#716: Performance Coach Andy Galpin — Rebooting Tim’s Sleep, Nutrition, Supplements, and Training for 2024

0:00 This episode is brought to you by Mementis. Mementis offers high quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more. I've been testing their products for months now, and I have a few. That I use. Constantly. One of the things I love about Mementus is that they offer many single ingredient and third party tested formulations. I'll come back to the latter part of that. a little bit later. Personally, I've been using Mementus Mag3Nate, L theanine, and Apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now the Mementus Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients. I've also been using Mementus Creatine, which doesn't just help for physical performance, but also for cognitive performance.

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3:10 Ultimate Omega for the last two months or so. And this fishy aftertaste issue has been a problem for me and has actually with other brands induced some nausea after a few days. And Ultimate Omega has been as clean as a whistle. I've had no issues whatsoever. And if you are vegetarian or prefer to alternate, I ended up alternating two products. And that is number one, the ultimate omega fish oil formula. And also the algae omega, which is plant based EPA and DHA. That's also from an Nordic Naturals. So I end up getting both of those products and it is improved. My recovery from workouts, it's improved my sleep, it has improved my mood, and I know that because I pulled out a lot of other variables. In any case, back to the read. All Nordic Naturals fish oil products are offered in the triglyceride molecular form, the form naturally found in fish, and the form your body most easily absorbs. Their ultimate omega fish oil is offered in soft gels, liquid, and zero sugar gummies.

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4:53 Try it out. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then I answer your personal question.

5:09 No seen perfect time. I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endocrine. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world class performers from all different disciplines. In this case

5:37 exercise science and it is Very self-interested, I want to talk to this guest, Andy Galpin, about a reboot in the new year. What should I do to train for very specific things? What should I do to improve sleep, et cetera. And so on and so on and so forth. So Andy Galpin. Who is Andy? Andy Galpin is a tenured full professor at California State University Fullerton, where he is also co-director of the Center for Sport Performance and Founder Director of the Biochemistry and Molecular Exercise Physiology Laboratory. He is a human performance scientist with a PhD in human bioenergics and more than one hundred peer reviewed publications and presentations. It turns out he has done research, his team has done research on many things that have been on this show. I didn't realize some of it in advance. Dr. Galpin has worked with elite athletes, including all stars, all pros and MVPs, Psy Young and major winners.

6:27 Olympic gold medalists and world titleists and contenders. across many, many different sports that include MMA. So For instance, UFC, MLB. NBA, PGA, NFL All the acronyms, Olympics, Boxing, Military Special Forces, and much more. He is also a co-founder of Biomolecular Athlete Vitality Blueprint.

6:47 Absolute rest and rapid health and performance. You can find all things. Andygalpin atandalpin.com and you can find him on Twitter and Instagram at Doctor Andy Galpin spelled G A L P I N Just a few additional notes on this episode. I asked Andy if he would be willing to provide a number of bonuses, a number of resources that we could put in the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast, and he very generously agreed. Those include some synopses, overviews of the various training protocols that

7:19 were mentioned in this episode specifically related to the prep for my skiing, but that applies to a lot more than just skiing. Could apply to any number of different endurance sports or maintaining strength. over a period of training just about anything. That's my interpretation, not his. He also agreed to include a number of different resources related to micronutrient testing and a number of different supplements that he feels pull their weight from a scientific credibility perspective with respect to endurance training. And in my particular case, Training at altitude.

7:52 Including skiing. We cover a hell of a lot in this episode. We cover sleep banking, we talk about basketball tweets and how they tie into sports betting, believe it or not, testing sweat. Talk about using respiratory rate, so overnight respiratory rate, which you can figure out pretty easily as a proxy, an indicator of many other things. And last but not least, I asked Andy if he would be willing to provide A few snippets.

8:16 Anecdotes and explanations for a number of bullets that I didn't get to cover. And he recorded those separately. And I added those to this episode for you to enjoy. And here are those bullets. Number one, doubling a client's testosterone by just changing what path he took for his morning walk. Number two, curing a lifelong sleep disorder in five minutes for twenty two dollars. And now please enjoy a very wide ranging and very practical conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin.

8:46 The honest reality is As I've mentioned several times now. Our approach is to Have as comprehensive as testing as possible so that we can get the most precise and specific. solutions that we can.

8:57 But the reality is the vast majority of people will respond best through a multi factorial approach. Addressing all of the big rocks at once is almost always gonna be required for people to get their best results. That said, having done this now really hundreds of times.

9:13 There have been some fun cases in which people had this remarkable results. It's extraordinarily simple and sometimes even cheap. And uh really one change um approaches. And so I do want to really reiterate That it those are the exceptions.

9:29 So the rule. And I think that's important to state here because that stuff can be Intoxicating. It can really drive confusion. It's like, oh my gosh, maybe all my problems are really just this one thing. And that can happen, of course, I'm about to show you some stories, but really, really, really

9:45 I don't want to fall prey. To any Thought sometimes that Really This one particular thing I'm gonna share is

9:51 The cause of all human suffering is clearly not the case. So The very first one Is from a colleague of mine, Dan Garner. Dan is a world renowned specialist in Blood lab.

10:02 interpretations and really human performance and so Dan was working with a client in the Dallas, Texas area. The client had done many of the right things and had a lot of success, but was particularly interested in Elevating his testosterone and so despite the fact that things were going Well

10:17 That number wasn't moving as high as that individual wanted. And remind you, this is medication of TRTs, hormones, things like that are off of the table. We're not medical doctors. It's not what we do, and that's not what this individual wants to do. So the question was can we do this without Those. Options.

10:32 And so Dan had kinda run him through many of the The normal. Steps and we're still struggling to figure it out. And so we kinda went to the next level with some of the biomarkers we looked at. And Dan was able to identify There was actually an allergic response happening to something in his environment, and you can actually differentiate

10:48 If it's coming from environmental factors or other factors based on a handful of different blood markers. And so Something was going on there and we didn't know what it was. And didn't rather, and but we knew something was there. And so Long story short, what ended up happening was it was actually response to some of the trees That were in this Man's neighborhood.

11:07 And he was basically allergic to those and didn't know it'cause it wasn't creating a sufficient enough of a response for him to figure it out. And it turns out that those trees were basically on one side of his neighborhood and not the other one. And so the individuals basically start his day going outside and going for a walk. And we'll walk right through these trees. And it's just kind of exacerbating that response and there's a no

11:27 compromising sleep quality, et cetera, et cetera. And that eventually was was compromising his testosterone. And so really the ultimate change that was made was still continue to take those daily walks, but instead of walking out of the house and going right and walking around the block that way that he went out of his house, turned left and walked the block.

11:44 In a different area that was no longer exposing him to those trees. So You did that, waited six or eight weeks or something like I can't remember the exact time domain. And then testosterone was checked again and it was almost doubled. By that point. So again, fun little story there. Atypical, but uh absolutely possible and thing that we've seen A number of times over the years.

12:04 Another really fun story I like. is From the sleep. Now this is actually in a professional athlete that we've worked with and Has happened more than one time. This exact thing.

12:15 Has happened more than one time. And so really I'm I can kinda combine a mul multiple stories here, but When we do our sleep analysis, we're not just looking at your sleep staging and architecture, we actually are able to identify what physical positions you are in. So on your right side, left side.

12:30 back, et cetera. And and one thing that stands out routinely is how Sleep quality. drastically differs in people depending on their position. So some people really struggle on their right side or the left side or their back side. And that it's very common for us to see people will have Large percentages of their sleep problems in a single place, and so Again, seen this multiple times. Um

12:49 Where people would struggle in this example with sleeping on their back. And what we're able to do for a very cheap price was to go onto Amazon and buy what effectively looks like a fanny pack in reverse. So you can imagine a standard not the over the shoulder chest. fanny packs, but the more traditional ones that just go around your waist like a belt. And instead of having the pouch in front

13:09 You flip it around. and put it on your low back. And that stops you from sleeping on your low back. And forces the individual to sleep on their right side or left side. It's uncomfortable and it is weird for

13:20 a few days or weeks, but really it was it's pretty quick for the people to adjust to that. Now In this story I'm referring to We were able to see over ninety percent reduction in sleep waking events in the very first night by simply putting that backpack on. And that was not a fluke that has been sustained for weeks and months.

13:36 after that. Now the individual'cause it's been so long. Again, I'm many individuals here actually. They can really easily sleep without the pack entirely. Or it n certainly no longer affects their sleep at all, they really don't notice it. And those reductions in sleep waking events

13:49 Have persisted. for months and months and months, if not years at this point. And so we would kinda collectively Fix that person's sleep disorder. that have been going on for years, if not decades, and certainly decades actually. In about five minutes for I think the backpack costs like twenty two bucks on Amazon or something like that.

14:10 Dr. Galpin Andy, nice to see you. Nice to see you. And I'm so happy to have this opportunity to do a podcast, which is really a Self interested, self directed. session with you in the guise of a podcast. But anytime you can do something for yourself and only yourself, it's a win. You have a history of competition. Yeah. Been a competitive athlete.

14:30 You have an extensive history of injuries. Which have forced you to become Creative. Yeah. you could have not been creative, but you had the capacity

14:39 to think creatively about your own training and training. And then you also have Deeply technical. Foundations. And that combination Of

14:50 Competitive experience, creativity, and then technical capability I think produces a lot of what you've been able to do, which is why In part, I'm excited to have you here today. For a lot of folks who are listening to this, who have listened to many other podcasts, perhaps read many books, they think to themselves, For fuck's sake, there are a million different things I could be doing. And it's helpful even if it's imperfect to sometimes rank order things, and I'll give you an example. So

15:16 I've known Pavel Tsatsulin for a long time. Perhaps best known as popularizing the kettlebell in the United States, by and large. And his position would be strength first. Right, like focus on strength first. That is the mother quality.

15:28 Mm. And then also important as we age for a host of reasons that I'm sure we can get into. And then you can add in other things sort of below that, let's just say top of the pyramid or bottom of the pyramid, depending on how you look at it. How do you think about it? the cultivation of attributes.

15:47 training and how to prioritize those things. I will acknowledge my bias. Yeah. I played college football. I got into the sport of weightlifting, Olympic weightlifting as you may know it, but

15:58 Technically called weightlifting. I enjoy that side of the spectrum much more than I enjoy. Anything else, right? So I'm a sport kind of guy. I don't really have as much love for physique. Uh bodybuilding, stuff like his

16:09 It's always impressive, but it hasn't gripped me. Because I'm always more interested in sport, so I value being able to hit a golf ball three hundred and fifty yards, being able to Dunk of basketball, to being able to

16:20 Skate on ice. I like it when people can do a whole bunch of things in a well rounded area. So that's my just personal Preference. At the same time I acknowledge when other folks have a preference towards

16:31 Hindurance or In that case, physique. That's important to understand because the way that I answer this question is built fundamentally upon my own bias as We'll probably talk about through the entire conversation. We all have that filter. And so we're all aiming it at a lens and it's just personal preference. And I will do my best as

16:47 the conversation evolves to when I feel like that's a fair representation of the science versus just my Personal preference. And that's not always the same thing, though sometimes it is. So technically, personally to me, you've outlined my injury history. I know you have just a touch yourself. Oh yes. Just a touch. Quite a collection. I actually prefer the very first quality is you need to move well. What's that mean? Well, there's different definitions depending on what you're asking your body to do, but there are some colloquial standards. You know, you had Eric Cressy on recently.

17:13 Surely obviously is. just the foundation of the field in in large part. So sh you guys covered a lot of that there. But really you have to move well. Your joints for the most part have a fairly standard operating mechanism. So your shoulder is supposed to go through that certain range of motion, your neck is supposed to be in a certain place, your knee and your toes and All that stuff.

17:30 So you guys can refer back to that. Mm that conversation. But you have to move well. Secondarily on top of that. After moving well.

17:39 You have to be able to ask yourself Well, if I'm not moving well, why not? And someone like Paul's gonna come back and say, Well, in large part it's because of a lack of strength. If you're strong enough, you move well. I actually agree with him. On many, many, many things, and that's

17:52 One of them. That said though. I think there's a little bit more nuance there that I like to approach. And so whenever I'm watching movement. Whatever that is to you, whether you're surfing or you like jogging. Or you're doing jujitsu, whatever it is.

18:04 I'm going joint by joint. And I'm asking a handful of things, almost four specific things. Per joint. Number one. Does it have appropriate stability? You can call this stability, you can call this strength. It is the same thing, right? Your ability to control the joint to make sure it moves when you want it to move, and when it doesn't move when you don't.

18:21 Those things have to both be there. It's not okay to just move it. When you want and then not control when you don't want. Drive a car without brakes. Total. You have to understand that position, right? So you can put whatever phrase on it. I call it strength. Others call it stability, but it just it's just control, right? So is that joint under control? Is it stable? Number two, and this is even prior to that first one. Are you even aware?

18:42 You'd be stunned how many movement dysfunctions and mobility restrictions and things that I've seen on people and none of those are the case. They just don't even know that their foot's pointed to the right. Or that their shoulders in the wrong spot. Not only where they're supposed to be. But they don't even have the awareness of where they actually are. Yeah.

18:58 So just letting you know, hey, did you realize that Yeah, your left foot is pointing forward and your right foot is pointing Ninety degrees. Which just as a side note can be very surprising,'cause I like to think and I do think I have a reasonably high degree of Spatial kinesthetic awareness. Yeah.

19:14 But I remember having some issue with my right big toe. And I was doing a split squat type of exercise and this woman who was supervising at the time said, Are you aware You're Toe is Pointing.

19:27 Basically to like it was my right foot. Thank you. Ten o'clock on a dial, if you're facing twelve. And I was like, What are you talking about? And she took a photograph. Oh, like you were internally? I was internally rotating. That's your way out because I didn't have the mobility in the big toe. And so I was dodging that by kicking my heel way out to the outside. That's that's interesting. Almost Always the case would be the opposite. No kidding. Yeah, you flare out so that you can actually get more range of motion your knee forward. So I was doing the drop the hip and throw the straight right kind of position. Yeah.

19:58 So not to interrupt, but even for someone who thinks they know where their body is in space, you would be surprised. And we don't need to go off course here too much, but the reality of it is you don't need to be perfect. Yeah. Some level of asymmetry is Absolutely fine and In large cases with

20:11 Almost all of our professional athletes You actually Probably want some. Asymmetries, right? This allows you to create torque and to move in specific ways where if you're a major league baseball pitcher

20:22 You need to be able to throw a hundred miles an hour. We have to have some asymmetries, a golfer, all of our folks on the PGA tour and stuff like You need those things. So When I say that I just mean Roughly. Symmetrical.

20:33 Just give me a ballpark. What's that ballpark? I don't know. There's no hard cut line there, but You'll probably know when you see really bad. Mm-hmm. I guess is the point.

20:41 And so number one was again, are you stable? Number two was are you even aware? Of where you're at. Number three is Do you have some sort of rough balance between

20:51 Front. Back, left, right. On the left side of your body to the right side of your body, to the front side of your body, the back side of your body. What's that mean? Let's just say we're going with with our knee. Right, let's just say it's uh my right knee, right? There you go. We'll do use that as an example.

21:05 If I'm doing some sort of hinging activity. And my right knee is doing something different than my left knee. Now I'm concerned. Is my right knee doing something normal to my foot? Is my right seat doing something normal to my right hip? And so I'm looking not just at

21:18 the movement pattern, but how is it relative to my life? If I say the same pattern on the right knee and the left knee. And that's a different problem and a different solution than if that pattern is Exclusive to my right knee. And so that's what I care about. So if there's some level of Movement in your knee.

21:34 Maybe that's normal if it's in both knees. If it's aggressive in one side versus the other, you almost always have some sort of compensation happening. Now you've got to run a long algorithm there to figure out kind of what's happening. But that's what I'm after.

21:45 And then the final step is can you go through a full range of motion? Now that range of motion is different for every joint. The shoulder does different things and the low back and the neck and Fingers, etc. But you should be able to access full range of motion. We want to be Able to produce strength and have control in those N ranges of motion without significantly compromising any other joint.

22:04 And that's really as complicated as it needs to be. And so yeah, can your knee fully flex? Great. Can it do it with any load? Whatsoever. Doesn't have to be six hundred pounds, just a reasonable load. And then can it do it without significant compromise significantly compromising your ankle or

22:19 Hip work. Necker. Something else. So really it's those four things. If if you have all that checked off, then really your joints can access any movement that you want. underreasonable control. So as long as you have that, that is checkbox number one, which is

22:32 Do you move well? Mm-hmm. After that, now we're gonna play a game of okay, great. If you do it on Bilaterally.

22:40 Let's just keep using the lower body. So your knees are fantastic. When I give you support. So assist it. So your hands are on a table or I'm holding your hands when you're squatting or something like that. So if I take load off the scenario, do you check all four boxes?

22:52 Yeah. Phenomenal. We're going to the next one now. What happens when it's body weight only? You still move well? Great. Now we're going to the next one. What happens when we add Speed. Now you ask that joint to move fast.

23:03 Does it change his behaviors or patterns? Okay, so you do speed before load. I mean you could say I guess it's adding load in its own way. We'll just say additional external load. Yeah. Which could be gravity, depending on how you should use it. That one I'm fine.

23:16 Switching out. If you want to go load first before speed, absolutely fine. It it's it's really kind of one A, one B, yeah, in that particular way. But you need to understand what's happening. The point is you want to do All that. Before you get to the last one.

23:28 Which is now fatigue. Mm-hmm. You don't wanna load a system repetitively if it can't handle Let's just say it's an A. And we're gonna go for a job.

23:37 We know that even a moderate jog when you're in a single leg stance is gonna put Four, five, six times? Body weight on that load. On a leg. So even a slow jog puts a lot of load on your right knee in this particular case, when it's on that single foot stance. So it it's a pretty high amount.

23:51 And now you can repeat that over five miles. Or two miles. Or one mile, doesn't really matter. If it can't Do it well.

23:59 When you have your body weight. in a unilateral stance, then we have a problem. And just for definition Unilateral. meaning here.

24:08 One at a time. So what I kinda skipped over was in that initial assessment We're gonna go through bilateral stuff first and then we're gonna go through unilateral the second way, which is the way to say Alright. If you put your hands on a table. Can you do a squat?

24:21 And your knees and ankles. move correctly. And now what if I take your hands off the table? Now it's body weight. And now what if I add load? Okay, great. Now what if I add speed?

24:30 Now we're gonna repeat that whole thing basically. By saying, Okay, now let's do it one leg at a time. Yeah. that it would be unilateral, right? So maybe you move well bilaterally. But all of a sudden when we get that unilateral again one foot at a time.

24:42 Now things collapse with speed. Or they collapse with load or they collapse or something else. If I have failure points there. Then what the heck do you think is gonna happen when I put that thing under stress and fatigue? Mm-hmm.

24:53 You know the result, right? Now again, under fatigue. You're gonna have some tactical breakdowns. That's just it that's a part of it. But we're looking for Red flags. We're looking for egregious. We're looking for Am I really putting myself in a situation where you're just asking? For injury.

25:08 It is any time you're talking injury prevention risk and you can go a million Different direction to this. It's never about can you stop injuries from happening. That is not a real thing. It's all about can you just reduce the likelihood and reduce the risk as much as possible. So to circle back to your initial question, like where does that pyramid Of me land.

25:26 initially how I'm thinking about it. If you're moving well. And you can do this unilaterally. You can do this under load, you can do it fast, and you can do it over Fatigue? Then you can really do whatever you want. The only thing you have to pay attention to

25:41 That's how you're defining fatigue. So this is not Very practical. This is ideal. But one of the things we use a lot in training is determining fatigue by technical breakdown.

25:52 rather than an actual you're gonna run this many miles or you're gonna run this much time or you're gonna complete this much work, it is how much can you do until we see a significant break in posture and technique, until you're on the aerosol bike. And you're all of a sudden hunching over. Now your chest is on the Paddles in the front. We've stopped at that point. Because what are we doing? We're potentially reinforcing a bad pattern. We're Reinforcing an idea of When you get tired, just go ahead and break posture.

26:16 We don't want those things, right? That never is going to be a win in our book. Occasionally you're probably not talking under ten percent of the time. I'll let it fly. That can't be the pattern. Let's take this to the personal on my side. We're gonna talk about Tim Four point O.

26:31 Oh I like it. Not even two point oh even two point the shoulder and two point oh was a while ago. four point oh which will hopefully involve fewer MRIs. Fewer emergency room visits. And

26:44 I'll lay out some of the basic specs and mysteries, maybe, and then we can go from there. So the the first I think will be Time bound. in a way that will resonate with a lot of people listening. And that is we're recording this in late December. And in early January I'm going to be

27:00 Looking to reengage with all sorts of training. You and the whole rest of the world. Me and the entire world. And in this particular case, I do have two months blocked out. for Skiing and ski training.

27:12 And I've got lessons already booked with a technical coach. So I have the Technical side. Let's just say it. Organized.

27:20 I will be At altitude I'll be doing ski touring in addition to downhill. Which I find very meditative, I also find very challenging cardiovascularly. And So far so good. That is the same as last year.

27:33 And I made a ton of progress technically last year. Physically as well. Lots of great adaptations. The big difference is that as we were talking about a bit before. We started recording. I've had effectively nine months of

27:47 deconditioning. And I've had this persistent, sometimes crippling constellation of low back issues, which thankfully are Seemingly on the mend, although I do have some questions for you about it. I'll give you sort of a laundry list of things that are going on, but Before I get to that I I wanted to say that for a lot of folks they're going to go through cycles if they're not consistently competitive athletes of

28:10 Detraining, retraining, and at least for me as someone who used to be very competitive in various sports, there's a higher believing that. I'm fifteen or twenty or twenty five again. attempting to do things I used to do and getting myself into trouble. So I suppose the broad question is

28:26 If you were coaching me, sort of how would you have a conversation about training, maybe program couple of wrinkles. So the first is that I know my low back as an example and probably a lot of the posterior chain is weak because I've avoided anything that would potentially lead to inflammation. And I've had a million and one different diagnoses of this low back.

28:48 Compression, sensitivity, which I do think is a thing. some stenosis L four, L five on the right side, et cetera, et cetera. However I've been told by a number of folks like inflammation is not the issue. However, when I address inflammation Symptoms.

29:03 By and large vanish. I was on like Maloxicam and all sorts of anti inflammatories for a period of time. Ended up doing an extended fast a few Let's just call it two months ago. So week long water fast. And in combination with a few other things, complete

29:18 remission of symptoms. For weeks. And uh that raised a lot of interesting questions. When I am training for two months. Unlikely I'm gonna take a week. To fast, water fast.

29:27 It could, but it would present some challenges. So I'm trying to figure out how to approach things, recognizing in my older years Which I did not perhaps recognize in my younger years, that there's a high potential for injury here, if I approach it the wrong way. A few other notes. Last season

29:43 when I was skiing, I noticed that I got more chatter On my right leg. So if I took like a carving turn to the left, I would get more chatter on the right leg and I was like, Oh, that's very interesting. And my left leg I have noticeably larger say calf on the left leg. But I did a DEXA scan recently and overall I have more muscle mass on the right side. I was like, Okay, that's interesting. So

30:03 I was like so it seems like I have more muscle mass on the right side, but I'm having a lot more chatter, meaning stuttering on the slope. That the curves aren't as smooth. My priority is scheme. So if that means it's to my benefit for relative strength and skiing to lose some upper body mass, that's fine with me. I don't care. Where would you start?

30:22 In this particular case. If you're just listening, I can't explain to you how big of a smile I have on my face. During that whole thing. This is what we live for. Mm. This is exactly

30:34 What I like to do. Now you can take a couple of approaches here. Small to big or big to small. I think you know where I'm gonna go. Yeah. Here's how all of our coaching goes. This is exactly what I do.

30:43 for anyone that comes through any of our programs, any of our coaching programs. I want everything. I wanna collect. everything on you and that's gonna allow me to stop messing around. I would love to do a full battery.

30:55 And gather everything from my cuticles to my you know, my chest hair and do the the hundred percent analysis and the reality is you're here for a day, you're taken off, and then I had two. the undisclosed high altitude location in

31:13 Let's just call it ten days. So chan I won't have an opportunity to do all of that. So I'd be curious to know given that constraint. I realize I should do it. But given the constraint.

31:23 What you might recommend in the interim. Yeah. Where are those places you want to start? Let's start with Maybe you want me just to cover a couple of

31:33 Really specific short ones that Let's do that. Fry. Okay. A very easy one.

31:39 That almost Everybody has access No, that's not everybody. Uh many people have access to If you have any sort of Reasonable tracker. Of any kind. Respiratory rate.

31:49 is a phenomenal insight. into everything that's happening in your body. I would make the argument that Blood work would be the most Important thing.

31:57 That one can do here? If done appropriately. even cheaper and easier than that respiratory rate will tell you a ton of stuff. So What we're talking about is how many times you breathe per minute and specifically overnight. So if you can measure your respiratory rate overnight. you'll have a great insight of what's happening.

32:11 A lot of stuff Can be explained. Here's roughly why. When you Take a breath in.

32:16 You're bringing in oxygen. When you exhale that This is CO two. At all times you're playing this oxygen and the CO two game. Oxygen is primarily responsible for regulating cellular metabolism. Energy.

32:28 CO two. Is meant to regulate PH. It does a lot of different things, but that's the primary mechanism. C O two then has a bi directional relationship between psychology and physiology. Meaning a psychological stressor.

32:40 Got really excited, got really happy, got Upset. Can cause alterations in the physical body, right? Specifically through CO two. Exercise, movement, any physical stressor.

32:50 Increases CO two concentrations. But that will then be registered. Psychologically, as Hey. Be more alert, be more focused, be more anxious.

32:58 All those things. And so When you see an increase in CO two concentrations that are developed from any tissue, let's just say muscle. That increases CO two concentrations in the blood. That is then registered as Energy is going out.

33:10 Physically, so let's be prepared. Psychologically. Again, more focused, all those things. And so your body is constantly measuring. CO2 and paying attention to what's happening. And this is good, right? This is one of the main mechanisms in which our body switches us up and down to the autonomic nervous system. And so on one end of the spectrum.

33:26 You've got sympathetic drive. This is Fight or Flight. This is freeze, this is awake. Alert. Anxious.

33:32 Other thing. It's important to understand that's not good or bad. That it's just a thing that happens, right? So as you and I are sitting in this conversation, we should be a little anxious. Well I wanna be hyperfocused. My eyes need to be narrowed on you. I shouldn't be having a panoramic view. Adrenaline should be up, I guarantee our cortisol levels are a little bit that's that's the point, right?

33:49 Yeah. Yeah. Parasympathetic is the other side. That's rest, digest, that is lethargic, that is depressed, that is all those things, right? So right now we wanna be alert like this and when we're done and go to sleep we wanna be very Very sympathetic and Lethargic.

34:03 Amazing. Well CO two concentrations are driving. It's not the only thing, but it's one of the main things driving. Where we're out of that spectrum. And this is why things like CO2 tolerance, which we've studied in my lab

34:13 are connected to state and trade anxiety. They are connected to a lot of different things. And so this is Brian McKenzie Brian? He's done this for Probably a decade. We've really spent a lot of time on CO two for a long time. It'll tell you a ton of what's going on. That then drives respiration.

34:28 Because the primary thing, remember, CO two is all is regulating pH. And so When your body senses CO two concentrations are getting a little bit higher. It's gonna tell you. Ventilate.

34:39 Breathe. Yeah. If we were to have you hold your breath. Just say, take a breath in and hold it. Eventually you start feeling that air hunger. And that like panic to breathe. That desire to breathe and eventually if you hold it, panic, panic, panic.

34:50 Unless we're at altitude or something weird. That sensation is not being driven by running out of oxygen. It's driven by increasing CO2. Increasing CO two. Right. CO two concentrations. This is why you have to have carbon monoxide sensors. Also, why you need to be careful about shallow water blackouts if you're doing a bunch of crazy breathing exercises. This is why you don't want to hyperventilate. For those.

35:09 You're supposed to be saying, All right. CO two concentrations are elevated in my system. Therefore I'm becoming ascitic. So therefore I need to start ventilating more. So then I breathe more, I dump out more CO two that lowers my CO two concentrations in my body and I'm

35:23 Back to normal. Hyperventilation is specifically Exhalation, so additional breathing. Where it no longer meets metabolic demand. So I'm breathing more than I need to be breathing.

35:32 If you and I were to sit here and hyperventilate Right, which done plenty of times. That's putting you in a state of hypocapne. So capnea is the science word for CO two, hypo meaning low. So you've lowered your CO two below normal. This causes what's called respiratory alkalosis. Right, you've removed CO2.

35:49 You've removed acid, you become more alcoholic, right? So Mm. Great. Now in response to that, one of the major things that can happen is your kidneys will then start altering bicarbonate. Which is the way you regulate pH as well, causing potentially

36:04 At least even temporarily metabolic acidosis. Because the entire system is supposed to be balanced. So now you've already altered pH in a number of different areas. You've altered what's happening. Three albumin, you've altered bicarbonate, you've altered All of these things.

36:17 If you were doing that in the short term. That gets too low. We have all kinds of issues with blackout. You do that in water, right? We're gonna have huge problems, right? People Yeah, because people die. Yeah, people die all the time. Not good.

36:31 You want the urge to breathe if you're Getting to the point where you need to breathe. Yeah, yeah. For sure it's a good idea. If I'm under breathing. Then we get hypercapnic, right? And so what's supposed to happen is you

36:42 Increase CO two concentrations, you get a little bit of hypercapnic. This sends signals that says hey Team reflexors. Jump off and they say breathe more. So you breathe more and you dump your CO two. That's awesome. So that rate of respiration or how often you're breathing is supposed to be driven by a number of things, but in this particular case let's call it CO2.

36:59 If your respiratory rate gets high. We are now putting ourselves in hyperventilation. It's not Clinical Hyperventilation. And this is a story that

37:09 Will unfold so many times there's a Just because you don't hit clinical markers for disease does not mean you're an optimal physiology. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, those reference ranges change a lot too, right? Man, I could I could I could spend hours on Th this is effectively what we do, right? Yeah. With all of our stuff. We don't use reference ranges

37:28 For anything. Yeah. We have our own high performance standards. I I'm not an M D. I don't do anything medical or disease. Related. Everything that from our perspective is From the perspective of enhancing human performance.

37:40 So going from good to great. Going from where's your risk factor disease I don't care about. That's like Go see Peter Tia. Like I I can't help you there. Yeah. Again, we take hundreds of biomarkers and I don't think I've ever measured A poly B in my life. Yeah. Never will.

37:54 It's just not your game. Not my game. I don't do medicine. We do high performance. So you wanna go from good to great. I got you. risk of twenty year disease. I don't know. Just exercise. Don't come to me.

38:03 Point is I'm watching that respiratory rate. If that thing starts to exceed fifteen breaths per minute or so overnight. I have a pretty good indication that you're over breathing.

38:13 Now, is this again clinical hyperventilation? Probably not. I don't know. Not for me to even call. But I can certainly tell you overreading because at that point for most people You're breathing more than your metabolic need. Do you have a preferred Tracking device for that. A little bit of inside house here we use our own.

38:28 Okay. So my company absolute rest or sleep company We have a very, very high quality one that Not that pitch on this, but the reality of it is you should pitch it if it's good. Just give a second option for like the second place. Well the reality of it is ours is Well, by the time this comes out, ours will probably be available. It's a couple of hundred dollars. Mm-hmm.

38:47 Not a tracker. It is a clinical Sleep lab. Set up on here. In your house with the wireless. Mm. You've probably seen people with the

38:55 Polycemography, sleep stuff, like all over the place. Ours is entirely wireless. You have to do any of those things. So for a couple hundred bucks, you can put that on. And we actually are. That's an absolute rest. Absolute rest that company, yeah. We were able to to run

39:07 Hundred and fifty hertz. Which means we're measuring a hundred and fifty times per second. Most wearables are gonna measure once every five minutes. Something like that? Yeah.

39:17 So like our fidelity is is just a touch higher. Yeah. Which means we are catching a whole bunch of things. This is by the way an FDA approved Device. So we can I actually said a second ago we don't do anything medical. That was a bit of a lie.

39:29 What is it crucial for? Diagnosing sleep disorders. We can clinically diagnose sleep disorders in Yeah, your own home and your own bedroom. Firm. Bucks.

39:38 At this point. So that can be done with that, we have Tremendous insights because we're getting every single breath. We're not missing. Any breath. And HRB.

39:47 Right variability is is also the highest standard possible. And we're getting overnight of that. So y you can pick other trackers. Those are all going to be in the same price range.

39:57 So there's really no difference. Anything you have is Probably fine. Almost everyone has something. Watches, rings. Bands. Whatever. A different

40:06 Scenarios. You can get Any those I'm trying in my head to Is there like a zero cost option?

40:13 Or respiratory rate. I mean, you could certainly measure it. You get close actually, you'd probably overestimate it if you just literally use the stopwatch. And just measured how often you're breathing during the day, like at a calm resting state. My guess is you'd be a little bit aroused, so you'd probably be over breathing a touch. So that might give you a little bit of a false sense.

40:31 But you could try it that way. That would get you close. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. And I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me.

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41:38 I Do the the rings and watches, et cetera. do a comparable job to A Chest strap.

41:49 Of some type. It depends on what you're measuring. The beauty and benefit of how something directly on your chest is not only do I get to measure respiratory rate directly, but I get to measure respiratory depth. Which is An entirely underutilized tool because we're gonna be able to do it. By depth you mean sort of uh chest expansion. That's correct. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

42:07 And that's gonna tell us a lot about what's going on. That's We do that too. That that's put on there. Not at that. Insanely low price point, but

42:14 At another mark. our full immersion. That that's gonna get measured. As well. We we don't miss Anything for the most part.

42:22 Yeah, so do they no. No, it's reality it is no. Yeah, got it. Okay. So you could use both. I mean, just for people listening, yeah. I mean there are folks out there We'd probably spend. A lot of time just on like respiratory muscles. Oh, for sure. And so on. But you were saying

42:36 Just a Lead back after I interrupted. Things that people can potentially do. Yeah. Right. Outside of the full Monty. My hope was Yeah, something.

42:45 where you can get a rough sense of respiratory rate. Because this factor alone And just Numbers wise, throw it out there. Again, I always look at fifteen. There is actually excellent research on sixteen. Um there's actually a recent study that came out that was quite interesting on college freshmen, I believe. And they looked at respiratory rate and they found that

43:03 For every Increase in one breath per minute. So you went from 14 breaths per minute to fifteen to sixteen. There's a twenty five percent increase in likelihood of experiencing moderate to high stress. Yeah. And that was independent of a number of sleep markers, sleep latency, sleep quality, sleep timing, duration.

43:19 Things like that. And so if you're using a sleep tracker of some sort. And that's not changing. But you still feel like you're experiencing stress or some of these other downstream things, you will note it in respiratory rate. You will see that move generally before it is more sensitive. It's like if you've ever used resting heart rate.

43:35 As a metric for If you're kinda overdoing things or where to go. It's okay, but that is a lagging indicator. HR V is more of a immediate indicator so HR V would be superior. The fidelity of and change of HR V is much higher.

43:49 Blood is even higher than that. It's faster. It's gonna tell you what's happening before HRV response typically. But You would have HR V, like resting heart rate would be another rough way to do that. Respiratory rate was gonna be even faster. Mystery happens really, really, really quickly. You're gonna have a change Overnight for the most part. If if you

44:04 Get a cold. If you have a few drinks tonight, i things like that, you will see a change in respiration almost. Immediately. If you cross that fifteen to sixteen and you continue to go up, you see dramatic increases in risks of all kinds of disease states. Um in fact the line again

44:22 on the research and I'm kind of summarizing the entire field Really. It starts to break around fifteen. You will See reference ranges that say twelve to twenty is normal?

44:32 I can pound that one as much as you want. Nah, it's all right. I mean we could replace normal with common, maybe, but I wanna see it. Ten or eleven. ten or eleven that's the number to be now there is genetic components to it and some other things, but used if any time I see above thirteen, I'm

44:48 Probably taking action. So let me ask a question. I wanna the and the action is where I'm going next. And before we get there, I'm curious if the arrow of causality here is bi-directional or unidirectional in the sense that when you exceed a certain sum total of allostatic load. Respiratory rate. Goes up. Presumably that's what I'm gathering, right?

45:09 Can you reduce your overall allostatic load by targeting the respiratory rate directly? Or do you need to address the Some components. I suspect it's both and, but I'm curious if by addressing the respiratory rate directly, for instance, through meditation breathing practices, does that help to reduce the sum total of that allostatic load, or do you have to go back to the puzzle pieces? Okay. Is it just an indicator? No. So here's where it's fun. Excellent research on this for a long time. Twenty plus years of data on this. Physiology recognizes patterns. The same thing happens with sleep.

45:41 I could give a ton of examples here. Happens with anything else. But If your respiratory rate is elevated. That could be an acute or chronic response and it can be Independent.

45:51 Of the original causality. Mm-hmm. Which means let's say you had A really traumatic event. Couldn't be not traumatic. Say you won a big game.

45:58 You got excited. It doesn't matter. Positive or negative. Some sort of big event. In the state of that, you would end up sympathetic drive. That then elevated. Respectory rate.

46:06 If that pattern is sustained. that continues to hold place even when you remove that initial stressor. So Childhood trauma, sure. Uh period of of extensive work, completing a dissertation. Having a child.

46:21 Any of these things again, it's not negative. It could be good or bad. That pattern can absolutely stay independent of the stressor being removed. Sounds a lot like pain signaling, I don't know. Or uh

46:32 Anyway. Everything is everything, my man. Yeah. Like this is why I love physiology. It's gonna tell you the story, right? And so we can run a little bit of a triage here. I look at your stuff and I see rest for your rate, seventeen breaths per minute. I say, All right, I'm gonna look back through the rest of your physiology. Do I see any other indicators of acute stress? I'm gonna look at blood. That's gonna tell me a lot what's going on. I can differentiate whether that stress is acute or chronic based on various markers. I'm gonna ask you, we're gonna have conversations.

46:57 When did you start noticing any signs and symptoms? Oh, back pain kicked up. Okay, did anything happen around them? What's going on, right? We're gonna figure this stuff out. It's very important when you measure physiology. You always need to understand symptomology. Like you're working with humans. You're not working with Blood markers. Then this is always the case. And so

47:15 If you have historical data and this is one of the benefits of tracking. over time. We can look back and say, Okay, there's an uptick here. Your respiratory used to be twelve and now it's Up here. Now is sixteen.

47:26 When's the breaking point? If you don't have any of those things, fine. It doesn't particularly matter because we have two clear action steps we can take in either of those cases, whether we have an acute specific thing we're doing right now. That's causing it, or whether this is some pattern.

47:39 From ten days ago to ten years to It doesn't really matter, right? Number one. You know what? Here's a free version. You can generally get a good sense of somebody's respiratory rate is high if they tend to feel very, very good.

47:51 During light or low intensity exercise. You know why? What? Because their metabolic rate now starts to match the respiratory rate.

47:59 So if you're breathing at sixteen breaths per minute, that's about four. Second, right ratio. You take fifteen breaths in a sixty second. window right. It's about every four seconds. Two second inhale, two second exhale. Right, run the map there.

48:10 So if you are now going for light jog, doing zone two, zone one, like low level activity, maybe just walking. These people are not always, but oftentimes can't stand going a day without exercise. They gotta do some movement. They gotta get a sweat in some day. A lot of the times those people's respiration rate's high.

48:27 Mm-hmm. They can't go a day without it'cause they feel tremendous. when they're doing a low level activity'cause now they're finally at a heart rate. That's matching the respiratory. That's matching respiratory rate. And so what happens? CO two concentrations are normalized.

48:38 And you feel normal. When you don't do that, you go back and uh um this is again This is never perfect. There's no panacea here, there's no magic. recipe with physiology ever. So I don't oversell it, but it's very common in our

48:50 Rapid health and performance program to have people like this who are just like I can't Not work out, right? I get too much anxiety, get too much and then you look and you're like, Oh, I don't need to see your laps. I can predict your respiratory rate. I can predict your HR V. I can predict these other things. And they feel great there.

49:05 And so what is the solution? In any of these cases, number one. We have to reduce arousal. Which means You no longer get headphones. When we exercise.

49:14 You no longer get headphones when you're walking. You're not gonna put in a podcast when you're going out to take the dog for a walk. We have to reduce input and you have to and this is there's great work here. From Emily Hightower.

49:26 She has a a course. Skill of stress. It is fantastic. She's actually Brian McKenzie's partner. Phenomenal. Emily's a great resource. She's on our team as well now.

49:35 It's in part, but She will talk about hey, we need to read and regulate. Which means you need to read your physiological state. You need to be aware that you're over breathing. You should be able to read that state and then you need to be able to regulate it.

49:47 So what we're doing is reducing input. And so whatever it is, any physical activity not. That's a hard and fast rule, but for the most part, we need you to be bringing senses out. And paying attention to what's happening. The respiratory rate in this particular case.

50:01 So reducing arousal step number one. This could be Hey, no more work at night. This could be like a lot of the very classic stuff. You're doing too many things that bring up arousal. At night or throughout the day. We could insert some specific down regulation in the middle of the day.

50:15 Any number of ways we can go about this, but we want to Have some point, particularly after The place where we have the highest sympathetic drive throughout the day. Your most focused and intense work session. Your most physical session.

50:27 And we're going to match that on the back end with an intentional down regulation piece. What are your favorite levers to pull? And I'm sure it's customized, but just broad strokes with your High performing athletes and so on. For down regulation post? That's right. Yeah. The easiest By far.

50:43 Is give me two. So seven minutes. Oh just quiet dark. So we typically ask them to do some breath work post. Exercise.

50:53 Which is as simple as Turn the lights off. Lay on your back, put a towel over Your eyes. Turn the music off.

51:02 And just breathe for five minutes. If you want to follow a specific cadence and do something like box breathing. Fine. If you want to do like a double Exhale. Which means Say a four second inhale.

51:12 Eight second exhale. So you're gonna extend it exhale, which is down regulatory typically. Fine. If you're super into that stuff. If not.

51:21 Just Quiet and calm. Chill the fuck out and breathe. Chill out, dude. Just Like bring it down. There's actually some initial data on

51:29 That can accelerate adaptations to exercise. is post exercise down regulation. It's Not extremely strong area of science. It's just a few papers, but nonetheless, it's enough for us to say, okay, what we want to do is take that high sympathetic drive. And then we wanna basically expand your boundaries.

51:47 So right now your boundaries of up and down are narrow. And we wanna bring it way up with exercise in terms of sympathetic drive really high. And then I wanna match it. With the downside. And so it's equal and opposite reaction. If you got to a seven out of ten Sympathetically, I want you to seven out of ten.

52:03 Parasymthetically. That's gonna increase your ability to go up. And down. Not always the case. Some people have the opposite problem. This is far more complicated, but Broadstrokes wise. It's more common for us to ask that.

52:16 Then it is the opposite. By doing that You are contributing to retraining breath rate. And so that is the second step. So first step was reduce arousal when you can. Second one is retraining breath work. If you want to do something like that.

52:31 Just do very light level exercise. But instead of doing Just the movement. We're intentionally keeping a breath cadence. Mm-hmm. And so we're regulating, we're saying you need to learn to breathe.

52:41 Uh Three second inhale, three second exhale. And so we're gonna do whatever exercise you want. I don't care. Go as hard as you want. I don't care. But we are capping your inhalation.

52:50 and exhalation. Right. So that would be Three seconds in, three seconds out would be sort of in that. Let's just call it ten to eleven. Target range. Yeah. There you go. That's the idea. And you can kinda do that.

53:01 So you take a combination of approaches there to figure out what's really happening and that solution can be very quick. Could be a little bit longer. We're certainly And to be really clear not boiling down. Any or all

53:12 Mental health. things into just fix your breath rate. You'll be fine. I guess it's not even close to that simple. But it is something from our physiology side that that we're really paying attention to. Okay, so hopping back.

53:24 Tim Four point O. Oh yeah, we got a little far off. Interrelated, but if I'm gonna be headed to altitude in Let's just call it seven to ten days. I've already made a couple of what I would consider

53:38 risk reducing decisions such as giving myself a week before intensive training to acclimate a bit to altitude because it always will affect my sleep for the first handful of days. What kind of rough ballpark me altitude you talking here? Ten thousand? Yeah, let's call it that thousand. Yeah, okay. Mm-hmm. Some up. typically have elevated heart rate for lots of straightforward reasons.

53:58 Sleep is compromised, dry, blah blah blah. Card number one would be sort of reducing risk of injury, right, for me. And then 'Cause I'm not a professional security, but even if I were, I suppose that would be number one. But given what I've mentioned, and I'll say uh just a few more things. In case they're helpful. I realize this is a little bit of

54:16 It's not as comprehensive as I would like, but what I've observed pattern wise They're kinda two things at once. One is like Minimizing likelihood of the back becoming a major problem. Which it was last season. I'd have to stop mid slope and like pick up one leg to try to like relieve pain. It was bad. Yeah. And uh there were days when I just couldn't even ski because I hadn't slept the night before because I've been tossing and turning with back pain, right? So

54:40 Few things that have helped. Some of which are easier to implement than others. So The first thing I've noticed very clear over the last nine months More time spent sitting. The more back issues. And when I did some testing with Eric Cressy, just basic stuff, right? But if I'm sort of

54:58 in a uh flexed position and I do a compression sana chair or extended. Doesn't really bother me. If it's sort of straight up and down, for lack of a better way to describe it. Compression sensitivity. So heel drop test, fucking hate it, right? Very sensitive. Yeah. And Other things that may or may not be helpful. Certainly if I'm working

55:17 And this is a lay person speaking, so keep that in mind, folks. But sort of the antagonistic muscles. So I'm if I'm doing core work. Of any type. Pilates, etc. That tends to

55:28 significantly alleviate mm the lower back issues. Mm-hmm. Stuart McGill style kind of. Big four. Fundamentals, big four, exactly. Especially the side planks. Mm-hmm. seem to alleviate a lot of the What I would

55:43 tend to describe as just like overall like Q L spinal erector. Tightness. On the inflammation side, Interestingly. I can gobble anti inflammatories like tic tac's.

55:55 It does not seem to help. Much. Ice and ketones. Really help. But

56:03 Key tones are nice. tremendous helpful with some durability. I mean the ice that effect lasts for longer than I would have guessed. So anyway, those are a few things, but I'm gonna be at altitude in ten days. At some point, certainly, I I definitely will talk about this after we stop recording, but would love to test the absolute rest. Very, very interested in that. Because also like the polysemography stuff, it's like

56:26 your first night's gonna be dog shit, right? With all that stuff hooked to you. And then like it's easy to corrupt the data. How much do you want me to shit on polystonography? Because I I can. No, no, no. Let's save that too. It is an absolute disaster. And

56:40 Borderline. Useless. Yes, let's save it. We'll give people that. But ten days I'm at altitude. How would you In lieu of since we won't have time to do all of this testing first.

56:51 I am gonna pay much more attention to the respiratory rate. I suspect mine is elevated. my resting heart rate also chronically I mean, or I shouldn't say chronically, but for as long as I've ever paid attention to it. Higher than Desirable.

57:04 Well, you're a data guy. Yeah. We gotta have data that we can use right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I have certainly I'm not sure.

57:13 you know, preferred markers and all that, but I bet we could get a really strong sense of what's happening based on what you have on your phone. You you certainly do some sort of tracking at this point of your sleep. I know I haven't used say or ring, et cetera, in a while, just because I the main takeaways were like, yeah, don't drink before bed. Maybe don't drink at all. So I mean I there were a few things that I took away from it and I was like this is the problem, right? There's a significant difference between you don't have a clinical sleep disorder and you're sleeping great. Are you familiar with at all any of the research on sleep extension? Sleep extension. Yeah. I don't think so. Oh my God. Like it's so insane.

57:46 If you want to Understand your risk of Disease. thirty, forty, fifty years. Okay, yeah, don't sleep four hours a night. That's great.

57:54 If you want to look at what happens with disease markers Between seven hours to sleep a night and eight hours. Okay, uh there's not a convincing argument there, right? So the the take home message there is don't have horrific sleep. But that is not nearly the same. It's optimizing your performance. What goes from good to great sleep on optimizing performance are strong. There is a ton of research on specifically high performing athletes in a number of areas. There's at least four studies I'm aware of.

58:18 in the areas of what we'll call sleep banking or sleep extension. Sleep banking is such that Before going into exposure. Of either. Restricted sleep.

58:27 High intensity or high duration training. Or both. What happens when you bank sleep? Ahead of time. Get more than

58:34 More than Normal periods of sleep. And so a lot of these data are looking at things like Going into fight camp. Okay, going into training camps. We know that we have a combination of Increased training.

58:46 And so by that. Fact alone, our r injury risk has gone up. Injuries in training camps are higher, you're coming in Somewhat deconditioned. Displaying a part of it.

58:55 You're doing a high intensity. A high volume. At the same time. Now we also know on the side

59:01 Sleep. Goes down significantly. during those phases of intensified training, which you're about to go do, right? Yep. So we're ten days away. We know that this is happening. And we know your injury risk is gonna quadruple. Yeah. During this phase. So that's roughly what is gonna happen. Now

59:15 A bad night of sleep is Irrelevant. That's not going to re increase your injury risk that much. However If you look at and the research again is not

59:24 Insanely strong here. But there is an association with risk in sleep. And so the number one thing I'm thinking is okay, you already mentioned and you said this a couple of times your sleep isn't great when you're in altitude for obvious reasons. Yeah, for the first week or two. Right. We need to bank ahead of time.

59:38 It's like starting tonight, we need to maximize sleep. As much sleep as humanly possible. The number here is ten hours. You need to get to ten hours of sleep. We need to get ahead of that curve. Right. We know what's gonna happen and we know that for altitude we have first night effect. You never sleep particularly well the first night in a new place.

59:54 Mm-hmm, all those things. And we know altitude's gonna have those physiological issues. So we need to bank that. That sleep banking can get any head. Sleep extension is taking good and going to great sleep. There's a handful of studies, again, probably five Ranging from forty five minutes. Extra sleep per night.

1:00:10 For three days. All the way up to two plus hours a night. Of additional sleep. For five to seven weeks. Data on rugby players.

1:00:18 High level in neuron cyclists. Division one basketball players, division one Swimmers. Potentially missing the other one. Enough here. Four or five, six studies from different laboratories.

1:00:27 looking at different metrics. You're gonna see improvements in particular one This is actually classic. Sherry Ma study. You're talking about two hours of additional sleep per night and people already sleeping well. The caveat with all this is We're not looking at sleep deprivation. Which is, you know, you went twenty four hours straight without sleep.

1:00:43 Or what we call extreme sleep restriction. So you slept for four hours or three hours. So you're talking about people already sleeping reasonable amounts of time, and now you're adding this forty five minutes. Up to two hours. And I Now in doing that you're seeing

1:00:56 And Sherry's initial study nine percent. Improvement in free throw shooting accuracy. This is in Division one basketball players. Same thing with three point shooting accuracy.

1:01:06 Improvements. In reaction time. Now these are actually not done in a single time. So what they're looking at is kind of like I think they shot free throws kind of in practice every day. they track that number over the course of the season kind of thing. So not like just one particular good day of shooting.

1:01:21 Or bad. With any of this stuff. And all science has limitations. These are not perfect studies. In this particular case they didn't have a control group.

1:01:30 You'd also assume people get better in season. Like that happens. But a nine percent improvement? And Elite athletes?

1:01:39 Of a skill? Let's say it was fifty percent high. Let's say it was seventy five percent high. You're still talking to Three, four, five percent improvement.

1:01:47 Mm-hmm. Which is is really, really impressive, right? There are data on NBA players and they're tweeting. activity, so how much they tweet post game. As a defunct measure of like who's asleep and who's not? And that can predict almost two percent.

1:02:00 Of shooting accuracy the next day. I'm just imagining all of the quads. We're gonna go out and start betting on games now based on analyzing tweet volume and timing. No, uh Sherry actually, I think. Actually clear. I don't know her at all, but I've seen other stuff. I think she worked for ESPN for like three years. And she did this thing where she would predict NFL games.

1:02:21 Like who would win or lose based strictly on circadian rhythms. Mm-hmm. And I think she was like seventy to eighty percent accurate for three year span. That's wild. Stephen Lockley who's Actually works the absolute rest of this. He's done a ton of this work, so there's things to pay we're so off track here, but

1:02:34 This is too fun. I'm coming back to a point to your ski thing here a second, I promise. I don't promise. I loosely promise. I'll I'll hold you to it. So what you wanna pay attention to with sleep is sleep duration, of course. All that stuff is great. Sleep quality.

1:02:48 This is where polycenography becomes really problematic. Like defining sleep quality is really challenging. Yeah. It's not the same thing. So let me ask you a question related to sleep and maybe we'll We'll dive even further into this, but

1:03:00 Few things. With sleep banking. I would imagine there are people out there. And this would include me, who would say I kinda wake up when I wake up. Mm-hmm.

1:03:08 And I might feel tired. But I'm not sure how I would be physiologically capable of extending my actual sleep. I could extend my time in bed. But I'm not sure of how to extend it. Let's just make that.

1:03:21 Part A. Part B is very specific, which is I'd be curious to know. Your thoughts on caffeine and best ways to reduce or get off caffeine because What I noticed

1:03:31 recently I did thirty days with no caffeine. Zero. It's the first time I've probably done that since I was sixteen. Oh and I'm zero caffeine. No tea, no nothing for thirty days. All of my sleepy shoes went away. Like resolved. Magically, right? Of course. And what was fascinating to me is that prior to that I would often try to fix my sleep issues by

1:03:52 Attempting to sleep more. More time in bed. I was I mean, hopefully. This is smart enough. If I were tossing and turning, I'd just get up, right? As as opposed to just like suffering for an hour or two in bed.

1:04:05 What I noticed when I got off the caffeine is that I in many cases was quote unquote sleeping less. Mm-hmm. But I was going to bed earlier, much earlier. Right. I was going to bed in this case like nine, nine thirty. Ten o'clock. Waking up a lot earlier, but waking up. Wide awake.

1:04:22 Yeah. No fatigue, no dragging ass, no I need a cup of coffee. So the two questions are for people who are listening and are doubtful they would be able to extend their sleep. What are some options? That includes me right now, because I'm back on the sauce. Um we we could dissect that. It's been a fucking Nutty.

1:04:40 last ten days. I'll I'll spare you the the drama, but a lot of things have happened in life that were unexpected. So my soothing mechanism has been drinking caffeine. I'm willing to get off of it, but now I have to do it when I'm in real life. Whereas before I had, you know, four weeks off the grid and it was O I see. Yeah. So for people who are unsure of how they would bank sleep because they're doubtful. That they could extend their sleep. Some options. Mm-hmm.

1:05:03 And then Thoughts on caffeine or getting off of caffeine. An appropriate measure of sleep quality matters. To figure out just what you're working with. Is that what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean you have to, right? So that is depending on what wearable or tracker you're using, that is defined differently by everybody. Mm-hmm. I would caution you against two major things here.

1:05:23 One worrying about a sleep score. Do not pay attention to that, right? That is In part. Almost all those are calibrated against poly sumnography. And that is

1:05:33 Somewhat arbitrary. Right, even in two thousand seven. They actually Changed. Yeah, I think it's like the American Sleep society or something. Yeah.

1:05:42 change their definition of what deep sleep is. So Moving target. Yeah. And poly sumnography for people who don't know. I mean, this is what we were referring to earlier, like sleep lab, bunch of stuff stuck on your scalp. But what people don't know about that is number one, those things change. And then two, all even in a sleep lamp.

1:05:59 Those are based on thirty second epochs. So what happens every thirty seconds and then somebody goes to there manually grades and decides This was a cut off line. This was not a cut off line. And so you're being Still subjectively scored. Mm-hmm. Even on

1:06:11 Like you went in the lab, you went to the sleep clinic, you did the whole thing. So So what should you pay attention to? Different ways to go about that. I do have an order ring. I could wear one prior. I mean I could put one on tonight or tomorrow. We use Aura for the record with

1:06:25 Almost Everybody for Many reasons. Have used it historically. So this is nothing against them whatsoever. But even or is matched against polystemography. So when they say they're ninety nine percent accurate or eighty percent accurate, it's against PSG. Which I don't think is telling you the story. The second part about that is problematic is Take part of sure.

1:06:40 If I asked you and we had this entire conversation about Training. And you said hey I wanna train for my ski thing. When I train the same way for this two months of skiing, physically train.

1:06:50 As I would If that was now a marathon. If that was just I wanna feel better, my joints hurt. If that was I wanna gain some more muscle and the obvious answer is Clearly no. Yeah. We have the same conversation about attrition.

1:07:00 But yeah. When we think about sleep It's just yeah, yeah, sleep more. Right. If you want to get better sleep. If you want to get better nutrition in your particular case, you would hire probably somebody who's done performance nutrition for skiing.

1:07:12 You would hire a high performance person for your physical training and Sleeper or in a This type of skiing and something like that. When when it comes to sleep, it's like go to a sleep live and get a doctor. But that's all we have here, right? And so we don't think about sleep as a high performance tool.

1:07:26 Well, I'm saying that to say. Why do you think Your sleep stages. Should be the same every night. Doesn't make any sense. When I expect your muscles to perform the same way.

1:07:36 No. But I expect your nutrition to be the same. Absolutely not. So not only should you be really cautious with The sleep score. But even worry about how much time you spend on each one of those sleep stages based on a tracker is highly problematic.

1:07:48 Yeah. It shouldn't be the same. When you go ski for six hours a day, I promise you your sleep architecture is going to be different than it is tonight. Oh totally. And if I was cramming for Studying Chinese it would be something else most likely. Right. And so we need to go a better way about thinking of of overall sleep quality.

1:08:06 This is where things like Okay, what's your HRV look like? What is your respiratory rate? How do you feel? Did you have a hard time sleeping at night? Did you wake up a bunch? How do you feel right now when you wake up? Those are free. Ways to assess your sleep.

1:08:19 On two things here. One, I promise I'm coming back to the point. I warned you before we started. Oh no, you did. This is why I'm I'm alert. I'm sympathetically activated to keep track. Yeah. Excellent data. If somebody sleeps for eight hours a night versus five hours a night.

1:08:34 And you tell them the opposite. You will see a physiological response so that's corresponds what you told them rather than what actually happened. So in other words, if I told you, man, we did this whole sleep study on you last night, Tim, you slept for two hours. You like, really? Your reaction time

1:08:47 Your memory, your focus, your attention that next day will reflect poor sleep. If you slept for two hours and the the actual study here was five hours. And I told you eight. I said, Hey man, your order ring's super wrong. Actually our technology is better and and you sleep phenomenal.

1:09:01 That's not true, but like I made it up, right? You would actually respond that way. Mm. There's a thing that's growing in the field called orthosomnia. Right. Which is actually sleep tracker induced insomnia. And so

1:09:15 Those scores matter to you. Mm-hmm. They matter more than you think. There's also an anticipatory response that can happen. Such that this is why you don't check your phone first thing in the morning. So when you know that a certain thing happens, in this particular case checking your sleep score. First thing in the morning. You will then back calculate and start adjusting your sleep to wake up in that aroused state.

1:09:34 Which then compromises your sleep quality'cause you know that thing is happening. In a certain amount of time. Meaning you're anticipating waking up, looking at your sleep score. Getting a positive or negative feedback, and now it's disrupting. This is why we're typically waking up all of a sudden earlier. Don't know why. Things like that.

1:09:52 All that stuff you need to be really, really careful. With understanding How am I using Any of these technologies. If I overall.

1:10:00 Yeah. So Sleep quality will kinda leave it. Yeah. To that for now. Sleepbanking how to and caffeine. Back to our original point here now. When you are thinking about sleeping more

1:10:11 We're paying attention to those other ones first. Duration is the one you keep saying, sleep banking. But really I've tried to make the arguments that quality matters and then timing. So if you are in the same timing And have a higher quality. You have de facto.

1:10:23 Increased duration. Sure. Even if your duration didn't actually increase. So the number one and two things I'd say there is number one, let's make sure you're timing your activity today. in the right time of your physical day. That's gonna make you feel like you've slept more. Your performance will go up. And so without actually increasing a minute of sleep.

1:10:39 You performed. Like you it's like a pseudo sleepmaking. It's like pseudo sleep extension. Getting a higher quality So that's step number one and two. Independent of a single extra minute.

1:10:50 I'm sleep. If you still need that. And this is where things like napping. Can come in. Be careful with napping.

1:10:58 I personally Don't like it? At all? In these particular cases I'm I'm okay going with it. As long as it's not reducing sleep pressure.

1:11:06 Like is it harming your sleep latency? Are you waking up more, having a harder time going to sleep at night, and you're losing total duration? A lot of people can get away with a lot of napping. And it doesn't harm it doesn't work very well for me. Yeah. Okay. So in your particular case, I would say just take what we have. Get as much sleep as absolutely possible.

1:11:23 And then build in what are non sleep. Equivalence. So what can we do throughout the day? to encourage extreme down regulation. And really banking that it's not the same as banking sleep, but is it having the same potential?

1:11:35 Well, we've taken a couple of steps of logic away. But it's close. Right. So this is Pick breath work, pick low intensity exercise. Pick non sleep, deep rest stuff, right? Pika uh Yoga Nidra, like all kinds of things we can do.

1:11:49 That again. Simulate some aspect of sleep. And that's what we're gonna go after. And then really doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on all of your personal known best sleep practices. And just really making sure

1:12:02 That is our top priority for the day. Or the things I have to get done. Check in for my flight, pack, things like that. And then the rest of the time, like I'm really making sleep my so I'm starting my

1:12:12 Down regulation practice now it three o'clock PM or something or whatever you do. So by the time eight o'clock hits, like You're just very send out. So for me

1:12:21 I would say these days Not just reducing, eliminating caffeine. Yeah. And then Ensuring I am not exceeding a certain duration of sitting, which is fucked for this week, so I'm recording podcasts, but that's okay.

1:12:34 Those two things, if I attend to those two things. Everything else is arounding her. Yeah. So those the those are the two. Putting aside the low back stuff. For now. It's such a gnarled tangled mess of Different theories and diagnoses, but the caffeine is I suppose a little simpler, not always easy. But what what is what is your position here and

1:12:55 I personally don't love caffeine much. Not as a scientist, not as a coach. As a human. Yeah. Like I don't like it that much. Um I'll have some, but like a half calf espresso is like perfect. Just

1:13:05 Tiny back line down there. Your physiology will tell you that answer. And what I mean by that is I have plenty of people Do fine on caffeine and their sleep is fantastic. And others, it really is detrimental. If you were to look across in the landscape of the research What you're globally going to see is caffeine is problematic for sleep. It just doesn't.

1:13:23 And I'm talking about like You don't have caffeine past two o'clock PM or things like I'm talking about literally any caffeine ingestion whatsoever. Just seems to Take sleep.

1:13:32 The wrong direction. Yeah, and I think I miss evaluated this for a long time because I can consume stupid amounts of caffeine and fall asleep. But the sleep architecture is Disaster, right? It's like uh one of those spider webs that is created by the spider on methamphetamine where you're like, Well, that doesn't look right. Yeah. That's my sleep. Okay.

1:13:53 So One thing you can pay attention to Is your physical output. There are not any data that I'm aware of that suggests that Sleep duration.

1:14:01 Is linearly tied. To energy expenditure. Such that if you burn more calories, you don't sleep more. But there's clearly some association here. I mean, just based on basic physiology, when we understand how caffeine works and how sleep works.

1:14:15 And that there's clearly an association. Let me give you a very simple example. Most people are aware at this point of a molecule called A T P. Mm-hmm. Right, this is the energy currency of all biology. It's the only way we can use cellular energy. Now that stands for adenosine.

1:14:28 Try phosphate. So it's an adenosine molecule with with try three phosphates. One, two, three. The way that energy is created from ATP is you take one of those phosphates at the end and you break that off. In our biology that is exargonic, meaning it gives off net energy.

1:14:41 And we can use it. What that leaves is a molecule called inorgonic phosphate. So one of those peas is floating around. And then now instead of having a triphosphate, you have a dye. So there's two of them. If you were to do that one more time.

1:14:53 This becomes challenging but that Uh, denosine diphosphate goes to a denosine mono. Most. You do that one more time and now you just have a denise. Those phosphates are now.

1:15:02 Recycled and gone back. That adenosine molecule is what drives most of sleep pressure. And the way caffeine works is that will competitively bind to the same receptors. So they're binding up to that receptor, which means a denison can't, which means you don't feel the pressure for sleep.

1:15:18 Right. Great. This is why it causes so many sleep issues. Therefore It makes some intuitive sense to say If I burn a bunch more ATP This should then

1:15:28 if I have a bunch of caffeine in the system allow me to generate more overall pressure because I'm creating more total a denacine in the system. Better ability to bind. Now that's not the rate limiting step to it. That's why there's not a linear relationship there, but You're gonna have some stuff there.

1:15:43 What I say that to mean is are people that engage in the most physical activity Even when they consume decent amounts Of caffeine. Ten to on average. still be okay with their sleep architecture. And so one of the ways to do that, of course, genetics and how fast

1:15:58 And you've we've probably talked about this, but how fast do you metabolize caffeine and or don't and stuff like that. No that all matters. But the reality of it is if you are in that situation, having a high energy expenditure. And The other one I'll say is having a high cognitive expenditure.

1:16:11 Mm. So making sure both those demands are really high. are gonna get you in a position where If you have to be on the sauce. And you say that you're giving yourself the best chance. to sleep the highest amount. So when I when you asked me that second question of

1:16:25 How do we think about caffeine? We typically deal with high performing folks. Whether this is our athletes or our non athletes, they're all in this game for high performance. Which means caffeine comes along for the ride.

1:16:36 Almost all the time. Caffeine is an incredibly powerful ergogenic aid. Tons of research on it affecting and enhancing human performance in a lot of ways, right? And so we're we use it. a lot for athletes. You're gonna perform better. That's great. But you have to play the game of sleep. So when you cross over of yeah, you had better Numbers in the gym or on the court or

1:16:55 On the course or wherever at. But now we've lost sleep. There's no right answer here. At what point do we say okay, I'd rather you be a little bit fatigued and not train as hard? But then sleep tonight.

1:17:04 And I can't answer that. One of the easiest examples is with our PGA golfers. And so here's a good example. You're gonna be on a course for four to six hours in a PGA tour. Energy is a big deal. So we gotta keep these folks, especially when it's hot.

1:17:18 And we're playing in Augusta and we're playing in like all these really difficult places. So we gotta keep people hydrated and performing. At the same time, golfers don't typically love Caffeine. Because Any amount of loss of neuromuscular control is

1:17:31 One percent loss there is Catastrophic. You gotta be there. So In golf, what happens is So golf is played in

1:17:38 Well in the PJ tour four. Days. So you play Thursday and Friday. The top half the group gets to play. The weekend and the bottom half goes home. So you're cut, if you will.

1:17:46 But to make things even because circadian rhythms matter so much. you play one of those first two days in the morning and you play the other day in the afternoon. So half the golfers and then then you need to switch, right? And so sometimes it's an advantage to play early, depending on the weather. Sometimes so they just try to make it even say, All right, Thursday you have six AM T time, then Friday's you know, noon or one or whatever the case is. Okay. Well, that is really hard because if you are a West Coast player Say in Phoenix, and you're gonna go play a tournament in Georgia. Like Augusta.

1:18:12 And you get a seven AM T time. This is a four AM T time. Yeah. Which means you're up at One thirty.

1:18:18 And practice warm up. All those things. And so you may want to go to caffeine. To say, hey, I need a little bit of a

1:18:26 my neuromuscular skill is significantly compromised, right? So it's gonna be really hard to get going. The downside of that though is Now what have we done to sleep? Because if we're in the wrong situation if we have early tea time. Thursday, late tea time Friday, we're fine. But if you're doing well

1:18:41 And you have the opposite. Then you have a late Start Thursday. Then you have a super early start. Friday.

1:18:49 So you haven't like Short number of hours between when you finish. And then play the next day. The caffeine on the first day is in if that compromises sleep at all, then you're really doubling down on how hard that next day is going to be. And so you have to really be careful about how much caffeine you use because at some point And this is just a coaching decision, right? How much do you want to perform better right now versus sacrifice tomorrow?

1:19:09 And what are you doing? The same could be said for any sport, and this is really hard for Our football players. So when w when are we practicing in the N F L, if we're playing a night game. Do we use a bunch of caffeine before that Sunday night football or that Monday night football game? Baseball players is the worst. Because they're playing typically at seven.

1:19:24 Seven oh five, seven ten PM If they're pitching Whatever they're gonna be done at ten at the earliest, and now you've gotta come back off that train and try to get to sleep before four AM. Yeah, now we're changing times on so There's no one answer for that, I guess is my point. So how do you use it?

1:19:39 Judiciously. And carefully. So in terms of getting off of it, I mean it seems to be and maybe I'm simplifying here, but I recall being in Korea not too long ago and I didn't use any caffeine when I was adjusting to Korea, which was challenging. But a friend of mine was explaining sleep deprivation to his young kids and If you ask him how you contend with that, his answer was effectively like don't be weak. He's like, You just contend with it, right? There's no magic trick, which

1:20:02 might be the answer for getting off caffeine. It's like, yeah, you're gonna have to just like bite the bullet and have a week probably of some degree of withdrawal symptoms, which I might just have to contend with. Okay, so Let's just say If I grab a device, whatever device I happen to have, I use that prior to getting to altitude. I land at altitude. Yeah.

1:20:23 I can try to do some Sleep banking. Mm-hmm. Up to that point, which would include non sleep augmentation in the form of Nonsleep, deep rest, Yoga Nidra.

1:20:35 Meditation, whatever it might be. Any other thoughts in terms of what happens after I hit the ground? So the other thing that would be a very easy win. Would be making sure hydration. Is really on point. Uh when people get in cold, they tend to forget because when you go to and do something

1:20:49 When it's hot. Do you have the visual tactical? Feel of your sweat. You lose that in the cold. I know you've done a bit of hunting.

1:20:57 Yeah. Yeah. So this is where like it comes in for me all the time. This is one of my Primary areas of passion. And you get out and you spend days And you're working all day running up and down mountains and it's really cold outside, you just forget. Yeah.

1:21:08 to drink water, right? And then you start seeing feeling signs and symptoms of exhaustion and altitude and all those things and you realize all right. There's nothing I can do about the altitude. But I can Correct hydration. And that's gonna be really, really important.

1:21:20 Having Viscous blood. Is not going to help. Anything. Yeah. Ketchup's not a good thing to be pumping through your veins.

1:21:29 So hydration would be another easy win. You also are probably aware of What happens with hydration just Being on a plane, assuming you're on a You already said dryness.

1:21:39 It's gonna be dry up there. This is part and parcel. So that would be the next big one I would go after is maintaining great hydration now. And then certainly optimizing it or at least maintaining it. Once you get there. Another super easy way. Any Guidelines around that, when to hydrate. How to hydrate.

1:21:55 Easy example here. Half your body weight in ounces per day. is a very rough number. So if you weigh two hundred pounds to hundred ounces a day. Gets you sorta close. Small parts.

1:22:04 Within that. You want to make sure that you're not reducing sleep. Some of the biggest wins we've had in from a coaching perspective is actually reducing water intake. Yeah, I'd love for you to say more about that. A friend of mine just a few days ago said he's like, Yeah, are you familiar with the three two one rule? And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And he said No food three hours before sleep, no water two hours before sleep, and then no devices one hour before sleep. I was like, Oh, that's clever. Okay. I mean it's not a bad touristic to use, but how do you think about

1:22:30 Reducing. Liquid intake. As a global answer, yeah. But I like I probably wouldn't use that. approach personally much. You do want to taper down fluids at night.

1:22:39 I'm laughing'cause we've had a number of people And they come in and they They are sure they have a sleep disorder. Or something or else and we look and we're like, All right, you're peeing three times away. And it's like okay.

1:22:51 Well why is that happening? Well it can actually happen because of low quality sleep. There are a number of things that happen. That people That are common. And people think are benign that are not. And one of them is that. So it it is

1:23:02 Somewhat normal to wake up once. Not the night to have to be. Okay, great. More than that. Something is probably happening. Either it's one of a couple of main areas. You're drinking way too much water.

1:23:13 Pure water too late at night. Or two, you do legitimately have some sleep quality issues and and that can actually contribute to nocturnea. overnight urination. But just the easy solution there is pay attention to a couple of things. Number one, how much water are you actually drinking at night? Mm. Two hours, three hours before.

1:23:28 And then two, pay attention when you wake up to pee, pay attention to it. Is it a really Large volume. Is it Really clear.

1:23:35 Or is it a smaller or medium amount? And or is it of a more tinted? color. And then pay attention to how much we actually weigh and measure all this stuff, but you you can just use these rough rules. How much you feed the next morning? Same thing. So if you're getting up and you pee once throughout the night.

1:23:50 And it's a medium amount. And then you pee the next morning and it's very small. It's very yellow. Then you can say this is probably not over hydration. This is probably being induced by low sleep quality.

1:24:00 If it's the opposite. It's like yeah, I woke up, I went P and it was like I was there for a while. And then I woke up the next morning, I did it again and I had these, you know half a pound or a pound and a half of of urine. Then you have a pretty good idea. It's like you're simply drinking way too much water at night. You can in that case try to add Things like salt, but

1:24:17 The better idea is just not drink so much water. Any guidelines on that? Any suggestions specifically? I mean, in the sense that people need to remember something to act upon it. So I'd be curious to know why the three I mean, look, I just heard about this two days ago, right? And it's just a heuristic, it's not a Hard and fast drill, but like the three two one it's like it's easy to remember. I happen to

1:24:37 Pee quite a lot at night. But guess what? When I was off of caffeine, didn't pee at night. And so if you're consuming diuretics. And then compensating by drinking tons of water, or in my case, I'm just a compulsive water drinker. If I sit at a lunch with someone, like I'll drink one or two bottles of Water.

1:24:54 Like, I drink a lot of fucking water. And I'm not saying you're making amazing faces. We'll have to get that on the video. There's so much opportunity with you. Yeah, yeah. So let's get into the juicy bits. But So I would love to know I didn't intend, I'm not intending to come always come back to sleep here. I don't even think we intended to get here at all, really, today, but

1:25:12 We're here again. You can differentiate between acute and chronic dehydration and blood really quickly. Okay, Ticker there. Acute dehydration markers.

1:25:23 Take a look at hemoglobin. Matocrit and sodium. Okay, that's gonna give you an indicator. If you stack albumin on top of that, if those three things start to tend high. Matic hemoglobin sodium. You got a good indication of dehydration.

1:25:34 If they go the opposite direction. We're worried about hyperhydration. Hyperhydration, right. If you take in Al Bumin on top of that. Then you're getting an indication of this has been around for a very long time. So we can calculate osmonality, we can do it independent of a urine analysis and things like that. Now why this stuff matters, think about it. All those metrics

1:25:52 Hamatic? is the percentage of your blood that is red blood cells. So it is a percentage. It's not an actual unit. Sodium?

1:25:59 and hemoglobin come in such low concentrations, we tend to give them relative to total blood volume. Which means is how many milligrams per deciliter of blood. If you were dehydrated, your total blood volume goes down so much such that those numbers Even if they're the actual same absolute value.

1:26:15 Get reduced. Now albumin is an acute phase reactant, which means it responds Acutely. to inflammation. Okay, so it'll change. And so here you go, here's some fun.

1:26:25 This is gonna frustrate everybody. Okay. If you've ever had blood work done and someone's been like, Wow, your labs look fine. But you're like I don't feel fine.

1:26:34 Could be a lot of things happening here, but albumin is one of the like easiest examples here. Is an acute phase reactant, but albumin is responsible for fifty to sixty percent of the osmotic pressure. in your vessels. So it it's the protein that carries around Any number of things. Ten to fifteen or so percent of your cortisol is being carried on albumin.

1:26:52 bunch of other things. So it's a main protein. It's made in your liver and it's got like a twenty or so day turnover rate. So every twenty or so it is you'll recycle that obvious. That in response to dehydration. Will change.

1:27:04 It will change in response to inflammation, too. So here's what happens. Imagine a situation, a scenario when somebody is slightly inflamed. And slightly dehydrated. Pretty common, right? Yeah.

1:27:15 A Buman got tugged up. And tug down, which means where's albumin gonna be on your blood? Dead in the middle. You will have a normal albumin. Right, your snapshot's gonna look just fine. This is an X ray.

1:27:26 Knee's not broken, your knee must be fine. Mm-hmm. Not at all. So now if I can look at albumin and say, Hey, wait a minute. Albumin As well as other markers.

1:27:35 are trending high. Now I got an idea what's happening. If they're not Now I can look at albumin and go, Oh, okay, this is an inflammation issue. That's our marker. And so I can really pay attention to that and say, Tim, you're hyper hydrating. You're drinking way too much water. Do you know what the signs and symptoms of hyperhydration are?

1:27:50 Well. Waking up and peeing three times a night is one. Annex. Brain fog. Do you how many people in our program post brain fog we've solved in day one? Because they're just drinking way too much water.

1:27:59 Yeah, I believe it. Headache's gone away. All kinds of issues, right? Almost the exact same symptoms. associated with dehydration is hyperhydration. You don't need to do a single lab if you want to be a dork like us and

1:28:10 Get all that stuff figured out. But if you are peeing consistently throughout the day like that, and if it carries over into night at the rate that you're talking about. Almost surely you were hyperhydrating. This becomes a huge problem because it can induce what's called hypotremia. Oh yeah. Dangerous.

1:28:24 You can die. Yeah. People have heard stories of radio. Jockeys having water drinking competitions, people died. Dangerous. Tons of stuff. Marathons too. I mean people over hyp hyperhydrating. Marathons, Iron Man's

1:28:38 Like things like that uh happens. It can cause Hyponeutremia. Neutremia is sodium. It's a science word for sodium, right? So it's hypo, so that gets too low. It's not actually an issue of sodium getting too low.

1:28:48 It's an issue of excessive water intake. And so the the electric gradient between your muscles And your blood? Becomes neutral? So the gradient gets lost and so muscle

1:28:57 And in this particular case. The heart muscle. Fails to contract. This is Muscle fatigue.

1:29:03 This is lack of performance. I'm just not feeling as strong, as powerful, as twitchy as they used to be, all the way up to In severe cases. Death, right? Because the coronetic tissue stops. So I would be interested to look at at more your metrics and just paying attention to all right. How many times do you really

1:29:18 And if you are. I would stop that immediately. And you will typically see very big changes in sleep but overall function by not excessively hydrating. Yeah. This is a

1:29:29 behavioral modification thing and not a knowledge thing for me. I don't I would bet. Like right here on the spot without looking at my labs, I'd be like, I could bet half my net worth that I'm hyperhydrating. Like I know I'm hyperhydrating. I'm just looking at my behavior over the last couple of weeks. And it's so it's really a question of like how do I modify behavior in this case. Like if I sit down at a lunch or a business meeting. My inclination is just to keep drinking, whatever is sort of in front of me. Yeah. That could be coffee, could be water. rarely alcohol, but if it's alcohol, you know, it's sort of like whatever's in front of me, I will drink because I like the motor movement. I have no idea. It's gratifying in some way. And then if I layer diuretics on top of the liquid intake, then we have a hell of a lot going on. Yeah, alcohol does the same thing, right? Alcohol does for sure. Because it's inhibiting

1:30:11 Like vasopressin, right? I guess that's what's going on. Antidiaretic hormone. Yeah, yeah. So you're gonna downregulate that. And then that's good, right? When you drink alcohol, you should be given the physiological symptoms to P more. Yeah, clearly, right? So here's what I would say. I would say actually two last things on that. One Like as a behavioral coaching tool.

1:30:31 Then we would have some sort of mechanism for you. There'd be something in your day that triggers Water stopping. This could be okay, when you shower at night. Mm-hmm. We just don't drink water afterwards. Right. When we have decide what the trigger is. What is the trigger what flips the switch, what other behavior. Right.

1:30:46 So at that point If you need a sip of water, you can. But we're no longer having water in a visual or immediately achievable position. So no more water bottles. No more.

1:30:58 Yeah. Yeah. No, you can leave it on for fun. Yeah. Oh that would be Physiologically.

1:31:05 I would come back and say. Of course it's behavior, right? But is there something actually happening that's causing Sensation of thirst. And I wanna look at that side of your physiology. Yeah, it's a great question.

1:31:14 It's a great question. So back to the labs. It's just it's wild hell. This isn't a surprise, but it's just a consistent reminder when these conversations get unpacked. It's like I can't remember who it was, maybe Emerson. I'll give him credit, why not? When you try to tease out any one thing you find it hitched to the rest of the universe in the sense that if I look at these behaviors, right, I also look at

1:31:33 The very high, let's just call it allostatic load of the last week. A bunch of unanticipated events such as life have caused A tremendous amount of workload. very unexpectedly, right before the holidays. Yeah. When when when everybody's on their auto response. Yeah. And you're like, okay, interesting. Home alone. You know, like, ah and one of my closing mechanisms

1:31:56 is we don't have to spend a lot of time unpacking this, but Is Hold sauna. Mm-hmm. Typically I would do that earlier in the day. I would do that, let's say five, six PM, but because of the nature of the schedule this past week. I've been doing it late at night. So what does that lead me to do? Leads me to hydrate around that.

1:32:15 And then boom, here we are. Okay, so funny enough, you say that. You may or may not have heard, but some people actually Sleep better when they do a sauna. I do. If I do it.

1:32:25 Earlier. Okay. Yeah. A lot of people have success with sauna at night, right? Many reasons why. One of them, though, is any hyperhydration that has occurred. You bleed it out. You bleed it out. Okay.

1:32:39 Ever to be there. The only other thing I'd come back to is I would be willing to bet. Probably not half my net worth. But some smaller margin may uh maybe a hundred dollars.

1:32:49 That you're smarter. I'm just a terrible gambler. I love gambling. We might come back to that. I love it. There are two things in this world I love more than anything, and that's trash talking and gambling. Often go together. Okay, so you'd bet a hundred dollars. Your hydration habit Is Better.

1:33:08 When You have Better down regulation practices. Absolutely. I wouldn't bet against that. Yeah.

1:33:15 And so now it's coming back to the same point, which is okay, great. We can give you a mechanism that just says like no more water bottles after six PM or whatever, that's great. But have we really solved the core issue? Mm-hmm. It's the same thing of going back to saying, Okay, great.

1:33:30 We took a look at That sodium potassium ratio. We identified that that got really high. Or they got really low. Really? And that caused signs and symptoms of fatigue, et cetera, cortisols.

1:33:40 And so These people tend to feel really good. When you give them salt. But did we solve the problem?

1:33:47 No. We didn't. Because as soon as you know, like you yeah, you took your element packs and you did all these great things, I felt way better. Amazing. Was your sodium truly low?

1:33:57 Or was it being Pulled down. Yeah, right. As a ratio, as it just being So even the absolute number. Even the absolute number being pulled down as a response, right? So we've now had alterations in kidney function that changed how much sodium that we're holding on to. We haven't solved the issue.

1:34:13 This is also a case for me where drinking Water is basically a socially acceptable, minimally disruptive, compulsive habit that is a coping response. For me. This is why I went to your HRV. This is why I want you down to His like a it's like a Worrystone.

1:34:29 Me drinking water. And I think this is also the case. I'm just thinking out loud here because it's helpful for me. Where

1:34:38 I've spent so much of my life worrying about hydration because I have like hyperhydrosis. I always was good at cutting weight for wrestling. I mean, I would cut like twenty, thirty pounds. I mean absurd amounts that I would never recommend. Terrible for you. However I could do it because I sweat so easily. Yeah. That also meant That when I sweat a lot. my endurance, my power output would just go into the garbage. So

1:35:01 For my entire life my preoccupation has been Hydrating. Yeah. And this is a case where it's like, Okay, maybe That has served you at points, but in this case Why don't we try the opposite for forty eight hours? And just like m and do the song of a don't

1:35:16 Guzzle a gallon of water afterwards. Going to bed a little bit. Sort of like when I did tennis training a long time ago and I was whiffing the ball like into the net over and over again in this pro set look.

1:35:27 For the next like ten minutes of practice. You're allowed to hit the ball anywhere except into the net. He's like if you if you want to hit a home run knock yourself out. He's like the one place you cannot hit it is into the net. Yeah. Maybe this is a case where it's like all right, Tim, the only thing You can do anything except for drink a ton of water at night. Like and if you go to bed a little dehydrated for two days like

1:35:47 Your your quote unquote dehydrated. May not be dehydrated. You will feel signs and symptoms of dehydration, though. You'll feel cotton mouth, I'm sure. Yeah. You you'll feel different things. Have you ever had your sweat tested? No. That's a super easy start. Like why don't we test how much you're actually sweating and then what's the content of that sweat. And that's gonna tell us.

1:36:06 the opposite side. Now this is something that can be done for A few dollars at this point. So there are a number of different methods that people can purchase these things. I think as low as probably like fifteen bucks all the way up to a couple of hundred dollars. What would people if people just want to learn about this, what would they Google? Yeah, there's there's a number of companies like Gatorade. Mm-hmm. Makes a sweat patch.

1:36:25 Hm. It's twelve dollars, I think. Something like that. You can go all the way up to something like a Nix and I X. And this is now I think you buy that patch for a hundred and fifty dollars or something like that and you could get different things, but you can actually

1:36:38 In that get real time feedback. I'm not associated with that. Oh, interesting. So it's like a CGM. It's like a continuous glucose monitor for your sweat. Hundred percent. Uh Now there's Some issues you don't get full electrolite break now, but you'll you'll know how much total fluid you're losing as well as sodium content.

1:36:53 Mm. And we will actually use that because one of the real tricks to maintaining optimal hydration status, whether you're talking about throughout the day or during exercise performance, is You have to make sure you're putting back in what you're sweating. Which is to say.

1:37:07 It is not just about water, we've talked about Hyperneutreme. We need to know that we're putting in a hypotonic solution. So you're saying like the total pressure with all the different solutes and solvents in the cocktail needs to be the same as your blood. Um Cook house.

1:37:22 Sodium. Chloride. Potassium. All this stuff needs to be balanced. Doesn't have to be, but you're gonna get better results. If you drink excessively Dilute.

1:37:31 Fluids. Let's just say pure water. Then what's gonna happen is And it'll go immediately into your gut. That'll get immediately into blood. It's very quick to get that across that barrier. And then your total blood volume will expand. you're running constant checks of total blood volume. You'll actually expand more

1:37:46 than you think. And so you'll actually send signals that says Excrete the fluid. And so this is why if you're really, really dehydrated, say after the sauna, say you did a crazy session. When you do sauna, how much time do you do like Twenty minutes, thirty minutes. I'm not doing super long. I tend to, and this is where it gets a little tricky because it's like all right, what's the humidity in the sauna, right? So generally what I'll do.

1:38:06 I'll get to let's just call it one ninety five in the sauna. Maybe between one ninety five and two ten. And Yeah, plenty on. So one ninety five, two ten. Get in there and I will immediately start dumping water. onto the stones. So I'm also jacking Oh I see yep yeah. So I'm also jacking up the humidity. I would say generally the way that I'll run it because I do this almost every day.

1:38:28 It's who who knows, four to seven times a week. I'll do let's just call it twenty to thirty minutes. Mm-hmm. And that will be threshold for most people, right? I need to cool off. Then I'll do cold plunge for three to five minutes. Then I'll go back in for a shorter session.

1:38:45 And five minutes warm back up. Like ten minutes and then also coal plunge on the opposite side, at which point I won't need as much, so I'll probably do three minutes of cold. That's a typical night. Okay. So In the

1:38:56 First session. Overall as well. How much Wait, are you losing? Do you know? I'll say it is uh

1:39:03 If I were to guess This is straight gas. I mean, I think it's a few pounds. I mean, I would say over the two heat sessions, two pounds, or at least a few pounds. I don't know how much I am reabsorbing. in the cold plunge, for anyone who has never experienced extreme like weight cutting. We couldn't shower after cutting for wrestling. You would absorb multiple pounds of water back just by showering. But I don't know if that's true in this much more mild form. Probably not. But I mean I'm

1:39:29 Dumping sweat. There is a huge pool of sweat under me. How long does it take you from initiation the second you walk in your sauna till you start sweating? I would say if I'm throwing water on the rocks. Two minutes. Two to three to three minutes. Two minutes is the number. We always pay attention to that. If it's taking longer than that We start to have concerns of

1:39:47 Dehydration. So when we handle this with our UFC fighters and stuff, like two minutes is a good thing to pay attention to. My guess is. You are sweating out. Far more than that. Amount. It would be not uncommon for someone You're plus or minus a hundred and sixty, seventy pounds. Hundred and seventy, hundred and seventy something. Yeah. Low seventies.

1:40:06 I'm gonna imagine a thirty minute science session. Three minute three pounds of beet. Reasonable if you're a hyper sweater, maybe more. Yeah, I think it's basically the equivalent of a Like a soda stream full of water. Would be would be my guess. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

1:40:19 Now this number differs significantly from people to people. Um I can just give you two direct examples. Tatiana Suarez, the UC fighter I've worked with for many years. She is a very good sweater. So she competes at uh a hundred and fifteen pounds. It is not particularly hard for her to sweat out four to five pounds. at that low of a body weight.

1:40:38 Not really hard. Now there's a lot of work that goes into preparation before that, but it's not particularly hard. Brian Ortega, another U C fighter. Who competes at one hundred and forty five pounds and is a male We tend to have to work.

1:40:49 To get four or five pounds out, right. So there is a spectrum. To give you a crazy reference point, my senior year in high school when I was competing Seriously. I cut from this. Never do this, people. Never ever do this. But I got to a lean body weight. I was very lean then.

1:41:06 It's kind of sad to think how much more muscle mass I had then, believe it or not, at like from whatever age it was, sixteen, seventeen, but I was one seventy eight, super lean, and I cut to one fifty two. twice a week. That was over Oh yeah. I was doing that over twenty four hours. Yes. And that's w water. That was water. Yeah. And a few other things. But yeah. For the most that's a lot of water. Yeah, a few other things, but a lot of water. I sweat

1:41:27 To use your language, I'm a very good s I'm top tier sweater. Tough elite. Elite sweater. Elite sweater. So okay, that that's great. We would come back and the reason I'm asking that is is we would have a good it's an easy way to figure out your sweat, right? So just way naked. go in the sauna, come back out, completely dry off. I would recommend in fact if you're gonna do this test, don't put any water.

1:41:45 Wanna keep it dry. Yeah. On there. And then just measure. Do it for thirty minutes. Measure yourself. How much did you weigh tonight? Right. Now that's gonna tell us about your sweat rate. In good sense. We don't have a sensor, so we don't have actually what's coming out.

1:41:57 Of your sweat? Which would be nice. Because we're paying attention to again sweat content and sweat amount. But That's gonna be a good insight. Now

1:42:05 That changes. on your day as well. So if you were to do a day where We podcast for five hours. And you drink one glass of water and then you go to do the sauna. you're gonna have way lower sweat rate than if you were to

1:42:15 Drinking three gallons. This is water loading. Right, this is in And weight management sports. We did it that way. So we wanna pay attention to all those things. You said y you've been a uh sweater like that your entire life. Okay, great.

1:42:26 Natural. People are different. We sweat differently. But it's something coming back to that. There has Probably Something in your physiology to which is explaining.

1:42:35 why that is happening. I've always had so I was born premature, had a ton of issues as a preemie, was in the Nik U. Lots of thermal regulation issues since day zero. So tons of thermal regulation issues. Yeah. Body temperature tends to run low. So my

1:42:52 And I can give you my take on this, but like I would say I tend to run in like the ninety seven point one to ninety seven point Whatever. Four. Degrees. In terms of Normal body temperature.

1:43:04 My subjective experience is much like when people have, say, really high fever, they feel cold. I feel hot. A lot of the time. Like the ambient Air temperature seems warmer to me than it does to, I think, most folks. But thermore regulatory issues from the get go. So I've been hospitalized for heat stroke a couple of times. Whether that was a proper diagnosis or not, but basically like in hot conditions where other people are challenged, very challenged, like training in judo in Tokyo in the summer with a gion, like indoors with poor ventilations, collapsed, taken to the hospital. I've had that kind of stuff happen a few times. I see. That may or may not have anything to do with heat regulation there.

1:43:41 Um, it could be a sensation. So you don't get the signals. Yeah, could be, for sure. And or because of Hyper sweating? Yeah, I mean that was Yeah, there's a lot of sweat going on. Yeah.

1:43:52 So the point is you kinda come back to that whole story of of unpacking like what is actually happening internally. Why are you doing it? So your cocktail for hydration Would probably be abnormal. But what is something we could Needs to be dialed in.

1:44:03 So we can say okay, great. Because if you drink too much. Water that's diluted for you. Remember, not for me, not for anybody else. For your physiology if it's too diluted then you have that excess of urination. But here's the kicker. you're urinating because that blood volume got that short term. So this is what happens when you drink water really quickly.

1:44:20 You get a short term expansion of total blood volume. Which causes you to then urinate it back and you're not actually cellularly hydrated yet. So that stuff hasn't had time to cross into tissue where you're actually properly dehydrated, right? Because you've got three main areas. You have intracellular in the the vessels themselves, and then you have interstitial. So it's the space between.

1:44:38 You're drinking it in your stomach. It's going into your vessels. That's trying to get it across into tissue. If that goes too quickly through there, it doesn't have time to get into. So here's the kicker. You're chugging water, you're peeing clear constantly, and you're still cellularly dehydrated. Dehydrated, yeah. What I've experientially found to be the case is that If I do really hard sauna sessions, I can be wiped out the next day. I I can feel really fatigued.

1:45:00 To avoid that. I can't hydrate in the sauna. I can't hydrate right after the sauna. I can't even hydrate within like twenty minutes of going into the sauna. It has to be like an hour to an hour and a half before the sauna. with electrolytes. In which case I'm able to I have greater resilience

1:45:17 And feel less fatigue the next day. Yeah. At least that's been I haven't split tested everything, but that's been my experience. Yeah. So then the final piece would be what is exactly that electrolyte cocktail? And getting that dialed in so that we are putting back in the same thing that you're losing, so we're not excessively Bringing in. Which I guess comes back to the sweat test, right? Yeah. Knowing what the hell

1:45:37 You are excreting. Yeah, you have to have that. That's gonna tell you electrolytes. You have to have that in combination again, ideally. with what your standard metrics are throughout your system. And then making sure that In addition, do we need to add glucose to the situation? Right, that's gonna transport things into cells.

1:45:51 really effectively. Sodium comes along for the ride. Water comes along for the ride with it. Does it not need to be in there? You're the perfect person to ask and I haven't had a chance to ask someone. Is it glucose?

1:46:01 Is it the insulinemic response to glucose. Do other things work better than glucose? Artificial sweetener versus Dextrose versus fructose versus fill in the blank.

1:46:14 In terms of hydration. Yeah, glucose. Glucose. Just straight glucose. That's your answer. Yeah. Yeah. Now it doesn't mean it's your only thing that can be in there. It depends on what If we're only concerned about Just hydration. Or if we have other things we're trying to do at once. So it's typically less common to only be caring about water.

1:46:31 So in the case of You may need to be trying to Increase to restore muscle glycogen. Are you trying to recover faster? Is there any tissue consideration there? That is a slightly different answer. Are we trying to maintain acute performance? So are we taking this in the middle of a session? that we're trying to keep going and perform better, or are we doing it to try to recover faster the next day?

1:46:50 Or we only concern about Just pure hydration at a steady Resting. In this case it would be a if I had to wait it, I'd say it's like seventy percent hydration, thirty percent. Help with recovery. I like to saw an afterweight training.

1:47:02 Yeah, okay. So in that particular case, if you're trying to maximize recovery then like glucose is gonna be super, super effective. Fructose comes in the equation when We're trying to maximize carbohydrate intake in acute performance especially. Because glucose and fructose get through the gut barrier and they have different transporters.

1:47:19 So when the Full we can use fructose and get it through. Separately. So our ability to bring in without GI distress. is much higher if we have a combo between glucose and fructose.

1:47:28 To just have diversified transporters. Bingo. You have two freeways. Two different types of fairies or yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. Now in terms of getting into the actual cell itself. There's two basic ways that you can get glutefour transporters. These are the transporters on muscle cells that allow

1:47:43 glucose to go inside the cell. There's insulin dependent and insulin independent. And so muscle contraction itself. is instant independent and then you would directly have instant dependent, which is in this case Bring in glucose. And Slun will then drive it.

1:47:56 In there. But if you're doing exercise, you're gonna get that other contraction. As well. And so you have both mechanisms. To bring it in play. So in that particular case. Glucose at a

1:48:05 Roughly five percent concentration or so, somewhere between five to nine. Just typically. The sweet spot. It doesn't have to be part of your equation, but it is going to help the process. So Host. We could.

1:48:16 If you were to drink electrolytes only, you would be limiting How quickly you can rehydrate it. That's in extreme situations. If you're the average person hanging out. Just like did a sauna session? You don't need to put a whole bunch of glucose into your

1:48:28 Drink you're probably fine. All right, so I'm gonna weigh myself before and after song tonight. Yeah. No s no water on the rocks. And just to get an idea of of what that actual number is,'cause I'm I'm super curious. I'll also be doing a song tonight with a guy who used to be a V J J competitor, so I think he'll be equally interested just to see what the hell. Happens with him. Yeah. Do you track how much water you drink throughout the day total? Do you know what that number is? I haven't. I have done it at points far in the past. I haven't done it recently, which would be pretty easy because I could Well, what is the easiest way to keep track of? Probably what you're about to say. Just fill one container. Yeah. And multiply it out. Thing. Just fill up a gallon. How far do you get down? Yeah. Or if it's multiple, then you get over there.

1:49:05 So I'll do that tonight. Ten days from now. Let's just say I make an attempt, which I will. Sleep adjacent activities, meditation, et cetera.

1:49:15 Sleep timing. T B D I'm gonna work on that, although Frankly the fifteen car pile up may make that somewhat challenging, but I'll work on it. We do the best we can with what we have. I land at altitude. I will then be confronted with training decisions.

1:49:31 And My concerns are mostly around avoiding entry. Tim and Andy got into the weeds of Tim's fitness training and it got very detailed, so we moved it to the end. It is super, super interesting from a training perspective.

1:49:49 So stick around to the end of the interview and you can hear the rest of that section. And then from a nutrition perspective. Yeah. This is why full analysis is better because now we can nail exactly not only

1:50:04 Macronutrients, right? Calories. Protein, carbohydrate. That's great. Um what we tend to say is like people care globally. About three things regarding their body. They wanna look a certain way, they wanna feel a certain way, and they wanna perform a certain way. Yeah. In this particular season I care most about Tunes.

1:50:20 I'm in gonna be in four layers anyway. I don't give a shit. You already laid the foundation. The physique part doesn't matter. And your physique is fine as it is, right? So it's not like it's detrimenting your performance, right? So you care about Feeling and performing a certain way. Awesome. That's gonna give us some heads towards macronutrients. Micronutrients though.

1:50:36 Or the true game behind how you feel and perform. That's the key here. Macronutrients are fine energy intake. This regulates how you look. Micronutrients are how you feel and perform. And so we want to be very clear on exactly what you're eating. If we can. Let's say we don't have any access to that, and so we just have to give you rough suggestions based on Nothing. I wanna know

1:50:55 What you're consuming. Prior to I wanna know what you're consuming during while you're on the slopes and what you're consuming afterwards. So give me a rough idea there and then I'll Come back with a

1:51:05 Far shorter answer than what took us to get to the training. Yeah, I mean if I'm giving you my lazy day of skiing. And I know this is gonna make people shudder but all the reasons why I think you've had such an tremendous career is you're so honest about these things. You don't you don't protect your ego like you know what's best, but this is what you're doing. Like you're waking up and eating cake in the morning. I get it. So first I just do a couple of lines of cake mix. Yeah. Uh

1:51:28 Then the fixy sticks come out. No, I I would say Often Wake up. And this last season I had a tough time with my low back, so I was I was having a really

1:51:38 most nights very compromised sleep. Like I was tossing and turning, waking up a lot, like turning from side to side, pillow between the knees,'cause my lower back is all jacked. Wake up. Huge cup of coffee. And then these are usually pretty early mornings, right? So and I'm and I'm getting up with about thirty minutes to be out the door. So I wake up. Okay. So I'm waking up Having a huge cup of coffee.

1:52:00 And then I'm having Oatmeal mixing in some almond butter. Mm. Yeah, kind of swirling that around. Doubting that.

1:52:07 Maybe if they're available, one or two eggs and let them out the door. And for on the slopes. Generally. We can make pit stops for water. So I'm I'm generally not carrying water. Unless I'm doing backcountry and that's um then I'm I have a backpack, so I'll carry water. Yeah. But I might have some UCAN bars, some kind of

1:52:24 And a handful of those, which I have found helpful. Just kinda like nibble on. And then uh Typically I'm doing a half day, but if we're gonna do a three quarter day or full day, then we'll stop for lunch and I'll I'll probably have Some type of stew? Meat, beans, et cetera. Mm-hmm.

1:52:39 And maybe some maybe some additional coffee. If I've really been pushing it hard, I might have some hot chocolate. And then Right back out. And then at night.

1:52:48 I would say it's more of a real meal, per se. Then I'm sitting down and I can kinda choose whatever I want to have at that point. So the combination of fats and starches and the whole yeah. But I have certainly have flexibility. What I have found

1:53:03 And this is not gonna be a shocker for anyone. Who's done a lot of intense skiing. If I try to follow like keto super low carb, I feel like shit. Like I generally feel stunner. Terrible. Right. Yeah. Normal life, not having that kind of output, fine. But for that type of activity No. It doesn't really work so much. There's a difference between not being sick

1:53:24 Yeah, yeah. Not dying and performing at your best. Yeah, yeah, very different. So that's I'd say Not every day, but that would be a busy day, shitty night's sleep, woke up. Fuck. Just wanna get out on the slopes. Yeah. One last year.

1:53:37 Really quick. last year slash this year do you have a plan for supplementation? Let's see. So last year I would say no, I would add in What I have done over the last, say, nine months, which has And this is gonna sound like a shameless plug'cause I'm involved with these guys. But

1:53:53 probably what I would do this ski season is I would have a never ending supply of Maui Nui uh venison sticks, like the unsweetened. Yeah. Like no additional sugar. And that has proven for me to be just about the easiest way to get nutrient dense thirty grams of protein in the morning. So and the I can just throw those in my ski jacket too. So that will probably take the place of eggs, also just for convenience. In terms of supplementation, I would say last year Kept it pretty simple. I would say I was taking magnesium, some electrolytes Generally magnesium in the morning. And then I went back and forth on creatine. I know that there are so many different benefits to creatine. I was cognizant of not wanting to carry too much weight.

1:54:36 like additional water weight if I was gonna retain a lot more water. So Use that intermittently. I would often use that around cross training. So I was like kinda going to the gym. Yeah. Athletic Green, again, it's gonna sound like a plug, but I've been using that stuff since two thousand whatever, nine, ten. So uh and uh not a whole lot beyond that. I'd say where last season I was taking the most was Related to sleep. Because I was so desperate to get a good night's sleep I was taking just like

1:55:03 entire laundry list of stuff before sleep. Including some prescription stuff, which I've tried to really titrate off of. Yeah but At the time helpful, you know, Tracido and things like that, which you should not take without doctor supervision. So I would say not a really comprehensive supplemental plan at this point. I would also, though, not want to leave behind the nutrition piece because right now if you're if if you were to ask me like

1:55:26 What does your macro breakdown look like? I'm I have no fucking idea. Honestly. If I'm being truthful about it. Look, the reality of it is Supplements are called supplements for a reason. Yeah. And we we absolutely approach them the same vein. We're gonna spend as much time as we can on whole food.

1:55:39 After coming back from training, almost always taking supplemental protein of some type. Yeah. Like just Okay, I just want a little bit of a context, a foundation of what I was working with here. And actually I'll modify one thing I said, which was last season out often and Again. what I did, I'm not saying it's the best, but I would often have like athletic greens plus some type of like whey protein isolate or something before like immediately before heading out. So I've had the oatmeal plus the almond butter and then I would throw that in. Yeah and

1:56:08 That happened quite a bit, I would say. When you think about Recovery. Three classic R's. Come into place. Repair.

1:56:15 Replenish and rehydrate. That's what we're going after, right? So repair is protein. replenishes carbohydrate. And obviously rehydrate is. Is a combination of.

1:56:24 fluids supposed to electrolytes and and glucose. So as you're running through that I'm running through that entire thing, okay. Now Can we alter what we're doing to maximize performance on the slopes? Yeah, but that's not really what you're asking. You don't want to feel terrible on the slopes, but you're also really hedging because we know your recovery capacity is already compromised. So I'm gonna push towards that. What's that means? Do we have enough total calories? Maybe. Do we have enough protein? Unlikely. Unlikely, yes. Fact we're starting off the day with no

1:56:50 Protein source is not a good idea. Mali's fantastic Almost every day at this point. My entire like I eat almost exclusively wild game. That's yeah. That's what I do, but Yeah, since

1:57:01 being part of my as well, like That's what I'm after. I've yet to have anybody That we've sent it to. come back and be like, what the hell is this stuff? This is like this is incredible. Yeah. This is such a high positive response. Yeah. All right. Conflicts of interest noted. You guys you got the note. So that is great. Um you can start there. That's awesome.

1:57:19 I don't really particularly care where the sources I I wouldn't make sure that we're getting some Source immediately in the morning. A protein. That would be my first stop. Now the other thing is I would probably take your caloric intake higher in the morning. than it currently is because we know it's unpredictable throughout the rest of the day. Yeah. And we know that's you don't have to

1:57:37 Have a lot of calories in the morning. So now people often say things like, You can only absorb twenty five or thirty grams of protein at once, and that's Obviously by the way I opened up that question that's Clearly not the case. Yeah. However There is serious

1:57:51 Scientific. Evidence to suggest you can only maximize Muscle protein synthesis. Up to twenty five to thirty grams. That's been around. So the question is

1:58:02 For you. Despite the fact that All the evidence in science will say that. Are you ever concerned? But if you eat a little bit more protein

1:58:11 That you would somehow Not use it. No, I spend zero time worrying about that. Correct. Okay. So I know this is a tough question, right? Ha ha.

1:58:20 This never made sense to me. If my urine ends up a little more expensive, I don't care. Who cares, right? Look, when you go to apply things into

1:58:29 The science and life. We were trying to do all day. The science of sleep and nutrition and supplementation. You have to take some leaps of faith. That that is actually the scientific process, right? This is why like I think it's best to think about science as a verb, not a noun. is an action. It is not a thing. Right. What is the science of recovery? That's not how it works. Just like This is an action. So I'm taking a real life action on you, which means I'm gonna take steps past science.

1:58:50 Such that it never made sense to me. the muscle protein synthesis is maximized at twenty five or thirty grams. I work with NFL players, right? So V to A defensive tackle, three hundred and Many plus pounds on top of three hundred, right? We really think his muscle protein synthesis is locked up. And just maximized.

1:59:07 At thirty grams. The same as you or I. Correct. Who are just about less than half his size. Yeah, yeah. Like actually way less than half. So there's actually a paper that just came out really interesting. Suggest even up to a hundred grams of protein it continues to increase. You know, th I might be making this up, but I don't think I am. I wanna say that the older you get

1:59:25 There's some literature to suggest that it is better to have lar like a larger bolus, meaning more grams of protein at at a single Yeah, this is what you're talking about. It's called anabolic resistance. So you become more resistant to anabolic stimuli, training or protein. As you age, but this is totally preventable. Extremely preventable by just having bigger boluses. So my point with all that is

1:59:47 You can't stop that train. Yes. Some of that protein will be oxidized, who cares? Doesn't matter. You can't have too much protein in your particular case. Why I'm going back to that.

1:59:57 in your case in your scenario is because we now we've continually had conversations about you just recover slower, you were sore longer. Et cetera, et cetera. We need to make sure we are never limited in our recovery by Protein. That needs to be higher. And so we need you at a minimum of I don't know.

2:00:12 Two hundred grams of protein a day. Oh wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna need to change some things. I'll survive at one fifty. I'll take one fifty. But like I want you to go over fifty minutes more. Copy paste now, you're in my place doing the exact same training. Yeah. What might your breakfast look like? I'm fine with everything you had there.

2:00:27 Yeah. But now I just want fifty grams of protein. What form? I know you said you're agnostic, but for you. Fine. Eggs. No problem eating eggs. To get to two hundred grams, I mean if we're like yanking out the yoke. Yeah, you can't factor. Well I I'm just thinking about the w what this actually nets out to. I mean

2:00:44 How many exit that mean that's big? Well five six. Yeah, you're you're not gonna get me like I'll put it this way. I wouldn't go exclusively from eggs. That would that would be The point. If you want to have a protein shake as well, you already said you basically did that, right? That's what I did, yep, this last season. So if you have let's say three eggs, maybe half a cup of egg whites. Mm-hmm. Something like that. Maybe two eggs, half a cup of egg whites.

2:01:05 We're not forty or so. And Twenty minutes later or something, but I don't know, were you having that shake on the way? I was having right before I stepped out. Okay, great. Let's just stop right there then.

2:01:15 Forty grams. Great. I said fifty we're splitting hairs, right? Yeah. You're close enough there. If you want it, and I thought it's a day where you woke up late. Great, just do the double shake. Yeah, right. Two two scoops, right? So you're forty? protein source you're using, whoever you're getting it from. Pretty high quality, pretty fast absorbing. Yeah.

2:01:30 You're great. Now when we're at lunch, that's fine. We're just gonna make sure that If we've had a couple of Maui news sticks throughout the day. Those are

2:01:37 What, ten grams each? Ten grams each, yeah. So you got twenty, right there. Mm-hmm. It's easy to put down like Four or five of those more candidly. Yeah. Let's just say you're at

2:01:46 One. Ten more grams. All right. We're up to fifty sixty. Maybe another one. Any reasonable serving of meat in your stew is gonna get you another thirty to forty? Fifty?

2:01:56 Depending on how much you're eating there, you don't want to eat your Fearable. Mm-hmm. But that's fine. We're already well over a hundred. Okay, awesome. If you can get another shake in.

2:02:05 A protein shake, double shake when you're on the slopes. That's great. Some of their snacks like you Another or forty, which brings you back to dinner with another thirty or forty. I wouldn't track them, I wouldn't weigh them, I wouldn't do any of those things. Some days you're at one fifty, fine. Some days you're one seventy five. Just do what I don't which I don't really do, which is like when doubt, just eat a little bit more. It's fine. Yeah, eat a little bit more, right? From there. I would be primarily concerned with

2:02:27 Making sure. Carbohydrate intake? Is sufficient, you're probably gonna get enough fat along the way. So you have to get enough fat along the way. I think that I've trained myself historically to reduce carbohydrate intake for a lot of different Reasons. Sure. consume to

2:02:45 Little carbohydrate. when I get into training mode for something like skiing. Look you know, I said I'm tool agnostic. It's the same thing with food. Carbohydrates and fats have different properties. And that gives us a lot of opportunity. One is not better than the other.

2:02:57 In any situation. So it is in this context, clearly additional carbohydrate is Highly beneficial. You can go more fat. That's great too, just to get more calories. It's also easier More condemns, you can get it in.

2:03:09 Faster. You're getting in a decent amount for breakfast, so you're you're good there. I would make sure we have some sort of starch as well for lunch. Yeah. Red with that.

2:03:18 Yeah. Soup. Yeah. Yeah. Who ever complained about dipping bread and Soup. Yeah. Yeah.

2:03:24 That's amazing. Or whatever. Any number of I mean you're well weller high quality. Carbohydrate sources. Fruit would be fantastic.

2:03:33 At that feeding as well, so now we get all the other additional benefits. That come along with fruit. This context. And then backing up at night. One of the other things that's really clear While you don't want to have a large

2:03:45 Meal right before bed. Carbohydrates at night. are highly beneficial for sleep quality. Yeah, for sure. There's tons of links there. In fact, we actually had this happen Fairly recently.

2:03:55 So Labs came back individual sex hormone binding globulines high. Tree testosterone's low. All the signs and symptoms of wanting to go on testosterone. Mm. That's a not a conversation I have. That's go to your doctor, right? You want to go on hormones. Awesome.

2:04:09 Sleep is terrible. You must get asked about it a lot. Oh my gosh. Like you saw how sensitive I am. When I go in public, I'm like I'm not like I don't do medications. And insulin was low. Mm.

2:04:19 Super low. There's a known inverse association between insulin and sex hormone binding lobulin. So when insulin gets too low, sex hormonal barning globulin goes up because that what happens to free testosterone. Goes down. So you can do that if you want.

2:04:31 However, in this individual We took a look at Total carbohydrate intake and it was something like a hundred and twenty five grams a day. Which I actually feel great personally. I would imagine you probably feel fine at that level too. Even with like training.

2:04:42 Mm. I trained. Most days. I feel fine at one twenty five, one fifty. No issues. Almost no carbohydrate at night. Very low, uh twenty. Well this less Gramscape or I all we had to do

2:04:54 Was put Another forty or so gram of carbohydrate at night. Everything corrected itself when sleep took off. So super, super simple solution like that. So sexual and bid and gloving came down. Yeah. Because the insulin was going up. Totally.

2:05:06 And testosterone then. Took off. And then what happens to sleep. And what happened to recoverability? Yeah, sleep doesn't hurt testosterone either. Oh my god, right. Well, this it's a classic case of what forty grams, so what we're talking about there is like

2:05:20 That's not that much. I mean it's like what, two hundred I'm flubbing the math here, but it's four point five Calories per gram for ish, right? So it's not that much. No. Like you're talking about well, this is say banana. Twenty five grams. Yeah.

2:05:33 Bingo, right? A hundred calories. Yeah. An apple. Like these these things are b a piece of fruit is typically fifty eighteen to twenty. Twive grams.

2:05:42 Small side. Of sweet potatoes. A cup of rice, like you've already hit twenty five to forty. sort of grams pretty easily. So we're not talking like We had this guy pig out on pasta.

2:05:52 But like S very small changes here. Miracle workers, right? Just like they really have to. So Point is Um making sure that we have

2:06:00 An appropriate amount of carbohydrate. In your last feeding would be appropriate. We've gotten ourselves a nice infusion. Throughout the day. This will help with your rehydration since we're probably having fairly limited water intake because you're on the slopes, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's dry and it's so easy for people to forget. You mentioned this earlier, but it's like high altitude, cold. It's like you go to Antarctica, it's a desert, right? It's easy for people to forget. Trust me, I'm not sure.

2:06:23 I did a mule deer hunt in the Tetons this year. Ten thousand ish fee. I think our base camp was like Seventy five hundred. And we would ride horses for a couple hours in the morning to get up to our hunting spot. Holy cow, cold?

2:06:36 So dry. And Ten thousand. Which for me. I live in southern California, so I'm at you know, zero.

2:06:43 Like literally. And those mountain boys, holy cow. They are mountain tough. So point is you get super dehydrated super fast. Yeah, they don't really ask. So those carbohydrates and all that are gonna help. Maintain. Mm-hmm.

2:06:59 Replenish the muscle glycogen that you burn throughout your entire body. We don't care. If we're having an excess of calories. Because if we lose a little bit of body composition, we can won't. Yeah.'Cause you're burning so many calories. Yeah, it it's astonishing how much

2:07:13 'cause I'm I'm going to be there with a close friend and We can consume absolutely mind boggling amounts of food. Oh yeah, and it does Oh yeah, and it just does not matter. You're gonna work it off. Yeah, yeah. And I like you mentioned some resistance arches earlier. If you can take them out there, that's great too. That's probably gonna feel better than just a malware stick when you're six hours in. For sure. Yeah. I mean I need to restock, but yeah, the UCAM bars that I used last season were super helpful. Yeah. I would just make sure on top of all that, kind of rounding out these points, making sure that you were adequately salting your food.

2:07:43 Because we know that that's gonna go down. We know you're a heavy sweater. I don't know what your sweat rate is for your salt intake, but if you're sweating out three or four pounds a day, that's just gonna you're gonna lose a gram. Plus many grams of salt. So making sure that comes back in. In the form of supplementation, if you like to use electrolyte packs or something like that.

2:07:59 Or if you just wanna strictly go Salting your food. you know, heavily to taste there. You probably need some supplemental electrolytes. Would be my guess at this point. Making sure it's there. That's nutritionally gonna put you in a really, really good spot. Just be really careful.

2:08:13 Making sure we're still getting colors. In your food? typically don't have a huge response. Like you're not gonna feel a difference in vitamin A or C in like a day. Yeah.

2:08:21 But it will over the course of two months start to kinda add up. Yeah. So making sure we're not just eating all brown and then having a outlet of greens. Yeah. I've generally used color as a proxy, so yeah try hard. It is one of the challenges in a lot of these mountain towns. Of course it is. Is like they're they're importing everything. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Oh man. But yes.

2:08:40 Good friends. If you have to, right? So frozen fruits and vegetables, it's not the same, but it's still Really, really high quality. And then supplementation we could say I can be brief here if you'd like. But absolutely making sure magnesium is there. Magnesium is released in sweat at very low quantities, but it's still enough when you sweat.

2:08:57 The amount that you're potentially Oh, also with with skiing, like I'm gonna swept my ass off. Yeah. I'll be working. Yep. So you we wanna make sure that that Stuff is high. Great.

2:09:08 If you're going to use it, I wouldn't use it the way you did. Okay. Oh use it or don't. Okay. So having it like on certain days or not is just make it make it daily or not. Yeah, because it takes a chronic effect. Yeah. For it to really start to matter unless you're going really high dosage. So I wouldn't be super concerned about the water retention aspect of it because it wouldn't be a plus. Yeah, I was gonna say, we're having a problem with that anyways, right?

2:09:27 So I would go there. Any recommendation if you try and don't doesn't work, you don't like it. Don't what are we talking about? It's like five grams a day, or what are we That's the number. That's the standard. That's what everyone throws out, but I would say the same thing of like the protein. Yeah. Yeah. Can leave for

2:09:42 Guys our size. Fine. I'm probably going higher. I'm also never measuring creatine to be totally honest. Like I'm just taking big scoops and throwing it in there. Like seeing what happens. There's actually really interesting data on

2:09:54 The more recent stuff, the more interesting stuff on creatine is around bone health. Brain health. And overall even like mood. Brainhall is no joke. Yeah, but that's been ten to twenty grams a day.

2:10:05 Things like that. So Yeah, I have experimented with that chronically. And just looking at verbal I mean it's Recall. Yeah. And also just like verbal acuity and and stuff in podcasts. I mean, I've looked at this somewhat and it's N of one and uh it's just self reporting, but for me it's pretty noticeable. You don't have to do N of one, there's data. There's tons of it out there that's Nothing's perfect.

2:10:25 But There's actually another review article just this week came out also on prete and brain health. So whether you're looking at Dimensional Alzheimer's.

2:10:32 Marks and stuff like that. There's no perfect answer there, but You can see the data. Anything else you would Add to the list. The rest of it would be dependent upon Your labs and your physiology. Yeah. What we knew there. You could throw in you're never going to be hurt for the most part, adding vitamin D. It's a very

2:10:46 common one. You're gonna be on the sun all day, so Well, half of my face will be out in the sun all day. There'll be significant sun blockage, I hope. So Yeah Uh yeah, I I did supplement with D last year. Yeah, and fish oil? Fish oil, I also supplement it with fish oil. Could be

2:11:05 Pasebo, who knows, there's probably literature out there on this, but I found it to seemingly help us sleep quite a bit. Oh yeah yeah. Like those would be the standard kinda Without knowing anything about you, you throw in that cocktail, you're talking about things that are fairly cheap. Again.

2:11:18 Relatively. Yeah. They have very little Cross reaction. Unlike minerals. Unlike even high doses of vitamins. You're playing a game there.

2:11:26 That you may want to be a bit careful of. But things like vitamin D and things like omega three. Yeah, you don't wanna know what problem you're solving really, and so you're just sort of throwing stuff in there. That can technically happen with anything, even vitamin D. And Heavy metals.

2:11:40 Can be concerned there, but It's a very Rare. thing. So most of the time, like you're fine. I I feel comfortable saying like Most people can jump on that train.

2:11:48 For all those. Can be totally fine. Outside of that. It would be precision and intent. What are we trying to move? What are we trying to do? If you wanted to go kind of next level of Hey, less science, but some science. Potentially beneficial. Then you would get in the realm of herbals.

2:12:04 And this was when Ashwagandha, Rodiola Things like that start to kick in. What do you find Rhodiola most helpful for? So I actually do use Ashwaganda in the same way that say Peter Tia might use phosphityl serine, just to blunt Oh sure. Okay. In hell?

2:12:21 So maybe maybe I'm off base, but I mean talk to me About it. Ashwhanda and Rodiola. Okay, so we actually just published a review paper on Rodiola. Think it's open access.

2:12:31 Should be able to go read it for free. Way more data on Ashwakanda. been around for a long time. The issue we've always dealt with with both of those are all of our athletes have to have third party certified. things. And even they have to have NSF or informed choice. So those are hard to get to. If you're not concerned about that, then disregard that.

2:12:49 But you really do need This is to avoid doping issues, right? Correct. Yeah. We actually have another paper we published on the frequency of adulterated Supplements. It's gotta be complete disaster. Whatever number you're thinking, it's higher. Yeah, yeah, totally. Now in America with big brands. Like you're fine, but You leave America and things get squirrely. Yeah. Pretty quickly. On supplements.

2:13:12 Plenty of squirreliness here too, but both those papers are open access. So if anybody wants to dive in. We'll start Oshwagan. There's much more data on Ashwagandha. Good effective, but it is very difficult to make sure you're getting concentrations. Uh

2:13:24 What is labeled. On the bottle. Uh and that's actually from a labeling issue as well as a harvesting issue. So the people that are kind of behind the scenes that make these things will tell you not every plant has the same. Yeah, lo and behold.

2:13:38 No. Yeah. People say things like it's not FDA regularly. That's not true. There's tons of regulations on supplements. It's just They can't standardize it. Against things like that. It's really hard, right? You're growing Herbals.

2:13:51 And you're just hoping that that dose is as potent as the previous one. What do you think from an effect? Standpoint. For what can a credible argument be made? I know less science, but with Ashwagandha, like why would someone take it?

2:14:04 That is plausibly defensible and What should you take in that case. Like are there certain brands that are more reliable for dosing for any particular reason. Yeah. With Ashwaganda I think the only

2:14:17 Third party pure Ashwagandha company that I know is clean. Okay. K L E A N I'm pretty sure. Um, you'll see it in combinations and a bunch of other stuff, but that's I think the only one that sells it as uh designed for f Health and design for sport.

2:14:31 Might make one as well. Can exact I'm not a hundred percent sure. On that one. Decent data on exactly what you mentioned, taking it as a The colloquial term we'll say here is any adaptogen. Adaptogen, yeah. Yeah, it it what it means is it's

2:14:44 We're skipping is it's a cortisol modulator. Mm-hmm. What that means is cortisol is not supposed to be low. Yeah. Good thing, right? That is lethargy. That is That is a classic sign of excessive training as well.

2:14:55 You can go back to sodium potassium ratio. That'll tell you exactly what's happening with cortisol as well. That's addescend. Disease, right? Super low down there. You don't want it to be high.

2:15:04 Either. Now the General Optimal with cortisol is you have giant spikes throughout the day and then giant recovery. This is exercise, this is focused work.

2:15:14 And then we have this normal curve throughout the day such that we have high cortisol in the morning, so we're awake and alert, and then we have low cortisol at night, so that we can actually fall asleep, and then there's a curve. So adaptogens are supposed to be modulating that curve, not such that it's going high or low, but such that it's getting back to an appropriate Diurnal curve. That's the idea. Ashwagandha and Rhodiola, and specifically Ashwagandha There's reasonable evidence that it helps. with that. And so a lot of folks probably the most typical utilization of Ashwagandha is

2:15:40 Helping get to sleep. Helping calm down. There's it is kinda resetting that entire access. Because of that. Whenever you manipulate cortisol, you have a very good chance of manipulating testosterone.

2:15:52 'Cause that relationship is antagonistic for the most part. And so the smaller level science and then also large amount of anecdote is it can be helpful and beneficial with testosterone. I would say in my experience it's Reasonable. It is a very reasonable thing to think about.

2:16:07 With that I I wish that More companies would make Pure Oshwaganda, that is NSF certified. That'd be great. I could I could use it more directly. Now Rodiola

2:16:17 is another one we have had now this is not science, this is just my practice, coaching experience, I've had a lot of benefit of elevating testosterone with rhodiola. Really? Yeah. It is also cortisol modulator. There has a lot of other effects. The paper we published had nothing to do with hormones that had everything to do with performance. And so there is enough data now on muscular endurance and physical performance.

2:16:37 That it seems to be pretty beneficial. It's not perfect. Not every study showed benefit, but there's enough to where that I've been using it for I don't know, probably a decade or more. Personally as well as in the coaching practice and and uh I feel like it it does really effective

2:16:51 Work on that. So we actually got um I was pitching it so hard we got Jeff from Momentus to make it. So they they have their stuff. So we use them. Yeah. I don't know that. Yeah. We got him to make it,'cause I was like you guys are just like So much work here. So we use them because it is certified as third party tested as well. So that's pretty much where we got our roteola from, but Lot of benefits there.

2:17:10 Are there for acclimating to altitude, because I know you've gone from flatlander to altitude a couple of times. Anything that you have found particularly helpful for accelerating acclimation to altitude. 'Cause you hear all sorts of stuff, right? Some people take like beetroot extract. Some people take rodiola anecdotally. Of course. I'm curious if if you have thoughts here. Rhodola would be on my short list. I would listen to you either way.

2:17:34 If you said it didn't work at all. Or if you said it did. Yeah. Like I I would listen either way, but it would be a Low risk. Potential small reward.

2:17:42 Why not? Any Arginine. Or precursory. B root, you mentioned.

2:17:49 Gonna give you every opportunity possible. To give spleen a contraction to get more red blood cells. Into your blood to Let you acclimatize to it. Other stuff you can pay attention to. So one of the major couple weeks at EPO. Yeah.

2:18:03 I mean, That would be my first stop. It's a joke, guys. Joke joke. Yeah. Anyway. It'll work. It'll it'll work, yeah. Now you can consider at this point in the same Well

2:18:20 You can consider Any global Alkaline Agent. So one of the issues that you're gonna see happen with Altitude is

2:18:28 Predictable increases in respiratory rate, predictable increases in carbohydrate metabolism, right? Predictable increases in respiratory quotient, respiratory ratio, things like that. This is just part of what happens. Like lactate is a big player. Right. This is insanely beneficial for you. So you may consider I don't know if this will actually work. I don't even know the literature to be canon here on this one.

2:18:46 But a lactate supplement. Could be potentially beneficial there. Lactate is incredibly Actually bicarbonate. That buffering acid. So this may sound counterintuitive, but you heard that right. Lactate. very specifically will reduce metabolic acidosis.

2:19:00 Melactate doesn't do what people think. It does. It is certainly not the cause of muscle fatigue. And definitely not the cause absolutely definitely not the cause of muscle soreness. It is highly beneficial. It is directly used in the brain as a preferred fuel source of the brain and the heart in numerous situations, including altitude. Used actually Right now a couple of handful of trials being used as an acute

2:19:20 Response to traumatic brain injury. No shit. Yeah. How's that administered? You can do it any number of ways, Ivy. Yeah. Jill.

2:19:28 I like to gels. Mm. Any of those things done. George Brooks at Cal Berkeley. The lactate. King him and Bruce Gladden at Auburn. But George has is done a number of those trials in T B I. It's similar to look.

2:19:38 You may or may not realize, but there's an entire lactate shuttling that happens from muscle into other muscle to the kidney cori cycle, all that stuff. There's also an astrocyte lactate shuttle. So astrocytes are like the cells in your central nervous system. They need energy too. So we know that the brain, the heart, and astrocytes prefer almost exclusively anaerobic metabolism.

2:19:58 Which me love. Glucose, right? When you enter into areas of problem, whether you're talking about long term brain health reductions or even short term concussions and injury, ischemias, heart attacks, things like that. One of the major issues is we lose metabolic fuel. Have problems, right? Enter ketones. Yeah, exactly. Enter lactate. This is why these things are so interesting. It's still a lot to learn here. Some of the trials are like, Oh, great, but then they don't work for ketones and they do for lactate and stuff like that. But there's clearly something happening and this is also why that

2:20:27 Come back to the point. Creatine is so powerful for brain health. It's the same thing, it's the most direct and fast fuel source. It's one to one stoichiometry, so it doesn't give you a ton. one molecule of creatine one ATP. Others ketones are far higher. But it's super fast and effective. So lactate would be

2:20:43 One. And and is that I haven't ever sought it out. Presumably you can just find that as an oral supplement. You're taking capsules of this stuff or you you can again, the gel would probably be Gel. Yeah, better place. But the even easier gel, is it like any of your tissue. Just rub it on. Anywhere. Yeah, yeah, on your legs. Yeah, yeah. Probably where I would actually start because that's

2:21:03 I could go look at the research and I might be like, Oh my God, that was really stupid. Don't do that. I don't know. Like I was sort of me working through thoughts on there. But a similar idea that is much more founded would be any sodium bicarbonate. Mm-hmm. Solution, right? It's same exact idea. Where you're gonna put yourself in a little more alkaline situation.

2:21:21 My guess is that would help you feel a little bit better. And that was Yeah, since you asked sort of direct application. Sodium bicarbonate can come in a lot of forms and fashion. It's baking soda. Like literally. Just be careful though.

2:21:32 Yeah. I could tell you many stories in the lab of doing research. With baking soda. Or sodium bicarbonate.

2:21:40 Yeah, there there's such a thing as too much of a good thing. Yeah. Fluid in your intestines matters. So also be careful with creatine and double espresso, just pro tip if you're about to head out skiing. Too much of those two. Creatine and caffeine have this weird relationship. Increased likelihood of disaster pants. Not to get too technical. Yeah, super technical. Theoretically. We'll see the data on that. So you can do that.

2:22:03 The other way is gels. Right. So this is PR lotion. This is what they make. So you can just rub a blonde sodium bicarbonate. If you want to go around it there. So anyone that has any GI issues with it, the the lotion. We'll go as well. Far, far, far more research on oral applications. The notions, but

2:22:18 On the sodium bicarbonate. Yeah, for sure. And there's lots of research on that. So those would be potential ways. Outside of that. We would have to really start getting into things that are actually Specific to mitochondria. And it to kinda go down those range. The issue with all that is

2:22:32 I don't know if you're gonna have like a One to five day effect. And so really getting into and this is everything from coq tens and things like that. So the going back up to like Argentine and That's gonna happen.

2:22:43 Instantaneous effect. Sony bicarbonate will instantaneously change things. The other stuff takes a little like a mild Or P KQ or something like that. It's gonna take probably weeks. Yeah to do stuff. So by that time You put probably hopefully acclimatise. Well there are levels and then there are levels, right? So if I'm operating at ten K, but then I'm doing some. But if I'm going up a few thousand feet for

2:23:10 For backcountry stuff or hell skiing. Yeah, you'll notice that extra thousand feet. Oh yeah. For sure. Kind of my point I was getting there at the end was I would probably let physiology just do what it wants to do. That would be my normal thing. Take your baseline stuff there and then let it.

2:23:23 Go because you're going to be there for eight weeks. And we're gonna walk ourselves into these first two or three weeks anyways. If you were there for Like for example we have Brian Ortega is fighting in Mexico City.

2:23:33 For his next fight. That's seventy five hundred feet elevation. Brian lives Torrents. We are doing things specifically now starting Like two day. To prepare for that. But that's'cause we have to get there for one.

2:23:45 One event, one night. You have two months to live there. Yeah. I would let your body do what it wants to do. kind of the last thing I'll really say here is

2:23:53 I think that's an important note. Your physiology In your brain. Are still Way smarter.

2:23:59 than anything we have. Any AI program. Any machine learning stuff we've got, your own physiology has a far better sense of what you're doing. So whenever possible. Don't

2:24:09 Hold it back. We call these performance anchors. So anything you're doing that's an anchor, it's dragging you down. So this is alcohol. This is Any number of suboptimal visible stressors, hidden stressors. That's gonna hold you back. But once you've removed those things. Just get out of the way.

2:24:24 Yeah, your body will figure it out. Your body really knows where it wants to go for the most part. Don't sabotage it. But then don't have too much control of the wheel. Put this, I guess, would be like it's human nature to think about how we can accelerate things, accelerate, accelerate. But in this case.

2:24:41 We have millions of years of of evolution. Yeah. And if you can just remove make sure that you don't have any emergency brakes on. Yes. That's exactly right. You make a lot of progress. Andy, we've talked about a lot today.

2:24:55 People can find you on Twitter, Instagram at Doctor Andy Galpin. And They can find all things Andy Galpin at andy galpin dot com. You have a number of different

2:25:06 Initiatives, projects, companies. That are in motion, absolute rest, we've already mentioned. Any others that you would like to mention or point people to? Yeah. The absolute rest, of course, is our sleep company. My education company is called Biomolecular Athlete. And that is actually

2:25:22 Something that we just released. Thanksgiving. So this is just new to the world. I have always and will continue to put out As much free content on YouTube

2:25:32 as I can. So what I do is I have this like series of Five, twenty five, and fifty five minutes. Physiology videos? And if you've been paying attention and when I say twenty five minutes It's ish.

2:25:43 And when I say fifty five minutes, it's Yeah. Yeah. I get brown on that one. I'm always gonna do that. And that is

2:25:51 always gonna be free out there. But we had I had such demand for it. I was like, mean, I just need to make a full proper education company. So we released our very first course Thanksgiving. And I think we had people from over ninety countries. Get into it like I I was like, all right, that'll do well, but holy cow.

2:26:07 I look so stunned. So that is out there. Uh we're gonna come out with our second And third course this year. One of them will be on Performance blood work. And then another will be on

2:26:17 Managing It's like a an algorithm, if you will, step by step process on fatigue. How to stop it from happening correctly, like what to do. Like all this stuff. So That'll be coming that biomolecular.

2:26:26 Athlete dot com. I think it's forward strength. But If you get to buy them one, though.

2:26:33 The other one we're launching in January is called Vitality Blueprint. And that is Is high level performance blood work. And so this is Not medical stuff. This is if you want to really understand

2:26:45 how to not only analyze blood But then go through through some of the stuff I We talked about of how do you interpret it? Once you get it, what's it mean? All that is done for you. It's completely interpreted.

2:26:56 All the patterns and calculations. That go into high performance are done for you? And then as a result of that you can spit out very high precision supplementation, nutrition, and and exercise protocols. on the back of that. So it's not just like, Hey, here are your labs, you go figure it out.

2:27:10 So that is coming out. That's Vitality Blueprint. And then our coaching program is at Rapid. Rapid health and performance is like If you want to come in and get Full immersion coaching like I sort of st started with the beginning. Yeah, yeah.

2:27:23 That's at that program, so Where can people find that? I think that is rapid. Health report. Dot com.

2:27:30 We'll link to it in the show notes as well. Yeah, I think it's all Is or will potentially be on my website. I realize again I'm Like business and savvy forte is not my thing. So Probably shouldn't have all these brands and companies going, but They're all out there. So education, blood work, rest, sleep.

2:27:45 And coaching error. There. And then all all the social media is for me is It's all science communication. That's pretty much all I do. So

2:27:53 If you want to know more about the science team performance, that's pretty much if you don't want it Like, get out of there. Do not if that's not what you want, don't go to Andy Galvin.com. But if uh is of interest, then uh certainly What we mentioned.

2:28:06 Andygobin.com. On social Doctor Andy Galpin and we'll link to everything in the show notes. So if people miss anything on Andy Galvin dot com, people go to Tim.blog slash podcast will link to everything we discussed in this conversation, which is gonna be a lot. For the record, I made that website myself on Squarespace like seven or ears ago. So

2:28:26 Not a lot of standards. All right. Well Might be able to help you with an upgrade. So T V D on that. Is there anything else, Andy, that you'd like to mention? Or

2:28:37 Closing comments you'd like to add before we Land the plane? I think I've had plenty of comments at this point. All right, perfect. And As mentioned everybody, we'll have links to everything in the show notes, as per usual at Tim.blog slash podcast, and until next time.

2:28:56 Train smart. Keep it green lights. Don't get injured. And best of luck in the new year. Thanks for tuning in. And now Tim and Andy discuss Tim's training regimen.

2:29:12 I land at altitude. I will then be confronted with training decisions. And My concerns are mostly around

2:29:26 avoiding entry, right? I'm not worried about like hitting the most complex double black diamond, blah blah blah, two weeks out. I don't have a competition. I'm doing this for fun. Also to get into shape. Which is fine. Touring I find pretty kind of self-regulating in a way, although you have avalanche risk, but let's put that aside. How would you think about? Training This is gonna be a lazy question, but the lower body. And the reason I ask is two seasons ago, I've been very lucky, knock on wood, I've had very few knee issues. I've had issues with a lot of other stuff. Shoul surgeries, elbow surgeries, you know, all sorts of issues. But

2:29:59 Angles like broken every which way from Sunday from all sorts of Terrible combat sports decisions. Knees have been pretty good, except for two years ago, I had to get Medivac out with a Barry. Impressive. Tomahawk accident after hitting a ice ridge at a high speed hell as game. So got

2:30:16 Metavaced out for a bunch of reasons I mean, like the knee was my leg was twisted around like a G.I. Joe figure is bad. And I felt a pop in the hip in the knee because one ski ejected, the other one didn't. So as I tomahawk, like the tip got caught and rotated my leg around. And landed and I was like fuck. I'm gonna wait for the tail guide to check this out. And the knee felt a little loose. Ended up.

2:30:36 ultimately getting um E R M R I the whole nine. and had a couple of minor injuries, but they're like your knee is surprisingly okay. You might have like a mild tear. I think it was meniscus. They were like, but nothing really of note. And I was like, Huh, okay. But there have been points, for instance, as my back has started to feel better, I've slowly moved into conservative

2:30:59 Mostly isolatal leg training,'cause part of what precipitated this I've had back issues for decades. It's just I have a transitional segment, but my brother has the same thing, lots of kind of chronic back tightness. Yeah, but. I have a chill. Yeah. Exactly. That's what I'm gonna say now. But what really what really precipitated the acute phase was back squats. And I'm sure I could dissect biomechanically why I think I fucked that up, but I've been very moderately moving into like split squat type stuff and feeling really good.

2:31:28 Feeling very good about it. But a few weeks ago felt like a little like Like a little weirdness in the right knee, a little tension after that with like terminal knee extension. Or let's just say terminal extension, like when I'm walking. If I try to keep my heel down, I'm like weird. At the very end, it's a little tight on the back of the knee. So Priority number one for me is

2:31:48 Injury prevention. How might you think about getting back into Skiing but doing it in a responsible way. What type of training to augment with just the time on the slopes. Okay. I will actually directly answer your question finally. Oh my god. Yeah. We'll go straight to Christmas comes early. Hey. Let's talk about sleep.

2:32:06 Let's talk. When you're Going into a novel situation like that. Your hydration, your sleep, we've already talked about those are gonna be huge. And then overall Stress.

2:32:15 Of all that stuff. Like that is by far the best place to start. We've done a nauseum there. We're gonna go on to what you're talking about here. I need to know what is your you got two months. What's the rough skiing plan? Because what we want to do first. And this is the same thing when we get in season for any of our athletes or in fight camp.

2:32:32 Sport is first. You gotta get better at fighting, you gotta get better at hitting golf balls, you gotta get better at hitting tennis balls, et cetera. So tell me what that looks like and I'll reverse engineer the training backwards. So what that looks like is First week I'm actually not scheduling any formal training sessions with a coach because I want to have some time simply to remember what I did last season. No point of even getting tips on technique when you're inconsistent. Yeah. Let me get in a bit of mileage. Also let me acclimate to altitude so that I'm not tempted to push

2:33:02 with a coach who's also a very high level skier because I'm competitive and there's just From protecting myself from my lesser self, like week one is going to be acclimating. Let's just call it. Then beginning week two probably minimum three days a week of training with a coach. And then depending on recovery and other factors.

2:33:22 An additional two to three days. Of Yeah. Skiing. Yep. Most likely then after let's call it week three. I will add in ski touring. where I'm doing side or back country using skins where I'm basically

2:33:37 Shuffling my way up. a mountain and then uh skiing down in more backcountry powder conditions. I would say also around that time I do well with these types of conditions, I would like to I'm not attached to it, but I think it would be very interesting to do some adult race training.

2:33:56 Mm. And Just working with gates and getting very good at carving and There are other.

2:34:03 Obviously aspects to that. At this point, and this is where I have not decided on what adjunct training Yeah. To to supplement. What I found helpful in the past, at least last season, was let's just call it one or two

2:34:17 Not quoganidra, but pretty low key, let's just call it down regulating yoga classes a week. Also for just Hip stuff. And then

2:34:26 Some type of core training. There are a couple of great uh Ploty's instructors find that very, very helpful. For Seemingly mitigating some of the lower back issues. And uh that's about it as far as it stands right now.

2:34:40 So let me see if I can spit that back to you. Mm-hmm. First week. Just getting on the slopes. Moving.

2:34:46 Yep. Moving around. Yeah, and just and acclimating to altitude. Getting there, okay. Weeks two to three. We start actually

2:34:53 Getting moving. We're doing a variety of different types of skiing. And styles of skiing in different areas. Week three to eight. His training.

2:35:01 We're gonna have a Somewhat of a specific plan about Different styles of training on different days. Mm-hmm. Depending on conditions, yeah. Depending on conditions. Right. So it's like if if we're training for powder, we don't have the chance, we might train on moguls for a host of reasons and Yeah, yada yada.

2:35:16 White camp. Mm-hmm. That's exactly what it is. You move week one, you do these things and then you s get into a specific plan for Five to eight weeks of

2:35:24 Different things. On each of the days we have different emphasis. Right. So we're boxing one day, we're wrestling another day, et cetera. You're doing it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Right. Because we might do one day it's it's a real carving emphasis. We might do another day that is, you know, powder emphasis, another day that's more conditioning with the touring. Great. So here's what I do. A couple of structured things. Number one, you actually made a comment earlier that I banked. That I wanna come back to. And you sort of said you don't care about your upper body.

2:35:48 losing a weight, you'll be willing to let it go. If it helps sort of looking at, say, Lance Armstrong post cancer when his like relative strength went through the roof. I'm willing to compromise that for the sport. Understood. Yep. Don't want to go away for no reason. But if but if but if it's if it's if it's beneficial. Power to weight ratio matters. Right. I don't know a ton about skiing, so I don't I didn't catch all that

2:36:09 Terminology exactly, but From my understanding, you're gonna be doing some stuff that is High speed, high change of direction. High impact on joints. My assumption is that's shorter duration. Yeah, the runs are gonna be shorter duration. Ballpark me.

2:36:21 Time. Twelve minutes, like two minutes. I would say with the coach Let's just say it's Two to five minutes before stopping to review technique. And then some back up the mountain and then Multiple runs of that a day.

2:36:34 Yeah. How many runs roughly I mean we're gonna be doing on the order of At least I would think. Minimum ten to fifteen total runs. Okay. Yep. The other days are more when you're doing like the touring stuff.

2:36:48 Oh yeah, that's gonna be you might spend an hour or two going up and then you get Ten turns. in deeper powder. I mean, ideally you get more than ten turns, but the ratio of let's just call it Uphill to downhill is heavily

2:37:04 Tilted to Uphill where you're doing a lot of conditioning. And very fatiguing. Mm more like steady state though, more like many hours of you going up. This would be the steady state. Yeah.

2:37:15 Great. And This would be in uh the sort of go heavy, go along, go hard, this would be like the go long. Yeah, yeah. How many days a week total? Seven? Six? Five.

2:37:26 I would say I will likely increase the volume Each week. because my recovery will just be compromised in the beginning as I'm acclimating to altitude, et cetera. So I would say uh my goal Would be by a week.

2:37:41 Three that I'm at minimum four days a week. It would not be seven days a week. I will have at least one full day of recovery because I've just found that I need that. Yeah, you have to have so okay, great. The reason I ask all your upper body is When you're moving on seas like that, and again I know minimal about it, you're having poles and You will get some upper body Like you are using your upper body. There's actually classic data. Looking at cross country skiers, this is like our study.

2:38:06 was in that but if you actually the biopsy data that have been done on deltoid, so shoulder muscle, you can get like a ninety five percent reduction in muscle glycogen content. If you were to look at in uh something like glycogen depletion. Yeah. In the quads, if you get to like fifty, sixty percent, we call that depleted. So like you you can torch your shoulders. Oh, for sure. And also triceps. You can uh smoke your triceps. And the reason I'm saying that is going back to your back and knee. Because if we are now

2:38:34 Either compromise strength or endurance in our shoulders. And now we're getting up or downhill or control via other mechanisms. We're probably putting undue stress. In those positions. Yeah, let me add something to that, because what you just brought up. raise this and that is you're a hundred percent right. It's not gonna be to the cross country skiing is like Nordic skiing is insane. It is just like torture personified. I I mean I the cardiovascular capacity is so outrageous. Absurd. Absurd. So I'm not doing that. I mean there are cardiorrespiratory demands placed on me in touring, but um I won't get into all the details, but it's far less than cross country.

2:39:11 But to your point, yes, I'm using the upper body. And one of the question marks that has existed in my mind since last season. is how much to work on various types of rotation. Because Where I've found my back can get quite grumpy.

2:39:28 Is When you're skiing at say steeper inclines. Yeah. Sorry, but it's getting very personalized. Uh You're not sorry at all. Yeah, I'm not sorry. Sorry. Sorry, I'm not sorry. Your skis might be

2:39:41 facing across the slope, but you often want your body, your chest to be facing down the slope. So there's a lot of rotation. There's like disassociation of the torso almost. And that is something I think that a lot of skiers underestimate in terms of the toll and the tax that can take, especially if you have mobility issues or or any type of type of orthopedic issues. Okay. So big picture wise, what I would do is set up your week.

2:40:05 Mm-hmm. And we need to make sure that we're doing this in a way where we understand our higher impact days and our higher fatigue days. Yep. And what you wanna avoid is doing something in both of those categories on all or most days. And so I personally generally like to stack red on red. What I mean by that is if you're gonna have a really challenging session. Say it's the touring when you guys really get going.

2:40:27 And you're cutting, you're sharp, you're moving. This is torsion on the back. Right. It is impact. It is also probably more focused because there's like crash and burn. Faster speeds, all that stuff. Okay. This is high physiological demand, this is high energy demand, and this is high neurological demand. Also high stress. Yeah. That's a red.

2:40:44 Right. When it comes to your training now, I'm thinking This is a good day to go hard. Counterintuitive. But I want to go hard on hard. I don't want red on red.

2:40:53 Because the next day we're gonna come back and probably do green. Whatever that means. That could be Your Pilates? to be your total off day or this could be one of the other ski sessions that is a very low technical Recovery.

2:41:05 Movements. Something like that. This is something of of there. And then we can come back and sack probably like an orange. Yellow, whatever you want to call it, kind of in the mid. Um, this is where you're accumulating volume.

2:41:16 Right. So this is we're we're building up. This is maybe the longer state. Yeah, so the red might be the steeper, gnarlier stuff. Yep. with some the higher speed carving and then green is Actually maybe a touring day. I mean it's gonna be like slow and steady, but not redlining. Yeah. You don't even want to like yellow line. Yeah, okay, then maybe something else. Maybe it's some drilling. Like drilling, like single leg practice, stuff like that.

2:41:40 It is high technical feedback stuff. Yeah, exactly. High technical feedback stuff. And then the maybe the orange is the moderate touring something like that. Is exactly what you want to do, right? So we're gonna take all that and the first thing I want to say is let's lay out specifically when we're doing if we can This game components over the course of a week. And then we're gonna build in some sort of intentional down regulation work to supplement that stuff, right? So when we go red on red.

2:42:04 And we are paying that back. And when you say red on red, that's in a single day. Single day. Yeah. 'Cause they assume you're gonna do a training session, asking session in a day. Or something.

2:42:12 Right. Okay. Got it. So you're gonna do your hard, hard red skiing session and then we're gonna come back and either do some Pilates to unwind. We're gonna do maybe a lift that day. We're gonna do something else, depending on Where we're at. Right. We're typically doing some Multiple physical exposures. In one day, in some form or fashion, right? That's what I mean when I say if it's a single session, that's fine.

2:42:32 Single section red is fine. It's gonna carry over to the next day. Mm. Right. So there's residual fatigue there. There's some other changes. You wanna pay attention to. So either way, we're gonna finish that day with strong down regulation.

2:42:43 Right, really gonna batch recovery into that. The next day then we get to pay that toll back. Okay. And this is again technical work. Yes, I'm saying this is much for myself. Well I am saying for myself. But like the Slow restorative yoga. was fantastic for down regulation that's where the day ends. Yep.

2:43:00 Love that stuff. I would actually like to also see make sure that that session is Maybe not full ninety minutes. If it's long, or even maybe sixty minutes is Maybe Mm. Enough,'cause we just want restoration.

2:43:11 Fine. Like if you're like no, I leave there and I feel more energetic. Or feel unwound. Oh, I basically feel like I'm all asleep'cause it's also really dark studio. So perfect. Perfect. Amazing on that. So we would lay out the entire week. On the skills there. And this would progress over time.

2:43:24 So the reds get a little bit harder. The green stay green. This is a major mistake to have right. Green drift. Green drift. Everybody drifts. Right. You end up just having a bunch of medium stuff, which is great. You gotta accumulate volume there.

2:43:37 But the way that I want you to reframe this is when you're thinking of red We're thinking about Maximal capacity. Can I perform under these maximum conditions, right? You are holding on. You are getting after it.

2:43:49 When we get into the other session, we're not working on conditioning at this point. We were working on technical capacity. It is practice. The general rule of thumb is probably something like twenty percent of the time can be read. And almost everything else needs to be practiced.

2:44:04 Or recovery. Much more than that depends on your unique physiology, but With all you got going on, new to the altitude. injury history, I'm gonna hedge way more conservatively. I would also say my recovery capacity, sprawling speaking, pretty low. I mean I would just say I'm a slower I'm slower to recover than a lot of my friends who are competitive athletes who I trained with. Same workload.

2:44:25 Kinda same diet, same habits, and I'm just I'm slower to recover. Yeah, that's that's another metric we actually we always bucket. So I want to see what your total recovery capacity. And then It goes back earlier. It's that non specific stress. Get those out of your life and watch your recovery capacity just take off. So we w we'll wanna work on that one hundred percent.

2:44:42 Nondetheless, this is the end part, right? The recovery capacity is Give me my other stuff and I'll get that up higher. But as long as we don't have time for that. Let's just make sure the input, the stressors going in from what we can control are not outkicking our capacity to recover. This is where the problems start to exist. We wanna outkick them a little bit. Mm-hmm.

2:44:58 Gastress system. But We can't exponentially increase our injury or overuse. Risk, right? You will see the back lock up.

2:45:06 Hundred percent during this time, right? Not because of injury there, but because global stress got high. Central nervous system said, I don't like what's going on here, I'm gonna stop him. I'm throttling him back. Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, tight, tight, tight. That's effectively what's happening.

2:45:19 No real actual change there, but it is a global regulator It's a governor. Same. Lock up. Right. That's what's happening. So we're gonna stretch that week out that way.

2:45:27 I want a full layout of the seven days. We want to put in all those other practices around that. We're going to build a schedule. And then from there, we're going to work our training. backwards around that. So when we look at that we need Unwinding. Sounds like you're getting that from yoga. And uh Pilates. When I am my better self meditating twice a day, twenty minutes, basic TM stuff, transfer meditation stuff. And breath work on top of that, or that is

2:45:50 Just the Um breath work. I'm not doing much independent breath work. I mean what I do find helpful and I can make time for this is Using something like There's a device called the O two trainer. It's I'm not even sure what the sort of general term would be.

2:46:06 It's a respiratory training, you know. It's respiratory training. And yeah, I do find those extremely helpful on a number of levels. Funny you mentioned the O two trainer. That research came from my lab. Oh yeah? Yeah. No shit. Okay. Well there we go. So that's Boss Rutons. Yeah, it's Bos Rutten. Yeah, I had him on the I had him on the podcast and that's when I started using it. In preparation for high altitude.

2:46:25 Hunt. Yeah. And found it tremendously helpful. Yeah, yeah. Okay, since it came from your lab, just Sixty seconds. Sure. Just a brief overview of what we're talking about.

2:46:35 We touched a lot on respiratory rate. The reason respiratory rate can be Either dysfunctional or even just suboptimal. Which are are different. is because of a number of things. I talked to you about it could be

2:46:47 Pattern recognition. Could be psychophysiological. Right, what I never even got to was could be biochemical. That would be CO two. That would be PH levels, right? You're trying to restore there. The third one is it can simply be mechanical.

2:46:57 Right, and and so this is intercostal muscles. So these are the little muscles that are in between your ribs. As well as your diaphragm. When you contract those that open up the cavity of the lungs, which allows to change pressure. Well that matters is the real issue at altitude, and people say this all the time, but there's not less oxygen. At altitude.

2:47:17 There's the same amount of oxygen at ten thousand feet as there is at sea level. But the partial pressure in the air is different. It's much lower. And so when you open your mouth, the gradient, the difference between the pressure in your lungs and the outside environment is less. It's almost the same. So air doesn't go anywhere. And so what you need to do is be able to create a huge amount of increase in volume. As Yeah.

2:47:36 And maybe the way the relationship between pressure and volume. You open that up and then allow air to come in. So what the O two trainer does is it restricts airflow in. And so you actually have to actively pull it's like strength training your intercostals. And your diaphragm. So you can do that to give yourself more Ability.

2:47:53 While that also matters through fatigue. Is those muscles or like any other muscle? They fatigue. So when you lose that ability, you lose the ability to bring in air Like during acute exercise.

2:48:03 So that becomes a problem. Another free way to do it. Is this is when nasal breathing. Can work. So nasal breathing alone is in closing your mouth. is a fantastic way to force intercostals and diaphragm to really get on board. Because you're restricting total air. You're effectively

2:48:18 Doing altitude without doing it. Not something you want to necessarily do, you shouldn't be doing Like nasal only breathing when you're at maximum heart rate. Doesn't really make any sense to do though. You have a mouth, like for a reason. But if you have significant problems breathing

2:48:32 At moderate to medium. Intensities. Oh two trainer. Great. Four days of breathing or any other. tools, but it's effectively getting at respiration train.

2:48:40 Yeah, and that came in because you're asking if I do separate breath work and I would say outside of I often wonder how much of we don't need to diverge here, but how much of the benefit of meditation is from just measured slow breathing versus good posture versus diagram there. Yeah. So let's leave that alone. But I would say right now, no, I'm not doing separate breath work. Okay. Maybe not here. Again.

2:49:01 Let's take a look at CO two tolerance, let's take a look at mechanics, how you're moving, how you're breathing. Potentially I don't know if you guys covered this in your combo with Eric or not, but you know where are your ribs at? Are you have Excessive rib flaring. It's something that I've been working on a lot in the last, let's call it six to twelve months. Just having my awareness brought to it generally, yes, quite a bit of flair. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's pretty easy. That that'll kick off the diaphragm pretty quickly. Right, inhibits it, and so it becomes a problem. So we would look biomechanically.

2:49:27 We would look at it chemically. And then we would look at Pattern. Psycho physiologically, something like that. But that would be

2:49:33 the the places to start to figure out okay. You may or may not need breath work that doesn't necessarily need to happen. It also again can be detrimental. Meditation the same thing. It's Almost Like as an aggregate, it's generally very, very, very positive to extremely positive.

2:49:47 But there's also subsets of folks where Breath work is maybe not a great option, right? This is not necessarily just this panacea of everyone go do down regulation breath work. Particularly if your HR V is extremely high. So you're very parasympathetic. And this has actually happened Again, this is rare.

2:50:03 More common is what we've been describing. But has happened. We have had folks that have very high HRVs. So if you're using a device like an aura. That's getting in this you know, once every five minute mark.

2:50:15 You're talking about people's Overnight HRV averages of one hundred and fifty. Milliseconds hundred and seventy. No seconds really, really high. May or may not be a problem at all.

2:50:24 Could be totally normal for you. Easy, no problem. At the same time they have a respiratory rate of nine breaths per minute. Yeah. Okay, again, maybe totally normal. Especially if you're super fit.

2:50:32 Anytime we're running through physiology. We're never taking action on one metric. Just way too many things that could be explained what's going on there. But if you couple that with Lethargy? Can't get out of bed.

2:50:44 Performance numbers are down. No motivation, drive, things like that. If you think that person is burnt out. Mm. And you give them a bunch of down regulation work. Yeah.

2:50:53 Right. Gonna be a problem. Mm-hmm. You're pushing the slider in the wrong direction. You're pushing the slider in the wrong direction, for sure. So Then again, that's more typical is Up regulation, we need to bring you back down. But just I just feel like it's important to say that.

2:51:05 Because some people go out there and just Have everyone down regulate and you're like, Whoa. Time out here, you may or may not need breath work at all. This is a baseline. Tool.

2:51:14 Right. For sure. So I want something in there. After those sessions hit and we've got that big

2:51:19 Fear to go, okay, let's let's bring it back down. That could be very, very low volume strength work. If we feel like We have a little bit of an issue with Under regulation.

2:51:30 I was gonna go next. I'm curious to hear Yeah. So I wanna make sure that you're strong in strong positions. So everything you outlined Is going to be

2:51:39 Steady state endurance ever a Somewhat limited range of motion. Mm-hmm. You've also outlined and again I'm just I'm making assumptions here, but when you're doing a lot of those fast turns, it's a greater range of motion through your knees and hips.

2:51:51 'Cause you're cutting at a faster angle. Yeah, and you're doing stuff that scares the shit out of me that is helpful for skiing, like kind of this is not the right term, but like buckling the knees laterally. to get higher edge angle. Yeah, makes sense. See clean. Yeah. Start of the tire. I get it. All right, great. So that's actually high velocity eccentric. Yeah.

2:52:10 We wanna make sure that we come back in and reestablish a proper pattern over those same Rangers of motion. And fast. We'll walk through like exact examples. Here in one second, but we' we're walking from the top down. I wanna know what your week looks like. What's the skiing?

2:52:23 Now that we understood that, now we're back feeling in. all of our needs. Okay. So we needed the down regulation so that we don't just get the entire system to lock up on us. We needed now to look at our physical attributes. Okay, can we come back and reestablish proper movement patterns? What I'm meaning by that is you are going to when you're on those slopes, you're gonna default to your movement and breathing patterns. That are the lowest common Recipe, right?

2:52:44 hedging against that, that's when we come back and we do our pelvic floor stuff, we do whatever stuff that you're doing that says, Hey, no, this is the way that we want to sequence. So you're just continually reminding it that how much transfer that has over to your skis, I don't care. Hopefully a lot.

2:52:59 But even one percent is better than zero. Any percent carry over we can get from there. At this point we probably don't need to spend a lot of time on maximal speed and power. That's not a li rate limiting factor. We would have done this in the off season or

2:53:10 Some other issues, right? Daylight and a dollar short. Totally. But we need to make sure your hips in particular and feet are functioning appropriately as well as your shoulders. And that's like those are the areas I'm gonna go after. And making sure we have proper stability. And then we have strength in them. You're gonna get a lot of muscular endurance on the slopes. I'm not super concerned about that. I want low volume. High quality Strength. I don't really need maximal strength at this point, but I kinda want a touch.

2:53:36 the envelope a little bit here. I wanna get up to Tim give me a heavy heavy double. Give me heavy triple. No smelling salts. Don't like I don't need that. But we want to touch.

2:53:46 More than you probably want to do. Okay. So th maybe this isn't the right way to reference it, but like what percentage of one rep max are we talking for those doubles and triples? Eighty five? Okay. All right. It's up there. No, you're you're you're going. Yeah. You're more than you want to do. Yeah. For sure. Okay. But we don't need you.

2:54:02 Ninety five. Yeah. I don't need you at a two rep max. Yeah. Right. I want you feeling again heavier than you want to feel. So you're doing it two with what you might be able to do for Yeah.

2:54:12 I don't know if my mouth is panning out here. Six. Six. Okay. All right. Got it. Got it. That's Right, just to sort of make it concrete for my something where you gotta be paying attention. Knuckle dragging. Yeah. So the double could be with a weight. Where you would tap out at six to eight. Six to yeah, something like that. Um I don't actually I'm not super concerned about the exact numbers here. What I'm concerned about is

2:54:31 Is it at a level where you sufficiently have to be paying attention? You have to be ready to go, right? We're not sending a work text and In the middle of like a set, right? Right. I'm not listening to a a dense podcast while I'm doing this. Totally. I also don't want it at such a intensity or volume that it's now Escalating.

2:54:47 Recovery. In a negative fashion. I got it. Right. You're you're not digging the hole deeper. Yes, that's right. Don't want to dig a hole any deeper. Fatigue is really interesting, whether you're looking at endurance or strength. However you wanna do it. This is

2:55:00 Basic physiology stuff. It doesn't go linearly. There's a little bit of an asymptote here, and there's a little bit of an exponential growth such that going from a 10% increase in intensity, so 50 to 60%. is almost identical in terms of recoverable volume. So the amount of volume you could do, let's say skiing.

2:55:16 At fifty percent of your max heart rate. It's pretty much the same as what you can do at sixty percent. There'll be very little changes. But if you go from eighty percent to ninety percent. There'll be dramatic increases in time it takes to recover. And you already we know

2:55:28 just based on what you've told me earlier, probably struggle on the higher end of that spectrum, right? And so getting into real high terms of recovery. Recovery. Yeah. So your recover maximum recoverable volume? is MRVs kinda how we talk about a lot is low. Yep for higher intensity stuff. Now I'd be interested to see what your muscle physiology looks like. Would you generally consider yourself more fast Twitch or slow Twitch? Just off the cuff.

2:55:47 I'd say more fast switch. Yeah, that's always the answer, right? That's me. Mm-hmm. My fatigue, my soreness from Power have you strength stuff is really, really high. Yeah. From those things.

2:55:57 Because I'm particularly good at that stuff, really for my own self. I mean when I've and look, you're much more sophisticated with this stuff, but when in my own primitive way when I've been my absolute strongest. I'm generally taking like seven to nine days between the same workout. Yeah. And super long rest intervals. Yeah of course. 'Cause if not It's not necessarily that you potentially respond better to that training.

2:56:19 It's the fact that the hole gets dug so deep if you do more than that. Mm. Your maximum recovery volumes is super low. Yeah, low. Right. Okay, so we want to pay attention to that. That's basically Where I'm looking at, right? So we're gonna do some stuff for global torso.

2:56:32 Think of this as trap bar deadlift. Right. So we want to make sure that shoulder position is appropriate, hip position, and we're putting strength in the posterior side. And we're just Remembering strength. If I've had a history specifically with Trapar Deadlift, I'm not sure why. For decades I was totally fine with Trapwire Deadlift. You're gonna love this. And then I did a Going from zero tennis to spending

2:56:54 I don't know. Seven to ten days with a pro in Florida. Doing like eight hours a day of tennis. Mm-hmm. Technically made tons of progress. Of course. And then I came back and I was doing a trap bar deadlift and my right SI was like clunk. And ever since I've actually had I've gone through periods of it improving, getting worse. Who knows if it's exactly the SI

2:57:13 But I've had issues with Both trap bar and say back squatting type movements. Yep. where I worry about the low back and and the hip. So I'm wondering if throw it off. Yeah. Pick a different exercise. We're we're Almost always tool agnostic.

2:57:30 Yeah. Thing we're trying to get to. And we'll pick a bunch of tools based on that, right? So I could do some split stance or you know I sat around. Split stands tend to be better for you. Single leg, or split stands entirely. Or both. Single leg, I would say just seems to be safer. I don't run into the same back issues. Do a single leg leg press.

2:57:48 Yeah. For all I care. Right. Like Who cares, right? It's different. Now we've got to do something for the back later, but Fine. Yeah. Right. We we can make that work. We can do hip thrusting. Mm-hmm. Lots of ways we can go about it. Single leg leg press is how I've been edging back into the Like training, which has overall gone very well with that one strange like piano wire, not snap, but like twing that I felt a couple of weeks ago. So this is just recent.

2:58:10 That was uh Two or three weeks ago. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, great. We could do sled drags. Right, we could push and pull things that are really heavy.

2:58:19 For a few steps. All of these things are gonna be fine. So my guess is if you were to do something like that, you'd probably be fine. That particular position it is being stuck in a position under load. that really give you problems. So I would look and see when we get out to the place w w what equipment do we have. And then we'll work around that.

2:58:36 That's the approach. Could be Like split stance, even potentially elevated one foot overhead pressing. for your shoulders, things like that. Let's get your back out of the equation, but I don't want it gone. That's the real big key. You said a second ago Thermal extension of your right leg when it's trailing.

2:58:50 Okay, great. So let's put it in terminal extension. I want your right leg behind. I want your right heel on the ground. I want you terminally locking out your knee. And then we're gonna do overhead movement. And so what we're doing is in that case we're not training the leg per se, we got that and other stuff, but we're connecting it to the rest of the movement group. Well say you never get the time off. You are always practicing that movement when distracted. That's gonna tell us do you own that position?

2:59:11 Do you really have that? Is that gonna meant Transfer onto the slopes. That's what we're after. Learning movement. And this is a general problem with physiology. I think we've done a huge disservice Teaching.

2:59:21 Systems. As if they are separate. Everyone makes and says, Oh yes, they're not, but then we go right back to treating it. System by system. If we want to improve movement, that means that foot heel connection needs to be worked on in all

2:59:34 of our practices, right? We just don't let it go. That's just the new ingrained System. So I would do that. I would say the same thing for our rotational work. It's really weird. People get to rotation and they all of a sudden just forget the strength train.

2:59:46 Right. And they get to rotation, they're like, I'll just do sets of tan or like what why? Yeah. Like, well, why is that the only answer? You wanna be strong this way and this way, all right? Great. So we're gonna have the same movement patterns um that we're gonna get there.

2:59:58 When you're doing let's just say Two rep sets, three rep sets. Yeah. Doesn't have to be right now, but I'd love to know what we're talking about in terms of total volume, number of sets that are gone. You can use A very easy rule of thumb. Three to five method.

3:00:13 Now, every time I say this, the entire internet Comes after me. Yes, I didn't invent it. No, like it's been around for a very long time. Three to five, which just means it's three to five days per week. Pick three to five exercises.

3:00:24 Do three to five sets. Three to five reps. Percent. Three to five minutes rest. So what that means, that could be on the high end five days a week.

3:00:33 Five sets of five. Of five exercises. That's a long workout. If you start adding up the rest in rules, and even if you cheat the rest in rules. And you do that at the appropriate load.

3:00:46 Five by five's anyone who's truly strength trained. That is a beast. Wanting to say but I'll I'll pass on saying it. Like starts with the M and F. And well then.

3:00:56 It's a load, right? It can be as little as three days a week. Three exercises, three sets of three. That's probably what I would hedge more to you. Yeah, so that I'm not Digging.

3:01:05 Any deeper with my already limited recoveryability. So if I were to give you like just one example of an actual full training program for you, I'm missing a bunch of information here, but just as a sample here, I would probably say if you're skiing initially Five days a week. As we call it. I probably want Roughly Wednesday, I want almost as a pure recovery day.

3:01:25 Mm. We are going to Potentially do some sort of Movement. So you're a P T or your actual movement coach. respiratory muscle.

3:01:35 Hip. adductors, whatever that little thing is we need to get activated. So any hygiene we have from Well there was Coaching there. We wanna get done. We're doing our hot cold sauna thing. You wanna do that outside?

3:01:46 Great. You wanna go do your breath work outside to get hot. Like any of those things you'd like to do for recovery. Wednesdays As an example is that day. That's it. Catch up on Work. Maybe for a few hours. We're gonna

3:01:58 Keep that thing. We're resetting We're checking hydration. Or sleep extension. We're napping.

3:02:03 We're getting PT, massage, soft tissue. All that stuff is Wednesday. And that's Wednesday. This is also the day where you do something that is Obnoxiously selfish. You wanna play three hours of video games.

3:02:14 Great. Like what is the thing you love to do that you don't like let yourself do? Yeah, World of Warcraft while I'm getting a manny petty. Or petty probably. I need my hands. Yeah, there you go. That's fantastic. All right. That is that day. We may or may not incorporate a low intensity walk. This is potentially getting out in Yeah, you're gonna have a lot of nature exposure, so we're fine there. I will likely also do a lot of walking.

3:02:36 In place of sitting. So in place of zoom calls, in place of that type of thing, I'll do a low Intensity walking. Yeah. If not, we would say walk outside for some chunks, two walks, two ten minutes walks a day. Morning news, something like that. Any other adjunct therapies and and tools and technologies we're using as

3:02:53 Gonna be that day, right? So that's amazing. Let's just say I'm just gonna make up an example here, just gonna run the whole thing. Let's just say Monday is that really hard red day. You go on that really hard session on the scope. We're gonna come back. after that final session we might go straight to the gym, get really warmed up, and we're gonna do three by three. Okay, we're gonna probably do that like

3:03:09 Rear stands. Foot elevated. Front foot elevated. Front foot elevated. Overhead press. Something like that. Now in this particular case, I'm probably not doing three sets of three. I might ask you to go to like fives. The upper body doesn't tend to respond to lower rep ranges as well as the lower body.

3:03:24 Interesting. Um, you won't see too many guys who are really, really excellent at bench press who only do singles or doubles. They tend to do probably closer to three to four to fives. Lower bodies Like generally opposite. So doing like a

3:03:36 An overhead press double. By the time you get it up and get the first rep up. Doesn't work as well. It it also might behoove me to use slightly lighter load for anything overhead, which I've avoided completely for probably half a year because of the compression sensitivity. Yeah. So I have I've done very little very little spinal loading. Angle it. So let's just do incline.

3:03:56 Yeah. Same thing, right? Okay, good. Like jammer press like forty five degree if you've got a landmine some other way. Perfect. We need to just be at an angle here. It doesn't have to be perfectly overhead, something like that, okay? So I'm probably doing that. I want some sort of lower body.

3:04:10 Similar vein. This could be threes. I love If you have a heavy sled. You can push for like three steps each leg. That would be great. If you've got some sort of

3:04:19 Potentially front squat. Goblast squat, Zerker Squat, something like that that Is Not aggravating of any of your things. When we're saying three by three, two at eighty percent, this is still week one. So I don't care if this is sixty percent.

3:04:32 It doesn't matter. Like we're just going through the motions here. Blitz stance or isolatal. Like movements. Just in in in my particular case. The sled is interesting. I responded well to sleds in the past, so I'll look for that at maybe

3:04:46 My equipment options might be limited. What would be uh an alternative step ups? Great. Super basic step up, right? Just like holding on to dumbbells or kettlebells or something. Yeah, but just be really careful. A lot of people will like to progress this by going to a higher step. Mm. Which is great. But we have to be really careful of how much hip flexion

3:05:05 And how much load we put on hip flexion for you. At the same time, if we go At a low. Say twelve inch box or something. We're really not getting much

3:05:14 movement here other than a basic knee extension. We want to think and kinda play through this. And my low back responds very well to the type of glucation that I experienced through step ups. High angle or low angle? High box or low box? I have only done lower box even at low box, assuming that I'm and th this is

3:05:31 getting into the weeds, but when I sort of do like the Versteg and like pick the knee up and really get that support leg glute contraction, my low back responds very well to them. Okay. Let me ask you one quick question. This is super technical here. When you're on that box, let's just say you're doing a step up with your left. Food.

3:05:49 Okay to make it easy. Yeah, the left foot over there. Where is your body at relative to your left foot? And where's your knee at? Hm. Well, the way I've been doing these step ups

3:06:00 is actually A sort of Cross lateral step. Oh sure. And then like a curtsy squat. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you're going to do that. I'm open to whatever you would suggest that has the lowest injury potential. Yeah. So you're doing that and feeling a great glue contraction because you're

3:06:16 Crossing. Okay, that's great. The only reason I asked that is because Depending on where your foot position is, this can dramatically change hamstring gluctivation. Right. And so are you stepping up with a knee? Related activity or you stepping up with a hamstring or glute? Activity.

3:06:29 I'm not sure. Yeah. So if your foot is way on front of you, so you can imagine You're kind of As you go to step up, you're rocking forward and then coming up, right? Or if it's behind you. Right. Right or same with you just behind you. None of these things are right or wrong.

3:06:43 Right. Should your knees go past Your toes. Well. What are we trying to do here? The more our kne goes past our toes, the more it's gonna be knee.

3:06:50 related. The more it stays behind and the more it's gonna be most here, typically, right, as a general rule. So what are we trying to get response to? Potentially you're in quads are weak Yeah. Now when you're gaining feeling great response from single leg pressing depends on how your setup is. You might be in a situation where you feel better when your quad's quad's got I can tell you how I'm setting up.

3:07:09 For the single leg legs. I'm actually placing foot very high on the platform. What kind of platform is this? Yeah. Well, let's just say on on a leg press and we've got this rectangle in front of us. Yeah. I am putting the foot quite high on that platform. So that it would be the I guess maybe the equivalent of rocking forward in this step. This is a very high hip flexion. Very high hip flexion. Yeah. And because the more I feel it in the glute, the better the low back feels. Yeah. Okay. So what you're getting is contraction over

3:07:38 Stretch. Which is great. Right. So contracting over this is why full range of motion stuff is such a good idea. Right. It needs to be strong over those long positions, right? Charlie Wing Groff all day, right? Like long, strong, and then work hard. Okay. So We wanna be in that position. I'm I'm not gonna Suggest that the

3:07:54 standard step up positions any better. If you're having success With how complicated things like low back are. If you're having success with that modified curse seed step up, then I would stay Like probably right there. Okay. Which is great. The only thing we might wanna do is Potentially load it more?

3:08:08 I don't know how you're doing now. As far as step ups go, I've been doing it unloaded. Like this is body body weight only. And then I've moved into loading with the leg press because there are just fewer variables at play. And I'm like, all right, let me see how I progress with this. Yeah. I would do the same thing, by the way, the record. Like if we started loading curtsy I would start very low. Like right now, let's not go the wrong direction. Yeah. Let's t take our wins. We're at the black tech table we won. One hand, let's say. In the step ups you were saying sort of below or twelve inches or below, like you're not really getting

3:08:37 A B and C if you're trying to like win a world record and you're trying to do like a four foot step up, you got your own set of problems, like how how do you think about elevation. It's the same thing you already answered the the question. I was coming out of this way, right? Which is if it's at a very low position, then it you're basically getting most drive from your knee extension initially to get you moving. This is generally what's gonna happen, but if you put it at a really high position, you're automatically putting your hip in really high flexion. So your thigh gets really close to your rib cage. Now we have to work the glute. And and it doesn't mean you're not you working your knee as well. Could be very knee heavy driven, still Doesn't matter.

3:09:08 But you've now force your glute to work over a high range of motion. Wait, which is what we're after. Yep. People tend to avoid range of motion when they have things like back injuries. That's oftentimes the wrong direction. Like you want to make sure without exacerbating pain, of course.

3:09:22 But it probably wants to be opened up a little bit and the hip needs to be so I would keep it there. I also made Ditch that and go to straight hip extension. This is this is go to with hip thrusts. Have you done this before? I have done hip thrusts. I mean we're talking about like Barb across the waist type stuff. Yep. I have

3:09:39 Yeah, for whatever reason, especially if it's single leg If I keep the elevation Pretty low. In other words, if I'm not getting to like max terminal Hip extension. Hip extension, I'm usually okay. It can cause my spinal erectors to fire.

3:09:55 No, yeah, yeah. And and that and that sometimes gets me into a spasmed situation where it's problematic. Yep, a hundred percent. So you're getting extension from Lumbar spine. Instead of But for instance, if I keep my hips somewhat low, let's just say I'm using a Swiss ball or something like that, and I'm doing like heel roll outside getting the hamstring. Yeah. Then I'm fine. Yeah. But higher weight if I'm really making the effort to go full range, my spinal reacters can really get overactivated and stay overactivated. Yeah. So you just wanna stay out of those situations. Yeah. This is why like it would be impossible. I'm glad you're letting us do this, by the way, because

3:10:29 Typically on podcast it kinda is like, What's the Yeah, what's the cookie gutter. Ah, like you can. No, this is really can't. And I I know this is really self indulgent, everybody, so I appreciate you bearing with, but you know, what I would have said, because I record the intro after these conversations, but like you get to the universal through the personal in the sense that If you've had any degree of injuries, if you've just lived life aggressively It's never gonna be a cookie cut or one size fits all. You're going to have to zig and zag like we're doing right now. So this is I appreciate you being game to do it also,'cause you're gonna have to zig and zag with this stuff. So yeah, with the hip bridging. If I keep my hips kinda low and I'm let's say targeting the hamstrings that it works, but otherwise

3:11:08 What I've realized with this low back stuff is If it gets super hypertonic like if my spinal reactors just like turn on and they refuse to turn off, that can last two days. Or more. And or three days. And it fucks up my sleep so badly. And everything else. And everything else. Yeah. Digestion, all of it. Mood, work, can't wanna don't want to do anything. Yeah. Okay. So I I would just Given the fact you've had some success

3:11:31 What's what you're currently doing. And those other ones are marginally helpful, then just ditch'em. Yeah. At this point it's just like Green only. Yeah, yeah. Yellow orange is out. Like that's what we're doing. The only other thing I'd say is let's change the positions entirely.

3:11:44 Which is Okay, how about You said you had success in areas where you make the hamstrings work really hard. So let's do a hamstring curl on a machine. Take the back. Entirely out of the question.

3:11:56 Glutes contract, hamsters contract. When we don't give the spinal erectors an even an option. to come because it sounds like once they come into the party when you're front squatting, when you're back squatting, when you're doing hip thrusts or glute bridges. They haven't learned to

3:12:09 Play their position yet? No, it's like that w that one friend everybody has, who shows up at the party, drinks too much, starts yelling and screaming, you're just like oh God Just don't invite him to the party. This guy again. Yeah. Yeah. You don't get to come to the party for a while. Yeah. Like you're just gone, right? We can do some other stuff there. What you're gonna eventually want to build to. Is integration. Which is okay, now we need to learn to go glute hamstring low back.

3:12:30 Firing sequence, right? Glute, hamstring, low back. But right now for a while, to make sure that your quads, hamstrings, and glutes are truly conditioned. Isolating. And until we get out of pain, that's where I don't even care too much. I would do Leg extension on leg extension machine. Leg curl.

3:12:46 In your situation where you're at and limited resources, probably not full time PT like Remember folks like This is this situation here. And then We're gonna slowly in our warm ups and cooldowns.

3:12:56 Do sequence movement patterns. That go glute. Hamstring. More back. And just to sort like hey. Remember.

3:13:04 This is the pattern we wanna be in. Okay, now we're not gonna put uh expose you to load or fatigue. We're gonna do that in our isolation work, but then we're come back and in our cooldowns, we're gonna go through that. I would also then build you out a specific warm up that you do every day. Prior to scheme. That is the same sequencing. Yeah. Right could be a thousand different little things we do, but we're gonna do a couple of drills and then I'm literally talking

3:13:23 Four minutes. of work, right? Where we're just remembering proper glute sequencing. And this is a combination to round this last point out,'cause we haven't got to Tuesday yet. I still have more questions about Monday, but yeah.

3:13:36 Well folks. I'm having a ton of fun, so I hope they are too. In getting to Matt is we need to make sure a part of that equation is your chest and your thoracic spine and your rib cage. Because we can't then

3:13:48 rebuild the lower sequence without And then just let the ribs do it. That natural thing. And so we don't want to be in a situation where we're like locked out. We can't like breathe everything's so tight. No. This needs to be a move. functional position, you actually would be sort of surprised how much that will carry over.

3:14:04 If you give it time. You're not gonna see significant changes in your posture, low back pain in three days by doing A four minute warm up. But an a year later. Yeah. This can have substantial effect. look like yeah okay. So one of the things I'd probably start you with is a basic diaphragm warm up.

3:14:23 Okay, so this could be as simple as Let's lay on your back. Let's go in a heels to your butt position. So knees are up in the air, your feet are flat on the floor, and your heels are right up against your butt. Okay, now you're gonna take your hands and put them around your stomach, so just below your rib cage. And we're just gonna use your breath to expand your hands.

3:14:39 So pushing it out there, right? Okay, great. Three or four breaths. Probably nasal only. Okay, awesome. Now we're gonna do a glute bridge.

3:14:46 Okay, we're in that same position and we're gonna make sure As high as you can go. Six inches. Two inches. an inch off the ground. I don't care. Only as high as you can go.

3:14:56 We're probably gonna tuck our chin. Right. This is almost automatically going to keep your position out of extension in your low back. So we're going to tuck your chin just a little bit there and we're going to breathe. Three breaths. Four breaths. While you're bridged. While we're bridged. Right. And watch what happens. Reset yourself.

3:15:11 You've gained eight inches in your hip extension. Guaranteed. Because not you actually stretched anything, but you've turned signals off.

3:15:20 Right now almost I'm Totally projecting here, but I'm pretty confident. Right now you're in a position to where any time you get Any perception through your low back just goes lock.

3:15:29 Yeah, the the the governor's just like Bingo. Shut off the yeah. You have to turn it off, right? Throw the throw the switch. So you throw the switch. All of a sudden boom, you could hip extension. And now it's not coming from your lumbar spine, right? And we're doing this still in a tucked position and we're going two inches lower than you want to go.

3:15:44 Mm-hmm. So gold the ties you want to go back down to it. Stay green. Totally. Stay green. We're gonna do some breath work there. And my breath work again. Yeah, breathe through your nose. Three. Yeah. Three of them.

3:15:52 Four, five, whatever you want, doesn't matter. Then come back down, reset, come back up one more time, you'll be up four more inches. Like if you're doing this at home, you're gonna be like, Oh my god. It works. Perfectly. I might have you go into one leg position. So you're gonna hold that position on one leg, say kick your right leg out, keep your knees identical to each other and kick the right leg out. And now we have ipsilateral control, right? So now our we have torso rotation. And we also have that terminal hip extension.

3:16:15 And now can you still breathe? What happened to your ribs? Bingo, right? You're gonna see, I guarantee, as soon as you do that, you look down, you'll have varched. Right, ribs have gone up. This is not a locked in hard contraction. This is a Chill.

3:16:27 Position. Right. All right, I'm relaxed here. I'm breathing. There's gonna be a little bit of shaking because you're in a single leg. Three, four, five, eight rusts.

3:16:37 switch to the next one. Take a break in between. Like those details aren't what matter here. You're just trying to slowly let the system know These are okay positions. You can relax. We're safe here. So I would probably go into that. Then I'll come back down. That's the s symbol sequence. We are Forty five seconds in.

3:16:52 At this point. And I guarantee you stand up in your posture. Will be better. Right, you'll be out of that little bit of a a curve. From there I would probably then take that exact same thing and go into a split stance. So um w imagine you could do this walking lunges. I would probably do this with a slight rotation, but I still want your hands

3:17:07 Around your stomach. So we're still watching The distance between your rib and Anterior spiritualiac spine, that ASIS, that front point of your hip. Mm-hmm. You're gonna pay attention to that. If you want to put your thumb

3:17:18 And your pinky, put your thumb below your rib, put your pinky on your ASIS while you're doing these lunges. And make sure that distance isn't changing. And just breathe. To a stop. All the way down. If you want to play here.

3:17:28 That's fine. Let's go a little bit rock your knee over your ankle. Rock backwards a little bit. Give me a little bit of a rotation. If you want to do a little bit of an arch, if you're Your right knee is forward in this lunge position. And you want to take your left arm and reach it over top of your head. Wanna rotate it, you wanna twist it, any of those things are fine, but the key is here, we're not doing these.

3:17:46 Because we have a checkbox that says this is my warm up. Intention is everything here. As soon as you lose intention, just stop. Because we're trying to make sure we have a specific action, not just like coach that I have to warm up. And specific action in this case is making sure you're not flaring Making sure that that's

3:18:03 torso position. That's correct. In terms of like distance from rib cage to the A S I S. Bony protrusion on the front of the hip. Folks. You see someone wearing low jeans and you see those like ridges in the front. Yeah.

3:18:19 Right. Exactly. Okay, so that that is the intention then. It's not just like oh I'm doing my eight steps. It's like no you're doing your eight steps, but the purpose is to maintain Yeah, and it's not even breathing. Not even necessarily like the other classic Things that are associated with a physical warm-up, like actual temperature increases, being metabolically efficient in the muscle, having more strength and power production. That's coming to. But we've slid that in.

3:18:42 We've also slid in breath work. 'Cause you're actually now altering O two and C O two on purpose? And you've done that on top of correcting movement patterns. And now you're reestablishing that. So I would argue would have loved you to do this barefoot.

3:18:54 Sure. If possible. Right. So your toes are all the way up. engaging. I want in this particular case that heel connection to be strong. I don't want you driving only through your heel. You're gonna be driving and using your whole foot? Let's make make sure we're not forgetting our toes and our feet.

3:19:08 Yeah, super important for skiing. Very important, right? It's important. Your foot awareness and control is super, super important. Everything, right? If you want to do a little more ski specific here, you could do actually Or a little more fun, you could take a little slide pad. Side of a

3:19:23 Two, if you will, if you can put it on a surface of slides and put that on your back foot. Mm-hmm. And let that slide back and forth. So you lose some some stability, that back leg, which is then just gonna further exacerbate Neurological control. And it's gonna remind you at all times, do you know where everything is moving? Right. So when we're talking your adductors are now moving.

3:19:42 You're talking your hip extensors and knee flexors, they're all working on both sides. And we're getting Am I controlling my breath? Am I controlling my ribs? So I would probably add a few of those in. Again, one give me one set. Six to twelve.

3:19:55 Lig. I I don't really care. There's no magic. Thing we're trying to get here. We're three minutes in. At maximum here. You've now got an entire lower body. The hips have been moved and isolated or activated. We would do something like that.

3:20:07 If they have any specific things and this is why I don't have insight, but if you had any Hey, yeah, my my right act doctor is weaker than my left, or it's overused, or Or Silvia's is something like that, then we would add in specificity here. Let's get your left glute mead. On. So we'll do some standing clamshells, we'll do some lateral walks, we do w whatever the case is that we need to get going there. And we're in a pretty good position. Last thing we would do is then go to your upper body.

3:20:29 And make sure that we're having a connection between our upper body to our toe. All the way up and down. So this could be throwing some Stoomagill. So throw in hand leg opposite here. We could do And like opposite meaning, like bird dog, something like that. Yeah, so you're on quadruped, right? So your hands are on the ground, you're on your knees.

3:20:44 And you would say lift your left hand all the way in front of you. So it would be over your head, but you're on your knees, and then at the same time your right leg is extending back. And so you're getting a very strong right glue contraction. That's crossing that fascial line to your left.

3:20:58 Shoulder? And now that entire thing is in the sequence. At the same time your core is working on rotation while remember What happened to your roofgate? Yeah. And we'll link to all this in the show notes, guys. So you'll you'll be able to find these things.

3:21:11 Something simple like that. would be probably what it would do. The very, very last thing I would do then would be some sort of extremely low level what some folks call aerobic plyometrics. This is Altus, this is uh Dan and and Stu stuff, this is rudimentary hops. So something like Stiff legged.

3:21:26 And you're gonna do twenty hops and land intentionally on your heel. Ooh, that's gonna be hard for me with the Kill drop stuff. Yeah. Right. Like again, you don't want to do it to a level of pain. You could do a little bit of your toe, you could do something, but if you're going to be landing and absorbing load

3:21:40 On the skis. Yeah, for sure. We have to get some sort of activation of tissue tolerance here. Remember If we really have a sensitivity issue in your low back with pain, we have to desensitize it somehow. The way that we do that is we walk right up to that line of sensitivity. Go back two steps. And we do a little bit of volume there.

3:21:57 And then ideally try to push that line. Back up. Tangible quick example. Let's just say you're having an issue with trap bar deadlifts.

3:22:05 Okay, great. And let's just say we did a thing where I said, Okay, put it on the bar. And we're just gonna work up to a load. Until it starts to hurt. Let's say that that is Three hundred pounds for you.

3:22:14 Probably have a pretty decent drop bar deadlift, I assume. Okay, great. So when the pain started hurting at three hundred pounds. Let's go to two hundred. Let's do three sets of six. Come on.

3:22:24 Come back the next day. No, no, no, she. Next session. Slowly working our way up to where's that line? Okay, seems like I can train at two eighty. And I have no pain. Let's

3:22:33 Now get the five sets. Oh six. Let's get to five sets of six and then some accessory exercises, some other stuff. No pain, no pain, no pain. Now let's slowly go up to two eighty. And then we're gonna slow the you're gonna desensitize that system by doing it. I'm doing the same thing with your landing and compression. I I had to get to that somehow. I don't want to exacerbate your pain.

3:22:51 But I wanna do Ten lands. I wanna do something. Um, it could be maybe on a little bit of a softer ground. We could do some other way around it, but we wanna slowly desensitize the tissue. that landing and loading is is okay. So that's how I would build Monday.

3:23:04 Okay. So Few follow ups on Monday. My most important remaining question is related to let's just say in this case the three exercises. And three to five minutes in between. I've benefited in the past from three to five minutes.

3:23:19 or more in between exercises, but One might be inclined, myself included, to say, well. Rather than doing, say, exercise A and doing the three sets of that exercise with five minutes in between.

3:23:33 Maybe I could just sequence it so that I do exercise A, I take like a minute rest, exercise B, take a minute rest, C, take a minute rest, and then go back to A. Is that something that is acceptable slash advisable or do you really want more of a break for your central nervous system or otherwise? In your particular case in this situation, what you laid out that super setting is totally fine. Okay, great. No issue there. We're not trying to maximize your strength. Yeah. If we were trying to do that for any number of reasons where we really are trying to peek it, what you're really trying to do in this case, I don't even care if you get stronger.

3:24:05 If we lose some strength over the course of this It's okay. Mm. We're trying to do is continue to have health. Throughout the system. So we need to be strong enough to hold positions while you're on the slope. Right. So we're trying to avoid a slope of degradation over the course of fight camp. So if you wanted to to do that

3:24:20 No problem. You want to superset'em is what we'd call that. Yeah. Um, what we would probably have you do is set the whole circuit up four. It's part of your kind of warm up. And you do one. Catch your breath for a second, you slowly walk over, set up, do the next one. I don't care that it's three minutes.

3:24:33 Or two minutes. Or less. What we wanna make sure we're doing is not getting a ton of fatigue. I don't want you if your breath rate is one hundred and fifty breaths. For a minute.

3:24:42 Or your heart rate rather. If you're sweating a lot, if you're really getting it Yeah. Oh. Like pause. Calm down. Um I actually want you leave these sessions feeling like I didn't do anything. But if you can do that super set fashion, no problem. Uh dishing should not be thirty minutes.

3:24:56 Yeah. Really you've remember you skied hard. Oh yeah, well that's part of the reason I'm asking. It's like I'll probably be pretty fatigued walking in. So yeah, that's great. Like we're gonna get a high quality warm up in, we're gonna do a couple of exercises at a reasonable quality, but we're also not going to ninety ninety five percent. We're getting a good strong contraction. Probably finish it potentially with one exercise.

3:25:15 To a pump. This would be Let's take one area that needs that is undersized, that is under strength, that is dysfunctional. And we'll do one set. So many options.

3:25:27 Yeah. We'd probably rotate it. Uh. is to be honest. So like maybe maybe it's just It's clues.

3:25:32 Mm. Maybe we put a band on And we just do a set of Thirty. Glue pumps. Yeah.

3:25:38 We're out of there, right? Got it. Maybe something for your shoulder. Yeah, you've had this thing going on. Maybe Something like that going on. I mean maybe it's Hand leg opposite. Thirty reps each. I just did this yesterday. for kinda shoulders using rear adult stuff.

3:25:52 Totally feels great, right? Yeah. So something like that. Maybe uh bent roll. on a machine. Like what any number of things we can do. And you do one or so sets of twenty, you get a nice big pump, you feel jacked, it's great. That's probably what I would do. One or two of those.

3:26:07 One set, maybe two, and then We're done. What else would you like to add and then another critical question, which is one where I do think I tend to Lose the plot. I don't think I eat enough, actually. And I've done so much fasting, I'm like if I'm not hungry.

3:26:22 I have developed the habit of not eating very much and I can see that in my lean body mass right now in terms of just totals, um I As an under muscle or over fat. Both. The over fat is I've just been a piglet over the holidays and I've been doing less strength training in Being in a protective mode.

3:26:41 For the back stuff. And I think just not consuming enough. protein and other things. So we've talked about Monday. I guess if there are any sort of crux pieces that you'd like to discuss. For the rest of the week. Which you already kinda laid out.

3:26:54 Top level. And then I would love to get your thoughts on uh tracking nutrition because part of what I've seen is like, all right, I'm not gonna like weigh out my chicken breasts on this jewelry scale. And I I Practically speaking, I'm probably not gonna do that. Maybe I should. But Much like tracking hydration by having A container.

3:27:12 Yeah, just set volume and you just multiply it out. Yeah. That's straightforward. How you might approach nutrition with a similar Yeah. Great. This is fun.

3:27:22 Regarding training, we kinda said We're probably Just a very quick recap. Monday's that red day, Wednesday's that green day. Which that means Saturday. Which is kinda like the reason I'm doing this is Monday, Wednesday, Saturday. generally going to be if we can a single session.

3:27:35 And this is technical work. So this is Let's Review Monday through Friday. And Tim, what do we need to work on? You know, this is you and your coach going back and say, We really want to work on this. We need more reps at this. In other words, what do you need more volume in? And that's Saturday. It is practice.

3:27:48 It is we miss this, we miss this, we miss this. Here's his drills I'm gonna do. It is not high fatigue, it's also not nothing. It's not green day. You got all Sunday. Sundays off, or whatever. It doesn't matter what days a week you are, but this is a point. So it is a little bit of work, but it is really getting that last bit of volume. We just need more practice. Practice takes reps. Awesome. That then leaves us with Tuesday. Thursday and Friday.

3:28:08 That lift you could do another lift on Saturday. Afterwards do real technical stuff and do the same thing. I would do the exact same thing I did on Monday, but Switch the exercises. So it's a little bit different. So let's say we decided to do step ups. On Monday.

3:28:21 Switch that out for Rear foot on the Blaze Quad. If those are great. Switch that out for uh

3:28:27 Lower body extension exercise. Whatever. Same exact concept though. Same thing. Switch out your upper body. Movement, switch out your rotation movement. Give you a little bit more variety. Make sure we're doing something pulling, something pressing. Something eroding. Um make sure we're doing something in

3:28:41 what we would technically call frontal and sagittal plane. So maybe this is a lateral bunch. So not only are we now switching out exercise, we're going laterally. As well. Something like that. Same thing with our upper body. Maybe it's a horizontal pole row instead of a vertical pole.

3:28:55 I would set that up. On Saturday. Your technical work, really quick lift, and then you're out of there. Done for the day. You wanna add any recovery stuff from Wednesday? Great. If not.

3:29:03 Go have your fun. Do what you do. Enjoy the weekend. Tuesday. And then probably Thursday. Are going to be Generally.

3:29:11 Yellow. Medium days. On the slopes. May or may not lift, but you're gonna do a lot of volume on those days. This is probably your longer duration stuff. Gonna feel fine on Thursday. You came off Wednesday?

3:29:21 Friday if we want to come back and do one red. Not a double red, but one. Then I'm good. Hard, hard, hard ski. Probably what I'd say. So we're lifting on that Monday.

3:29:31 We're gonna lift again. In this case, I know this is got a little confusing, but I'll probably lift on Thursday. Right, just to split it up a little bit. Thursday. Is a yellow

3:29:38 Orange. Ski, hard ski, not a lot. We're gonna lift. Can be kinda hard, so we're stacking hard on hard. And then Friday Might be one really hard ski.

3:29:47 Now we're good. 'Cause Saturday is pretty much green and then we're definitely green on Sunday. That's how I would stack the whole week up and I would keep the exact same theme lifting wise. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out. every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading.

3:30:29 albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Nordic Naturals, the number one selling fish oil brand in the US. More than 80% of Americans, that's probably a lot of you listening, including me, because I do measure my omega 3s, do not get enough omega 3 fats from their diet. That is a problem because the body cannot produce omega 3s, an important nutrient

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