The Art of Manliness - #207： Primal Endurance

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so you probably

00:00:18.660 heard of the paleo diet primal living etc it's got a whole bunch of different types of names

00:00:22.080 one of the driving forces behind this movement is a guy named mark sisson he's got a website

00:00:26.060 called mark's daily apple if you haven't been there go check it out there's a lot of great content on

00:00:30.680 fitness and just health in general anyways mark's got a great new book out called primal endurance

00:00:36.000 and if you're an endurance athlete if you're on marathons triathlons do obstacle course races this

00:00:40.160 episode is for you today on the show mark and i are going to discuss some of the myths about training

00:00:46.500 for endurance events some of those being you don't need a carbo load right have the big bowl of pasta

00:00:52.480 than the night before your event in fact that can actually hurt your uh your progress and your

00:00:57.680 performance we also discuss how you know training for endurance events and how you probably shouldn't

00:01:01.800 train as hard as you are training in fact you're gonna have to run slower than you think you should

00:01:06.000 run and sometimes may even have to walk uh today on the show mark's gonna explain why that is and

00:01:11.400 give specific ways examples protocols on how to train how to eat what to do for recovery so you can

00:01:18.820 have you perform your best not only perform your best but enjoy your endurance sport for as long as

00:01:23.920 you can uh so great show make sure to check out the show notes after the podcast is over at aom.is

00:01:30.640 slash sisson where you find links to resources and things we mentioned throughout the show

00:01:35.740 mark sisson welcome back to the show thanks brett back after how many years uh since 2009

00:01:46.400 it's a long time pal we've been growing we have you've grown phenomenally since then like last

00:01:51.840 time we talked uh your blog mark's daily apple had just gotten started all about primal living

00:01:58.300 um and you're out with a new book uh for endurance athletes for people who do triathlons marathons

00:02:05.780 long distance bicycling those crazy people who do the ultra marathons um it's called primal endurance

00:02:12.240 and the latest one obstacle racing obstacle racing i'm a big fan of the obstacle racing

00:02:16.260 yeah i'm i don't like just running i like being i have my running interrupted with peg boards and the

00:02:23.220 like i'm hip i mean if if that had existed you know 40 years ago when i started competing at an elite

00:02:28.900 level that would have been my sport i guess but anyway here we are here you are but so yeah primal

00:02:34.280 endurance this is interesting because you're going back to your roots with this book you started off

00:02:38.900 uh your career your athletic career as an endurance athlete uh for our folks who aren't familiar with

00:02:44.380 that tell us about your background as an endurance athlete what did you do uh i was a distance runner

00:02:49.720 uh primarily a marathoner and uh started out of necessity i grew up in a small fishing village in

00:02:55.340 maine i had to had to hike or walk or run two miles each way to school um and just figured that running

00:03:03.180 would get me home faster so i i started running at you know 11 12 13 years old and

00:03:08.380 joined the high school track team wound up doing pretty well in the mile in the two mile events

00:03:12.940 um rolled that over into college where i was captain of the cross-country team started doing road races

00:03:18.980 in the summer uh got out of college was uh good enough at running that i thought i would train for

00:03:24.160 the 1980 olympic trials so i spent the next several years focused on running uh putting in 100 miles a

00:03:30.740 week for many years uh got to be pretty good i finished fifth in the u.s national championships in 1980

00:03:35.440 and um so yeah i was uh i was down this path of um of human performance but ironically i started down

00:03:44.100 that path with an eye toward improving my health and longevity and as i got further and further down

00:03:50.680 that path it became fitter and fitter and more uh able to able to run faster and compete at a high

00:03:57.960 level i found that my health was suffering and that was a little bit of a disconnect because i'd assumed

00:04:03.120 all along that the more you ran the healthier you became and the better your heart was and the

00:04:08.380 stronger your joints were and so on and so forth but that wasn't the case so uh at the end of uh

00:04:15.780 around 1980 i um i was forced to retire from marathoning my injuries i had osteoarthritis i had

00:04:23.180 tendinitis had all sorts of injuries that had piled up and i was getting sick a lot and i had irritable

00:04:28.120 bowel syndrome and i was just a wreck really so i retired from that that high level competition

00:04:34.240 and and devoted kind of myself to figuring out ways in which i could i could be fit and and healthy at

00:04:40.840 the same time and and that's what i've spent the last 36 years investigating and doing and ultimately

00:04:47.800 i came to this point um about four years ago where i realized there is this this convergence of

00:04:54.680 technology now where we find that we can create the ultimate sort of high performance athlete and

00:05:00.680 not sacrifice health and that became the impetus for my new book primal endurance okay and what's

00:05:07.120 interesting is that primal endurance it shows athletes how to like you said be the optimal athlete but it

00:05:14.000 breaks or shatters a lot of myths it goes against the grain from what you've heard if you grew up in

00:05:20.060 the 80s and 90s about what you need to do to be an endurance athlete and i think it's interesting

00:05:26.020 too like you said you had these you were you were fit like you could run long distances quickly um but

00:05:32.160 you felt terrible and but this this is something that's common in the endurance uh world or was common

00:05:37.980 is becoming less common now uh what is it about endurance training the way people typically do it that

00:05:44.240 makes them feel terrible well first of all it's this um you know it's like a badge of courage to tell

00:05:51.880 somebody you're a marathoner or a ironman triathlete or or some ultra runner that uh people go oh my god

00:05:57.500 you must what discipline you must have and what strength you must have and and that's pretty much

00:06:02.420 true because it you're it's half the time you're out there most of the time you're out there you are

00:06:06.340 managing pain you know you're uh you're struggling through these workouts and you're and you're and you're going

00:06:12.180 to the well in these races digging as deep as you can um it's it's never you know i don't know of

00:06:17.820 anyone who's an elite level racer whoever says oh i was having so much fun out there right um and yet

00:06:23.520 you talk to elite basketball players elite football players elite soccer players they'll tell you what a

00:06:27.520 blast they were having on the pitch but with endurance athletes it's more of this um stoic kind of uh

00:06:33.300 management of pain and and it was an assumption that we all had that in order to race fast you had to a

00:06:39.500 train fast b you had to practice suffering i mean that was really what it was like in the mindset was

00:06:46.600 you know if i didn't suffer today in my workout the workout was not worth doing and so for decades we

00:06:53.600 went out and we put all these miles in and we raced we ran literally as many miles as we could at the

00:07:00.240 highest possible level we could with the heart pounding as high as we could sustain um and with the joints

00:07:08.100 being able to maybe keep pace uh without getting injured so it was really what's the you know

00:07:13.520 what's what's the highest amount of pain threshold i can create for myself in my training and sort of

00:07:18.360 practice that on a daily basis so that when i get into a race i'll be able to you know recreate all

00:07:24.940 this uh uh pain but management manage it in a in a better way and it's foolish to think that that

00:07:30.840 that's that's kind of how we train now ironically we also um we we sort of understood through

00:07:37.920 conventional wisdom that the way to fuel all this activity was to take in lots of carbohydrate because

00:07:42.500 the understanding was that when you manage your carbohydrate intake and you manage your glycogen

00:07:47.240 stores that's how you become an elite racer that's how you become a better at at racing at whatever

00:07:53.780 level you're at so that that sort of begat this whole concept of carbo loading and all of the gel

00:08:00.580 packs and all of the drinks the the pre-race drinks the the during race drinks and all that stuff was

00:08:06.200 was basically contemplated to get more and more sugar into your system so that you could you could

00:08:12.060 burn more glucose and sort of put off hitting the wall for as long as you could well those two things

00:08:18.280 the the intense mileage and the uh focus on carbohydrates and particularly on sugar kind of

00:08:25.360 overlooked the the main focus of what we should be looking at with endurance training which is

00:08:30.980 how do i manage glycogen by burning fat really well how do i become more efficient at burning fat so

00:08:37.400 that i don't have to put in a lot of carbohydrate that i don't have to put in a lot of sugar and once

00:08:42.480 you realize that fat is the preferred fuel for humans in general and that it becomes a preferred

00:08:49.360 fuel for humans who are competing uh once you understand this you can then begin to take on a

00:08:55.920 program a training program that reconfigures your fuel partitioning so that you get most of your energy

00:09:03.300 from fat at reasonably high levels of output uh that you spare glycogen that you don't put so much

00:09:11.100 of this inflammatory carbohydrate and sugar and and grain stuff through your through your digestive

00:09:17.900 track and your body and lo and behold you become a more efficient runner because you're burning fat

00:09:23.700 at a higher rate and you become a less injured runner because you're not getting that inflammation

00:09:28.300 that chronic inflammation that consistently goes with with the training and because you can do so on

00:09:34.540 on a uh on slower training and we'll get to that a little bit and it turns out that we were

00:09:40.460 training at way too high way too high a heart rate and too fast a pace to become efficient the only way

00:09:46.040 you become efficient at endurance training is to manage your heart rate in a in a completely aerobic

00:09:52.500 zone which means at a much more comfortable pace so now all these things come together now you're

00:09:57.840 you're actually you become a better racer by training slower strategically of course uh by adapting your

00:10:05.080 athlete your diet so that you become better at burning fat and when you become better at burning fat

00:10:08.960 you burn off your stored body fat so now we get to the point where you've got an ideal body

00:10:14.760 composition so many runners i see at the beginning of a marathon brett and they're like seriously dude

00:10:20.600 you got 25 or 30 pounds to lose and you're entering this marathon and you tell me you're training 30 40

00:10:25.560 50 miles a week how come you're not losing the weight well that's because they haven't become good at

00:10:30.400 burning fat so we we're training at a much kinder gentler pace we're eating the sorts of foods that

00:10:37.320 encourage us to burn off fats we're getting injured less often and sick less often because of this

00:10:42.900 reduction in inflammation and and oxidative throughput and it all comes together to make

00:10:47.880 for a strong lean fit happy healthy productive athlete yeah that's fantastic there's a lot to

00:10:54.580 unpack there and i thought that was interesting that statistics i've read that other where other

00:10:57.540 places where they did a survey and they found that 30 of all marathon uh participants like they're

00:11:03.700 overweight which is that crazy you think like these like marathon they can run 26 miles they're probably

00:11:09.200 the fittest people in the world but a lot of them are overweight correct and they're overweight by the

00:11:13.240 way they're overweight because they're stuck in this carbohydrate paradigm and the way it here's how it plays

00:11:18.220 out you know you train really hard but because you're not burning fat at a high level you're still

00:11:22.900 burning through all of your glycogen every every workout you do uh you get home the brain says hey we

00:11:29.060 just depleted all the glycogen we better build back our glycogen stores we better eat all the

00:11:33.360 carbohydrate we can get our hands on so you carbo load that night and then the next day you go oh well

00:11:38.400 i carbo loaded i better go out and train again train hard and it's this vicious cycle well the brain

00:11:43.180 sort is telling you to overcompensate by replenishing the carbohydrates after a fashion and it gets to the

00:11:50.960 point where every excess carb that you take in raises insulin and is sort of presumptively going

00:11:57.240 toward fat stores once the glycogen stores are filled and you have this this vicious cycle where

00:12:02.480 you think wait a minute i just sweated off 500 calories today and and every day for the last uh

00:12:07.600 you know year and a half you're telling me i haven't lost any weight what's wrong with this picture well

00:12:11.980 what's wrong with this picture is you haven't become good at burning fat yeah that's the chronic

00:12:16.480 cardio that you talk about in the book exactly so let's let's talk about let's get into this difference

00:12:20.640 so the difference between aerobic and anaerobic training because i think most people think oh yeah

00:12:24.600 yeah running bicycling those are aerobic activities and they think of like lifting weights as an

00:12:29.700 anaerobic activity but what you argue in the book is that many endurance athletes who think they're

00:12:35.980 training aerobically are actually training anaerobically right so we're always doing a mix

00:12:43.080 of aerobic and anaerobic energy production so at the very lowest levels it's 99 aerobic using oxygen

00:12:51.700 using oxygen to burn fat so walking around the house uh uh easy easy jogging easy swimming whatever

00:12:58.660 when your heart rate's just creeping up there you're in a mostly aerobic zone uh as you start to increase

00:13:06.560 the speed the pace as you start to increase the workload as the heart starts to beat harder you

00:13:11.900 enter a little bit more of an anaerobic contribution and that is the uh the burning of glycogen uh through a

00:13:19.680 process known as glycologist glycolysis and so there's a little bit of fat burning and then some

00:13:24.820 glucose glycogen uh burning and as you increase the pace and increase the the rate of heart rate

00:13:30.740 it becomes less aerobic and more anaerobic and that's that part that starts to the anaerobic part is what

00:13:37.860 we see when we start to build up lactic acid and we start to get out of breath because we can't

00:13:42.880 we can't keep up aerobically we can't bring in oxygen enough to just do this with an aerobic oxygen

00:13:50.540 based uh level so where we see so much happening with uh with endurance athletes is because they can

00:13:58.900 train at a high heart rate uh they choose to do so thinking that at the higher heart rate that i can

00:14:04.820 maintain in my training for an hour hour and a half whatever the better that must be for me but what

00:14:11.080 it's doing is it's reinforcing this anaerobic type of training which is that training which puts you

00:14:16.980 into that lactic acid buildup phase that that takes you away from the aerobic training so the first sort

00:14:27.120 of lesson that we learn in primal endurance is where's that sweet spot where i can train my heart at

00:14:33.760 its highest possible rate but still mostly aerobic and it turns out that it's a number that's proven

00:14:41.220 empirically over the last 20 years to be 180 minus your age plus or minus a few beats based on genetics

00:14:47.920 and and and predispositions and and perhaps your your your athletic history but 180 minus your age

00:14:54.820 so in my case i'm 62 uh so 180 minus 62 is 118 so 118 is the highest heart rate that i

00:15:03.480 should be holding in long uh endurance efforts if i'm on the bike if i'm hiking if i'm jogging if

00:15:10.260 i'm um you know wandering around the house quickly or whatever i'm doing 118 is that heart rate for me

00:15:17.740 at which i'm putting mostly oxygen through my body and i'm not entering into any anaerobic

00:15:23.120 contribution now what a lot of people find is because they've trained so hard for so long

00:15:29.260 that and like i'm a person i could if i wanted to brett i could go hold 165 beats a minute on the

00:15:36.140 bike for 20 minutes or 30 minutes or maybe longer but it's not efficient at that at that rate i am not

00:15:43.620 burning mostly fat i'm burning mostly carbohydrate and i'm and i'm reinforcing that whole energy system

00:15:50.300 of carbohydrate dependency and i'm not becoming more efficient at burning fat so with that 180 minus

00:15:56.300 your age which in my case is 118 beats a minute that's the maximum heart rate that i can go at now

00:16:00.980 if i people say well mark i tried your program and i can usually run 7 30 miles but you know

00:16:07.820 when i met when i limited my heart rate i wore a heart monitor and i didn't let my heart get above

00:16:12.820 say 140 for a for a 40 year old i was going like 13 minute miles what's up with that i can go a lot

00:16:20.420 faster than that well what's up with that we just proved that you are not very good at burning fat

00:16:25.500 we just proved that you are not very aerobically efficient so in primal endurance in the book we

00:16:30.920 talk about one of the strategies for becoming more aerobically efficient is to limit your heart rate to

00:16:35.380 that number for most of your base training don't exceed it if you do not for not for very long

00:16:42.500 and over time you'll find that your efficiency improves so that same person who was running 12 or

00:16:47.060 13 minute miles over time is now going well wait a minute now it now at my 140 maximum heart rate

00:16:53.180 hey i'm doing 10 minute miles or i'm doing 9 30s and then a month later wow i'm doing 8 30s what

00:16:57.840 does that mean well what that means is that they're doing 8 minute and 30 second miles burning mostly

00:17:02.880 fat burning 97 98 fat so that when they go ramp up the next phase of their training to to become

00:17:11.640 faster and and uh and more and more powerful if you will uh they're starting at a much higher base of

00:17:19.060 fat burning which will benefit them when they get in a hard workout or they get a race against

00:17:24.680 somebody who's not as efficient as they are does that make sense that makes sense so you got to slow

00:17:28.240 down to speed up in the long run i mean that's the mantra and it's it's counterintuitive at first but

00:17:33.600 when you understand the biomechanics and the biochemistry of it uh you can see that if we're

00:17:37.780 talking about becoming more a more efficient fat burner and if we understand that fat is this preferred

00:17:43.540 fuel that we want to tap into so that we can we can better manage our glycogen stores and spare

00:17:49.720 glycogen because there is this science that suggests that once the muscles are out of glycogen

00:17:55.560 you hit the wall so now if i'm if i'm running at the same pace as the competitor next to me

00:18:02.020 but i'm burning at the pace that we're at i'm doing i'm getting 80 of my uh my energy from fat and 20

00:18:08.480 percent from glycogen and that person is getting 40 of his energy from fat and 60 from glycogen at

00:18:15.080 the same pace who's going to run out of glycogen faster he is now so that so if we if we go to the

00:18:20.620 same pace he'll die he'll hit the wall before i do but conversely if i want to match his his his fuel

00:18:27.080 uh uh partitioning and i want to go 60 uh or 40 fat and 60 glycogen i'm going to be going a lot

00:18:34.340 faster than he is from the get-go because i'm that much more efficient okay and so i mean i imagine

00:18:39.520 this when people hear this and they put it into practice first it's extremely frustrating like you

00:18:44.340 might be doing a lot of walking during your if you're a runner yeah yep right or as we say on

00:18:49.360 the bike you may be doing some paper boy up the hill um but uh then that's zigzagging back and

00:18:54.820 forth across the street with a with a bike full of papers back in the old days i don't know if that

00:18:58.380 means anything to your audience but uh it's a it's a cool visual for those of us who are over 50

00:19:03.060 um but it basically yeah i've had so many people uh report back to me exactly that wow i was so

00:19:10.460 frustrated when i first started doing this it's like i i wasn't going that fast i didn't feel like

00:19:14.920 i was doing much but i'll tell you what after you know a month of doing this i'm racing faster than

00:19:20.560 ever and i'm not even doing any speed work what's up with that what's up with that is you're racing

00:19:24.960 you're more efficient you're burning more fat so that when you do get to the high end

00:19:28.500 you've got more glycogen to spare than the guy sitting right next to you who hasn't been training

00:19:33.160 that way this is fascinating so before we get to the nutrition because that's connected to this

00:19:38.040 let's continue with the training because one of the other things you talk about in primal endurance

00:19:42.660 that sort of goes against the grain of what you're traditionally here in endurance sports is

00:19:48.040 this idea strength training should be an important part of an endurance athletes programming and not

00:19:54.040 just like any type of like i think most people when they think endurance athletes doing strength

00:19:57.920 training they think maybe some barbell you know some dumbbells some lunges but you're recommending

00:20:03.300 like barbell training like deadlifts and and uh squats i mean right so if you're a runner or cyclist

00:20:09.340 it would be those uh the lower body stuff that the the complex complex exercises like weighted squats

00:20:15.780 and deadlifts and the reason is uh it's to develop uh sustained power so what happens in a race a couple

00:20:24.780 things happen when you're when you're competing one of which is certainly that ability to produce energy

00:20:30.300 at a more efficient rate and to fuel the muscles but the muscles still have to have the ability to

00:20:36.220 withstand the demands of increased uh output whether it's uh sprinting whether it's climbing hills as a

00:20:43.640 runner or climbing hills as a cyclist and what we see happening over time particularly in the longer

00:20:48.700 events is that athletes may have a hundred percent of their max power on the first hill but then the

00:20:54.380 second hill rolls around and even though their energy production is is reasonably good the muscle

00:21:00.420 fibers themselves are starting to tap out because they haven't trained for this ability to sustain

00:21:06.480 power over time uh and so we see cyclists who'll maybe climb the second hill at 75 or 80 percent of

00:21:13.560 their max capacity or max power and then by the time the third hill rolls around they're at 65 percent

00:21:18.380 so how do we how what can we do in terms of training to increase that ability to sustain power over the

00:21:26.540 long haul and what we do is we load those those muscle fibers uh deeper and deeper we put more stress

00:21:33.500 on them in a short period of time through specific things that we do in the gym for example

00:21:38.240 uh we might do weighted squats and we might determine well what is my you know one rep max

00:21:45.960 on a squat and let's just say if you're an endurance athlete it might be say 100 or 200 pounds

00:21:51.100 well then we take 80 percent of your one rep max we call that 160 and instead of doing one rep and

00:21:57.500 stopping or conversely instead of doing say um 80 or 100 pounds 20 or 30 you know times 10 reps times

00:22:07.120 three sets and then walk away we take a we take a hybrid of that and we go okay 80 of your one rep max

00:22:13.200 we're going to do a couple of we do as many as we can uh right now do a quick 10 second rest uh don't

00:22:20.220 don't even re-rack the equipment or don't really walk away from it uh do a couple more uh maybe take a

00:22:25.740 short rest there do a couple more and we keep loading those fibers until we can't complete one more

00:22:31.360 rep with perfect form and form being the sort of main arbiter here so what we're doing is we're

00:22:37.720 we're loading the fibers and then we're backing off a little bit and then we're loading them again

00:22:42.980 and backing off a little bit but we're loading them maximally so we are we are recruiting fibers

00:22:49.860 deeper and deeper into that muscle tissue to the extent that those fibers become able to handle

00:22:54.960 uh the power demands that may be called upon in a sprint uh halfway into a bike race or a or a hill

00:23:02.760 climb a charge up the hill or heartbreak hill at uh at the at the boston marathon or something like

00:23:08.780 that so these are we're basically we're training the component parts of what a race consists of but

00:23:16.680 doing so in a way that rather than just practicing doing them we are breaking them down we're parsing the

00:23:22.860 entire uh the entire goal into its component parts so that we're dealing with the aerobic efficiency

00:23:30.580 we're dealing with maximum sustained power uh we'll talk later about sprinting and and how we look at

00:23:37.040 sprints as a form of interval training and then ultimately we'll look at how the diet is important

00:23:42.680 in in reconfiguring how we extract fat from uh from our stored body fat so uh how do endurance

00:23:49.400 athletes avoid the risk of bulking right while doing strength training because like you know

00:23:54.480 on cyclists runners like every little bit like if you if you sure you have more muscle and that muscle

00:23:59.860 can do more work but that's like more weight you have to carry around um so how do you uh address

00:24:05.460 well first of all yeah so if we're doing lower body training in the gym um you're not you know you're

00:24:12.520 not bulking up on top so you're not really carrying around any extra weight on top we're not having

00:24:17.640 you do biceps curls and you know and lat pull downs and uh you know deltoid raises and things like that

00:24:24.580 i mean you can if you want to but that's not the point here the point here is is how specific can i

00:24:29.480 get in my in the gym in the weight training so that i'm building power and not putting on useless mass

00:24:36.440 around my entire body so when we're talking about doing uh weighted squats or deadlifts um we're just

00:24:42.200 talking about the leg muscles and you will not bulk up it just it's impossible because if you're doing

00:24:46.920 the work running uh you're still going to be you're still going to be um leaning out that muscle

00:24:53.580 tissue it's just that what we've done is we've worked on your power we haven't worked on your

00:24:57.440 size we've worked on your power right so so it's not an issue bulking up is not an issue and i

00:25:02.680 defy you to show me one you know one cyclist who has complained about uh bulking up because of the

00:25:11.200 work he did in the gym most cyclists you look at their quads even if they're not doing gym work

00:25:16.120 their quads are pretty you know pretty uh big meat slabs because if because of the especially

00:25:22.060 the sprinters because of that work that they do right so nothing you do in the gym is going to

00:25:27.040 um hamper or hinder your your ability to race efficiently it's really about the power to weight

00:25:34.100 ratio that we're developing um cyclists in particular you know they look at this magic

00:25:38.560 number of six watts per kilogram and if you can get the six watts per kilogram over extended periods of

00:25:43.340 time uh you're going to beat the guy next to you uh given uh the same you know equipment and

00:25:49.120 everything else so let's talk about sprinting because that uh is an anaerobic activity um so

00:25:55.200 how does that help you i mean how does this fit in with the idea that you know we want to build an

00:25:59.080 aerobic base uh in our uh endurance uh training right so then sprinting comes in because a couple of

00:26:06.540 reasons um number one uh sprinting is another way to um to work on that uh sustained power that deep

00:26:14.280 power when we talk about sprinting we're not so much talking about the old school of the intervals

00:26:21.120 and if you're a you know if you're a marathoner you probably did a lot of um half mile repeats or mile

00:26:27.020 repeats or really longer intervals that we wouldn't really call sprinting to begin with

00:26:32.260 and it was rare at least when i was training that a that a marathoner would do 100 meter sprints or 200

00:26:38.740 meter sprints because it was like okay how does that that doesn't apply to what i'm doing in the

00:26:44.040 marathon i'm not i'm never running that fast so why should i train that fast well the answer is

00:26:48.160 because uh what we're training is we're first of all we're we're looking at how can we get

00:26:53.240 the most effective workout with the least amount of of pain suffering and sacrifice we call it the med the

00:27:00.580 minimum effective dose so when you're sprinting if i can show you that by doing

00:27:06.020 six to eight sets of 10 to 20 second sprints all out after a warm-up obviously you want to warm up

00:27:14.820 but all out maximum effort and then you're done uh you might go well you're crazy mark how does that

00:27:21.180 help me with a 10k or a or a marathon well what it does is it it works those completely anaerobically

00:27:28.400 which has its own metabolic um side effects that create the gene expression that builds power and

00:27:36.480 strength and speed but it also it's working at the level of the um the structure of the of the tendons

00:27:44.640 the ligaments and the muscles so you're doing a lot of work in a very focused period of time

00:27:50.280 that allows you to spend shall we say less time on the ground and more time in the air if you're a

00:27:58.400 uh more efficient at at pedaling through the entire barrel of the stroke if you're a cyclist

00:28:03.900 and you know what i'm talking about um you know cyclist the idea to become efficient cyclist is to

00:28:10.000 be inside this cylinder that you're always trying to to pedal out of so you're pulling up on the top

00:28:15.380 you're pushing forward in the front you're pushing down on the on the on the downstroke and you're

00:28:19.420 pushing back on the backstroke you know what i mean so you're not just hoping the pedals get over

00:28:23.900 the top and then stomping on them but you're becoming more efficient well all of these things

00:28:27.940 whether you're sprinting as a runner or or as a cyclist and it works for swimming as well

00:28:33.460 that sort of training is now preparing you for uh that efficiency of the actual uh the actual work

00:28:42.940 being done by the muscle itself so not so much in terms of the uh the energy source but in terms of

00:28:50.120 the mechanical force that's being produced by that set of tendons and muscles does that make sense

00:28:56.500 yeah that that makes sense um so i mean i imagine in the book people can find out uh how this all this

00:29:02.200 training works together your period you lay out a periodization a suggested periodization program

00:29:06.480 um in the book and what i love about your book as well is that you know you give prescriptions but

00:29:11.740 it's not overly prescriptive i think the overarching um theme or idea in the book is like you got to just

00:29:16.740 like listen to your body do what works for you i mean my goal here is to make people intuitive about

00:29:22.420 their training and so how we do that or how i elected to do that is through some education this

00:29:28.640 is how the body works this is what's what what we've learned from the science in the past 20 years

00:29:33.300 that we didn't know 20 or 30 years ago here's how we can apply it if we want to but ultimately

00:29:38.100 you are the best coach for yourself and when you understand the ramifications of these choices

00:29:45.580 you're making and you wake up in the morning and you say well how do i feel today i had this plan

00:29:50.620 but if i don't feel like doing it i'm okay uh taking the day off i don't have to feel guilty

00:29:55.720 because i was supposed to go for a you know an easy 15 mile hike today or a easy 50 mile bike ride

00:30:04.120 or whatever but i don't feel like it and i'm i don't feel prepared then great now you become intuitive

00:30:09.960 and wait till you're ready for it and particularly true with a with a with a sprint day for instance if

00:30:15.200 you're not firing on all cylinders on a sprint day don't do it you'll you'll gain more by taking

00:30:20.600 the day off and resting than you will from slogging through a workout that may predispose you to injury

00:30:26.120 or may set you back because your immune system wasn't ready for you to dig that deep that day

00:30:31.560 okay so let's let's go back to nutrition because this ties in uh ties in tightly with uh the training

00:30:37.940 because the goal with uh primal endurance is you want to focus on aerobic training and that requires

00:30:43.620 fat it burns fat as fuel so i imagine the diet we want is to when we're training on the primal

00:30:51.980 endurance way is more fat focused as opposed to carb focused yeah correct it's more healthy fat

00:30:57.560 focused for sure um but we we look at uh you know how do we what are we trying to do here we're trying

00:31:03.300 to force the body to make changes to up regulate gene systems that will build a more powerful set of

00:31:10.120 muscles that will allow us to be able to access stored body fat and burn it more efficiently

00:31:14.520 that means um building more more mitochondria which is where the fats burn within the cells

00:31:19.580 making those mitochondria more efficient all of this happens as a result of gene uh genes turning on or

00:31:26.600 off in response to the signals we give epigenetics this is epigenetics and this is the key to everything

00:31:31.980 we talk about in in primal blueprint and primal endurance and everything primal paleo or ancestral

00:31:37.300 how do we harness the power of our genes through the epigenetic choices we make uh with the foods we

00:31:44.320 eat the types of workouts we choose to do the amount of sun we get the amount of sleep we get the amount

00:31:48.600 of play we we take on well one of the strongest uh sets of epigenetic um regulators is food and

00:31:57.100 the very fact that we could eliminate or cut way back on carbs is a powerful signal to the body that wait a

00:32:06.820 minute i've been i've been relying on carbohydrates my whole life because you've been feeding me every

00:32:11.200 two or three hours and now you change the rules now you're cutting back on the carbs you're not

00:32:15.380 feeding me as often you're feeding more me more fat i guess i have to adapt and so the body up

00:32:21.080 regulates these enzyme systems that are involved in taking fat out of storage it up regulates those

00:32:26.060 enzyme systems that are involved in building more mitochondria the mitochondria have their own dna

00:32:31.020 those mitochondria respond by getting more efficient at burning fat and lo and behold over time by having

00:32:37.500 reduced the sugars and the simple carbohydrates in your diet by having increased the amount of healthy

00:32:43.640 fats and pretty much kept protein steady uh you have reconfigured i say reprogrammed your genes

00:32:51.880 to become a fat burning beast to make you a fat burning beast to make you able to access stored body fat

00:32:57.740 um on a minute to minute basis so that you don't have to rely on carbohydrate at every meal you don't even

00:33:04.920 have to rely on three meals a day most people who are who are in this space right now are doing some form

00:33:10.960 of compressed eating window where they wake up in the morning they're not really that hungry because they're

00:33:15.600 so good at burning fat they're not they're they're literally not having fasted overnight because the body's been

00:33:20.740 taking its energy from stored body fat so you wake up you're not hungry and i say if you're not hungry

00:33:25.800 why do you want to eat uh you know you you're good at burning fat become more efficient at burning fat

00:33:30.700 so a lot of these people who are doing this type of training don't eat until noon or one o'clock it's

00:33:36.480 what we call a compressed eating window or intermittent fasting so they have their first meal at one and

00:33:41.060 then they have their last meal of the day at 7 p.m and starts that cycle all over again but in between

00:33:46.900 in those uh 18 hours in between they're burning a lot of fat and they're training their body to burn fat and

00:33:53.960 that translates directly to how they access fat when they go out and do that aerobic threshold training

00:34:01.380 so it's a beautiful sort of reinforcement

00:34:03.540 synchronistic system

00:34:05.460 yeah i love the analogy you made about the book about between carbs and fat

00:34:09.980 um with the power plant like carbs

00:34:12.280 are coal right it's dirty

00:34:15.180 it can get the job done

00:34:17.180 but not not very efficient not very clean whereas fat is more like solar power

00:34:22.600 exactly yeah i mean and solar power is unlimited and and you know fats are virtually unlimited i mean i

00:34:29.480 think back to the original premise that we we opened this discussion with which is that for the longest

00:34:34.620 time we thought that that that what determined your success in a race was uh how you manage glycogen but

00:34:42.640 when you realize that the body can only hold about 2 000 calories worth of glycogen uh at any one time

00:34:50.260 and of those 2 000 calories 400 sort of reserved in the liver for the brain that leaves 1600

00:34:57.040 and the muscles will never uh willingly run out of glycogen completely down to zero

00:35:03.860 so maybe you've got you know 1200 calories accessible for this race that you're going to do that's 300 grams

00:35:11.140 total of carbohydrate well your body you can store even on a lean athlete

00:35:16.140 uh you can store 30 or 40 000 calories worth of fat and in some cases more uh and that's enough to

00:35:23.140 to to jog easily 300 miles uh big difference there between the these two uh sources of energy so

00:35:32.040 back to the the more you can become efficient at burning fat the more you can reduce your reliance

00:35:38.120 on carbohydrates and and this glycogen reserve that you have the better you will compete the less

00:35:45.060 sugar you'll put through your system and we didn't even talk about you know the sort of devastating

00:35:49.480 effects of a lifetime of consuming high amounts of sugar right i mean it's terrible i mean like i mean

00:35:56.260 you talk about some of it some of it's just it's fascinating what what the sugar does to our bodies

00:36:00.560 yeah i mean it's it's clear that uh of the 35 million people that are either currently diagnosed

00:36:06.940 or will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in this country it's it's that inability to manage large

00:36:12.740 amounts of glucose coming into the body whether it's from sugar or whether it's from uh even sometimes

00:36:17.580 quote-unquote healthy sources of carbohydrates like grains and whole grains or refined grains and

00:36:23.060 things like that so the uh the excess sugar is very toxic to the body the body does has a lot

00:36:30.040 of ways of getting rid of excess sugar which is another kind of red flag when people say well

00:36:37.020 wait a minute glucose is the preferred fuel of the body if it were so why would the body have all these

00:36:41.760 mechanisms to limit the total amount in our bloodstream to uh what amounts to a teaspoonful

00:36:47.420 at any point in time and uh why would it allow us to to store unlimited amounts of this other uh very

00:36:54.620 efficient fuel that we call fat uh too much sugar is inflammatory and that was one of

00:37:00.020 my biggest issues with uh with my uh heyday of my of the training when i was consuming

00:37:06.400 700 to a thousand grams of carbs a day to be able to fuel my 100 miles a week of training

00:37:13.120 uh it turns out that that was very pro-inflammatory the just the pure sugar that was in the drinks and

00:37:19.400 the and the sweet stuff that i was taking in but also in the form of uh the grains that i was consuming

00:37:25.500 i mean i found in my case that i had a big issue with gluten and gluten analogs that exist in other

00:37:32.840 grains to the extent that when i eliminated all the grains from my diet um the the major source of

00:37:39.320 inflammation throughout my body went away and that was life-changing i mean the arthritis that i had in

00:37:44.260 my feet for 30 years that went away the the arthritis that i just recently started to develop in my

00:37:51.660 early 40s in my fingers went away and i thought well that's how could that possibly be that's just

00:37:57.280 normal arthritis isn't it no it was completely related to the foods that i was eating uh so when

00:38:03.540 you see the the immediate effects of uh reduction in pain from from inflammation i mean my ibs went away

00:38:11.200 that was a huge thing for me so all these all these pain elements in my body went away uh that were

00:38:17.680 largely determined by inflammation i started to think in terms of of the the late the latest

00:38:25.060 philosophy in heart disease which is that heart disease is not a factor of of cholesterol and and

00:38:31.600 and saturated fat per se but it's a disease of inflammation uh and it's really the cholesterol

00:38:38.080 that's acting as a band-aid within the um the blood vessels that's that's caused by the inflammation

00:38:44.820 that becomes the issue if you don't have the inflammation then you don't have the issue and i

00:38:49.540 thought i started to think well wow that's maybe all of the stuff that was obvious to me from the

00:38:55.040 inflammation in my fingers the arthritis the ibs um you know maybe i just dodged a bullet here because

00:39:01.520 that same inflammation was happening in my arteries and now it's i can visualize that it's not

00:39:07.280 happening at all because i i i removed those uh inflammatory offending ingredients yeah

00:39:14.480 and it's i mean yeah you're right during i remember like during the it was like during the 80s and 90s

00:39:18.340 the whole cholesterol fat is bad for you and that's when the whole like low fat foods came out

00:39:24.220 and were snack well cakes fat-free margarine and now we're like we have research that's coming out

00:39:30.660 even like the i guess it's what health organization with the government is saying that oh yeah like

00:39:35.700 that's what we said 20 years ago you can ignore that well i wish they'd say that but they don't quite

00:39:41.660 say that they say um you know maybe some of the research on saturated fat isn't as uh overwhelmingly

00:39:48.600 negative as we've been telling you for 40 years so they're slowly backtracking but uh it's still

00:39:54.540 frustrating to see the the guidelines at least by the u.s department of agriculture and the fda and

00:40:00.240 and uh and the departments of health that are clinging to this notion that well we should still limit

00:40:07.100 fats to a very low number and we should still make uh complex carbohydrates the base of our of our food

00:40:13.760 pyramid um yeah it's frustrating but so so the sum up we're what we said your nutrition primarily you

00:40:20.220 want to go fat so we're talking about good fats here we're not talking pending pounding back you

00:40:24.060 know uh state fair corn dogs and waffle that's right we're talking like avocados olive oil state fair

00:40:31.860 corn dogs i like that yeah no we're yeah exactly so we're we're eliminating the industrial seed oils

00:40:36.960 so we're getting rid of soybean corn oil canola for sure and all of these industrial seed oils that

00:40:43.840 have been uh permeating our food supply for the last 40 years so when you buy a processed food which i

00:40:50.540 hope you don't check the packaging uh and if it has any of those offending oils don't buy it but

00:40:56.120 absolutely take in uh avocado oil um coconut oil butter ghee lard um nuts nuts have a lot of fat in it

00:41:06.320 yep yep um uh you know and things like that and then and then um grass-fed animals if you're

00:41:13.580 inclined to get your sources of protein from from uh animals uh either pastured chicken uh you know

00:41:20.500 grass-fed beef uh line caught wild salmon things like that and your carbs should probably be like

00:41:25.060 vegetables we're talking like broccoli sweet potato so you're not saying like i mean you do talk about

00:41:29.520 the book you could go like no carb and go to like a ketosis uh which is even like cleaner than fat

00:41:35.920 but you don't have to do that you could right you don't have to and that's sort of the next level

00:41:40.760 stuff that we talk about the ketosis and i'm giving a talk in a couple weeks on on ketosis and you know

00:41:47.240 how as an athlete you can use ketosis to your advantage uh but it's a it's a commitment uh and i'm not

00:41:53.400 even spending that much time in ketosis even though i'm a big fan of it as a tool for enhancing your

00:41:58.220 ability to burn fat i'm a i'm a fan of cyclic uh ketogenesis which means you go into ketosis for a

00:42:03.260 couple of days or a week then you go out for a while and when you're in ketosis you're giving

00:42:08.020 your body those signals so it's it's improving the efficiency of the mitochondria it's doing a lot of

00:42:12.600 good things and then when you go out of ketosis as long as you don't start cramming down you know

00:42:18.480 sugar and and increasing your carbs dramatically you'll you'll retain that metabolic machinery that you

00:42:23.760 just built so there's a way to i was gonna say have your cake and eat it too but i wouldn't say

00:42:28.500 that um have your olive oil yeah well have your yeah have your um cheesecake or whatever not cheesecake

00:42:36.100 yeah you're you're whatever there's a way there's a way to do this and and get the benefits of uh of

00:42:41.320 all the um the tools of and strategy that we're talking about here you don't have to really commit

00:42:46.000 to being in ketosis uh for long periods of time or for the rest of your life as some people i'm talking

00:42:51.680 to are they're so enamored of it that they're uh they're saying this is you know this is the way to

00:42:56.920 uh a really long life i just to be honest with you i just like to eat such a wide variety of foods

00:43:02.620 that i don't want to eliminate so much from my diet that uh that my uh gustatory pleasure

00:43:09.480 is compensated for gustatory all right um so besides the diet and the nutrition what other lifestyle

00:43:15.860 changes should endurance athletes make to perform better you know with a lot a lot of stuff we talk

00:43:21.660 about the book is um find ways to move throughout the day every every time you're moving throughout

00:43:25.980 the day you're contributing to your aerobic efficiency so if it's um a stand-up desk uh my

00:43:32.100 at my office all my employees have the option to get a treadmill at their stand-up desk if they want

00:43:37.100 uh so some people are putting in eight nine miles a day of easy walking while they're doing their work

00:43:42.740 uh but find ways to move uh take a take a lunch break with with your um work mates uh have a meeting

00:43:51.160 on during a walking session uh there's sort of the new thing among the the we work crowd and the

00:43:56.700 millennials is having uh walking meetings um let's see uh you know i i like um i get a massage once a

00:44:05.220 week uh i'm a big fan of deep tissue massage so i get if i get uh get worked on i get the kinks worked out

00:44:12.120 uh get get sort of actively uh stretched or passively stretched i should say um in that process

00:44:19.700 um i like cold cold therapy so i do a little cryotherapy i have an unheated pool every night

00:44:25.800 before i go to bed i might jump in the pool spend uh two or three minutes cooling down and uh then towel

00:44:32.480 off and go to bed and i sleep like a baby uh sleep is another important part of our ability to perform

00:44:39.280 better we we only perform well when we recover and improve from our workouts and sleep is that time

00:44:45.940 at which the body is doing its its greatest amount of restoration and and repairs so it's critical that

00:44:52.620 anybody intent on improving performance manages sleep to the extent that they're getting

00:44:57.440 seven and a half eight hours minimum per night well mark this has been a fascinating discussion

00:45:03.060 where can people learn more about primal endurance than the rest of your work

00:45:06.180 sure uh mark's daily apple is my blog uh written a post every day for going on 10 years now

00:45:12.920 number yeah um primal blueprint.com is our e-commerce site where you can buy our books

00:45:20.300 get the endurance book there um also some of our uh healthy fats we've got a new line of product

00:45:27.920 called primal kitchen so we have very healthy uh mayonnaise the world's healthiest mayonnaise

00:45:32.580 made with avocado oil there um and uh yeah just uh you know those two sites the main thing you

00:45:39.460 obviously buy primal endurance on amazon and finer bookstores anywhere so if you're interested in

00:45:43.900 becoming a better at performance whether you're an athlete or not um it's a it's a it's a cool new

00:45:49.780 strategy and technology fantastic well mark sisson thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:45:54.280 my pleasure as well brad thanks my guest today was mark sisson he is the author of the book primal

00:45:59.800 endurance you can find that on amazon.com and also make sure to check out his website

00:46:03.420 mark's daily apple.com a lot of he's got tons and tons of free content on there about

00:46:08.520 eating primal living exercise etc you name it he's got it go check it out and also make sure to check

00:46:14.740 out the show notes at aom.is slash sisson well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness

00:46:31.580 podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:46:35.640 art of manliness.com and if you enjoy this show i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes

00:46:39.980 or stitcher or whatever it is you use to listen to the podcast and also tell a friend about us that'd be

00:46:44.500 one of the best compliments you could give us appreciate your continued support and until

00:46:48.060 next time this is brad mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - June 06, 2016

#207： Primal Endurance - Become a Fat-Burning Beast

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