as a terrific alternative.

03:24:59.480 | I have to assume that the specific adaptation

03:25:03.440 | that's occurring here is related to the fat burning system.

03:25:07.380 | And again, that doesn't necessarily mean fat loss overall,

03:25:10.920 | but fat burning system.

03:25:12.600 | And yet I do have a question,

03:25:13.640 | which is can you build enhanced microcapillary systems

03:25:18.540 | into the muscles by doing this long duration cardio?

03:25:21.800 | - Yeah, absolutely can.

03:25:23.080 | In fact, depending on which paper you like more

03:25:26.600 | than the other papers, you may even find evidence

03:25:29.680 | that this is a superior method than anything else.

03:25:33.400 | So steady state endurance is very important.

03:25:36.680 | I used to not like it as much.

03:25:40.880 | There's just so much evidence now that suggests

03:25:42.800 | it's probably a really good thing for basically everybody.

03:25:46.240 | Maybe for some individuals it's not in all year

03:25:49.960 | of their training, but if you're not a high level athlete

03:25:53.360 | or have a very specific goal that's right in front of you,

03:25:55.920 | it's probably best to do at least 20 minutes as a minimum,

03:25:59.440 | maybe 30 minutes of some steady state exercise once a week

03:26:04.200 | for basically any training goal outside of, again,

03:26:07.920 | a couple of really specific scenarios that are happening.

03:26:11.500 | The other thing that kind of kicks in here

03:26:14.420 | that we haven't really talked about

03:26:15.680 | is now we're actually reaching a position

03:26:18.700 | where fatigue of the intercostal starts to play.

03:26:22.600 | So diaphragmatic fatigue starts to run on an occasion.

03:26:25.120 | So we forget generally breathing is a contraction

03:26:29.840 | to open up the lungs to change pressure

03:26:31.940 | so the air will flow in.

03:26:33.400 | And then the exhalation is passive, right?

03:26:35.640 | It's just a muscle has been stretched,

03:26:37.120 | it goes back to its resting.

03:26:38.480 | When you get to a maximum heart rate,

03:26:40.080 | inhalation and exhalation become active.

03:26:42.520 | So you're squeezing as hard as you can to open up

03:26:44.080 | and you're squeezing to contract to blow air out.

03:26:47.080 | You're going to get fatigued, that system, right?

03:26:49.600 | Over time, you have contracted, contracted to open up.

03:26:53.160 | If that system starts to get fatigued,

03:26:55.000 | you start running into failure here.

03:26:56.520 | So you need to practice that.

03:26:58.120 | And this is when all kinds of things like breathing drills

03:27:00.520 | to just simply training in this fashion.

03:27:03.160 | There's all kinds of exercise devices for your lungs.

03:27:06.300 | And when we say that,

03:27:07.140 | that's what we're really talking about.

03:27:08.240 | The musculature around the lungs needs to not fatigue.

03:27:12.100 | So that's the only other little component

03:27:13.600 | I wanted to throw in here.

03:27:15.000 | If we're not talking about acid buffering,

03:27:17.680 | which in this particular case is not a problem anymore,

03:27:20.460 | the time domain is long and slow earth.

03:27:23.760 | So we have plenty of time to use fat as a fuel.

03:27:26.060 | We also have plenty of time to use anaerobic,

03:27:28.360 | anaerobic glycolysis and clear out waste products.

03:27:31.640 | So we don't really see pH being a problem

03:27:34.720 | with this type of exercise.

03:27:36.220 | You may start running low on liver glycogen

03:27:38.520 | if you're going a very long time.

03:27:40.400 | Muscle glycogen may start getting low,

03:27:42.500 | but not really, these are huge issues.

03:27:45.160 | You're going to run into maybe a little bit

03:27:46.600 | of a stroke volume issue,

03:27:47.560 | but an intensity is not high enough to become a problem.

03:27:51.040 | You're more likely to break down posturally

03:27:53.560 | or breathing mechanics than really anything else.

03:27:55.600 | Unless again, that duration really gets generally

03:27:58.160 | past two hours for most people.

03:28:00.500 | So those are the things that are going to limit us.

03:28:03.000 | So how do we improve it?

03:28:04.520 | What do we train?

03:28:05.360 | We went through the exercise choices.

03:28:06.860 | You also need to make sure you're training

03:28:09.040 | your intercostals.

03:28:09.880 | We need to be training our diaphragm in some fashion.

03:28:13.160 | Again, it can be the exercise itself,

03:28:15.040 | can be your normal training.

03:28:16.440 | The thing you need to be careful of here,

03:28:19.200 | and this is actually true for all the things

03:28:20.940 | we just talked about.

03:28:22.600 | When we think about fatigue

03:28:24.240 | and we think about failure and endurance,

03:28:26.680 | we really need to pay attention to technical breakdown.

03:28:29.520 | That is always the marker we look for.

03:28:32.600 | So when we go through our stuff with our athletes

03:28:34.960 | and they quote unquote fail or they finish,

03:28:37.840 | that's generally because we saw

03:28:39.080 | a massive technical breakdown.

03:28:41.040 | You're done.

03:28:42.080 | Like you're over there.

03:28:43.440 | Not always the case during all your round of training,

03:28:45.600 | but this is something to really pay attention to.

03:28:47.340 | So if you're on that bike and you're 40 seconds in

03:28:49.640 | and all of a sudden posture starts to crunching over,

03:28:52.200 | I may stop the test.

03:28:53.440 | I may stop the training.

03:28:54.600 | It's like, no, what we decided failure was

03:28:56.840 | is when you lost your technique to some sufficient level.

03:29:01.760 | So you want to pay attention to that too,

03:29:02.980 | because that's going to determine your ability

03:29:04.600 | to perform well as well as maintain efficiency,

03:29:08.160 | which is a really big problem here.

03:29:10.640 | - Tell me if the protocol I'm about to describe

03:29:12.800 | would be a reasonable one for people to incorporate

03:29:18.080 | 60 to 120 minutes of long duration work per week.

03:29:23.080 | So one way to accomplish that that I often use

03:29:30.520 | is to head out for a weight vested hike.

03:29:34.600 | It's not a heavyweight vest.

03:29:36.300 | It's maybe, I think it's eight or 10 pounds.

03:29:38.600 | It's one of these thinner ones.

03:29:39.500 | And if people don't have access to that,

03:29:41.340 | you can bring a backpack with some items in it.

03:29:44.540 | I mean, it can be as simple as that.

03:29:45.380 | - You don't even need external load.

03:29:46.600 | It can just be your body.

03:29:47.640 | - Okay, great.

03:29:48.480 | And do some hiking at a fast enough clip

03:29:52.120 | that I'm breathing harder than I would be

03:29:54.360 | if I just kind of shuffled along.

03:29:56.320 | I might stop here or there, drink some water, no big deal,

03:29:59.400 | but I can carry on a conversation if I need to.

03:30:01.760 | So it's zone two-ish,

03:30:03.720 | but probably pushing a little bit harder than that

03:30:06.240 | for that duration.

03:30:07.900 | Not a lot of deep soreness occurring after this,

03:30:11.680 | maybe a little bit of achiness

03:30:12.960 | and some stabilization muscles that were used

03:30:15.080 | that may not be used too much,

03:30:16.400 | especially if I've been sitting a lot during the week.

03:30:19.160 | Kind of reminds me of how much I've been sitting.

03:30:21.680 | But doing that all in one long afternoon,

03:30:25.600 | typically on a weekend,

03:30:26.600 | or doing two shorter sessions throughout the week,

03:30:30.120 | maybe 45 minutes and 45 minutes,

03:30:32.040 | and then working up the progression to longer duration.

03:30:35.720 | Seems like that would be something

03:30:37.040 | that most people should be able to do

03:30:40.320 | and that it would weave in well

03:30:42.800 | with any resistance training

03:30:45.420 | or the anaerobic and aerobic output capacity work

03:30:50.240 | that we talked about just a moment ago.

03:30:51.840 | - Great, that's a fine version to do it.

03:30:54.020 | If you want to go shorter

03:30:55.680 | and bring up the intensity a little bit,

03:30:57.480 | so you want to keep it more to the 30 to 60 minute range

03:31:00.980 | and go closer into the,

03:31:02.920 | I can't have a conversation right now,

03:31:04.880 | but again, I'm not at a blistering heart rate,

03:31:07.920 | then you could probably get that same thing done

03:31:09.360 | in a smaller time window if that was a consideration.

03:31:12.320 | So if you wanted to blend all three of these together,

03:31:15.900 | you have a lot of wiggle room, right?

03:31:17.780 | So you could do something like order.

03:31:21.280 | If we're talking about this type of training,

03:31:23.700 | you could do this first

03:31:25.620 | and then finish with either one

03:31:27.500 | of the higher intensity stuff we talked about.

03:31:29.620 | So it could be roped into the same thing.

03:31:31.380 | It could be its own independent day.

03:31:33.420 | Could be your sort of active recovery day.

03:31:35.220 | It tends to be fairly restorative,

03:31:37.020 | as you alluded to a little bit there.

03:31:39.300 | So it's not that big a deal

03:31:40.260 | to do this on your quote unquote off day.

03:31:41.620 | If you're that type of person who like even on your off day,

03:31:45.340 | you have to do something physical, this is fine, right?

03:31:49.280 | If you wanted to do it on a lifting day,

03:31:51.780 | especially if it's a power strength day, it's probably fine.

03:31:54.560 | If you wanted to do it before the workout or after it,

03:31:56.920 | either way, you're probably okay.

03:31:58.780 | Probably best to do it after,

03:32:01.520 | if the primary goal

03:32:02.500 | is one of the strength training adaptations.

03:32:04.020 | If it's not, if this is a primary goal, do it first.

03:32:07.660 | Amazing.

03:32:08.720 | If you wanted to do it in the combination

03:32:11.420 | with the other interval stuff, you could do it fine there.

03:32:14.360 | You could do it before or you could do it afterwards.

03:32:16.860 | I actually have no problem doing it afterwards

03:32:18.780 | because that in effect,

03:32:21.040 | especially if you say nasal only during this training,

03:32:24.620 | will help the downregulation go.

03:32:26.520 | And so you could finish

03:32:27.520 | that fairly well downregulated actually.

03:32:30.020 | So it's kind of like a nice way to get thoroughly warmed up,

03:32:33.160 | go really, really hard,

03:32:35.560 | and then give it a nice 20 to 30 minute slow back down.

03:32:39.600 | And by the time you finish,

03:32:40.560 | maybe even on a three minute walk.

03:32:43.800 | - Nice, slow nasal breathing.

03:32:49.240 | - Four second inhale.

03:32:51.020 | Four second inhale, maybe five.

03:32:54.140 | So you can play with the numbers a little bit.

03:32:56.080 | Then maybe you don't even need

03:32:57.040 | to do the downregulation breathing afterwards.

03:32:58.600 | You'll be in a good spot.

03:32:59.600 | Well, you wouldn't want to do this before.

03:33:02.000 | Do your intervals, finish your intervals, throw up,

03:33:04.760 | lay on the ground, sweat all over the gym floor,

03:33:07.080 | get up and go back to work.

03:33:08.140 | That's probably not our best strategy.

03:33:10.700 | - As people are hearing this all,

03:33:12.940 | they may be thinking, wow, this is a lot of work to do,

03:33:15.080 | but I've been keeping track of the math here.

03:33:17.400 | So I'm sure some of you out there are as well.

03:33:19.520 | And we're really talking about 10 minutes of running

03:33:24.200 | or sprinting on the bike or rower once a week.

03:33:27.720 | We're talking about six minutes or so

03:33:29.400 | of the much higher intensity,

03:33:31.680 | but short bouts divided into rounds of 20 seconds

03:33:35.120 | to a minute with rest in between.

03:33:36.960 | And then some longer duration workout of 30 minutes minimum,

03:33:40.680 | but maybe as much as an hour, even two hours,

03:33:42.920 | which in total doesn't really equate to that much time,

03:33:46.900 | especially if one can access these things

03:33:48.840 | right out their front door or at home.

03:33:51.040 | And as we pointed out,

03:33:52.060 | you don't need any specialized equipment to do that.

03:33:55.100 | Oh, and I forgot the muscular endurance.

03:33:59.920 | I wasn't trying to cheat there.

03:34:01.760 | There's some muscular endurance thrown in as well.

03:34:05.020 | So that brings me to a question,

03:34:07.480 | which is if I'm doing my training

03:34:09.960 | for muscular endurance each week,

03:34:11.800 | for anaerobic capacity and for maximum aerobic output

03:34:16.200 | and long duration, and given that all of that,

03:34:19.960 | it's gonna take roughly two hours for the typical person,

03:34:22.680 | total for the entire week,

03:34:24.120 | which I would argue is going to give you back

03:34:27.140 | so much life literally in terms of longevity,

03:34:29.480 | you're literally gonna earn back years of your life.

03:34:31.480 | - Productivity, you name it.

03:34:33.040 | - Offsetting all sorts of metabolic issues

03:34:35.880 | and enhancing your sleep and improving mood.

03:34:39.720 | I mean, there's so much data,

03:34:41.720 | so much data pointing to all those positive benefits.

03:34:45.040 | If I do all of these things

03:34:46.560 | and I'm fairly consistent about them,

03:34:49.640 | am I going to be metabolically flexible?

03:34:52.560 | Am I going to have a well-developed fat burning,

03:34:57.600 | carbohydrate burning system?

03:34:59.840 | And will I be essentially fit?

03:35:03.520 | I mean, this is not,

03:35:04.400 | leaving aside issues of strength and hypertrophy,

03:35:06.480 | which were covered in the previous episode,

03:35:09.400 | will I be fit?

03:35:10.280 | I mean, to my mind, the ability to sprint very fast

03:35:15.040 | if one needs to, the ability to go longer duration

03:35:17.320 | if one needs to, and the ability to do something in between

03:35:19.800 | as well as hold a box overhead if necessary

03:35:23.240 | while installing a shelf or something like that,

03:35:25.280 | these are the realities of life.

03:35:27.560 | And to me represent real functional world fitness.

03:35:30.480 | If that's the case,

03:35:31.840 | is there anything that we would want to add to this program

03:35:33.880 | or would you consider that a fairly comprehensive

03:35:35.960 | and complete endurance training system?

03:35:38.560 | - If we remember the target, which is, I want to have energy,

03:35:43.560 | I want to look a certain way,

03:35:46.040 | and you want to be able to do that

03:35:47.480 | for the duration of your life, for a very long life.

03:35:50.280 | This style of training,

03:35:52.560 | where you incorporate all of those areas of endurance

03:35:55.680 | gives you all of the necessary adaptations

03:35:58.160 | one would need to execute all of those things.

03:36:01.200 | Remember, fat loss or weight management

03:36:05.800 | is not best done with any individual style of protocol.

03:36:10.280 | So if you do a little bit of all three of these,

03:36:11.920 | you've checked that fat loss box.

03:36:13.440 | You don't need to go out and do anything separate for it.

03:36:16.200 | You've done all the things then to cover aesthetics

03:36:19.800 | from that side of the equation, right?

03:36:21.840 | You've done the things to both enhance mitochondria,

03:36:25.880 | to enhance blood flow, increase oxygenation

03:36:29.360 | and manage fatigue and waste development.

03:36:33.040 | Boom, energy's there, fatigue is there.

03:36:35.800 | I'm not going to get tired or have to quit

03:36:37.880 | or stop or sit down doing any of these activities I want.

03:36:40.880 | At the same time,

03:36:42.360 | if you look at the literature on mortality,

03:36:44.920 | one of the strongest predictors

03:36:46.760 | of how long you're going to live is your VO2 max.

03:36:50.320 | So we've set up a scenario in which you're going to hit

03:36:53.280 | all three of those primary goals

03:36:55.080 | by doing a combination of this training.

03:36:57.680 | You're not going to miss any plausible adaptation

03:37:00.560 | from endurance training and you should be set

03:37:02.800 | for regardless of your goal.

03:37:04.640 | - Incredible.

03:37:06.600 | And as I understand, totally compatible

03:37:10.040 | with strength and hypertrophy training

03:37:12.240 | provided that your goal is to also be strong

03:37:15.860 | and also selectively hypertrophy

03:37:18.280 | or generally hypertrophy your muscles

03:37:20.200 | or maintain your muscles.

03:37:21.680 | For many people that are listening to this,

03:37:25.120 | I'm guessing that they have an interest

03:37:27.400 | in building more endurance,

03:37:29.320 | but not just the ability to go further,

03:37:31.440 | but the ability to go a given distance at a higher speed

03:37:35.200 | and to do it with better form and to breathe better

03:37:38.160 | and to feel better before, during and after.

03:37:40.660 | For those folks, maybe you could spell out a program

03:37:45.120 | that combines these different elements of endurance

03:37:48.360 | and does so in a way that informs how, for instance,

03:37:51.800 | the higher intensity short duration sprints

03:37:55.240 | would be expected to improve their longer duration work

03:37:59.360 | and how perhaps their longer duration work can progress

03:38:03.480 | if they are careful to include some planks

03:38:06.080 | and some wall sets and things of that sort.

03:38:08.300 | I asked this question specifically

03:38:10.960 | because I have to believe that while there probably

03:38:13.920 | are some folks out there that are looking

03:38:15.200 | to just maximize their plank from week to week to week,

03:38:18.720 | typically it seems that people fall into these categories

03:38:21.220 | of either wanting to get stronger and get bigger muscles

03:38:24.320 | to varying degrees or to get better at endurance

03:38:27.520 | or to get better at everything overall.

03:38:29.640 | Right now, I'd really like to just focus

03:38:31.120 | on what you think is a nice contour of a program

03:38:34.800 | for the person that wants to get better at endurance,

03:38:37.680 | but do it with more speed, more stability,

03:38:40.640 | and just feel like a strong endurance runner,

03:38:43.420 | cycler, swimmer, or whatever happens

03:38:46.160 | to be their endurance event.

03:38:47.520 | - Okay, great.

03:38:48.420 | So let's just give an example.

03:38:50.200 | Maybe you want to run your first half marathon,

03:38:52.900 | something like that, okay?

03:38:54.480 | Maybe done a couple of times before,

03:38:55.520 | but you just want to get better at that time.

03:38:57.840 | I would probably put somewhere in the neighborhood

03:38:59.800 | of 60 to 70% of your mileage

03:39:03.760 | in the moderate intensity zone, okay?

03:39:06.260 | So you need to accumulate mileage

03:39:08.280 | and you need to be able to handle

03:39:09.480 | what we call the tissue tolerance.

03:39:10.800 | So in this case, your feet need to be able to handle

03:39:13.740 | 13 miles of pounding, okay?

03:39:15.780 | It doesn't matter how much high heart rate training you do

03:39:18.380 | or your fat deliverability, none of that matters

03:39:21.740 | if your feet are blown up by mile eight, okay?

03:39:24.840 | So in addition, we talked about how even training

03:39:28.620 | in that 70 to 85% heart rate zone

03:39:31.980 | is quite effective at oxygen delivery,

03:39:34.960 | fat utilization, capitalization, et cetera.

03:39:37.380 | So you're going to get a lot of direct endurance benefits

03:39:39.880 | from that work.

03:39:40.840 | You're also going to be working on

03:39:42.160 | what's honestly going to be one of your limiting factors,

03:39:44.840 | which is that tissue tolerance and that pounding, okay?

03:39:48.120 | In addition, you need to be efficient with your technique

03:39:50.960 | and you need a lot of repetitions

03:39:52.440 | for motor skill development.

03:39:54.520 | So you want to spend most of your time there.

03:39:56.360 | It's easy to recover from,

03:39:57.800 | it's not extremely demanding and challenging, awesome.

03:40:02.240 | That leaves you with another 30 or 40% of training.

03:40:05.000 | I would spend 10% of that in that like 20 second burst area.

03:40:10.000 | You're going to drive up fatigue extremely high

03:40:13.200 | and you're going to really maximize your ability

03:40:15.160 | to recover from waste production.

03:40:18.360 | All right, great.

03:40:19.440 | I would spend the remaining amount of time

03:40:21.380 | either on a little bit of actually maximum speed stuff

03:40:25.060 | that could actually be in a 20 second burst

03:40:26.640 | if you're really trying to go as fast as you can

03:40:29.280 | at the beginning of that exercise.

03:40:31.560 | And then the rest of it I would spend in that other zone,

03:40:33.720 | which is more of like the five to 15 minutes,

03:40:37.560 | but you're probably going to want to repeat those.

03:40:39.280 | And this is when things like 800 meter run,

03:40:43.100 | rest for double the time,

03:40:45.600 | and then repeat that two or three times.

03:40:47.420 | You actually need that in this scenario

03:40:49.580 | because you're going to need to be able to be running

03:40:51.500 | for two, most people are going to do a half marathon

03:40:53.840 | and maybe around two hours or so, something like that.

03:40:56.880 | And so you want a little bit

03:40:58.040 | of what we call repeated endurance, right?

03:41:00.880 | So be able to handle that higher heart rate, come back down,

03:41:03.880 | do it again.

03:41:04.720 | At the same time,

03:41:05.680 | that's actually how you bump your mileage up.

03:41:08.280 | So instead of having this do more

03:41:09.980 | of these long duration distance runs,

03:41:12.480 | you can still get maybe five or six miles done in a day

03:41:15.720 | if you're going to do a one mile repeat

03:41:18.340 | or whatever number you're looking at.

03:41:19.600 | So for a lot of people,

03:41:21.360 | that's kind of how I would structure it.

03:41:23.560 | That's honestly is very similar to what we laid out

03:41:26.160 | in the previous conversation,

03:41:27.400 | which is getting this idea that more than 50%

03:41:30.960 | should be basically practice.

03:41:33.280 | A little bit of work at the very top end of the spectrum,

03:41:36.100 | but not too much.

03:41:36.940 | And then a little bit of work at the other end,

03:41:38.800 | and you should be in a good spot.

03:41:40.320 | A major mistake one would make here is only doing

03:41:43.040 | the long duration steady state stuff

03:41:44.560 | and just sort of saying,

03:41:45.820 | I'm going to run a five mile this week

03:41:47.760 | and then do six miles next week and seven a set.

03:41:50.080 | That might work for you.

03:41:52.200 | I think we have enough evidence at this point,

03:41:53.800 | both in the scientific realm,

03:41:55.280 | as well as most of the coaches.

03:41:57.040 | I think in this space would agree with me

03:41:58.360 | is that's a suboptimal strategy.

03:42:00.640 | So it could work, but we can do better.

03:42:03.000 | - And in terms of the structure of a program like this,

03:42:05.900 | I realize that those structures vary tremendously.

03:42:08.800 | Different coaches and different books and different programs

03:42:11.000 | are going to say, oh, you should run Monday through Friday

03:42:13.100 | with weekends off or every other day.

03:42:15.080 | But in terms of this 70%, 30% divide

03:42:19.560 | where 70% is going toward the specific event,

03:42:22.840 | doing the kind of work that you're going to do

03:42:24.900 | during the specific event that you're most interested

03:42:27.420 | in cultivating or improving and the remaining 30%

03:42:30.420 | coming from other sorts of supporting work.

03:42:33.560 | How should one think about distributing that other 30%?

03:42:37.960 | Should it be all geared towards maximizing recovery

03:42:40.680 | for the 70%?

03:42:42.540 | Or in other words, could I do all that 30% work on one day?

03:42:47.540 | - I probably would split it into two days.

03:42:51.340 | That's the reality of it.

03:42:52.180 | So if you're thinking, man, coach wants me

03:42:55.400 | to train six days a week.

03:42:57.120 | My schedule is tight.

03:42:58.000 | I can pull off four to five.

03:43:00.080 | Okay, great.

03:43:00.920 | What I might say is two of those days

03:43:03.420 | are just your tempo, right?

03:43:05.440 | This is what like a runner would call this,

03:43:06.560 | like tempo training kind of in that space.

03:43:09.120 | - Remind us what tempo training is just for the uninformed.

03:43:10.960 | - It would be this like 60 to 80% effort range

03:43:13.800 | where you're like running at probably the same stride length

03:43:17.280 | and rate that you're going to run your race at,

03:43:19.280 | maybe a little bit lower, but something similar.

03:43:21.440 | You're practicing skill, you're accruing mileage,

03:43:24.720 | and you're getting a little, you're getting work in,

03:43:26.720 | for sure work, but it's not absolutely the fastest

03:43:29.740 | you can sprint and it's also not conversation.

03:43:32.340 | - So this would be the, before we referred to as the

03:43:36.040 | 10 minutes of fast running or 10 minutes of fast rowing.

03:43:39.680 | - This is lower intensity than that.

03:43:41.260 | - Got it.

03:43:42.100 | - This is work accumulation.

03:43:45.640 | - Got it.

03:43:46.480 | - This is practice stuff.

03:43:47.920 | Then one of the days a week,

03:43:49.460 | I would probably enter in that 20 second,

03:43:53.240 | 30 second burst for a little bit of speed there.

03:43:55.400 | And then one of the other days is when I would do that

03:43:57.820 | true high intensity as hard as I can

03:44:00.080 | for hitting a VO2 max, something like that.

03:44:03.460 | So that's probably how I'd break it up

03:44:04.840 | if I had like four days a week.

03:44:06.200 | If you had five, you can maybe add in another day

03:44:09.480 | where you do more of that volume accumulation practice work.

03:44:13.700 | But that's a pretty good split.

03:44:15.940 | - Well, this is the point in the episode where I say,

03:44:19.320 | thank you ever so much.

03:44:20.600 | You provided an enormous amount of incredibly interesting,

03:44:25.040 | clear information that's also actionable.

03:44:28.240 | I do feel as if I far better understand endurance

03:44:31.400 | in its many forms and even the cellular underpinnings of

03:44:35.480 | that and even subcellular underpinnings of what endurance

03:44:38.680 | adaptations are and how to foster those

03:44:41.360 | through specific protocols,

03:44:42.640 | things that not only I can do tomorrow,

03:44:44.680 | but that I will do tomorrow.

03:44:46.620 | And where I hit my pain points,

03:44:47.960 | I'll understand what's happening

03:44:49.740 | and the adaptation that I'm triggering.

03:44:51.600 | When my legs are burning or I'm sucking for air

03:44:53.920 | through my mouth, or I can calmly move along

03:44:57.120 | just through nasal breathing,

03:44:58.400 | I will now know what's happening in my body

03:45:00.840 | and the specific adaptations that I'm triggering.

03:45:03.200 | I think you also highlight something

03:45:04.520 | that is vitally important.

03:45:06.780 | And I've never heard it phrased as clearly as you did today,

03:45:09.680 | which is that it really doesn't matter how one seeks out

03:45:13.000 | to achieve fat loss provided certain criteria are met.

03:45:17.480 | Even while certain forms of exercise tap into fat stores

03:45:20.540 | more than others.

03:45:21.840 | And you beautifully illustrated the relationship

03:45:25.040 | between energy utilization and breathing

03:45:27.540 | and the fact that we literally exhale fat to some extent.

03:45:32.240 | - Of course.

03:45:33.520 | - So once again, thank you, thank you, and thank you.

03:45:36.740 | I know I'm not alone in recognizing this information

03:45:40.240 | as incredibly interesting and actionable.

03:45:42.840 | And indeed I do plan to put it into action

03:45:44.800 | as I hope many of our listeners will as well.

03:45:48.240 | - Yet again, the pleasure is actually all mine.

03:45:50.320 | And I actually really appreciate the fact

03:45:52.340 | that you let me go so far into metabolism.

03:45:55.200 | My PhD is in human bioenergetics.

03:45:58.000 | So anytime I can go many hours into metabolism,

03:46:01.500 | I get very excited and I don't typically get that leash

03:46:05.120 | in this format.

03:46:05.960 | So I appreciate that.

03:46:06.800 | I know you understand your audience will love that hopefully.

03:46:10.280 | - Oh, they'll love it.

03:46:11.400 | And I think that they'll especially love it

03:46:13.120 | because they understand that if one can wrap their head

03:46:18.120 | around even just a small fraction of the mechanisms

03:46:21.220 | that underlie a given protocol,

03:46:23.120 | it gives both tremendous depth and meaning to that protocol

03:46:25.760 | and makes it so much more flexible for people

03:46:28.260 | that can really think about what's happening

03:46:30.060 | as they're engaging in a given protocol

03:46:32.060 | and know exactly what they can expect in terms of results.

03:46:35.520 | - Great.

03:46:36.360 | We've been on a bit of a journey here.

03:46:38.060 | We've covered a lot of ground with speed development

03:46:41.000 | and strength and hypertrophy.

03:46:42.760 | And now we walk through probably several hours here

03:46:45.600 | of endurance.

03:46:46.960 | What I would love to do next is to just give you

03:46:50.880 | a more straightforward, not as much background,

03:46:54.520 | not as much metabolism, none of the mechanisms

03:46:57.560 | right into protocols for someone who says,

03:47:00.480 | look, I wanna hit those marks you keep talking about.

03:47:02.880 | I wanna look good.

03:47:04.240 | I wanna feel good.

03:47:05.120 | And I wanna do that across my lifespan.

03:47:07.120 | How would I build all these things into a protocol

03:47:11.400 | that actually covers maybe the entire year?

03:47:14.560 | And how would I would be able to repeat that year after year?

03:47:16.640 | So I almost have this evergreen, sustainable,

03:47:19.800 | year long periodization structure

03:47:21.920 | that covers all the nodes I need to

03:47:24.160 | if I want everything we've talked about

03:47:26.660 | in these nine adaptations in this short series.

03:47:29.120 | So I would love to do that in our next conversation.

03:47:33.080 | - If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

03:47:35.440 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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03:48:03.960 | I'd also like to inform you

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03:48:39.200 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion

03:48:41.460 | about fitness, exercise and performance

03:48:43.420 | with Dr. Andy Galpin.

03:48:44.920 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

03:48:47.900 | (upbeat music)

03:48:50.480 | (upbeat music)

Dr. Andy Galpin: How to Build Physical Endurance & Lose Fat | Huberman Lab Guest Series

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