The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #996 - Dr. Andy Galpin

00:00:07.000 Yes, and we're live.

00:00:08.000 What's up, man?

00:00:09.000 How are you?

00:00:09.000 Fantastic.

00:00:10.000 Thanks for doing this.

00:00:11.000 Appreciate it.

00:00:11.000 Appreciate you letting me come up.

00:00:13.000 So, why don't you tell people what you do?

00:00:15.000 I am a muscle physiologist, so I'm a PhD in human bioenergetics, and I'm the director for the Center for Sport Performance, which all that basically means I study muscle physiology, why it grows, shrinks, repairs, dies, and all that crap.

00:00:27.000 Now, when you're dealing with athletes and you're dealing with state-of-the-art performance, how much does that stuff change year-to-year?

00:00:36.000 Like protocols?

00:00:37.000 Like what people used to think was the way to go?

00:00:39.000 What's the new way to go?

00:00:40.000 Well, if you take a look, or if you examine just the idea of science in general, it's the understanding that we're wrong.

00:00:46.000 That's really what science is.

00:00:48.000 If we knew what the answer was, we wouldn't look into it.

00:00:51.000 What's the point of doing a study if we know the answer?

00:00:53.000 Right.

00:00:53.000 So by definition, we're always evolving in that sense, but it's quite funny how the central tenets are really not that different.

00:01:00.000 You take nutrition, you take training, the vast majority of those things are similar to what they were 20, 30, 80, 100 years ago.

00:01:07.000 So the bulk of it, what matters for the bulk of athletes, is fairly standard.

00:01:13.000 Where it differs is the last few percentage points.

00:01:16.000 It's getting us that last 10% gains or being very specific.

00:01:19.000 So you, on a personal level, need this little bit of difference, and then you need this tiny bit of difference.

00:01:24.000 But the bulk of it really is not that different.

00:01:27.000 Well, when you watch MMA fighters in particular, you see so many different methods, so many different ways to approach things.

00:01:35.000 And I never know who's right.

00:01:37.000 You know, it really depends upon who's successful, and then you go, well, that guy obviously has it down.

00:01:43.000 Yeah, that's a major fallacy called the fallacy of authority, or appeal to authority, which is somebody really good did it, or somebody who coaches somebody really good, they did it, or a lot of people did it.

00:01:53.000 All three of those are examples of major logical fallacies, right, to break down in Aristotle's reasoning.

00:01:58.000 That's not what we do.

00:01:59.000 Now, they can help us with some ideas of where to go, but that's a really bad approach.

00:02:03.000 So, we have to understand, like, what works for somebody at a very high level is not necessarily going to work for the bulk of people, and particular, if, like, the great example is Schwarzenegger.

00:02:13.000 So, when he came out with his book of the Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding, everyone was like, fantastic, I'll go do those workouts.

00:02:19.000 You're not Arnold.

00:02:21.000 And you should be doing what Arnold did when he was at your stage.

00:02:25.000 Not at his stage.

00:02:26.000 Well, also he's doing a bucket of steroids.

00:02:29.000 Well, that too, right?

00:02:30.000 That's a big factor.

00:02:31.000 Especially back in those days, they didn't come clean about that stuff.

00:02:35.000 No.

00:02:35.000 So guys are like, hey, how come my biceps are ripping off the bone?

00:02:38.000 Right.

00:02:39.000 Or how come it's not working for me?

00:02:41.000 So all that is really important to understand.

00:02:45.000 With the context of recovery, the nutrition he has, all the other stresses that are eliminated from his life, all of that changes what's going to work or not work for you.

00:02:53.000 Now, there's a bunch of different ways of approaching things.

00:02:56.000 I've always been fascinated by the Marv Marinovich method, and now Nick Kurson takes that method as well.

00:03:02.000 And their idea is that strength and conditioning, especially when a fighter's in camp, is more important than anything.

00:03:09.000 More important even than skill work.

00:03:11.000 Right.

00:03:11.000 Because you already know how to fight.

00:03:13.000 So strength and conditioning should take precedent.

00:03:16.000 Get all that done.

00:03:17.000 So get your body to the point where you have the most horsepower, the biggest gas tank, the best tires, the best handling.

00:03:24.000 And then you already know how to fight, so just approach it that way.

00:03:28.000 Yeah, so the guy that actually trained Marv, Michael Yesis, is a Fullerton guy.

00:03:33.000 Oh.

00:03:33.000 It's Cal State Fullerton.

00:03:35.000 Michael Yesis?

00:03:36.000 Yeah.

00:03:36.000 That's his name?

00:03:37.000 Yeah, Y-E-S-S, Russian name.

00:03:39.000 Ah.

00:03:39.000 He's awesome.

00:03:40.000 He's like 85 now or something.

00:03:42.000 And if you want to get massively entertained by somebody, he's a good one.

00:03:46.000 Yeah.

00:03:46.000 Because he's just very opinionated.

00:03:48.000 But nonetheless...

00:03:49.000 Yeah, that is, I think, an important one.

00:03:51.000 If you look at Joel Jameson, a friend of mine who trains Demetrius Johnson, like all those guys, they have very different approaches.

00:03:58.000 And I think the massive fallacy, this actually goes back to your original question, is thinking that there is one single answer.

00:04:04.000 Right.

00:04:23.000 It's not the right place to go.

00:04:24.000 So those are two very different approaches.

00:04:26.000 For Demetrius, they reduce a lot of the strength conditioning they do during camp because they want to get very good with the fighting.

00:04:34.000 So all that stuff is gone.

00:04:36.000 So Joel believes in training as much as we can prior to camp.

00:04:42.000 Yeah.

00:05:07.000 Like, I want to be really sharp with my combinations.

00:05:08.000 I want to be really good with my transitions, etc.

00:05:10.000 And if you take that away from them, they get very anxious and they don't like it.

00:05:14.000 And so what you almost have to do is program it based on this combination of physiology and psychology.

00:05:21.000 And that's a bit outside of my realm, but this is what makes coaching so complicated.

00:05:26.000 It's saying, okay, well, you know what, for you...

00:05:38.000 Yeah.

00:05:46.000 Yeah, it is weird that, like, there is no answer.

00:05:49.000 No.

00:05:50.000 You know, like, Mark Hunt is going to have a completely different set of requirements than, you know, Derek Lewis or Mighty Mouse Johnson or anybody.

00:05:59.000 So, like, everybody's got different needs and everybody's coming to the table with a different set of skills and a different set of problems.

00:06:07.000 Especially when you look at experience, too.

00:06:08.000 So what worked for you in your second fight when you were 20 is maybe not the same approach you have to take when you're 30. I just got back from New York.

00:06:16.000 I was in there the last three days, and I was with one of my guys, Dennis Bermudez.

00:06:20.000 And we had this conversation, and when I first started working with him, we had to take a very different approach the week of, and especially even the hour before the fight, because the way that he got ramped up for a fight is very different than some other people that I've worked with.

00:06:35.000 What we had to realize, and I remember he called me right after one of his recent fights, maybe four or five fights ago, and he's like, I'm freaking out because I didn't freak out in the cage this time.

00:06:45.000 I was like, what?

00:06:46.000 And he's like, you know, I'm usually really freaked out in the cage, and this is what drives my performance, but this time I was really calm and collected, and I saw everything, and I'm nervous that I'm not nervous enough.

00:06:55.000 So I had to get him in with my good friend Lenny Wiersmo, who's a sports psychologist, who works with a lot of combat sport athletes, and say, okay, we need to get you in a place of optimal arousal.

00:07:03.000 Because if you're under aroused, that's a problem, but if you're over aroused, that's a problem as well.

00:07:07.000 So we had to change the tactics a little bit between everything from his walk down to the week of, before, the queuing, the things that we say to him, to make sure he's in an optimal state.

00:07:17.000 Every other athlete, all those approaches are completely different.

00:07:20.000 We can't have the same thing.

00:07:21.000 How do you train a guy to do his walk down?

00:07:24.000 Oh, there's a lot we can do.

00:07:26.000 Really?

00:07:27.000 Oh, yeah.

00:07:27.000 And I'm not a sports psychologist, so I don't go too much.

00:07:30.000 But do you know what they do?

00:07:31.000 Absolutely.

00:07:32.000 Everything from breathing drills to the cueing, the words you use. 1.00

00:07:37.000 So, for example, in the back, if you're a Dennis Bermudez five years ago, you know, Ryan Parsons would have to say, like, real vile, horrible shit, like, rip his fucking head off, I want you to bring it back in a plate, like, murder him, rip him to shreds. 1.00

00:07:50.000 That works? 1.00

00:07:51.000 For some guys.

00:07:52.000 For Dennis.

00:07:52.000 At that point.

00:07:53.000 At that point.

00:07:54.000 Not anymore.

00:07:55.000 Right.

00:07:55.000 Now it's a little bit different approach, and Ryan can tell you the details of what he does now, but some guys, like you tell some other people that backstage, they're going to be like, what?

00:08:03.000 Huh.

00:08:03.000 Like, don't say that.

00:08:04.000 Just like, tell me what to focus on.

00:08:06.000 Remind me of my cues and my timing.

00:08:08.000 And so the guys that are too ramped up...

00:08:10.000 There are very specific breathing drills, for example, we can have them do as they're walking down the cage, as they're in the cage, especially if they're the first one down or the second one down.

00:08:19.000 So if they're first down, sometimes that's a 10-minute delay between when they're standing in the cage and when they actually start throwing.

00:08:25.000 If you're not taking advantage of that time, or if that time is getting taken advantage of you, that can have a real problem with your energy.

00:08:32.000 Especially if you get a guy who's really savvy, like a Connor or a John Jones, who takes their time coming down, and they mess with you, they do different things on the way down.

00:08:43.000 That really influences what's going on with the guy in the cage, especially if they're less experienced or maybe attention to the underdog or other things like that.

00:08:50.000 So...

00:08:50.000 That can all be messed with.

00:08:52.000 Now, a guy like Dennis Permudez is a good example.

00:08:55.000 You're working with him.

00:08:56.000 He's obviously a world-class fighter, but he always seems to fall just short on these big fights.

00:09:04.000 This is where it's outside of my expertise.

00:09:06.000 I'm a muscle physiologist, not a psychologist.

00:09:09.000 Right, but with his last performance.

00:09:11.000 Against Darren Elkins.

00:09:12.000 Yeah.

00:09:12.000 Who's a really tough guy.

00:09:14.000 Very awkward.

00:09:15.000 Really just blood and guts type of fighter.

00:09:18.000 But that was a good matchup for him.

00:09:19.000 Very good fight.

00:09:19.000 Good matchup skill-wise.

00:09:21.000 It should, on paper, it should have been a good matchup.

00:09:23.000 It should have favored Dennis in a lot of ways.

00:09:25.000 There's no way to beat around that.

00:09:26.000 I feel like...

00:09:27.000 Two things are happening in that fight.

00:09:29.000 One, I feel like Darren Elkins is getting better.

00:09:31.000 For sure.

00:09:32.000 And he was super motivated and energized by his performance over Mursad Bektik.

00:09:38.000 Amazing comeback.

00:09:39.000 That was incredible.

00:09:41.000 Crazy.

00:09:42.000 But a lot of people felt like he was the favorite.

00:09:46.000 That Dennis was the favorite going into that fight.

00:09:48.000 Yeah, on paper, clearly he was.

00:09:50.000 From a lot of vantage points.

00:09:52.000 But it's really difficult without telling too much of Dennis' story for him.

00:09:58.000 It's quite funny what happens with the game plan sometimes and what happens when they get in there, even with a seasoned guy like Dennis.

00:10:03.000 And I don't know if a part of that was because it was in New York, in Dennis' hometown, or if that was because of Pat, who was his good friend, fought right before and won a really crazy fight in the fight before.

00:10:14.000 If he saw that, you just don't know what goes in.

00:10:17.000 And then, you know, sometimes in the middle of a fight, the fight's over and you're like, I don't even know why we did that.

00:10:22.000 We got into this weird rhythm thing and we started doing this and that was, I don't know what happened.

00:10:27.000 And the rhythm can kind of take over the fight.

00:10:29.000 And Darren fought an amazing fight.

00:10:31.000 He did exactly what he needed to do.

00:10:33.000 But it was just, from my perspective as a scientist, one, I try to stay away from those things.

00:10:40.000 It's not my job.

00:10:41.000 But it's fun, and this is what makes it exciting for me.

00:10:44.000 It's why I work with these folks.

00:10:45.000 It's because you can have the perfect camp physically.

00:10:50.000 And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

00:10:52.000 And so then you go back to the drawing board and you go, well, do we throw everything out?

00:10:55.000 Do we try something different?

00:10:56.000 What was it though?

00:10:57.000 Was it psychological?

00:10:59.000 Is it physical?

00:10:59.000 That's the thing to think about.

00:11:00.000 He was physically fantastic.

00:11:01.000 What was the physical game plan?

00:11:03.000 Like you planned on, you must have planned on knowing how Darren fights.

00:11:06.000 A super high-paced, in-your-face type of fight.

00:11:09.000 Yep.

00:11:10.000 That part's not a problem for Dennis.

00:11:11.000 He doesn't really get tired in the vast majority of his fights.

00:11:14.000 But he looked a little bit like he was getting tired in this fight.

00:11:18.000 Again, he can say that, but from the feedback and from what we saw, he was like, no.

00:11:22.000 He just maybe had a hard time focusing.

00:11:25.000 Honestly, I haven't asked him very specifically what was going on there.

00:11:28.000 I kind of give them a few weeks to kind of get through that stuff before we start going back.

00:11:32.000 All right, let's watch the tape.

00:11:33.000 Let's go through it, like what he went through.

00:11:34.000 So I want to be careful not offending him or his direct coaches like that.

00:11:39.000 But yeah, I mean, from my vantage, it was like...

00:11:43.000 This is not what we were looking for.

00:11:46.000 He should have just been more active, particularly in the second round, which is what really got him.

00:11:50.000 And you saw in the third round, once he kind of got into it, Dennis, in our eyes, at least, was pretty dominated that round, or was at least clearly ahead, where one and two were not so good for him.

00:12:01.000 But yeah, just potentially a focus, potentially a lot of things.

00:12:05.000 Nothing physically that happened to him in the fight, was he like, oh, we didn't prepare for this, we didn't think this was going to happen, this is throwing me off.

00:12:13.000 He was just like, I just didn't go in the second round.

00:12:15.000 So it's a weird job you have because you're kind of relying on someone else to pull the trigger.

00:12:21.000 You're relying on someone else to make the moves.

00:12:23.000 And you could train them all you want.

00:12:25.000 You can get them in incredible shape, but then, you know, ready, go.

00:12:29.000 They're on autopilot.

00:12:31.000 They're doing their own thing.

00:12:32.000 Especially me because I'm not the guy who's in practice all day every day with them.

00:12:36.000 Right.

00:12:36.000 Like, I'm not the Nick Curzon.

00:12:37.000 I'm not seeing him 12 hours a week.

00:12:39.000 Right.

00:12:40.000 I'm out there.

00:12:40.000 I'm just like, like Dennis, I won't even see Hall Camp sometimes because he's in New York and I'm in L.A. So what do you do?

00:12:49.000 Do you give them a protocol?

00:12:50.000 Do you give them a schedule?

00:12:52.000 So my role, depending on which fighter I'm with, is completely different.

00:12:55.000 So sometimes it's one phone call at the beginning of camp.

00:12:58.000 Sometimes it's just like, hey, this came up.

00:13:00.000 What do you think we should do?

00:13:01.000 How do we go about this?

00:13:02.000 Sometimes it's a text three times a day every day for the whole camp.

00:13:05.000 Sometimes it's phone calls.

00:13:07.000 I try to do, like, this is not my full-time job.

00:13:09.000 My full-time job is to research muscle physiology.

00:13:13.000 I work with MMA fighters and combat sport athletes just because I love it.

00:13:16.000 Really?

00:13:17.000 I love the challenge.

00:13:18.000 So it's just almost like a side job, a side hobby.

00:13:20.000 Yeah, if you want to think of it that way.

00:13:23.000 Because I have my full-time living.

00:13:25.000 I've got multiple labs to run.

00:13:26.000 This is what I do is publish research.

00:13:28.000 Right.

00:13:29.000 I take biopsies of people.

00:13:31.000 I isolate tens of thousands of muscle fibers at this point in my life.

00:13:35.000 And when I can help, if I think I can, I will.

00:13:38.000 But I try not to.

00:13:39.000 I don't work with the general public.

00:13:41.000 Our lab is different.

00:13:42.000 We'll put it this way.

00:13:43.000 Most labs that do the type of muscle research we do are focused on disease prevention or treatment, right?

00:13:49.000 So how do we fight cancer?

00:13:50.000 How do we get people back?

00:13:51.000 I'm one of the few that actually do this on the other end of the spectrum, which is, well, let's study optimization.

00:13:56.000 Like, how do we thrive?

00:13:57.000 How do we not just get to 80 years old, but how do we kick ass at 80 years old?

00:14:01.000 And be coming from the performance background that I have, my athletic background, It just makes so much sense.

00:14:07.000 I didn't come from a martial arts background at all.

00:14:09.000 I didn't do anything until much later in life.

00:14:13.000 But once I started paying attention to MMA, I was like, there's something energetically, physiologically far different about the demands of this sport, and it's really exciting, and it's a really complex problem to solve.

00:14:26.000 So I just started helping out and chipping in, and then once you help a couple of people and they're like, this is fantastic, etc., kind of the ball gets rolling.

00:14:32.000 So right now, basically what I do is think of it like concierge service, if you will.

00:14:37.000 I'm not like, you can't email me for a training program.

00:14:40.000 I don't have an online website you can buy stuff from.

00:14:43.000 I'm here.

00:14:44.000 If somebody's like, hey, I know a friend who could really need this or something, maybe I'll help out.

00:14:47.000 So do you coach people for diet as well?

00:14:50.000 Do you go through everything with them?

00:14:51.000 Yep, depending on what they need.

00:14:53.000 And how do you decide what a person needs?

00:14:57.000 Say if Darren Elkins came to you, he might be very different than Jon Jones.

00:15:01.000 How do you decide what a person needs?

00:15:04.000 So it depends on if they're local or not.

00:15:06.000 Blood work is the easy one.

00:15:08.000 But the vast majority of what I do is a lot of conversation.

00:15:13.000 Yeah.

00:15:15.000 Yeah.

00:15:20.000 Yeah.

00:15:34.000 I've seen this happen before, or I know someone that's happened before.

00:15:38.000 This is what happened with, the best example was, do you remember last summer at the Rio Olympics when Helen Maroulis won the gold medal?

00:15:47.000 The first American ever female to win gold in wrestling? 0.82

00:15:50.000 No, I wasn't paying attention.

00:15:52.000 Oh, dude, joke.

00:15:53.000 Go read the article in Sports Illustrated that she wrote afterwards.

00:15:56.000 She beat, I think Yoshida was her name, but she was a three-time defending gold medalist. 1.00

00:16:02.000 And a 15 times straight world title.

00:16:04.000 It was just like Rulon Gardner when he beat Corellman.

00:16:07.000 But the female version. 0.95

00:16:09.000 So Helen went down there.

00:16:11.000 It was crazy.

00:16:12.000 She was down 2-1 with like 30 seconds to go in the semifinals, came back and won. 1.00

00:16:17.000 She was down a point.

00:16:17.000 She in the finals ends up upsetting her first American to ever win gold.

00:16:22.000 Well, I worked with Helen for about a year on straight nutrition because she had to cut a whole bunch of extra weight for the first time. 0.99

00:16:29.000 And the whole wrestling community was like, you'll never get down to 53 kilos.

00:16:32.000 Like, don't do it.

00:16:33.000 You have to go up.

00:16:35.000 Because what happened was, wrestling is this really weird thing where world championships is at different weight classes than the Olympics.

00:16:43.000 So she was a world champion at 55 kilos and either had to go up to 58 kilos for the Olympics, which had a three-time defending gold medalist and a 15-time straight world champion, or go down to 53 kilos to wrestle somebody who also had that 15-time straight world title.

00:16:59.000 So pounds-wise, it's like three kilos, like six pounds, yeah.

00:17:03.000 Roughly.

00:17:03.000 Which is not a big deal, but when you're already, like, scraping to get there.

00:17:06.000 Right.

00:17:07.000 And so she had to make the decision to go up or go down.

00:17:10.000 And what happened was she had a nutritionist, Eric Revello, who you may know Eric.

00:17:14.000 He works with Barnett.

00:17:15.000 He's been around Josh.

00:17:16.000 Big, huge dude.

00:17:17.000 Okay.

00:17:17.000 Wrestler.

00:17:18.000 But Eric was her nutritionist, and Eric reached out to me because he's right down where we're at and Helen's down here.

00:17:23.000 And he was basically like, I know what I'm doing, obviously, but let's get as big a team as possible to make the right decisions as possible.

00:17:31.000 So that's how I like to work.

00:17:33.000 So when a new person reaches out to me, I go like, well, who else do you have on board?

00:17:36.000 Don't fire them.

00:17:37.000 I don't want anybody to get fired.

00:17:38.000 Let's all put our heads together.

00:17:40.000 Because with MMA specifically...

00:17:43.000 They're not making any income.

00:17:45.000 Olympic wrestlers are the same thing.

00:17:46.000 She makes like 15 grand a year or something. 1.00

00:17:48.000 She's poor. 0.99

00:17:49.000 So what you have to understand when you're coaching them, it's not Team Dr. Andy.

00:17:55.000 It's Team Helen.

00:17:56.000 And all of us have to be focused on her.

00:17:58.000 And it doesn't matter if anyone knows what I do with her or not or anybody.

00:18:02.000 I don't care if you get the credit, another nutritionist gets the credit.

00:18:05.000 If you want to actually help these professional athletes, you have to let your ego go completely out the door and say, why throw people out?

00:18:11.000 Let's take every information I have about everything you've ever done and come together with solutions.

00:18:16.000 And if somebody else has an idea that you don't like, that's up to you to figure out and give it to the athlete.

00:18:20.000 Okay, so what'd you find out with her?

00:18:22.000 Like, what was the issue and how'd you get her to lose the extra? 0.85

00:18:25.000 So, actually, it was like a year of issues.

00:18:27.000 A year?

00:18:28.000 Yeah.

00:18:29.000 I mean, like, every day, every week, every month, something else came up.

00:18:32.000 So, it was like, we tackle this problem, and then we had another problem.

00:18:35.000 Iron was a huge one for her.

00:18:36.000 Iron as in deficiency?

00:18:38.000 Mm-hmm.

00:18:38.000 And we had, she was basically almost flat-lined on her iron.

00:18:42.000 Like anemic.

00:18:42.000 Mm-hmm.

00:18:43.000 And we had to come in and go, okay, well, we're going to add this, but she was also traveling to Mongolia.

00:18:47.000 She was going internationally, so she kept getting sick.

00:18:50.000 Mongolia?

00:18:50.000 Yeah, for tournaments, because she had to qualify the spot.

00:18:53.000 Damn. 1.00

00:18:53.000 And she's cutting. 1.00

00:18:54.000 I would imagine wrestling a Mongolian chick is terrifying. 1.00

00:18:57.000 When you're a world champion, it's not that terrifying.

00:18:59.000 They're hardcore, though.

00:19:01.000 Yeah.

00:19:01.000 They scared the shit out of me.

00:19:03.000 So we had to basically play a game of saying, if we give you the things that keep you from not being sick, that's also the stuff that actually harms iron absorption.

00:19:14.000 Like vitamin C, for example.

00:19:17.000 Vitamin C to keep you from getting sick.

00:19:19.000 Right.

00:19:20.000 So that can help you get sick.

00:19:20.000 So you're talking about while she's dehydrating?

00:19:22.000 Is that what you're saying?

00:19:23.000 Anytime.

00:19:23.000 So if you're going to go travel internationally for a long time, you can take a big bowl of vitamin C and it may help you from getting sick, from getting cold.

00:19:30.000 Does that really affect it better than probiotics do?

00:19:33.000 Well, probiotics, we're on that too.

00:19:34.000 But the point was, if you're going to go on like a two-week thing to Eastern Europe, I'm going to give you every advantage possible to not probably get a cold.

00:19:41.000 Right, but wouldn't you do that on a regular basis?

00:19:44.000 Like, why would you accentuate the diet on a traveling trip and give it some stuff?

00:19:49.000 I mean, wouldn't you want that boost everywhere?

00:19:51.000 So the probiotics are basically a no-brainer all the time.

00:19:54.000 But I mean, even vitamin C and everything else?

00:19:56.000 Yeah, but you have to be careful because any time you go with a vitamin specifically, you're going to have potential toxicity.

00:20:02.000 Vitamin C? Absolutely.

00:20:04.000 Really?

00:20:04.000 Yeah.

00:20:05.000 What's the toxicity rate of vitamin C? It's not going to actually...

00:20:09.000 Well, put it this way.

00:20:11.000 Generally, anytime you're getting a vitamin from a food source, you're probably nowhere near toxicity level.

00:20:16.000 So natural consumption of food, you're not going to be in a problem.

00:20:19.000 You start taking three, five, six grams of vitamin C at a time.

00:20:23.000 You're potentially going to have problems.

00:20:25.000 And it's a whole host.

00:20:25.000 And what makes it really complicated is there's interaction with other vitamins and minerals.

00:20:30.000 So the iron, for example, if you give them with vitamin C, it's going to help absorption.

00:20:34.000 But zinc is going to do the opposite.

00:20:36.000 And so if you do these other combinations, you potentially have problems or you're potentially safe.

00:20:41.000 So you say the opposite.

00:20:43.000 What does that mean?

00:20:43.000 Do you mean zinc doesn't help vitamin C absorption or doesn't help iron absorption?

00:20:48.000 Iron.

00:20:49.000 So zinc actually messes up your iron absorption?

00:20:51.000 Anytime you have a vitamin or a mineral, you have potential either co-absorption or you have confliction.

00:20:57.000 So you've got to cut things off.

00:20:59.000 How does zinc conflict with iron?

00:21:02.000 I don't know the chemistry behind it.

00:21:03.000 That's weird.

00:21:04.000 Yeah, you have a lot of that.

00:21:05.000 I mean, you look up basically vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin K, magnesium, vitamin K with bone absorption.

00:21:10.000 So you have to make sure that, like, say if you're eating one at breakfast, you eat another one at lunch.

00:21:14.000 Is that how it works?

00:21:15.000 Well, if you get it from food, you're basically safe.

00:21:17.000 Right.

00:21:17.000 Like, we don't really, this is stuff we don't worry about at all.

00:21:19.000 But even if you supplement, like, during your lunch or during your breakfast?

00:21:22.000 Yeah, this is why the general answer is don't supplement with vitamins and minerals unless you have a very specific reason.

00:21:27.000 Right.

00:21:28.000 And we did that for the vast majority camp, but she was continually getting sick because of a variety of reasons, some that I probably shouldn't say.

00:21:37.000 So we were like, okay, fine, we addressed that.

00:21:39.000 And then it was like, okay, now you're super anemic, so let's get away from that.

00:21:43.000 But what we did basically is get iron back to a decent level as soon as possible and then go off of everything.

00:21:49.000 Go right back to food.

00:21:50.000 How are you feeling?

00:21:51.000 And that one, she was so low on iron. 0.95

00:21:54.000 As soon as we got her to a decent level, like within days, it was just like tears of joy.

00:21:59.000 Like, I feel so much better.

00:22:00.000 I'm not lethargic.

00:22:01.000 I'm not sleeping all the time.

00:22:02.000 But it was continual.

00:22:03.000 The hard part with her was getting her down.

00:22:05.000 And then you would be shocked what the food was like in Rio.

00:22:08.000 In Brazil?

00:22:09.000 Oh, yeah.

00:22:10.000 At the Olympics.

00:22:11.000 Oh, my God.

00:22:12.000 Like, they told them you'd have A, B, C, D, and we get down there, and she called me the first day, and she's like, they have nothing.

00:22:18.000 We've got McDonald's, we've got popcorn and cookies.

00:22:21.000 Like, there's nothing down here.

00:22:22.000 Wow.

00:22:23.000 At the Olympics?

00:22:24.000 Oh, horrible.

00:22:25.000 I mean, the basketball players probably had something, but...

00:22:28.000 She's a wrestler. 1.00

00:22:29.000 She didn't have anything.

00:22:30.000 So they had better food for the more prominent sports?

00:22:34.000 Probably.

00:22:35.000 Probably.

00:22:35.000 Because they probably brought their own chefs.

00:22:37.000 Yeah.

00:22:37.000 Oh, okay.

00:22:38.000 Right.

00:22:39.000 So she's down in with the team.

00:22:40.000 And then she had to be shipped out of Rio to some other city two hours away or an hour away or something.

00:22:45.000 And she's like, there's no grocery store here.

00:22:46.000 I can't even walk to the store to get anything decent.

00:22:50.000 So we had real problems.

00:22:51.000 She was about to do opening ceremonies.

00:22:55.000 Yeah.

00:22:55.000 And we had a plan, you know, for food.

00:22:57.000 Like, basically, we're going hour by hour.

00:22:59.000 How do you feel like?

00:23:00.000 Where are we at?

00:23:00.000 These types of things.

00:23:01.000 And she wanted to do opening ceremonies.

00:23:03.000 And she called me.

00:23:04.000 She's like, I want to do opening ceremonies. 0.67

00:23:05.000 We're like, fine, cool, no problem.

00:23:07.000 This is what I want you to eat and whatever it was.

00:23:09.000 And we'll do next.

00:23:10.000 And she's like, I'm right next to Michael Phelps.

00:23:11.000 I'm in the front.

00:23:12.000 Like, I don't want to get out of line.

00:23:13.000 I don't want to go back out and eat because I don't want to lose my spot next to Phelps in the front.

00:23:16.000 I'm like, okay, fine.

00:23:18.000 Well, she was supposed to eat whatever vegetable and food and fat source we had. 1.00

00:23:22.000 I don't remember.

00:23:23.000 But she's like, all they have is cookies and popcorn.

00:23:26.000 She's like, I guess I'll just like starve.

00:23:28.000 And we actually, that was one time we didn't want to do that because she was at a problem where she was so calorically underserved for so long, her body would crash quite often. 0.97

00:23:38.000 So we had to keep her nutrients really, really, really high, our vitamins and minerals to keep her at a low calorie count, but her body not freaking out. 0.91

00:23:46.000 So she was like, what do I do, not eat?

00:23:48.000 And we had to actually go to the popcorn because of the good fat in there, the butter that it had, to keep her from not feeling terrible.

00:23:55.000 Jesus Christ, you had to go for popcorn for nutrition at the Olympics?

00:23:58.000 And she was there for like six hours.

00:24:00.000 They were supposed to be there for like an hour and go in. 1.00

00:24:01.000 It was a shit show. 1.00

00:24:02.000 That's a mess. 1.00

00:24:03.000 Now, what about other athletes?

00:24:04.000 Like, I mean, forget about the specific requirements of someone who has to lose a ton of weight.

00:24:08.000 Yeah.

00:24:08.000 Now, when you deal with most athletes, like, what kind of, like, strength and conditioning protocols do you have them on?

00:24:16.000 What kind of recovery protocols?

00:24:17.000 Like, are you using cryotherapy or sauna?

00:24:20.000 Like, what kind of stuff are you using?

00:24:21.000 So, all that is, again, I think the problem is thinking that there is one answer there.

00:24:26.000 I don't have any athletes that I'm like, this is what we do.

00:24:28.000 Hey, this is our method.

00:24:29.000 This is, I think, generally a terrible approach.

00:24:32.000 It's a combination of where they're at, who are they with, what have they done, what's their past history, what do they like, what are they not like, what do we really need to get?

00:24:38.000 So I try to identify what's compromising their performance.

00:24:42.000 Let's pick the best solution for that issue.

00:24:45.000 So you show up and you're like, your problem is agility, your footwork, you're just too slow on your feet.

00:24:49.000 Well, we're going to have a different approach to training than when someone says, you're getting out strength here, like someone's pushing you around too much.

00:24:56.000 I don't need to rebuild your feet, I don't need to improve your maximal speed because you're already the fastest in the division.

00:25:02.000 Maybe your strength is your issue.

00:25:03.000 So do you do a bunch of tests on them when they come to you?

00:25:07.000 What kind of test do you do?

00:25:08.000 So we have an entire Center for Sport Performance.

00:25:11.000 We've got six or eight laboratories in it with a whole host of equipment.

00:25:15.000 Do you do that thing where you put the mask on and make them run?

00:25:17.000 VO2 max?

00:25:18.000 Yeah.

00:25:18.000 Yeah, if we need to.

00:25:19.000 What does that do?

00:25:19.000 So we can actually measure the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide coming in and out of the body, which allows us to get a number called a VO2 max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen that you bring in and exhale.

00:25:30.000 So it tells us basically your maximum cardiovascular capacity.

00:25:33.000 And it's pseudo-important for MMA. So the average person's like at 40, 45, just to give you some context of that number.

00:25:41.000 Anyone past about 60, if you continue to go up, it's not going to really make you fight any better.

00:25:47.000 So that's one of the things that we did, or we found doing all the research on MMA folks is...

00:25:51.000 There's a point of diminishing returns somewhere around 60. So if you show up and you're a Jake Ellenberger and you're at 52, and I can get you to 58...

00:26:01.000 Then that's going to help your performance a lot.

00:26:03.000 But when you show up and you're a Pat Cummins and you're 66 and I get you to 69, that's not going to make you fight any better.

00:26:07.000 Right.

00:26:07.000 That's not your problem.

00:26:08.000 What makes you lose in a fight is other things that you need to spend that precious training time on.

00:26:13.000 So when you get a guy or a girl and you have them in your studio and you start work, what's the first thing you do with them?

00:26:21.000 Honestly, the first thing would be, well, what did the manager or why did they reach out to me?

00:26:25.000 Because usually when they come to me, it's problem fixing.

00:26:27.000 They don't come to me like, hey, I've won seven fights in a row.

00:26:29.000 I feel fantastic.

00:26:30.000 Usually, it's, this is going on.

00:26:32.000 I'm losing because of this reason.

00:26:33.000 That's got to be frustrating, though, because when someone's losing, the problem is, like, that's a slippery slope.

00:26:38.000 It's hard to catch yourself.

00:26:40.000 Oh, yeah.

00:26:40.000 Yeah.

00:26:41.000 Well, it's the game, too, of, like, sometimes they just want another answer, which is not, like, you're just not good enough.

00:26:47.000 Right.

00:26:47.000 Ooh, that's a rough answer.

00:26:49.000 Right?

00:26:49.000 Like, I'm not going to tell them that.

00:26:50.000 I'm not a fight coach, but I'm like...

00:26:52.000 Okay, so I'll watch the fights, of course, talk to their team.

00:26:55.000 So I'll give you a specific example.

00:26:57.000 So they come to me and go, hey, like, I don't think we're fast enough on the feet.

00:27:02.000 This is a problem.

00:27:03.000 Okay, well, we've got force plates that are really, really sensitive measurement equipment built into the ground.

00:27:08.000 And we can have them do a variety of jumping tests, moving tests, lifting tests.

00:27:13.000 Force plates?

00:27:14.000 How does it work?

00:27:15.000 So it's a really expensive scale, basically, built into the ground.

00:27:19.000 How big is it?

00:27:20.000 They're as big as your laptop or as big as the table.

00:27:24.000 Oh, so it's fairly small.

00:27:26.000 Oh, as big as the whole table?

00:27:27.000 Yeah, they can be.

00:27:28.000 Not ours.

00:27:29.000 But we have one that's maybe the size of, I don't know.

00:27:33.000 Small coffee table?

00:27:34.000 Yeah, and then there's two of them back to back.

00:27:36.000 Okay.

00:27:36.000 So we can do your right foot on one, your left foot on another one.

00:27:39.000 So we can test everything from not only your force, which is like if I measured your maximum deadlift, I would know how strong your back is and your hamstrings and your glutes.

00:27:48.000 But how do you produce that force is the big key.

00:27:51.000 So a good example is years ago we had some fighters come in and one of them was clearly not fast enough, but he wouldn't believe it.

00:27:59.000 So he was strong, but it took him a long time to produce that force.

00:28:04.000 So to give you a number, let's say you could produce 100 newtons of force, right?

00:28:09.000 Just making the number up.

00:28:10.000 And I produced 100 newtons of force.

00:28:12.000 But if it took you one second to get there, and it took me half a second to get there, in an MMA fight, I don't have one second.

00:28:19.000 Right.

00:28:20.000 So you don't have 100 newtons of usable force in your sport.

00:28:23.000 Right.

00:28:23.000 No, what's interesting, you just said he didn't believe it.

00:28:27.000 So he didn't think you were slow?

00:28:28.000 No, he thought the problems were other things.

00:28:30.000 What did he think the problems were?

00:28:32.000 Who knows?

00:28:32.000 Coaching, like, I'm not getting the right things.

00:28:36.000 You know, they had my walkout song wrong.

00:28:39.000 So you told him, you're slow, dude.

00:28:41.000 That was my thing.

00:28:43.000 I'm like, I don't think so.

00:28:44.000 His coaching staff was like, we think this is a problem.

00:28:47.000 Well, let's put him on the force plate.

00:28:48.000 And let's see not only how much force you produce, because his strength numbers were high.

00:28:51.000 He squatted a lot.

00:28:52.000 He deadlifted a lot.

00:28:54.000 But the time it took him to produce that force, what's called the rate of force development, his peak velocity, the time it took him to get to that velocity, all that when I compared him to the other athletes and NFL players and stuff was just like off the charts bad.

00:29:08.000 So what exercise do you do to measure that?

00:29:11.000 So now that's a great example.

00:29:12.000 So when we have two individual athletes, they come in, so say one is the opposite.

00:29:15.000 So one of them is really, really, really good at producing fast quickly.

00:29:19.000 And the other one takes a long time.

00:29:21.000 So the one that doesn't produce force very quick, we would put them on a drill where we say, okay, the goal of your training is to maximize how quickly you produce force.

00:29:31.000 I don't care how heavy you get, but this is a reactive strength thing.

00:29:34.000 This is a speed thing.

00:29:35.000 So you're going to do maybe a little bit lighter squats, but you're going to explode.

00:29:41.000 You're going to transition out of the bottom.

00:29:42.000 You're going to bounce.

00:29:43.000 You're going to use momentum.

00:29:44.000 You're going to swing.

00:29:45.000 You're going to generate fast as possible.

00:29:47.000 You're not going to go to maximal strength.

00:29:49.000 The other guy, we get the opposite.

00:29:50.000 We would take the speed advantage away from him or her and say, you need to be able to produce more strength without taking advantage of the speed.

00:29:57.000 And it basically comes down to using the muscle for force or the connective tissue for force.

00:30:03.000 And that's really what we can tease out.

00:30:04.000 Now, how much of speed and athletic performance is genetic and how much of it is what you've been doing and how much can you improve?

00:30:13.000 Yeah, so we actually just completed a really cool study on monozygous twins.

00:30:18.000 So monosegous twins means you're the exact same DNA. So sperm went in, implanted two, implanted one egg, the egg split, and you became identical, right?

00:30:27.000 And so we found two twins that were the exact same DNA, but one of them had been doing marathons and endurance stuff for 35 years.

00:30:37.000 The other hadn't done anything in 35 years.

00:30:40.000 So we had this exact question.

00:30:41.000 Wow.

00:30:42.000 That's crazy.

00:30:43.000 Identical DNA. One variable different, which is, well, one major variable.

00:30:48.000 That's a huge variable, though. 1.00

00:30:49.000 One is a super endurance athlete, and the other one's a lazy bitch. 1.00

00:30:54.000 Something like that. 1.00

00:30:56.000 Or maybe studies a lot.

00:30:58.000 Yeah, something.

00:31:00.000 I think it was a truck driver or something.

00:31:02.000 Oh, wow.

00:31:02.000 It's so weird.

00:31:04.000 That's unusual, isn't it?

00:31:05.000 Extremely unusual.

00:31:06.000 They usually kind of share similar interests.

00:31:09.000 If not, if their difference is mild.

00:31:12.000 Yeah.

00:31:12.000 I kind of do this and you do a little bit more, but...

00:31:14.000 So what are the differences in their body types?

00:31:16.000 So we tested them for everything.

00:31:19.000 Cardiovascular stuff, VO2 max, strength, all these same tests that we do with the MMA fighters, muscle biopsies, fiber type, how much fast, how much slow twitch, all the ones in between.

00:31:27.000 What we found was, of course, the endurance athlete had higher VO2 max.

00:31:32.000 Like, no-brainer.

00:31:33.000 You run 100 miles a week for 30 years and your brother doesn't do anything.

00:31:38.000 You're going to have a better cardiovascular system. 0.95

00:31:40.000 Blood pressure, cholesterol, all that crap, better than the trained athlete.

00:31:46.000 But the strength did not favor the athlete. 0.80

00:31:50.000 The muscle quality didn't favor the athlete.

00:31:53.000 The total amount of muscle didn't favor the athlete.

00:31:56.000 The speed didn't favor the athlete.

00:31:57.000 Really?

00:31:58.000 No.

00:31:59.000 And the craziest part is the fiber type.

00:32:02.000 The trained athlete and his quad was 90% slow twitch, 10% fast twitch, The untrained was 40% slow twitch, about 30% fast twitch, and then about 30% of some of the hybrids in between. 0.96

00:32:17.000 Does that make sense to you?

00:32:18.000 Because the guy was just constantly running, Darren's work.

00:32:21.000 Now, that's really weird, the muscle quality.

00:32:25.000 Yep.

00:32:26.000 Didn't favor the athlete.

00:32:28.000 What do you mean by muscle quality when you're saying that?

00:32:31.000 Yeah, that's a good question.

00:32:32.000 You can take an ultrasound and you take an image of the muscle and it looks at it like a combination of how much menstrual muscular fat there is with how much total muscle master is in the size and a bunch of different things.

00:32:44.000 So you get this rough idea of quality.

00:32:47.000 How does it not favor a guy who's exercising constantly?

00:32:52.000 Well, you have to be careful.

00:32:53.000 It's only one subject.

00:32:54.000 Well, two.

00:32:55.000 So we don't know.

00:32:56.000 But the one implication could be that, yes, endurance running and cycling is great for you.

00:33:03.000 There's a clear health advantage to that.

00:33:05.000 But if that's all you do for 30 years, that's probably not enough to save the muscle capacity.

00:33:11.000 We know things that are actually going to predict mortality.

00:33:15.000 VO2 max, leg strength is one of the most significant predictors of how long you live.

00:33:19.000 Leg strength is?

00:33:20.000 Absolutely.

00:33:21.000 How weird.

00:33:22.000 Well, sort of.

00:33:23.000 Tom Platt should live forever.

00:33:25.000 Yeah, right?

00:33:26.000 Some of these guys that squat 900, now obviously there's diminishing returns, right?

00:33:30.000 Right, I'm sure.

00:33:30.000 If you squat 400 and I take you to 450, you're not living a day longer.

00:33:33.000 Right.

00:33:34.000 But think about it this way.

00:33:35.000 What's one of the big reasons why you go from living by yourself to an assisted living home?

00:33:41.000 Can't walk.

00:33:42.000 Can't walk.

00:33:42.000 Yeah.

00:33:43.000 Can't stand up.

00:33:44.000 Yeah.

00:33:44.000 And the biggest one that they're actually starting to look at now is foot speed.

00:33:49.000 Foot speed?

00:33:50.000 Why?

00:33:51.000 If you trip and you're about to fall and you can't put your foot out and catch yourself, you have to have the foot speed to get yourself out there, but the strength...

00:34:00.000 To stop yourself from falling.

00:34:01.000 That makes sense.

00:34:02.000 So balance and...

00:34:04.000 Yeah, well, it's eccentric strength.

00:34:05.000 The ability to block all those forces into the ground to catch your whole body mass from falling.

00:34:11.000 Or wouldn't it be also your ability to manipulate your body like yoga?

00:34:15.000 Absolutely.

00:34:15.000 To be able to control yourself in awkward positions?

00:34:18.000 Yep.

00:34:19.000 The other thing they see is huge increases in general just physical activity when you're stronger.

00:34:23.000 So when you're really, really strong and you're 70, you're much more likely to go to an extra yoga class.

00:34:28.000 I'll go take the dog for an extra walk.

00:34:30.000 I'll go grab the thing.

00:34:31.000 But if I'm super weak and getting off the toilet is a maximum effort squat, I'm more likely to just keep in my chair.

00:34:38.000 Just stay on the toilet. 0.98

00:34:39.000 Yeah.

00:34:41.000 Wow, that's incredible that there wasn't an increase in muscle quality.

00:34:46.000 Well, that's also one very specific type of exercise, right?

00:34:50.000 Endurance work, where if this guy was a bodybuilder, who knows?

00:34:53.000 So that's exactly the point.

00:34:55.000 I think the first question you asked when we started talking was, what's the best type of workout?

00:35:01.000 Or what's the new age stuff, right?

00:35:04.000 Well, it goes back to, I think every one of us would agree, if you want to be as healthy as possible, you need to do a variety of training.

00:35:11.000 Yeah.

00:35:11.000 It can't just be one modality.

00:35:13.000 So if you've only done yoga your whole life, you're probably going to have strength problems or foot speed problems.

00:35:18.000 If you've only run, if you've only lifted weights, if you've only exposed yourself to a few of these stimuli, you're probably in a real problem.

00:35:25.000 Yeah.

00:35:30.000 So my friend Brian McKenzie and I have a book that just came out a couple weeks ago on this whole idea called Unplugged where we need to expand past just lifting and running and think about what other physiological exposures do we need that are important for longevity.

00:35:47.000 How well do we do when we're hungry?

00:35:50.000 How about cold?

00:35:51.000 How about thirsty?

00:35:52.000 Hot?

00:35:53.000 How well do we do?

00:35:54.000 Yeah.

00:35:54.000 Meaning performance-wise?

00:35:56.000 Meaning everything.

00:35:57.000 So, like, are you manipulating diet to make people perform better when they're cold?

00:36:01.000 Like, what are you doing?

00:36:03.000 Every combination.

00:36:04.000 So if we want to be able to sustain and perform as well as we can throughout life, we probably need to be able to handle a bunch of different challenges.

00:36:11.000 So you're talking about longevity now, not like necessarily athletic performance in professional athletes, right?

00:36:16.000 We would use this under that umbrella, but very, very carefully.

00:36:18.000 So, for example, I would not recommend extensive fasting during the middle of a six-week camp prior to UFC fight.

00:36:25.000 Right.

00:36:25.000 Like, this is not at all what we're saying.

00:36:26.000 But this is something maybe we implement outside of camp.

00:36:30.000 Okay, so for example, we have somebody who's very, very carbohydrate-dependent, right?

00:36:35.000 And we have a hard time using fat as a fuel source.

00:36:39.000 Okay, well maybe, during that six-week camp before a UFC fight, I'm not messing with a tremendous amount.

00:36:43.000 We're not going on a new diet five weeks before a fight.

00:36:45.000 Like, that's not going to happen.

00:36:46.000 But maybe, oh, you got hurt, you know, you got an extended layoff.

00:36:50.000 Now we start to work on that other part of your physiology, so that next camp we've got more what's called metabolic flexibility.

00:36:56.000 So we have an ability to switch back and forth between fuel sources.

00:37:00.000 Right, so when you're preparing someone for a very specific event, like here you're ramping up for September 12th, boom, we have a protocol, let's get ready, but then after the fight's over, then you might be working on very specific balancing exercises or that kind of stuff?

00:37:16.000 Exactly, so I'm of the belief that during those last few weeks, you need to be very specific to what you're going to do.

00:37:22.000 Get on weight, get focused, get all these things.

00:37:25.000 But now, because if we over-specify for too long, We have problems.

00:37:32.000 We have this complex, these fighting forces called optimization versus adaptation.

00:37:38.000 So generally, when you're optimizing, you're not adapting and vice versa.

00:37:42.000 How does that work?

00:37:43.000 So for example, you brought up ICE earlier.

00:37:46.000 So we do this stuff a lot.

00:37:48.000 We've done a lot of studies and published in this area.

00:37:52.000 So, we're just learning some of the physiology behind what's going on with ice.

00:37:56.000 And a lot of people ask me this, like, well, are you for ice or pro-ice or against it?

00:38:00.000 I don't understand why we have to be in one side of the camp.

00:38:02.000 Well, there's one guy who doesn't believe in ice.

00:38:09.000 Misha Tate had him on our podcast.

00:38:11.000 He's like the anti-ice guy.

00:38:13.000 He's like saying you shouldn't use ice.

00:38:15.000 But I've looked at some of the PubMed studies and some of the various things.

00:38:18.000 There's a lot of benefits to ice.

00:38:20.000 I don't understand why anybody would be anti-ice.

00:38:23.000 Does that make sense at all to you?

00:38:24.000 No, it totally does.

00:38:25.000 And this is exactly where I'm going.

00:38:26.000 Anti-ice makes sense to you or no?

00:38:28.000 It can.

00:38:29.000 In what way?

00:38:30.000 Because there is good scientific evidence to show that there are consequences of the ice as well.

00:38:34.000 Like in post-injury or post-workout?

00:38:38.000 So it depends on the workout context.

00:38:41.000 Okay.

00:38:41.000 So we'll go two easy examples.

00:38:43.000 So it's not so vague and like theoretical.

00:38:46.000 Post a workout that you try to get bigger and add more muscle mass.

00:38:49.000 You don't want to do that right afterwards.

00:38:51.000 Bingo.

00:38:51.000 Yeah.

00:38:51.000 And why?

00:38:52.000 Well, because your body has time to recover and the actual inflammation is supposed to be good for you.

00:38:57.000 Exactly.

00:38:57.000 Yeah.

00:38:58.000 It's not good for you.

00:38:58.000 It is the signal to grow.

00:39:00.000 Right.

00:39:00.000 So people have this really weird thing where they like to personify or humify chemicals.

00:39:06.000 And physiology.

00:39:07.000 Like, it doesn't know.

00:39:08.000 It's not good or bad.

00:39:09.000 Like, inflammation isn't great or bad.

00:39:10.000 Like, it just is.

00:39:11.000 Right.

00:39:12.000 It's a chemical. 0.99

00:39:13.000 Like, it doesn't give a shit at all. 0.99

00:39:14.000 It doesn't know. 0.99

00:39:14.000 It's not conscious. 0.99

00:39:15.000 Right.

00:39:16.000 So, if you were to do and hop on a nice bath post a lifting session when you're trying to add muscle mass...

00:39:21.000 You're actually gonna fuck up your gains.

00:39:22.000 Probably.

00:39:23.000 Yeah, but you're supposed to wait like two hours, right?

00:39:25.000 Isn't that the right number?

00:39:26.000 The more the better, probably.

00:39:27.000 More?

00:39:27.000 Probably four to six.

00:39:28.000 Oh, okay.

00:39:29.000 Why mess with it?

00:39:30.000 Why interfere?

00:39:31.000 I read something about two, that two hours is good after a hard lift.

00:39:35.000 Well, we don't have any numbers to say optimal yet.

00:39:37.000 Like, it would take a lot of studies to figure out, well, two's not good, but three's better.

00:39:41.000 So everything you're hearing now is rough.

00:39:43.000 How would you know?

00:39:43.000 We would have to titrate it out.

00:39:44.000 We'd have to do a study that says one group gets two hours, one group gets three hours.

00:39:47.000 And then you'd have to, like, concentrate, like, effort, like, how much effort is this guy putting versus that guy?

00:39:53.000 It'll have to be in the same training program.

00:39:54.000 We'd have to biopsy them all pre-imposed, take blood marks. 0.99

00:39:57.000 God damn, you got a lot of jobs to do. 0.99

00:39:59.000 There's a lot of work. 1.00

00:40:00.000 That's why I'm so busy.

00:40:01.000 And there's creativity involved in it, too, because you have to manipulate things and figure stuff out and contemplate.

00:40:08.000 Well, that's why I'm the director or the co-director, and I run my own lab, and I've got fantastic postdocs and students that are actually the operators that execute.

00:40:15.000 But it seems like everything is constantly evolving and shifting and changing.

00:40:20.000 Well, I find myself honestly spending more time...

00:40:23.000 Being in the middle of saying, like, let's stop all the fighting between things and let's spend time saying, well, what was good about this and what was bad about this?

00:40:31.000 Now, when it comes to ice, what about an injury?

00:40:33.000 Like, what if somebody twists their ankle or something like that?

00:40:35.000 Do you believe in icing it right away?

00:40:37.000 I have to defer.

00:40:38.000 That's not my area.

00:40:39.000 I get it.

00:40:40.000 Okay.

00:40:40.000 But just to finish the example, so post-lifting session, maybe not great, but maybe if you wait six hours or do it the next day, And when we're talking about icing, we're talking about ice baths?

00:40:51.000 Is that what you're talking about?

00:40:51.000 Or are you talking about a cryo chamber?

00:40:53.000 We don't have a tremendous amount of cryo chamber research.

00:40:55.000 So I'll have to say...

00:40:57.000 Well, actually, I should say this with everything.

00:40:59.000 This is as we know it now.

00:41:00.000 Right.

00:41:00.000 But as I started the show with...

00:41:03.000 If I'm wrong in a year, I'm going to say, like, actually all that was wrong.

00:41:06.000 This is part of it.

00:41:07.000 So what I've read about cryo chambers is the big thing is the anti-inflammatory markers in the blood, or the reduction of inflammatory markers in the blood, improvements in cytokines, cold shock proteins, things along those lines, that those would be beneficial.

00:41:23.000 But if you're saying that...

00:41:25.000 But you've got to be careful on beneficial.

00:41:27.000 Okay.

00:41:27.000 So beneficial for some things, but they're always going to come in a compromise with something else.

00:41:31.000 Okay, so maybe not beneficial for a power lifter, but maybe beneficial for an endurance athlete?

00:41:37.000 Does that make sense?

00:41:39.000 Yes, but I'm gonna make it worse.

00:41:41.000 Oh, no.

00:41:43.000 What?

00:41:43.000 So, you have physiology, which is what I do.

00:41:45.000 Right.

00:41:46.000 And this is what science is.

00:41:47.000 We biopsy, we took blood, we measured one marker.

00:41:49.000 But that doesn't take into context anything else in their life.

00:41:52.000 Right.

00:41:52.000 So, for example, if you get a lift in and you're like, oh man, my elbow always things up on me after I lift, but I got a competition in eight weeks or a show in eight weeks, this would be like a powerlifting competition or a bodybuilding competition.

00:42:04.000 And if you get in the ice, that takes that pain away for whatever reason, physiologically or antagonistic or anything.

00:42:09.000 And that allows you to train more.

00:42:11.000 Well, then we can't say that that was bad for you.

00:42:13.000 Right.

00:42:22.000 Well, then now we're playing a game here.

00:42:23.000 Yeah, physiology said that.

00:42:24.000 Would it feel more accomplished when they got in the exercise or the ice bath?

00:42:28.000 In this example, the ice bath.

00:42:30.000 Okay.

00:42:30.000 But it would be true of anything.

00:42:32.000 Right.

00:42:32.000 So setting them up for a psychological win.

00:42:35.000 Oh, that's fascinating.

00:42:36.000 So you factor that in?

00:42:38.000 You have to.

00:42:39.000 Like, we're dealing with human beings, right?

00:42:40.000 Right, but it might not even be real.

00:42:42.000 Totally.

00:42:42.000 But real is...

00:42:44.000 But real is perceptive, right?

00:42:46.000 Right, right.

00:42:46.000 Yeah, I guess so, for sure.

00:42:48.000 I mean, confidence is a giant factor.

00:42:50.000 Absolutely.

00:42:51.000 Especially with combat athletes.

00:42:52.000 And there's some preliminary evidence that suggests perhaps an ice bath, I think, specifically post-exercise increased mitochondrial biogenesis.

00:43:00.000 Yeah.

00:43:01.000 So now you say, like, well, it's bad or good post-exercise.

00:43:04.000 Well, what's the goal of the training session?

00:43:06.000 Now, when you say increased mitochondrial biogenesis, is that within a certain time period post-exercise, or is that just period?

00:43:16.000 Well, it would be when they took the biopsy of the blood marker.

00:43:19.000 Right, but I'm saying like within an hour after exercise, within five hours?

00:43:23.000 The eye session?

00:43:23.000 Yes.

00:43:24.000 Yeah, so this one I believe was immediately post-exercise.

00:43:26.000 Oh, and now increased it.

00:43:27.000 So like finish and get it back.

00:43:28.000 Yeah.

00:43:28.000 Huh.

00:43:29.000 Whoa, so now you got a conundrum.

00:43:33.000 But this is physiology.

00:43:34.000 Right.

00:43:35.000 It's crazy. 0.88

00:43:35.000 This is why I get so fucking irritated when people say, like, nah, this is the thing. 0.88

00:43:38.000 And then they pull up flags about, like, this is what we do or what we don't do. 0.98

00:43:41.000 Because I stand in the middle going, like, you're going to be a terrible coach.

00:43:45.000 Because you're going to be in a situation where you're going to need to violate those rules.

00:43:50.000 Wow.

00:43:51.000 That's just complicated.

00:43:53.000 It is.

00:43:53.000 I mean, this is why we're eternally wrong.

00:43:55.000 Do you find that that's the case of diet as well?

00:43:57.000 Absolutely.

00:43:57.000 I am a big proponent of variable diets, and I think that there's a lot of biodiversity.

00:44:04.000 Well, obviously there is, where people are allergic to certain types of foods, you know?

00:44:09.000 But I just think this one-size-fits-all approach to diet seems...

00:44:14.000 The more I study diet, the more it seems crazy.

00:44:17.000 So...

00:44:17.000 I would ask you this.

00:44:18.000 What do you think about if I came to you and said, I'm going to do one workout style the rest of my life? 1.00

00:44:24.000 Everyone would be like, that's stupid. 1.00

00:44:26.000 Well, if you want to be a yogi, I'd say that's the way to go. 1.00

00:44:28.000 Oh, right.

00:44:29.000 But most of us would say, oh.

00:44:31.000 Yeah, no.

00:44:32.000 I just don't think it's fun.

00:44:35.000 So why is that acceptable to do that with nutrition then?

00:44:37.000 Yeah.

00:44:38.000 Why is it I have to be ketogenic and this is what I do the rest of my life?

00:44:41.000 Or I have to be paleo?

00:44:43.000 Or I have to be anything else?

00:44:45.000 Right.

00:44:45.000 Why?

00:44:46.000 In fact, when you said variability, I assume you mean having a wide variety of foods in your daily.

00:44:53.000 Yeah, I think also a wide variety of foods in your daily life, but also I think what works for you might not work for Jamie or might not work for me.

00:45:02.000 Yeah.

00:45:02.000 I think that's the bio variability.

00:45:04.000 But we're going to go inception on that one because, you ready?

00:45:07.000 We're going to go another level.

00:45:08.000 Okay.

00:45:09.000 That is absolutely true, and most people recognize that.

00:45:11.000 But what we don't appreciate is the fact that there's not one diet that works best for you.

00:45:15.000 Right.

00:45:16.000 So there might be one diet that works best for me if I'm powerlifting, but it might be different if I'm running hills.

00:45:21.000 Or it might be the exact same. 1.00

00:45:23.000 What the fuck, bro? 1.00

00:45:26.000 Yes, it is. 1.00

00:45:27.000 I mean, what you're highlighting is a real issue.

00:45:30.000 And it's also one of the reasons why there's a lot of what I would call confidence men out there.

00:45:35.000 And I don't use that in a good term.

00:45:37.000 Okay.

00:45:37.000 I mean, yeah, I mean, confidence men like con men.

00:45:40.000 Because there's a lot of people out there that tell you, like, this is my diet.

00:45:45.000 This is the way to go.

00:45:46.000 You've got to follow my way.

00:45:48.000 And, you know, and they almost always mock other diets, which is, yeah.

00:45:54.000 How helpful is that?

00:45:55.000 Not good.

00:45:56.000 No, it doesn't help anything.

00:45:57.000 It's a big issue in the MMA community.

00:45:59.000 I see a lot of these guys popping up where they're trying to make a name for themselves.

00:46:03.000 It seems super common that someone wants to diminish the other people out there doing different things and like, this is our way and this is the only way, this is the right way.

00:46:13.000 And that's a straight ego shot.

00:46:15.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:46:15.000 Also, I think what they're playing to is that fighters in particular want someone to come along and go, Andy, I got the fucking solution, okay? 0.98

00:46:24.000 You come to me. 1.00

00:46:25.000 This is Joe's fucking house of power. 1.00

00:46:29.000 We're gonna get this shit right. 1.00

00:46:30.000 We know what we're doing. 0.99

00:46:31.000 We got a team of experts.

00:46:33.000 Dude, he's got a team.

00:46:34.000 Joe's got a team.

00:46:35.000 And then you go, I'm with the team.

00:46:37.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I signed up with Joe's team.

00:46:40.000 And you really start believing, like, okay, this is gonna work, but...

00:46:44.000 Do you think physiology is that precious?

00:46:47.000 It's pretty precious.

00:46:49.000 Not like that.

00:46:49.000 It doesn't care.

00:46:50.000 What do you mean?

00:46:50.000 In terms of like, oh, it has to be lined up perfect and there's one magical combination of everything.

00:46:55.000 Oh, no, I don't think so.

00:46:56.000 But I think for some people, clearly, like, some diets fit better.

00:47:01.000 Like, I've had a bunch of friends that went plant-based and maybe not even vegan, but the majority of their food is plant-based and they just feel better.

00:47:10.000 Yeah.

00:47:10.000 Their body just works better.

00:47:11.000 I would say the vast majority of us would.

00:47:12.000 Yeah, but I know a lot of other people that went fat-based, and they feel better, too.

00:47:18.000 I mean, like, a lot of coconut oil, a lot of avocados.

00:47:21.000 That seems to me especially true with people that are in intense exercise.

00:47:27.000 And I don't know why that is, but it seems like a lot of dudes that I know that lift a lot of weights or that are involved in jiu-jitsu or wrestling or anything, or there's a lot of explosion...

00:47:35.000 It seems to me like a lot of fats and fish oils and things along those lines.

00:47:40.000 When they add those to their diets, fish oil in particular seems to have a big effect on grapplers.

00:47:45.000 It seems to help them with joint issues and a lot of pain and maybe inflammation.

00:47:51.000 Yeah, it could.

00:47:52.000 I would say that most people are going to far better on a more traditional carbohydrate diet that are in the more explosive power strength stuff, especially at the volumes that MMA fighters are on.

00:48:05.000 Because of the amount of output they're doing, like the glucose requirements of the muscles.

00:48:11.000 Exactly.

00:48:11.000 And you have to be careful because it's the exact same principle.

00:48:15.000 Either you're adapting or you're optimizing.

00:48:17.000 And if you're optimizing all the time, then you're not adapting and vice versa.

00:48:20.000 So if you push yourself to one end of the spectrum, you're going to probably compromise the metabolic ability to go back to the other side of the spectrum.

00:48:29.000 Spectrum meaning what?

00:48:30.000 Like when you're defining it?

00:48:31.000 Anyway, but in this particular case, I mean, so say for example, you get very good at metabolizing fat as a fuel.

00:48:36.000 That may come with the consequences then of being able to use carbohydrates as a fuel.

00:48:41.000 So if you're in a sport that requires that, that's potentially problematic.

00:48:44.000 What sport would require you to use carbohydrates versus ketones?

00:48:48.000 Anything that's anaerobic.

00:48:49.000 So almost by definition, so anything that's maximal intensity difficulty is going to be heavily carbohydrate.

00:48:57.000 Man, I wish I had got you in here with Dom D'Agostino.

00:49:01.000 Oh, you just had him on, right? 0.76

00:49:01.000 Yeah, and he's all fat-based. 0.76

00:49:04.000 I mean, he's 100% keto, and he believes that ketogenic diets have a host of benefits and that the human body just functions better on them.

00:49:13.000 Well, so here's a good example.

00:49:15.000 I mean, I don't know Dom, and I wouldn't say anything about him without him being right here.

00:49:18.000 It's not fair.

00:49:19.000 But everything I've seen of him has been fantastic.

00:49:23.000 I'm in very much support of the vast majority of what I've heard him say.

00:49:26.000 But his main lens is being focused on cancer prevention, epilepsy, these things.

00:49:31.000 But if you look at some of the research, and I'm not an oncologist, so I'm going to speak a bit out of turn here, but there are now actually identification of several cancers that thrive on fats rather than carbohydrates.

00:49:42.000 Really?

00:49:42.000 Yeah.

00:49:43.000 I have not seen this because he was talking about a host of different cancers that thrive on sugars and you stop them dead in their tracks by going on a fat-based diet.

00:49:52.000 I'm sure he's totally right on that.

00:49:54.000 I did read something about a type of brain cancer, though, that does not feed on sugar.

00:50:03.000 Right.

00:50:03.000 Yeah.

00:50:04.000 So, again, it would be like, well, good for cancer?

00:50:06.000 Well, what kind of cancer?

00:50:07.000 Right.

00:50:08.000 Maybe 80% of them, he's right. 0.98

00:50:10.000 Maybe 90%.

00:50:11.000 I don't know what the number is.

00:50:12.000 It could be environmentally caused cancer.

00:50:14.000 Who knows?

00:50:15.000 Right.

00:50:15.000 But the vast majority of high-intensity exercise is powered by carbohydrate for most of us.

00:50:19.000 Now, why would it be carbohydrate versus ketones?

00:50:22.000 It's more efficient and it's faster.

00:50:24.000 Man, see, I wish I had you in here with him.

00:50:26.000 I think he would disagree with you.

00:50:28.000 Well, there's not really...

00:50:30.000 When you say it's faster and it works better, like...

00:50:34.000 Well, you have carbohydrate directly in the muscle cell.

00:50:37.000 That's where it's stored, is muscle glycogen.

00:50:39.000 Okay.

00:50:39.000 And so it is an immediate fuel source.

00:50:41.000 And how does ketones work then?

00:50:43.000 Those are systemic.

00:50:44.000 Those are coming from the entire circulation.

00:50:46.000 So when you use carbohydrate for fuel, you're using the carbohydrate in the muscle that is exercising.

00:50:51.000 So if you're doing bicep curls, you're burning glycogen from the bicep fiber, not even the muscle, but the individual fiber that's contracting.

00:50:58.000 And how would that be more beneficial than systemic?

00:51:01.000 So it's faster.

00:51:02.000 I'm right there contracting.

00:51:04.000 I don't have to move it throughout my bloodstream.

00:51:05.000 When I use fat as a fuel source, it has to go through lipolysis, which means say it's stored fat in your entire body. 0.99

00:51:12.000 See, people right now listening to this podcast go, I don't know who the fuck to believe, man! 0.92

00:51:16.000 It's not a belief. 0.88

00:51:16.000 You got a dude on Monday who says one thing. 0.88

00:51:19.000 You got a dude on Wednesday who says another thing. 1.00

00:51:21.000 Shit! 1.00

00:51:22.000 So I guess that's what I would say my biggest message is. 0.99

00:51:25.000 It's not like a right or wrong thing.

00:51:26.000 That's the wrong question entirely is who's right or wrong.

00:51:29.000 Do you have any athletes who are on a fat-based diet?

00:51:32.000 Absolutely.

00:51:33.000 Who?

00:51:33.000 Totally.

00:51:35.000 Probably those ones I shouldn't say.

00:51:37.000 Are they secret?

00:51:38.000 No, they're just like, hey, don't talk about my diet stuff.

00:51:40.000 Ooh, really?

00:51:41.000 They say that?

00:51:41.000 Yeah, some do.

00:51:42.000 Okay.

00:51:43.000 The basketball jury don't compete.

00:51:43.000 Helen did.

00:51:44.000 I brought up Helen.

00:51:45.000 We go through periods of that with her, for sure.

00:51:47.000 For a lot of reasons, it's very successful with her.

00:51:50.000 Periods of that, but not when she's competing?

00:51:52.000 Even during training.

00:51:54.000 But not when she's competing.

00:51:55.000 Yes.

00:51:55.000 Not like on competition day, no.

00:51:57.000 Yes.

00:51:57.000 But sometimes the week of.

00:51:58.000 So on competition day, no, because you feel like the glucose-based diets are more efficient in terms of actual physical performance?

00:52:06.000 Well, most specifically for rehydration purposes, too.

00:52:08.000 Oh, okay.

00:52:09.000 Oh, right, because she's dehydrating heavily. 0.95

00:52:11.000 And if you don't consume carbohydrates in the rehydration process, you're going to have a real problem.

00:52:15.000 Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

00:52:17.000 So we don't go there.

00:52:17.000 But we'll do it even maybe like five days out or the working of or something.

00:52:21.000 But we have to be careful there.

00:52:24.000 And this is one, again, this is no, I'm not bad mouthing Dom at all.

00:52:28.000 Okay, no worries.

00:52:30.000 But he's not dealing with somebody who's generally hypochloric.

00:52:34.000 Right.

00:52:35.000 So when we're going through an athlete who's six weeks of coming down in calories, and if we start cutting out carbohydrates...

00:52:40.000 We actually did address that.

00:52:42.000 He was saying that when you're talking about ketogenic states in particular, when you're talking about most people during a regular life...

00:52:50.000 50 grams of carbohydrates would keep you in a ketogenic state.

00:52:56.000 But when you're talking about some pro-athletes, powerlifts, you're in hundreds.

00:53:01.000 It's 100, 250, and you're still ketogenic because your body has much more requirements.

00:53:06.000 So like I told you, he's a smart guy.

00:53:08.000 I'm generally on board with what he's saying.

00:53:09.000 He's a scientist just like you.

00:53:11.000 But the problem is micronutrient quality.

00:53:15.000 So if an athlete's coming down in calories, and especially if those calories are coming from carbohydrate, and carbohydrates, their main source of carbohydrates are plants.

00:53:23.000 So if we've compromised that and they're really low in calories, then they go down in nutrients and biochemicals, and that's a real problem.

00:53:30.000 So we have to be very careful with getting them into keto if it comes...

00:53:34.000 With a compromising of vegetables.

00:53:36.000 Of nutrition, right.

00:53:37.000 What about, like, cold-pressed juices or anything like that?

00:53:40.000 That's exactly what we do, actually.

00:53:41.000 A lot of the times, we did that specifically.

00:53:43.000 In fact, that almost single-handedly saved Rio for her.

00:53:47.000 Oh, interesting.

00:53:48.000 It was a real problem.

00:53:49.000 She had a real physiological crash.

00:53:51.000 That just sucks to think that at the highest level of amateur competition, they have poor food.

00:53:56.000 Yeah, well, we had to do, like, especially because she was basically broke, we had to, like, go out, real struggle to find...

00:54:02.000 Cold press things we could get to her because she was on like 40 ounces a day of that for a while. 1.00

00:54:08.000 Wow.

00:54:08.000 And you know what's funny?

00:54:09.000 We did that and that's, I don't know, you could do the math, but 200 grams of carbs or something.

00:54:14.000 And the second we did that, her weight just started falling.

00:54:17.000 Wow.

00:54:17.000 Really?

00:54:18.000 Oh yeah.

00:54:18.000 Interesting.

00:54:18.000 So we added 200 grams of carbs and boom, weight just flew.

00:54:21.000 What did you attribute that to?

00:54:23.000 A combination of physiological and psychological factors.

00:54:27.000 Psychological?

00:54:27.000 She felt better.

00:54:28.000 So it caused her weight to drop?

00:54:30.000 Yeah.

00:54:30.000 She was stressed out.

00:54:31.000 She was freaked out.

00:54:32.000 And that cortisol level keeps your weight higher?

00:54:35.000 Absolutely.

00:54:35.000 Oh, interesting.

00:54:37.000 So she was panicked and she was freaked out and she was stressed because she didn't feel good and she's like, I'm not losing any weight.

00:54:41.000 And one part of it was we gave her a system that she believed in.

00:54:45.000 Okay.

00:54:48.000 Okay, we can do this.

00:54:49.000 Oh, now I also physiologically pumped some nutrients into you?

00:54:52.000 Mmm.

00:54:53.000 So I don't know.

00:54:54.000 Like, honestly, I don't know what part of it was...

00:54:56.000 It could have been all psychological.

00:54:57.000 It could have been all physiological.

00:54:58.000 I don't know, but what we know is it worked.

00:55:00.000 Right.

00:55:00.000 And we gave her a bunch of nutrients and were like 40 ounces a day or up to 60 ounces a day of fresh-pressed vegetable juice and just like clockwork every day.

00:55:09.000 You know, this is such a complicated subject and it's so nuanced and there's so many different variables that...

00:55:16.000 I feel like you have to be a scientist to really truly understand this.

00:55:21.000 I mean...

00:55:21.000 Yes and no.

00:55:22.000 It's one of the problems with the bro science people, the people that do not have the real education in this stuff that are out there, you know, coaching athletes and teach them what to do and what not to do.

00:55:32.000 It's like, you don't really know what you're talking about, and that becomes a real problem.

00:55:36.000 You have to get care...

00:55:37.000 Like, it's funny because...

00:55:39.000 I don't know, Dom, like I said, but he's an example.

00:55:41.000 I've never heard him plant a flag and be unmovable on an idea.

00:55:45.000 And it's funny because those of us that do this for a living, rarely do we do that. 0.99

00:55:49.000 It's the other dicks that do it. 0.98

00:55:51.000 I think you're right. 0.99

00:55:52.000 It's like everyone else is like, what do you mean?

00:55:53.000 I get this one on fiber type more than anything in the planet.

00:55:56.000 Fiber type.

00:55:57.000 That's what I do for a living.

00:55:59.000 I could tell you more about that than vast almost anyone on the planet, and then yet I'll still have people who are like, I read this guy's Instagram post, bro.

00:56:05.000 You're wrong.

00:56:07.000 I've biopsied hundreds of people.

00:56:08.000 I've isolated tens of thousands of fibers and ran them under lasers and studied them.

00:56:12.000 And you're going to tell me because you read one Instagram post or one review from two years ago?

00:56:15.000 What the people are talking about?

00:56:16.000 Well, people love doing that, though.

00:56:18.000 Oh, it drives me nuts.

00:56:19.000 And they love it because of that reason.

00:56:21.000 I know. 1.00

00:56:21.000 They love to call bullshit on you. 1.00

00:56:23.000 I don't respond, so it doesn't matter. 1.00

00:56:24.000 But it still gets you.

00:56:26.000 Now they know.

00:56:27.000 Yeah, good luck.

00:56:28.000 Now they know, Andy.

00:56:28.000 Well, now they can't because I bombed them with YouTube videos showing them, walking them through the science, and it's like, all right.

00:56:33.000 Yeah, but they don't read that or watch that.

00:56:35.000 They're like, blah, blah, blah.

00:56:36.000 Dude, you're wrong.

00:56:37.000 Saw an Instagram post.

00:56:38.000 I had somebody on something a few weeks ago, some Instagram or something was like going through.

00:56:43.000 She was being super respectful, so I didn't mind like helping.

00:56:47.000 But I was like, okay, we're done here because I already told you about my three-hour video on this.

00:56:51.000 And you didn't watch it.

00:56:52.000 Right. 1.00

00:56:52.000 Fuck off. 1.00

00:56:53.000 Bingo. 1.00

00:56:56.000 But you know, the three-hour videos are hard, man.

00:56:58.000 I don't care! 0.99

00:56:59.000 And by the way, a three-hour video is a goddamn gift from God. 0.97

00:57:02.000 Because if you stop and think about how much schooling you would have to go through to get the information that's in that three-hour video, it would take a decade. 0.97

00:57:11.000 It took my career.

00:57:13.000 And you can boil it down to three hours, and people are like, man, not interested. 1.00

00:57:18.000 But I went to an Instagram page, and this guy had some shit that said, you're an asshole. 1.00

00:57:24.000 Well, I did a five-minute video. 1.00

00:57:25.000 That's why.

00:57:26.000 The first one was like a five-minute video.

00:57:27.000 And I just kept getting so much, like, blah, blah, blah, yep, you didn't do this.

00:57:30.000 And I'm like, really?

00:57:31.000 You think I missed that?

00:57:32.000 You think I didn't read that one? 1.00

00:57:33.000 And I was like, fuck this. 1.00

00:57:34.000 Like, here we go. 1.00

00:57:35.000 Here's the whole shabami, and there you go. 0.99

00:57:37.000 There's the link.

00:57:38.000 That's it.

00:57:38.000 I'm done.

00:57:39.000 And threw it all up there, and I still get the...

00:57:40.000 They don't change.

00:57:41.000 They don't change when you train.

00:57:43.000 I'm like, oh my god, here we go again.

00:57:44.000 Now, so if someone has a lot of fast twitch muscle fiber, like Mike Tyson in his prime as an example, is like a ball of fast twitch.

00:57:53.000 Could you turn a guy like Mike Tyson into an ultramarathon runner?

00:57:58.000 No.

00:57:59.000 I mean, he could maybe complete one.

00:58:01.000 Right.

00:58:01.000 For sure.

00:58:02.000 But he wouldn't be elite.

00:58:03.000 Okay, so genetically he's elite at fighting.

00:58:06.000 He's just an explosive individual.

00:58:09.000 But making him like a, you know, fill in the blank, David Goggins type character.

00:58:15.000 No, I mean we have, so the easiest way to understand this is plasticity.

00:58:20.000 Your ability to change, your adaptability, is far higher than what people understand.

00:58:25.000 And in fact, there's almost a direct link between the increase in technology and the increase in our thoughts of what change and how much they change.

00:58:32.000 Oh, so our ability to measure it.

00:58:34.000 Bingo.

00:58:35.000 Okay.

00:58:35.000 So the reason why we didn't think fiber type changed 20 years ago is because we didn't have the technology to actually have the fidelity to measure all the ones that we were missing.

00:58:43.000 And is there also probably a psychological factor in there as well from the people that are measuring it?

00:58:48.000 It's probably easier to say that it doesn't change than to say that it does.

00:58:52.000 Wow.

00:58:52.000 I don't know that.

00:58:53.000 It was just more of like...

00:58:54.000 The evidence.

00:58:56.000 Yeah, right.

00:58:56.000 So it's confirmation bias.

00:58:57.000 The first 10 studies have not shown it, so therefore you're not looking for it really hard.

00:59:01.000 Okay.

00:59:01.000 Got it.

00:59:02.000 Move on.

00:59:03.000 Because otherwise you'd be chasing your own tail forever on that.

00:59:05.000 Well, I can tell you right now, it's hard to get things into publication when they completely challenge an entire...

00:59:15.000 The entire thought.

00:59:16.000 Can you give me an example?

00:59:17.000 So, for example, if you were the first one to try to publish a study that fiber types changed as a response to exercise training, and 20 years of research suggested otherwise, you'd have a very hard time getting through a review.

00:59:29.000 They would hammer you for every little thing, like, wow, did you do this, and did you do this, and...

00:59:34.000 Because you're going to be very skeptical.

00:59:35.000 Right.

00:59:36.000 For good reason, right?

00:59:37.000 Yes.

00:59:37.000 That's how it should be.

00:59:38.000 That's how it should be.

00:59:39.000 Right.

00:59:40.000 Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, right?

00:59:42.000 Yeah.

00:59:42.000 So I have no beef with that.

00:59:44.000 What the problem is, when the other people who aren't scientists and don't pay attention, like if you don't know it like I do, then you need to...

00:59:52.000 You can talk about it.

00:59:53.000 That's fine.

00:59:53.000 I talk about stuff I'm not an expert about all the time.

00:59:56.000 But you need to be careful when someone else walks in the room and goes like, well, I do this for a living.

01:00:00.000 You don't just concede the point, but you need to be a little more open with listening and going, oh, really?

01:00:06.000 Didn't know that.

01:00:08.000 Yeah, that's interesting.

01:00:11.000 Can you think of anything other than the fiber types that's changed the way people look at things recently because of technology?

01:00:18.000 Yeah, I mean, that's a good example.

01:00:20.000 The hyperplasia is probably the biggest one.

01:00:25.000 And what is that?

01:00:26.000 So when your muscle gets bigger, the diameter of each individual muscle fiber gets larger.

01:00:31.000 So it just thickens, right?

01:00:33.000 Well, hyperplasia is a concept that you actually add more muscle fibers total.

01:00:37.000 So you add cells to the entire muscle.

01:00:40.000 And for decades, basically, you say that doesn't actually exist in humans.

01:00:45.000 And now as we're improving our fidelity of our measurement techniques, it looks like it happens a lot.

01:00:50.000 We know it happens in other mammals.

01:00:52.000 How it happens in humans, when it does, it's going to be very difficult and probably impossible to ever show.

01:00:57.000 But we have more and more evidence because we know the mechanisms now behind the cell growth.

01:01:02.000 So once we see the physiology and the mechanics behind it and the molecules and the gene expression, then we say, okay, it lines up with A, B, C, D, and E. We just can't show it with F because of technology.

01:01:14.000 Now we need to rethink our position here.

01:01:16.000 And that's probably the biggest one.

01:01:20.000 Now, when you're dealing with athletes, and especially athletes that are trying to make weight, like a fighter, and do you ever tell them, like, say, like a Jake Ellenberger, who's a pretty thick guy, gets down to 170 pounds, and you got them exercising and doing all these things,

01:01:36.000 and you do a body composition of them, do you ever tell them, like, you got to lose some muscle?

01:01:42.000 Do you ever say that? 0.76

01:01:44.000 Like, you're 205 pounds, getting down to 170 is really going to Kind of fuck you up. 0.75

01:01:49.000 We've done that a little bit in the past.

01:01:50.000 People have come and said, hey, will you test me and tell me if you think I can go down to 55 or 85 or something?

01:01:56.000 My general approach is you're better off staying or going up.

01:02:00.000 It's almost always better if they're that close.

01:02:03.000 To go up.

01:02:03.000 To go stay at weight class or go up weight class.

01:02:05.000 I could not agree more.

01:02:06.000 And you've seen the performances of fighters when they do go up.

01:02:10.000 They look so much better.

01:02:10.000 Jorge Masvidal is a perfect example.

01:02:12.000 Oh, sure.

01:02:12.000 Yeah.

01:02:13.000 Fought at 55 forever, fought at 170. He's one of the best in the world now.

01:02:16.000 Yeah.

01:02:17.000 Donald Cerrone, another good example.

01:02:19.000 There's been a ton of fighters that move up and look so much better because their body moves.

01:02:24.000 Like, Calvin Gastelum, he's another great example.

01:02:26.000 Yeah, he's a diet one, though, for the most part.

01:02:29.000 Like, he gets that dialed.

01:02:30.000 He should be able to make 70, no problem. 0.98

01:02:33.000 But God damn, he looks good at 85. He looks good everywhere. 0.98

01:02:36.000 He's a tank.

01:02:36.000 He's awesome.

01:02:37.000 But when you see a guy like him, and he got outpowered by a guy like Chris Weidman, what's the line in the sand you draw where you say, okay, Calvin, let's put on some muscle and some strength so that you can deal with the Yoel Romeros of the world, or let's lean you out and get you off the tacos so you can fight guys that you're supposed to be fighting, 0.98

01:02:57.000 right?

01:02:58.000 Yeah, man, that's an internally question that...

01:03:01.000 If they really buy in to what I say, it's a needed conversation, but a lot of them won't, which is fine.

01:03:08.000 So I don't think you have a good answer there, man.

01:03:10.000 It's tough.

01:03:11.000 He's a classic example, though.

01:03:14.000 I mean, I've got to be careful.

01:03:15.000 I don't know his camp.

01:03:16.000 I've met him a handful of times, but we've never been to my lab.

01:03:19.000 I don't know how bad his stuff is or if he's got medical problems that no one knows about or if he has other issues that are going on that make it hard.

01:03:27.000 That happens from time to time.

01:03:28.000 It could just be ice cream.

01:03:30.000 It could just be ice cream, man.

01:03:32.000 There's a lot of guys that are super talented that just love to eat.

01:03:35.000 Man, it's crazy.

01:03:36.000 A lot of those folks will go to food for their...

01:03:39.000 Comfort.

01:03:40.000 For that and for the control.

01:03:41.000 That's what they can control.

01:03:43.000 That makes sense, especially in such a crazy world, the world of competition and combat sports.

01:03:48.000 Especially in this sport where winning and losing is so finite, and when you get to the top, rarely people win more than they lose.

01:03:56.000 Right.

01:03:57.000 It's just so hard.

01:03:58.000 So hard.

01:03:59.000 In NFL and Major League Baseball and soccer, there's a clear pecking order.

01:04:04.000 You beat this person, then you beat this team, then you beat this team, then you get to play for the championship.

01:04:08.000 Where in MMA, it's not like that.

01:04:09.000 Well, it's definitely not anymore.

01:04:12.000 You know, in the UFC, it's real weird.

01:04:14.000 Like, especially the 185-pound division. 0.98

01:04:16.000 Like, good fucking luck. 0.99

01:04:17.000 Ugh. 0.99

01:04:18.000 You know, everybody's waiting in line to fight Michael Bisping.

01:04:21.000 He's probably going to fight George St. Pierre.

01:04:23.000 And people like Luke Rockhold, all these other guys. 0.99

01:04:25.000 Like, what the fuck? 0.98

01:04:27.000 When he beat Rockhold, that's my single favorite MMA moment in history. 0.99

01:04:30.000 Really?

01:04:31.000 I'm not like an obnoxious Bisping fan or anything.

01:04:33.000 But that just was the culmination of a dude who put in so much time.

01:04:36.000 Hmm.

01:04:37.000 And he did everything to make it a business.

01:04:39.000 He did everything.

01:04:40.000 And then he not only steps in and fights, just a killer in Rockhold, who I thought has been underrated his whole career.

01:04:47.000 He's insanely good.

01:04:49.000 But he'd already lost to him, convincingly.

01:04:53.000 He got subbed in the first round, yeah.

01:04:55.000 And older guys don't come back and beat younger guys in rematches, ever.

01:04:59.000 Right, especially on short notice.

01:05:00.000 On short notice, when he had a whole camp, and has every reason to not have confidence, and like, 90% or more fighters would have just been like, no, I'm out.

01:05:08.000 Like, no way.

01:05:09.000 He takes the fight.

01:05:10.000 Like, no one would take that fight, because if you lose twice to the champion, you're done.

01:05:14.000 Right.

01:05:14.000 Because you're not going to get third.

01:05:16.000 Just every risk possible.

01:05:18.000 And he just nails it.

01:05:19.000 Just unbelievable.

01:05:20.000 Clips him and knocks him out.

01:05:21.000 Amazing.

01:05:21.000 I loved Rockhold, but that was just incredible.

01:05:23.000 It really was crazy.

01:05:24.000 And you could really tell that Rockhold just thought he was going to win that fight no matter what.

01:05:29.000 This is a done deal.

01:05:31.000 Totally underestimated him.

01:05:32.000 He's just being so scrappy.

01:05:34.000 He's one of the most mentally tough guys in the sport.

01:05:37.000 Because he doesn't have some freak issue of Al Romero athleticism or anything.

01:05:42.000 It's just hard work.

01:05:43.000 He's not particularly fast.

01:05:45.000 He's not super mobile.

01:05:47.000 He's very skilled.

01:05:48.000 And he's got a lot of physical issues too.

01:05:50.000 He can't even see out of one eye.

01:05:52.000 You know, he's had a bunch of issues with, like, joints and discs.

01:05:55.000 He doesn't move well anymore.

01:05:57.000 No.

01:05:57.000 And he's not big for the division or anything.

01:05:59.000 He's still fucking people up. 0.97

01:06:00.000 Well, he's pretty big for 185. Well, not, like, amazing. 0.98

01:06:02.000 He's not, like, towering over wide men or Rockhold.

01:06:05.000 No.

01:06:05.000 He's not beating those guys.

01:06:06.000 Those guys are giant.

01:06:06.000 Yeah, those guys are giant.

01:06:07.000 And he doesn't have some amazing skill set either way.

01:06:09.000 He can fall back on a world championship in wrestling to get through.

01:06:12.000 Like, he just is, like, pretty good at everything.

01:06:13.000 Yep.

01:06:14.000 Yeah.

01:06:14.000 And still just finds a way to get him.

01:06:16.000 He's a guy I would love to biopsy and figure out, like...

01:06:19.000 How much slow twitch and fast twitch does he have?

01:06:21.000 34 beats per minute wrestling heart rate.

01:06:23.000 Yeah, he's fit.

01:06:24.000 Yeah, that's a big factor.

01:06:26.000 It's a big factor and then he could push a tremendous pace and then keep it going.

01:06:29.000 Like one of my favorite fights of Michael's was when he beat Kun Lee.

01:06:34.000 Oh, yeah.

01:06:35.000 Because he just overwhelmed him and just you see Kun starting to get tired and Bisping just He poured it on.

01:06:41.000 Just gave him a beating. 0.65

01:06:42.000 And that was sort of, in a lot of ways, like a shift towards...

01:06:47.000 I mean, he was always a world-class fighter.

01:06:49.000 There was a shift towards the upper end of the division.

01:06:52.000 It was a big moment for his career, too, because if he lost that, that's probably about night-night for him in terms of... 0.99

01:06:57.000 Yeah, he could say that, but he doesn't give a fuck. 0.99

01:06:59.000 He got knocked out by Vitor, comes right back. 0.99

01:07:03.000 He got knocked out by Henderson, comes right back.

01:07:05.000 He's one of the guys...

01:07:06.000 I've been around him a bit.

01:07:08.000 He's hilarious, but he's one of the guys where, again, he doesn't...

01:07:11.000 You're just not going to shake him like that.

01:07:13.000 No.

01:07:14.000 Not at all.

01:07:15.000 He's undeniably tough.

01:07:16.000 Yeah.

01:07:17.000 And he's undeniably, like, when he says, like, oh, I'll fight that dude, he legit.

01:07:21.000 Oh, yeah.

01:07:21.000 He's there.

01:07:22.000 Yeah.

01:07:22.000 And you can say, like, oh, he's scared of Romero.

01:07:24.000 No, he's not.

01:07:24.000 Like, he's not scared of any of these dudes.

01:07:26.000 No.

01:07:26.000 He's trying to cash in when he should.

01:07:28.000 Well, I think the Bisping GSP fight is a fascinating fight.

01:07:31.000 It's fascinating.

01:07:32.000 First of all, GSP's never fought at 85. He comes back.

01:07:36.000 He fights for a world title.

01:07:37.000 It makes it compelling.

01:07:38.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:07:39.000 I just wonder, and this is unfortunate, but I wonder how many of these young new fans, I would like to say like post-Ronda Rousey fans, how many of them even know who the fuck GSB is? 0.98

01:07:50.000 Yeah. 0.95

01:07:50.000 I think there's a lot of... 0.95

01:07:51.000 My wife definitely does. 1.00

01:07:52.000 Well, she's a fan.

01:07:53.000 Yeah.

01:07:54.000 But I mean, I wonder of how many of the new ones, you know, the people coming up, Actually know who he is and I mean it's been a long time.

01:08:03.000 Yeah, you know a couple years, right?

01:08:05.000 More than that.

01:08:05.000 Yeah.

01:08:06.000 When did he lose to Johnny Hendricks?

01:08:07.000 I want to say it's three years ago at least at least Yeah, well beat Johnny Hendricks Yeah!

01:08:16.000 I'm not a big believer in that decision.

01:08:19.000 I feel like, at most, that was a draw.

01:08:22.000 I felt like Hendricks got the most of it.

01:08:24.000 My buddy Troy's brother had 50k on Hendricks on that fight.

01:08:27.000 Did he?

01:08:27.000 Yeah, and afterwards he's like, here we go.

01:08:29.000 Like, we're done.

01:08:31.000 That Hendricks thing was interesting, because Hendricks is one of those guys that, like, you go, like, what happened to that guy?

01:08:39.000 Yeah.

01:08:39.000 You know, like, what...

01:08:41.000 A lot of speculation on that, where you can all read between the lines there.

01:08:45.000 Well, that's the problem, right?

01:08:47.000 There's the USADA speculation, there's the motivation speculation, there's a lot of speculation.

01:08:52.000 You also have that thing, too, with guys like that that put in that many years of wrestling, and you start competing that hard that young.

01:09:01.000 Wears on you.

01:09:02.000 There's a time frame that you just run out of.

01:09:04.000 Yeah, there's a, like, people believe there's a nine-year window as a world-class fighter.

01:09:09.000 I've heard that before.

01:09:10.000 It depends on the sport, but yeah, that's probably fair.

01:09:12.000 As a fighter.

01:09:13.000 And then, as a fighter, like, when you get to MMA in particular, guys have, like, nine years to compete at a world-class level, and then the wheels just fall off.

01:09:21.000 Yeah, get in, get your money, get out.

01:09:22.000 Yeah, if you can.

01:09:23.000 If you can.

01:09:24.000 Yeah, that's why at 38, I think Bisping's 38, That GSP fights the right move.

01:09:29.000 Oh, for a hundred reasons.

01:09:31.000 It's the right move anyway.

01:09:31.000 And what does Bisping typically do well with the fighters?

01:09:35.000 He handles wrestlers decently well.

01:09:37.000 He's a very good defensive wrestler.

01:09:38.000 His style is going to be fantastic.

01:09:40.000 He doesn't get tired, which is what GSP relied on a lot.

01:09:43.000 His conditioning was great.

01:09:46.000 But that stamina, like, is dependent upon activity.

01:09:50.000 Like, even if you're just physically fit, but you haven't fought in a long time, I don't necessarily know if it's applicable.

01:09:56.000 Yeah.

01:09:56.000 Well, it's also going to be different, too, with...

01:09:58.000 We'll see what he does weight-wise.

01:09:59.000 Yeah.

01:10:00.000 So, what people don't understand about when you watch professional athletes, fighters in particular, is a lot of what happens in that fatigue is either psychological or it's bad weight cut stuff.

01:10:09.000 So now he doesn't have that, but if he's lugging around extra weight that he's not used to, potentially...

01:10:17.000 Yeah.

01:10:23.000 Yeah.

01:10:26.000 Yeah.

01:10:38.000 Yeah.

01:10:39.000 Which he's not going to run out of gas because of that.

01:10:41.000 Like, having more muscle doesn't make you fatigue more.

01:10:43.000 It's the training that does it.

01:10:44.000 Now, do you have fighters use cardio machines?

01:10:49.000 Like, do you have them use versiclimbers or treadmills or anything along those lines?

01:10:55.000 I don't feel like those are super important differences in terms of...

01:10:59.000 We're generally trying to get most of their physical activity from training.

01:11:03.000 If you have an extra hour worth of training we could get in the week...

01:11:06.000 You mean by martial arts training?

01:11:08.000 Right.

01:11:08.000 Really?

01:11:09.000 Yeah.

01:11:09.000 Interesting.

01:11:10.000 But having said that, if we want to do a small circuit or something that incorporates one of those things in there, sure, but I'm never going to prescribe, if they're not doing it, like, hey, let's hop on and let's get an hour on the elliptical.

01:11:21.000 That's never going to come out of my mouth.

01:11:23.000 Hmm.

01:11:24.000 That's not to say I would never use it.

01:11:26.000 Right.

01:11:26.000 I'm not throwing anything out.

01:11:27.000 I'm not pro or con, but that's traditionally not where I'm going to go because it's far easier for us to help them lose weight through food than it is adding on an extra hour, and that adding on an extra hour of activity can be real harmful for them muscularly.

01:11:39.000 Right, but we're not necessarily just talking about losing weight.

01:11:42.000 We're talking about increasing performance.

01:11:44.000 Do you believe in any of those machines?

01:11:46.000 It's not a believe in or not believe in.

01:11:48.000 I would go to it if I needed it.

01:11:49.000 I don't feel like in camp it's a huge need with the exception of maybe like a recovery.

01:11:54.000 So you want to do like, hey, let's go an easy 45 or something on the bike.

01:11:58.000 But as like a 45 hard, with the exception of when you start moving to championship fights, I do think there's good cause for doing maybe once a week of saying, like we do this with Durkin all the time, like, hey, he loves to ride mountain bikes, so go out on the mountain bike and go ride for...

01:12:13.000 When you're saying Durkin, you mean Pat Cummins?

01:12:15.000 Yeah, sorry.

01:12:16.000 It's okay for people that don't know.

01:12:18.000 But that's the big part of it is because he loves that.

01:12:21.000 That's like his real mental release.

01:12:23.000 Mountain biking?

01:12:24.000 Yeah.

01:12:24.000 It's a great workout too, right?

01:12:25.000 Yeah, it's fantastic.

01:12:26.000 He gets in the sun, he gets away from people, he gets to breathe, and we're not counting things, which can be a problem.

01:12:33.000 But if I had another athlete who was like, I absolutely hate jogging.

01:12:35.000 Like, it's the worst thing.

01:12:37.000 I got knee problems, hurts my back.

01:12:38.000 I'm never going to ask them, hey, go jog an hour.

01:12:41.000 What do you do with them?

01:12:42.000 If someone has knee problems and you want to get them to do cardio?

01:12:46.000 45 minute, something like that, maybe in the pool.

01:12:49.000 A lot of pool work can be really helpful if they have access.

01:12:52.000 If they can't, no one has ever not loved the Airdyne or Aerosol bikes.

01:12:58.000 Those are fantastic.

01:12:59.000 Versaclimbers are great.

01:13:00.000 They've got no problem with those things.

01:13:03.000 Is there one machine that is your standby or go-to when it comes to a cardio machine?

01:13:09.000 Well, those are the rower.

01:13:11.000 The Versiclimber, the rower, and the Airdyne? 0.98

01:13:14.000 Yeah, Aerosalt, any of those things.

01:13:15.000 Anything that allow them to move that minimizes the amount of technical teaching you have to do.

01:13:22.000 Most people run horribly.

01:13:25.000 This is like a real, real, real problem, especially wrestlers.

01:13:29.000 If you ever watch a wrestler run, it's like you're a knee pain, you're a busted ankle waiting to happen.

01:13:34.000 So I'm not going to throw that on them and then try to teach them a new movement skill.

01:13:38.000 It's just not needed.

01:13:39.000 There's a thousand ways we can get there.

01:13:40.000 If they already run well and they have a running background...

01:13:43.000 And we could go there if they want.

01:13:45.000 Some of them do like it.

01:13:46.000 Okay, fine, we can get there.

01:13:47.000 But if they don't run well, I mean technically well, if they're landing in bad positions with their fear out everywhere and they don't want to take time to go to a running coach like Brian McKenzie or something, then...

01:13:59.000 We're not going to add that.

01:14:00.000 We're not going to add a new skill.

01:14:01.000 I know a lot of Greg Jackson's work, a lot of his camp, they do these hill runs in Albuquerque.

01:14:09.000 Have you seen that stuff?

01:14:11.000 Yeah, going up a hill is a little different, though.

01:14:13.000 Yeah.

01:14:13.000 Because generally, the foot position of the hill is much easier to get to, and it's harder to run bad uphill than it is on flat ground, generally.

01:14:22.000 So it is something you go to, but that's also probably something where...

01:14:26.000 You don't have as much teaching and you're at altitude, so that by itself is going to reduce how hard you work, which is going to reduce the stress on your joints and bones and ligaments.

01:14:34.000 Right.

01:14:35.000 So that helps.

01:14:36.000 So all that can be integrated where you reduce the likelihood of them getting a sore back or knees because you added some 45-minute running on there that didn't really have to happen.

01:14:46.000 Well, hills seem to reduce that anyway because you're really almost like doing squats.

01:14:50.000 It's almost like doing a lunge or something like that because you're just kind of running and pushing your body up instead of like the pounding.

01:14:56.000 The eccentric pounding is gone.

01:14:58.000 This is a very good, one of the most important things we stress during fight camp is you want to minimize the eccentric contractions.

01:15:06.000 Because that leads to more soreness.

01:15:08.000 And if you got really sore legs and you got to go to Muay Thai practice and somebody jacks you in the leg, that's a problem.

01:15:14.000 And so you have to be able to get work in without getting extremely sore.

01:15:18.000 So hills are a great example.

01:15:19.000 Aerodyne is like the same thing, right?

01:15:21.000 It's pushing the whole time.

01:15:22.000 It's not landing in impact.

01:15:23.000 Swimming, rowing, all these VersaClimber, that's why they're so good.

01:15:27.000 One of the reasons.

01:15:28.000 You can do a lot of work.

01:15:29.000 Is Aerodyne or VersaClimber, are those things limited in the fact that the movement is very specific in terms of doing that versus maybe like a kettlebell cardio workout?

01:15:42.000 Yep.

01:15:43.000 That's why you need to do a combination.

01:15:45.000 Okay, so it's a bunch of different stuff.

01:15:46.000 Just like we talked with nutrition.

01:15:48.000 It's variability that gets, like, this is what we're looking for.

01:15:51.000 Especially when the goal is not that modality.

01:15:56.000 So, for example, if you're competing in a kettlebell swinging competition, like, you should be focusing on that.

01:16:00.000 Right.

01:16:01.000 But when you're using that for another modality that doesn't transfer over, then you need to have a wide range of stresses.

01:16:07.000 Man, how do you know, like, what to tell them to do, though?

01:16:09.000 Well, so that's the thing is, I don't think that stress is necessary.

01:16:13.000 Like, who cares?

01:16:14.000 What do you mean?

01:16:15.000 So, the stress of worrying about which one to do is not important.

01:16:19.000 You shouldn't focus on being like, ah, should we pick first a climber today or should we, ah.

01:16:24.000 It should be, what's the training outcome we're looking for?

01:16:27.000 Right.

01:16:27.000 Oh, we're trying to improve your ability to repeat maximal sustained 15 second intervals with short rest and all at the same time keeping your breathing mechanics.

01:16:37.000 Right.

01:16:37.000 Okay, that's the goal.

01:16:40.000 Now, what modality do we want to use today to introduce that insult?

01:16:43.000 And so you think the good move would be to introduce a bunch of different things, like one day, yeah, one day do the kettlebell cardio workout, another day do the aerosol, was that aerosol bike, what's it called?

01:16:55.000 Aerosol, aerodyne, yeah, there's a bunch.

01:16:57.000 Another day, do a verse climber. 0.83

01:16:59.000 As a general quick statement, yeah.

01:17:01.000 Absolutely.

01:17:02.000 But I would say the smarter approach would be to step back and say, well, wait a minute, what's the goal of that workout?

01:17:08.000 What's the goal of today, this week, this camp, this fight?

01:17:12.000 Then that guides you to make that exercise choice.

01:17:15.000 Right.

01:17:16.000 So you should never choose the exercise because you love the exercise. 1.00

01:17:19.000 That's a stupid reason. 1.00

01:17:20.000 You're getting angry. 1.00

01:17:21.000 Yeah, it really irritates me.

01:17:23.000 Now, do you measure resting heart rates, body fat, all that jazz?

01:17:27.000 Not really.

01:17:28.000 No?

01:17:29.000 No.

01:17:30.000 Some folks do it.

01:17:31.000 It's not super important for me.

01:17:33.000 You don't feel like it's important in terms of finding out whether or not a fighter's overtrained?

01:17:37.000 Oh, that's a little bit different question.

01:17:39.000 So, you can use things like HRV to track those things.

01:17:42.000 What's that?

01:17:43.000 Heart rate variability.

01:17:44.000 So, it'll effectively think of it like a heart rate monitor, but it's going to look at how...

01:17:49.000 So, your heart doesn't just go beat...

01:17:52.000 Beat, beat, right?

01:17:53.000 It has variability.

01:17:54.000 It's beat, [...

01:17:57.000 Well, that actually has some relationship with your autonomic nervous system.

01:18:02.000 So if it's really variable, you're in a good spot.

01:18:06.000 If you lose your variability and it becomes beat, [...

01:18:13.000 So your nervous system is a little bit shot there.

01:18:16.000 So you can use those.

01:18:17.000 And Joel Jameson, again, has done a ton of this work.

01:18:20.000 And you can look at that to have an idea of whether or not they're over-trained.

01:18:24.000 So you can use that.

01:18:25.000 I don't particularly use those things for a couple of reasons.

01:18:28.000 Number one...

01:18:30.000 I know what's going to happen for the most part over the six weeks.

01:18:33.000 Like, as camp's going on.

01:18:35.000 Like, it's based on performance, the coach, the athlete, when I've been around them.

01:18:38.000 Like, we plan it out so that this is the volume this week, this is the volume this week, this is the volume this week, so that we don't get ourselves in those situations.

01:18:46.000 And how do you know how to plan the volume out?

01:18:49.000 Like, say if you've got a guy like, you know, fill in the blank, Chris Weidman comes to you, and he wants to train with you, and he's preparing for a five-round championship fight.

01:18:59.000 How do you know how much work to give him?

01:19:01.000 Like, how do you schedule that?

01:19:03.000 So I would never have the arrogance to step in and go, okay, this is the volume you're at, Chris.

01:19:07.000 I've never met you.

01:19:07.000 Great to meet you, but here's your volume.

01:19:09.000 Right. 0.99

01:19:09.000 Like, that'd be stupid. 0.99

01:19:10.000 Would you have him come and do a test workout for you? 1.00

01:19:13.000 No.

01:19:13.000 I would have a conversation with as many of his coaches.

01:19:15.000 And honestly, the first time I worked with them for something like volume, I generally would just shut up and watch.

01:19:21.000 And go, okay, like, here's what you're going to tell me you did.

01:19:23.000 So write on a piece of paper what you did for the camp.

01:19:25.000 What's your plan for the camp?

01:19:26.000 What have you done in the past?

01:19:28.000 Then I look and we can assess some volume.

01:19:30.000 And then I can generally tell, okay, this is normal for a person of your caliber, of your age and your experience, or like you're way over what's normal.

01:19:38.000 But I don't know how that lands on you.

01:19:41.000 And then I watch.

01:19:41.000 And as we go along, and it's conversations continually and going, this is happening.

01:19:46.000 Your other coach told me this.

01:19:47.000 You're telling me this is going on.

01:19:49.000 Blood work came back here.

01:19:51.000 Mmm.

01:19:52.000 Don't know if we're in the right spot here.

01:19:53.000 And then the second or third camp around, then I can have a feel and I can go back at the previous notes and go, well, this is 10% higher.

01:19:59.000 This is far three more times here.

01:20:01.000 I think.

01:20:01.000 And then it almost always matches up with, yeah, I'm feeling terrible, etc., etc.

01:20:06.000 Right.

01:20:07.000 What are your thoughts on like plyometrics, box jumps, things along those lines?

01:20:11.000 Yeah.

01:20:12.000 Box jumps are generally misused.

01:20:14.000 So people don't understand, especially in CrossFit or in MMA or in wrestling.

01:20:19.000 People use CrossFit for conditioning for the most part, which is fine.

01:20:23.000 But they don't get the biggest benefit out of it, which is strength, speed, power, training the reactive part of the system, training muscle spindles.

01:20:31.000 So, absolutely fine as a modality.

01:20:32.000 What do you mean by they don't get that out?

01:20:34.000 Like, how do they not get that?

01:20:35.000 So, for example, someone does a box jump, and they're like, okay, box jumps, I want to get better power in my legs.

01:20:40.000 So they'll go and do like, alright, let's spar for five rounds, and then I'll go do 100 box jumps as fast as I can.

01:20:47.000 You're not getting any faster like that.

01:20:48.000 You're just getting more tired.

01:20:50.000 That will not improve your power at all.

01:20:52.000 It won't?

01:20:53.000 No, because you're not jumping fast.

01:20:56.000 You're actually jumping at a very sub-max speed the whole time because you're already fatigued.

01:21:01.000 Oh, I see what you're saying.

01:21:02.000 So if you want to use those for power...

01:21:04.000 Now, if you're using it for conditioning...

01:21:07.000 Fine.

01:21:08.000 No problem.

01:21:09.000 But if you're using it for the sake of improving your foot speed or your power or your strength or your explosiveness...

01:21:13.000 You should be well rested.

01:21:15.000 Yes.

01:21:16.000 One, two, three reps, take a break, etc.

01:21:18.000 What do you think of, like, that strong first protocol?

01:21:21.000 Do you know the Pavel Tatsulin idea that, you know, he feels that strength is...

01:21:28.000 It's along the same sort of lines of what you're talking about.

01:21:30.000 That strength is essentially a skill.

01:21:31.000 Yeah.

01:21:32.000 Oh, absolutely.

01:21:33.000 And that you should not be doing things to failure.

01:21:36.000 That the best way to do it, in his estimation, is to do more sets with more break in between them.

01:21:43.000 That's like very strength 101. You'd have a hard time for a true strength person disagreeing with a lot of that.

01:21:51.000 It's hard to get stronger when you're tired.

01:21:54.000 So going to failure is not as...

01:21:56.000 Now, I've talked to a bunch of people about this that have started doing this recently, like within the last year or two, and they've all experienced great results.

01:22:04.000 And that the idea being that you used to go to failure and then you'd be wrecked.

01:22:09.000 Like three or four days instead of that like say if you could do ten reps or something you do five and then you take a big rest and then you do five again and you take a big rest and then you wind up instead of doing 15 reps You wind up doing like 30 over the course of an hour and a half and then you're fine the next day Well,

01:22:27.000 I mean you had Louie on like Louie Simmons, right?

01:22:30.000 This is classic. 0.99

01:22:31.000 What a fucking maniac that guy is He was awesome. 0.99

01:22:34.000 I love that guy. 0.99

01:22:36.000 I always tell my kids, my students to Google him.

01:22:38.000 Yeah.

01:22:38.000 You're not going to get bored.

01:22:40.000 Oh, listen to my podcast with him.

01:22:42.000 It's one of the most entertaining things I've ever heard in my life.

01:22:44.000 He's such a character.

01:22:45.000 The basic idea...

01:22:46.000 Well, we'll have to back up for a quick second.

01:22:48.000 It depends on the goal.

01:22:49.000 Right.

01:22:50.000 Strength.

01:22:50.000 If pure strength is the goal...

01:22:53.000 Failure also has to be defined.

01:22:54.000 So what do you mean by failure?

01:22:56.000 Now, am I failing because of fatigue?

01:22:58.000 Right.

01:22:58.000 Then he's totally right.

01:22:59.000 Right.

01:23:00.000 Am I failing, though, because they're too heavy?

01:23:01.000 Well, you do want to go to that failure for strength.

01:23:03.000 How so, though?

01:23:04.000 So you need to, at some point, pick up something that you can't pick up or really close to can't pick up to get stronger.

01:23:10.000 Really close to it.

01:23:11.000 Like, you can do...

01:23:13.000 Right.

01:23:14.000 But you can't do a second one.

01:23:15.000 Right, bingo.

01:23:16.000 So put it down.

01:23:16.000 Or maybe you could do two, but you couldn't do three or something like that.

01:23:19.000 The very textbook answer is anything below five repetitions-ish is going to be good for strength.

01:23:25.000 Yeah, he believes anything more than five is bodybuilding.

01:23:28.000 That's what Pavel says.

01:23:30.000 That's pretty dead on.

01:23:31.000 I mean, he's not too wrong there.

01:23:32.000 And the reason I brought Louis up is he's classic for saying first reps.

01:23:37.000 So if you did three sets of ten, Right.

01:23:40.000 Well, you had three first repetitions, right?

01:23:43.000 So you had three reps that you did after rest.

01:23:47.000 But if you did ten sets at three, now you had ten first reps.

01:23:53.000 Oh, interesting.

01:23:55.000 Right?

01:23:55.000 So now you did the same total repetitions, but ten of them were done after full rest, which means you're going to have more power and more force.

01:24:01.000 That makes sense.

01:24:02.000 That seems smarter.

01:24:03.000 That's basically it.

01:24:04.000 So you're better off doing ten threes than three tens.

01:24:07.000 For strength.

01:24:08.000 For strength.

01:24:09.000 Or power.

01:24:09.000 Right.

01:24:09.000 Or speed.

01:24:10.000 And then taking a big break in between them is sort of counterintuitive to a lot of people. 0.99

01:24:14.000 They feel like, oh, I don't want to be a pussy and then let myself get fully recovered. 0.99

01:24:19.000 I want to push while I'm still high. 1.00

01:24:20.000 Come on, bro.

01:24:21.000 Come on, bro.

01:24:21.000 We've got to go to failure.

01:24:22.000 One more, one more.

01:24:23.000 And they'll help you up.

01:24:24.000 Come on, come on, come on. 0.97

01:24:25.000 Yeah.

01:24:26.000 I see that all the time, meatheads in the gym, and they think that's the way to go, and I'm like, man, I don't know.

01:24:33.000 Well, it's the way to go if they want to get sore, if they want to maybe improve muscle mass.

01:24:37.000 People love to do that, though.

01:24:38.000 They love to walk around sore.

01:24:39.000 You know what's funny?

01:24:41.000 This is like the number one reason I got into MMA was that.

01:24:45.000 That question like right there.

01:24:46.000 People kept coming to me with this and I'm like, you don't know basics of speed training or strength training?

01:24:51.000 And the MMA guys were so wrong and that's how I got into this for the most part is people were like, oh my god, this is changing like everything.

01:24:57.000 I'm like...

01:24:58.000 Well, MMA training is, it's weird, it's really strange because MMA training is essentially, it's still in its infancy, right?

01:25:06.000 It really didn't even exist until 1993. And then it didn't even really exist even then until like...

01:25:13.000 I feel like Frank Shamrock was the first real professional MMA fighter, because he was the first guy to figure out that you have to be an insane cardio, and he was the first guy to be able to strike and also be able to grapple, to be able to fight off of his back, and piece it all together.

01:25:30.000 And the cardio was a huge factor.

01:25:34.000 When he beat Tito Ortiz, it was way smaller than Tito, but he beat him because of cardio.

01:25:40.000 But one of the things that I used to see early on that was so confusing to me because I came from a striking background was how many of these guys were willing to beat the fuck out of each other in the gym.

01:25:51.000 And like that they were just going to war.

01:25:54.000 But not even going to war with like good skills.

01:25:58.000 Like going to war while they were learning.

01:26:00.000 For the sake of war. 1.00

01:26:01.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm watching them getting coached and they're beating the shit. 0.99

01:26:04.000 I'm like, you guys are professionals. 1.00

01:26:06.000 Like, this isn't like some idiots at the Y. Like, you guys are supposed to be pros. 0.99

01:26:12.000 Yeah.

01:26:13.000 Like, you're going to damage yourself.

01:26:15.000 You're going to take years off of your career.

01:26:17.000 The vast majority of, you know, me working with athletes...

01:26:21.000 Is doing these very, very basic things.

01:26:23.000 Like, I'm not, I'm absolutely not the guru who's like, oh, I know the 18-point blood test and we're gonna get these.

01:26:29.000 The vast majority of what I do is go, oh, okay, I see the problem here.

01:26:34.000 We need to do this basic thing.

01:26:35.000 Right.

01:26:36.000 You haven't eaten a vegetable in a week.

01:26:38.000 Got it.

01:26:39.000 Did you get that?

01:26:40.000 Not as much anymore, but I used to.

01:26:41.000 Really?

01:26:42.000 Yeah.

01:26:42.000 We get a lot of that stuff.

01:26:44.000 A pro athlete that doesn't eat vegetables.

01:26:45.000 You know what we get? 1.00

01:26:46.000 Honestly, it's probably because assholes like you and they watch your show or something. 1.00

01:26:50.000 Just kidding. 1.00

01:26:51.000 I tell people to eat vegetables all the time.

01:26:53.000 No, but they watch this and they're like, okay, and they'll come at me with a thousand really weird nutrition questions or something, or really weird advanced training ones, because I went to a seminar or something, and I'm like, back the train up.

01:27:02.000 Like, you're sparring six times a week.

01:27:04.000 Ooh, yeah.

01:27:05.000 We've got a whole other conversation.

01:27:07.000 Like, oh, we don't do that?

01:27:08.000 No, that's not normal.

01:27:09.000 Really?

01:27:10.000 No, okay.

01:27:11.000 Or you're doing that, or you're running 35 miles a week.

01:27:14.000 Got it.

01:27:15.000 That's the vast majority of what I do, is bring these guys back to life and go, like, let me help you sift through all this internet stuff that's really complicated, and let's take what's actually good and bad and dial in a very usable system.

01:27:28.000 So you think people just get overwhelmed with options from the internet?

01:27:32.000 Absolutely.

01:27:33.000 Because too many people...

01:27:35.000 Get on exposure, get on shows or platforms, and they try to make sure that they are known as the guy that knows something different.

01:27:41.000 Right, right, right.

01:27:43.000 It's not very exciting if I come up here and say, yeah, Joe, that's pros and cons to everything.

01:27:47.000 Great.

01:27:48.000 Like, well, that's not fun.

01:27:48.000 But it's good.

01:27:50.000 I mean, I think what you're saying is very important for people to hear.

01:27:53.000 Yeah.

01:27:53.000 Like, they get bogged down in the details way too much of things that really don't matter.

01:27:57.000 Your body's not that sensitive or insensitive enough where it can't convert something from something to something else.

01:28:03.000 And if it needs it, it will do that for the most part.

01:28:05.000 So there are some real small things at the end, but a lot of what we can do is, like, just get you on a reasonable program that's actually possible for you to implement.

01:28:15.000 Mm-hmm.

01:28:16.000 And that doesn't drive you so crazy or is so difficult and so confusing for you that you get halfway into it, you abandon it, and then you want to start over.

01:28:22.000 Well, you know, I always think about Dan Gable.

01:28:25.000 When Dan Gable was young, he pretty much outworked anybody.

01:28:29.000 And he was just an unbelievable savage when it came to his training.

01:28:32.000 And then that manifested itself in the competition.

01:28:35.000 He was just like, the momentum behind him because of his ruthless training was so intense.

01:28:40.000 But...

01:28:41.000 Now he can't even walk. 0.99

01:28:43.000 I mean, his hips are gone, his knees are gone, he's got artificial everything, you know, he's just fucked up because of it. 0.98

01:28:48.000 And some guys are willing to make that sacrifice. 0.97

01:28:50.000 Yeah, but is that, here's the question, is that sacrifice necessary?

01:28:54.000 Like, can you be too tough versus smart in your training?

01:29:00.000 It's impossible to say.

01:29:01.000 Right.

01:29:02.000 Because, like you said, here's where it gets so tricky, is physiology versus psychology.

01:29:07.000 So if that gave him that extra mental confidence that he needed to perform better, well then it's hard to say that it wasn't necessary.

01:29:14.000 Yeah, like he was always talking about guys on steroids, that he liked competing against guys on steroids because he knew they were mentally weak and they would break.

01:29:20.000 Right.

01:29:21.000 So who the hell knows, right?

01:29:23.000 Like you have all this conflicting stuff and you try to do this dance, which is why again you need people, you need a team to do this stuff and say, okay, this is what I think.

01:29:31.000 So people have a really hard time with physiological truth or scientific truth And implementation.

01:29:41.000 So, a very easy one is sugar.

01:29:43.000 Right?

01:29:44.000 Now, like, I don't know anyone in the world who advocates adding sugar to your diet is a good thing.

01:29:48.000 Like, no one's gonna say that.

01:29:50.000 Right.

01:29:51.000 But what you tell somebody is scientific truth versus what the message you spread to either your athletes or a bunch of people, that can be very, very different because of unintended applications or consequences.

01:30:03.000 So, for example, there's no physiological harm with sugar.

01:30:07.000 It's not bad for you in any way.

01:30:09.000 But as a message to the general public...

01:30:13.000 That's not the worst thing to say.

01:30:15.000 And so most of the fighting that goes back and forth between any conversation like this is people saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, but the actual effect of it is good.

01:30:23.000 Yeah, but the science is wrong.

01:30:24.000 And they're not conceding.

01:30:25.000 They're actually talking past each other far more than they're talking to listen.

01:30:28.000 Let me stop right there.

01:30:29.000 You don't think that sugar is bad for you?

01:30:30.000 No, it can't be.

01:30:32.000 It can't be.

01:30:33.000 Unless implementation-wise.

01:30:35.000 So process sugar.

01:30:35.000 No, no, no, no.

01:30:36.000 What are you saying?

01:30:36.000 So now we've...

01:30:37.000 Okay.

01:30:38.000 Sugar in your diet.

01:30:39.000 Nope.

01:30:40.000 This is where it gets confusing.

01:30:41.000 Exactly.

01:30:42.000 You want to break down sugar? 0.98

01:30:43.000 Yeah.

01:30:43.000 Well, having sugar in your diet, like eating sugary foods and snacks, having an excess of sugar has dire health consequences.

01:30:51.000 Totally.

01:30:51.000 Correct?

01:30:52.000 Absolutely.

01:30:52.000 But there's a key word you said there, which was excess.

01:30:54.000 Excess.

01:30:55.000 Excess.

01:30:56.000 Okay.

01:30:56.000 So, like, meaning a piece of fruit, like a nectarine, not bad for you at all?

01:31:00.000 No.

01:31:01.000 Of course not.

01:31:01.000 It's good for you.

01:31:02.000 And plus fiber.

01:31:03.000 Absolutely.

01:31:04.000 Yeah.

01:31:04.000 But processed sugar, whether it's removed from that fiber and put into a Coca-Cola...

01:31:09.000 That becomes an issue.

01:31:10.000 Yeah, because of concentration issue.

01:31:12.000 Because now you can consume it at a concentration that probably wouldn't happen normally.

01:31:15.000 Right, in quantities that would never happen normally.

01:31:18.000 Bingo. 0.99

01:31:18.000 So now you could have a person in the corner of left who says, like, no, you're an idiot, look at the science, sugar's not bad for you for a thousand reasons, and they're technically right. 0.99

01:31:28.000 But, when we have conversations to 350 million Americans, they don't want all that detail in between. 0.98

01:31:34.000 They want, do I do it or do I not?

01:31:37.000 And so, if I have to take a hard line and I go, you know what?

01:31:39.000 Sugar is bad.

01:31:40.000 Don't eat it.

01:31:41.000 It actually causes a generally good effect on people.

01:31:44.000 They go, oh, okay.

01:31:45.000 I didn't know this.

01:31:45.000 Adding sugar to my stuff is not good.

01:31:47.000 Don't do it.

01:31:47.000 Right.

01:31:48.000 Which is a net good thing, although technically, individually, it's not true.

01:31:52.000 Hmm.

01:31:53.000 I see what you're saying.

01:31:54.000 So sugar in and of itself is not bad.

01:31:58.000 Excess sugar and processed sugar and added sugar in mass quantities is bad.

01:32:03.000 Exactly.

01:32:04.000 And that's what you're dealing with with the average American diet, whether it's through breads or pastas or actually sugar and soda itself.

01:32:10.000 Right.

01:32:10.000 Or sucrose or sucralose or any of those things and added to it.

01:32:13.000 And so when people, like, the poor souls go on the internet and they're trying to figure out, like, wow, God, are carbs bad for me or not?

01:32:19.000 Right.

01:32:20.000 It's like, well...

01:32:21.000 We're fighting over stuff that's not important and we're missing the message because people want real answers and you're not helping them.

01:32:28.000 Give it to them in a way...

01:32:30.000 I don't care if it makes you look right on the internet.

01:32:33.000 We need to come together and say, oh, okay, well, here's good, here's bad about it, here are the pros and cons, etc.

01:32:38.000 Now, here's the information for you folks.

01:32:40.000 And it doesn't matter whose book it is or who wrote it.

01:32:42.000 Like, that's not the important part.

01:32:44.000 Well, even having this conversation, though, is going to be really confusing to a lot of people because you're talking about so many different variables.

01:32:50.000 And by your being intellectually honest about all this stuff and saying, well, it's, you know, there's no real good answer.

01:32:58.000 Yeah.

01:32:58.000 You know, and it's different for one person than it is for another person.

01:33:00.000 Some people might get over really well on, like, macadamia nuts and almonds and get their protein from, you know, and other people, they might actually have an allergy to those things.

01:33:11.000 Yeah, and, you know, trust me, try to be my students. 0.96

01:33:13.000 They get irritated as shit when I do this to them. 0.93

01:33:16.000 But it's probably a good thing. 0.99

01:33:17.000 But when a fighter, in particular, is thinking about their career, they sort of exist in these six-week to eight-week lifespans.

01:33:25.000 Like, their whole life.

01:33:27.000 Unfortunately.

01:33:27.000 Yeah.

01:33:28.000 Or fortunately, when it works out well.

01:33:30.000 Right.

01:33:31.000 That they go through these ruthless training camps, and to have any variability, to have any unknown, to have any...

01:33:39.000 So this is...

01:33:40.000 Yeah.

01:33:41.000 I mean, you bring up a good point.

01:33:42.000 This is not the kind of conversation I would have with a fighter.

01:33:45.000 Right.

01:33:46.000 Not during, not especially 10 weeks out from a fight.

01:33:48.000 Overload their brain with possibility.

01:33:50.000 No.

01:33:50.000 Right.

01:33:50.000 No, no, no.

01:33:51.000 It is very clear, like, what do you do?

01:33:52.000 What do you like to do?

01:33:53.000 What do you hate to do?

01:33:54.000 Right.

01:33:54.000 What have you done before?

01:33:55.000 What's worked well?

01:33:55.000 Et cetera.

01:33:56.000 Okay.

01:33:57.000 So, I have an analogy called the cook, the baker, and the chef.

01:34:02.000 I'll give you the very quick story of it.

01:34:04.000 You can listen to the whole episode on my podcast if you want.

01:34:07.000 What's the podcast called?

01:34:08.000 The Body of Knowledge.

01:34:09.000 Okay.

01:34:10.000 So, I like the- It's on iTunes, all that stuff?

01:34:13.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:34:13.000 All that stuff.

01:34:14.000 Bodyknowledge.com.

01:34:16.000 It's actually, not to talk about that too much, but it's only nine episodes.

01:34:19.000 It's not like an on-running podcast.

01:34:21.000 It's like Radiolab, Dan Carlin, but for physiology, strength and conditioning.

01:34:26.000 Not to that extent, but you get that.

01:34:30.000 I like to look at people as either, the easy one is either a baker or a cook.

01:34:35.000 Right, so do you know what the difference between baking and cooking is?

01:34:37.000 No.

01:34:38.000 Cool, most people don't.

01:34:39.000 Baking is chemistry, basically.

01:34:41.000 Right, you can't like, ah, I'm a little tablespoon here, maybe a teaspoon, baking soda, baking powder, ah, same thing.

01:34:47.000 That does not work.

01:34:48.000 You can't bake like that, right? 0.99

01:34:50.000 You will not make anything, you would have a mush of crap in an oven. 0.98

01:34:53.000 Baking is chemistry. 0.95

01:34:54.000 You do this, in this order, and this, and then you add this, and you cannot do these in other orders.

01:34:59.000 It's very specific.

01:35:01.000 Like, roughly.

01:35:02.000 Cooking is like, well, alright, what's left?

01:35:04.000 I get some oil, get some hot, kind of dices, yeah, throw some, whatever, that you give a mishmash, right?

01:35:11.000 So, people generally, I find, work well with nutrition information, either one of two approaches.

01:35:17.000 So, if I said, Joe, I'm going to do a nutrition program for you for the next six months, whatever you want, and I said, you can either do this one of two ways.

01:35:24.000 We can work together every morning, weigh every single thing you eat on the scale, text it to me, I'll tell you exactly how many slices of avocado to have, how many jalapenos, and I'll tell you exact weights and volumes for everything.

01:35:37.000 Or we can maybe text once a day or once a week and we would just go over concepts and ideas.

01:35:42.000 Here's what we're trying to get to, do what you want.

01:35:43.000 Which would you like?

01:35:45.000 Man, I don't know.

01:35:47.000 What should I like?

01:35:48.000 It's not a should, it's a personal preference.

01:35:50.000 Okay.

01:35:51.000 So some people would cook.

01:35:54.000 Just wants ideas.

01:35:55.000 Give me the concepts, like one or two things to work through.

01:35:58.000 Cool.

01:35:58.000 I get anxiety with all those rules, all that information.

01:36:02.000 I can't implement it.

01:36:03.000 It's too complicated.

01:36:04.000 I don't have that much time, etc.

01:36:06.000 I call those people cooks.

01:36:08.000 Other people get anxiety, like my wife Natasha, when I don't give her exact numbers.

01:36:14.000 She's like, well, is it six grams, or is it eight almonds, or is it nine almonds? 0.56

01:36:17.000 Like, what is it?

01:36:17.000 Right.

01:36:18.000 So, giving people the information in the way that they absorb it is important.

01:36:23.000 So, if you talk to a baker, so chemistry, details, weighing, everything out, and I go, alright, here's what I want you to do, a little bit of fat, a little bit of protein, some grains, that's not going to work for them.

01:36:35.000 You have to give them a very, very specific system.

01:36:38.000 Half a cup of this, a tablespoon of that.

01:36:40.000 Even if that system isn't perfect.

01:36:42.000 What about a chef?

01:36:43.000 So a chef is someone who knows the chemistry of baking, but has the years of experience of mixing it in different ways.

01:36:51.000 Now you can go ahead and break those rules.

01:36:53.000 Oh.

01:36:54.000 Chefs break cooking rules all the time.

01:36:56.000 Baking rules.

01:36:57.000 So a chef is like Anderson Silva.

01:36:59.000 Well, of fighting.

01:37:00.000 Yeah.

01:37:01.000 Yeah.

01:37:01.000 But a chef would be maybe where you're at in your nutrition where you go, you know what?

01:37:05.000 Like, I can do that.

01:37:06.000 I could follow a very specific diet, but I know the concept and I know these rules.

01:37:09.000 Let me experiment here.

01:37:11.000 And you have room to maneuver.

01:37:12.000 The problem is most people want to jump in and be chefs.

01:37:15.000 People want to fight like Anderson Silva their first day and get overwhelmed.

01:37:19.000 I see what you're saying. 0.98

01:37:20.000 So get a detailed understanding about how your body functions under very specific protocols and then start fucking around with it. 0.98

01:37:27.000 Or the opposite. 0.92

01:37:28.000 Start off with a cook approach, which is say, let me give you one or two concepts this week.

01:37:32.000 I want you to eat one fresh green every day, and I want you to make sure you have protein every time you eat.

01:37:38.000 That's it.

01:37:39.000 It's my only rule.

01:37:40.000 Okay, next week we add a rule, maybe.

01:37:43.000 We had another concept.

01:37:44.000 And as you get better and you get more confidence and you get more comfortable, you can go, okay, well, how much protein exactly?

01:37:49.000 Let's just try 100 grams. 0.54

01:37:51.000 All right, well, let's try 150. And we've slowly pushed you.

01:37:56.000 But generally being a baker, all those rules, weighing everything, generally that's not sustainable for most people.

01:38:03.000 Hmm.

01:38:04.000 Now, do you coach them as far as their diet goes?

01:38:07.000 Do you actually tell them what they should and shouldn't eat?

01:38:10.000 Depends on if they're a cook or a baker. 0.74

01:38:12.000 So, a cook, I do not.

01:38:14.000 I tell them basic concepts.

01:38:16.000 So I talk to them what's going to be helpful for them.

01:38:19.000 They go, what do you think I should do?

01:38:20.000 Should I add more carbs?

01:38:21.000 Here's what I'm feeling.

01:38:23.000 I'll go, where are we at?

01:38:24.000 Here's our diet.

01:38:25.000 Yeah, let's add more carbs. 0.93

01:38:26.000 How should I do it?

01:38:27.000 This or this?

01:38:27.000 This one.

01:38:28.000 Do you generally tell people to avoid any specific foods?

01:38:32.000 Are there any things that interrupt training or get into the way?

01:38:37.000 Outside of the obvious, no.

01:38:38.000 I mean the basics, candy, pizza.

01:38:40.000 Right, right.

01:38:41.000 Not really.

01:38:42.000 Unless we have some very specific history with them that, hey, remember, you don't react well when this happens.

01:38:47.000 But generally...

01:38:49.000 I don't.

01:38:50.000 And then when you say like protein, do you specify fish or chicken or meat?

01:38:54.000 If it's a cook?

01:38:56.000 Uh-huh.

01:38:56.000 No.

01:38:57.000 No.

01:38:57.000 If it's a baker, absolutely.

01:38:59.000 Absolutely.

01:38:59.000 And whether it's important that I chose fish or chicken almost doesn't matter as much as...

01:39:04.000 Telling them.

01:39:05.000 That the fact that they...

01:39:06.000 Oh, he's got it dialed for me.

01:39:07.000 Great.

01:39:08.000 I got a system.

01:39:08.000 Right.

01:39:08.000 You have eight ounces of halibut.

01:39:11.000 There it is.

01:39:11.000 Bam.

01:39:12.000 Right.

01:39:13.000 Because the vast majority of the ones I work with are already pretty good with their nutrition.

01:39:18.000 And it's really more concepts.

01:39:19.000 Some of them just want the stress relief, telling them what to eat.

01:39:22.000 And they want someone to come in, hey, do you know anyone that will come in and food prep, meal prep for me?

01:39:26.000 And yeah, okay, we can do that.

01:39:28.000 But some of them like it.

01:39:29.000 Some of it's their de-stress.

01:39:31.000 Some of them like that control.

01:39:32.000 So I try to help them.

01:39:34.000 Again, it's not about me.

01:39:35.000 I don't care if my system worked.

01:39:37.000 I don't have a system.

01:39:38.000 My system is, what do you want to do?

01:39:40.000 How can I help you and your team?

01:39:41.000 What can we do?

01:39:42.000 That's the approach.

01:39:43.000 Right.

01:39:44.000 Wow, God, that seems so...

01:39:47.000 There's so many variables, and it's so complex.

01:39:50.000 Yeah, which is why I get so irritated.

01:39:52.000 You're teasing me earlier about getting all fired up about it.

01:39:55.000 I can understand.

01:39:56.000 But I appreciate this intellectual honesty about these variables and about how there is not one approach.

01:40:03.000 Because, again, there's so many dickheads out there that are teaching their method, in air quotes.

01:40:10.000 So here we go. 0.99

01:40:10.000 Let's take those dickheads, right? 0.99

01:40:12.000 If you're a baker... 0.99

01:40:14.000 Landing on one of those systems is going to be fantastic for you.

01:40:17.000 And you're going to five-star review them, and you're going to tweet it out to everybody, because you're like, this is great.

01:40:20.000 Because you're a baker.

01:40:21.000 And you needed a system.

01:40:23.000 And if you're a cook, though, you're like, well, who cares? 0.99

01:40:26.000 And if a scientist could step in and go like, well, these are all the problems, and this, and this, and this, and this, and everyone's fighting back and forth, you're like, well, fuck, do I guess, do I eat fat or not eat fat? 0.98

01:40:34.000 Like, I'm so confused. 0.96

01:40:36.000 That's not the right question.

01:40:37.000 I think what irritates a lot of people is that some people are finding...

01:40:43.000 Like, this insecurity that people have, and they're exploiting it by telling them exactly what they think is right.

01:40:52.000 It's human nature, right?

01:40:53.000 We want the next solution.

01:40:55.000 We want all this stuff.

01:40:56.000 We want it all dialed into one.

01:40:57.000 I call it fallacy of unicorn.

01:41:00.000 Like, I'm just going to keep searching because there's this one thing and if I fix that one thing, everything else will line up.

01:41:06.000 It doesn't work like that.

01:41:07.000 Yeah.

01:41:08.000 Now, what about vegetables?

01:41:10.000 Like, do you specify the type of vegetables you like?

01:41:12.000 Do you prefer a dark, leafy, green vegetable?

01:41:15.000 General statement, the more color, the more texture, the better.

01:41:18.000 Right?

01:41:19.000 And like you said actually earlier, it's the variety that matters with these folks as sustainable.

01:41:23.000 Now, having said that, here's what I'll do.

01:41:26.000 Outside of camp, these are the conversations we're having.

01:41:29.000 I want as many different vegetables as you possibly can.

01:41:31.000 Different colors, different countries, different seasons.

01:41:34.000 All this stuff, right?

01:41:35.000 Let's cook them sometimes.

01:41:37.000 Let's steam them. 0.97

01:41:38.000 Let's eat them fresh.

01:41:39.000 Let's eat them raw.

01:41:39.000 There's pros and cons to all this.

01:41:41.000 Mix it up.

01:41:41.000 Exactly.

01:41:43.000 Oh, now you've got to fight in four weeks and we're 25 pounds overweight?

01:41:46.000 Sometimes I will take those options away because it's easy then to control numbers.

01:41:52.000 If I say, okay, here's the approach, you're going to have A, B, and C... We're good to go.

01:42:18.000 And so sometimes if you're like, I'm eating everything you're telling me.

01:42:20.000 I'm eating a bunch of different stuff and I'm not losing weight.

01:42:23.000 Well, maybe they don't understand.

01:42:24.000 Yeah, but this type of vegetable has a lot more calories than this type of vegetable.

01:42:28.000 So we're getting really high up in your numbers.

01:42:30.000 Or when you eat this, the way you prep it, the way you like it is calorically dense.

01:42:34.000 So I will reduce...

01:42:36.000 I know.

01:42:58.000 What about water?

01:43:00.000 Now, I've always wanted to ask somebody this.

01:43:01.000 I hope you know the answer.

01:43:03.000 There's all these ways to treat water, alkaline water.

01:43:08.000 Nonsense. 0.99

01:43:09.000 Bullshit, right? 1.00

01:43:09.000 Mostly. 1.00

01:43:10.000 Yeah, I would assume so.

01:43:11.000 Yeah, we actually did a study on that.

01:43:13.000 Six weeks, alkaline.

01:43:14.000 What does it mean? 0.91

01:43:15.000 Like, what the fuck is alkaline water? 0.67

01:43:17.000 It's pH, right? 0.95

01:43:18.000 So it's the opposite of acid.

01:43:19.000 Right.

01:43:20.000 Alkaline's the base.

01:43:21.000 But I mean, how do they make the water that way?

01:43:24.000 Like, what are they doing to it?

01:43:25.000 Oh, so generally water comes probably a little bit acidic, especially our tap water.

01:43:30.000 And so I would imagine they just do some sort of combination of salt or desalting.

01:43:34.000 Pretty easy, chemistry-wise.

01:43:36.000 So they get it a little bit technically.

01:43:37.000 So just adding a little salt to your water.

01:43:39.000 I think somebody actually did a study of a bunch of those alkaline waters and tested them in the store, like bought in different brands, and they were all over the place acidity-wise.

01:43:48.000 Yeah, I would imagine.

01:43:49.000 They were not even close to alkaline.

01:43:51.000 Because you also have, like, remember, it's going to change when it sits on the shelf.

01:43:54.000 Right. 0.98

01:43:54.000 When it's exposed to sunlight, all that crap. 0.98

01:43:56.000 I call it holy water. 0.99

01:43:57.000 Yeah, it's kind of silly.

01:43:59.000 I mean, I always feel like, oh yeah, that's the blessed water. 0.99

01:44:02.000 Like, come on, man, it's fucking water. 0.98

01:44:04.000 I mean, dude, look, I'm open. 1.00

01:44:05.000 If studies came out and we kept doing it, we're like, oh shit, there's something here.

01:44:09.000 But there's no studies currently.

01:44:10.000 That's happened before. 1.00

01:44:11.000 With things I've been like, that's nonsense, that's stupid. 1.00

01:44:13.000 I mean, a bunch of things. 0.99

01:44:15.000 The training mask.

01:44:17.000 The training masks, yeah?

01:44:18.000 Absolutely.

01:44:18.000 Is it good?

01:44:19.000 Well, it's not good or bad.

01:44:21.000 Depends on what you use it for.

01:44:22.000 How dare you?

01:44:23.000 Yeah.

01:44:23.000 I need an answer.

01:44:24.000 I'll give you an answer.

01:44:25.000 Okay.

01:44:25.000 So, what I like to do is give examples of when good, when bad.

01:44:29.000 Right.

01:44:30.000 And this is Brian McKenzie.

01:44:32.000 I keep bringing him up, but he taught me this lesson.

01:44:34.000 This is a great lesson in humility.

01:44:36.000 So, if you don't know him, he was really disruptive in the running community, in the movement.

01:44:41.000 He came up Kelly Starrett.

01:44:42.000 They came up together.

01:44:43.000 Okay.

01:44:45.000 So I wasn't interested in him.

01:44:46.000 People kept getting at me like, hey, go look at his stuff.

01:44:48.000 And I'm like, oh, he's a CrossFit coach.

01:44:50.000 Out.

01:44:50.000 Like, not interested.

01:44:51.000 You don't like CrossFit coaches?

01:44:52.000 No, I have nothing against that.

01:44:53.000 But at the time, I was like, what does CrossFit coach know?

01:44:57.000 Right, okay.

01:44:57.000 Again, arrogance on my part, mistake.

01:44:59.000 And second, I'm like, you're a running coach.

01:45:00.000 Like, I'm doubling uninterested.

01:45:03.000 Again, this is me highlighting my mistakes.

01:45:05.000 But then I actually, funny enough, paid attention to what he was saying, and it turns out there was something there.

01:45:11.000 So it's funny how much you hated someone when you don't actually listen or read their stuff.

01:45:16.000 So he was promoting the training mask, and I'm like, like everyone else, I'm like, it doesn't work, evidence shows it doesn't work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

01:45:23.000 And then I listened to how he was actually using it.

01:45:26.000 So he wasn't using it to simulate altitude, because that's not really effective, but he was using it to teach people how to use their diaphragm.

01:45:34.000 And that's when I was like, oh, I get it here.

01:45:39.000 So I'll come back and I'll finish this in, but the quick analogy here would be if I handed you a pen and said, you know, like, does this pen work?

01:45:48.000 Well, it may not work as a dagger, but it worked pretty good as a pen.

01:45:53.000 So the problem with the mask was it's flipped.

01:45:55.000 It didn't work for what it was told you to work for, but it worked because, in this case, the act of restricting people's breathing sometimes can help them learn to use their diaphragm.

01:46:04.000 People who breathe with their shoulders up and they don't use their stomach and their diaphragm a lot, when you put that mask in front of their face, they don't have that option, and so they learn to breathe through their belly and use their diaphragm.

01:46:17.000 Interesting.

01:46:18.000 And so I just didn't give him the time of day because I'm like, training mask doesn't work, elevation, etc., etc., etc.

01:46:23.000 Right.

01:46:24.000 Oh, that's not how you were using it.

01:46:25.000 And what's the benefit of breathing through your diaphragm with a mask on?

01:46:29.000 It's not the mask that's important.

01:46:31.000 It's the fact that it would use you.

01:46:32.000 It's a quick way to identify if you're breathing this.

01:46:34.000 So you figure it out.

01:46:36.000 It's like a weight belt.

01:46:38.000 Boss Rutten has some sort of a breathing device.

01:46:41.000 And he was telling me about some studies that they did with it.

01:46:45.000 That was me.

01:46:46.000 Was it you?

01:46:47.000 That was mine.

01:46:47.000 Oh, beautiful.

01:46:48.000 My lab.

01:46:49.000 Well, what he was saying is that what makes his better is that it's easy to breathe out, the valve opens, so you can exhale really good.

01:46:57.000 Dump your carbon dioxide.

01:46:58.000 Whereas other ones that have just smaller holes are not as good.

01:47:02.000 So we did that study.

01:47:03.000 Oh, okay.

01:47:04.000 And this is actually, that's what turned me on to Brian initially, because I'm like, when Boss came to me with the O2 trainer, I was like, this stuff doesn't work, bro.

01:47:13.000 Turns out it does.

01:47:15.000 But here's a good example.

01:47:17.000 So his device restricts airflow in.

01:47:20.000 Right.

01:47:20.000 But you can change the setting.

01:47:22.000 So it can be a lot of restriction or a little bit of restriction.

01:47:25.000 Yeah, he has like filters that you put on it.

01:47:26.000 There it is right there.

01:47:27.000 Boss Rootin.

01:47:28.000 Yeah.

01:47:29.000 The O2 Trainer.

01:47:31.000 Exactly.

01:47:31.000 So all those little valves on the left and right hand side, they're thick.

01:47:34.000 They increase airflow or decrease airflow.

01:47:37.000 So what we did is we had people come in four times and they either got the high restriction, low restriction, medium restriction or no restriction.

01:47:44.000 And what we saw is in every person under one of those, sorry, let me back up.

01:47:50.000 They came in and either they did some breathing drills like blowing it out, inhaling as hard as they can, blowing it out.

01:47:58.000 And they did that 30 times.

01:48:00.000 And then they did basically a V2 max test.

01:48:02.000 So they ran into exhaustion, which took them 5 to 8 minutes kind of thing.

01:48:06.000 So we want to see, like, I was interested in performance.

01:48:08.000 Like, does this actually make me perform better?

01:48:11.000 And so they either got a lot of restriction, a little restriction, medium or none.

01:48:15.000 Every single person got substantially better, like 20 to 30% better, under one of the conditions.

01:48:22.000 But they also got worse under one of the conditions as well.

01:48:26.000 So what that told us was this.

01:48:28.000 If, for example, you went under the high restriction, so you're like...

01:48:32.000 And you can't get any air in.

01:48:34.000 It actually fatigued your intercostals, which are the muscles between your ribs that open up your ribs that allow airflow in.

01:48:41.000 The diaphragm in those got fatigued.

01:48:43.000 So when you did your performance, you got slower because you were already gassed.

01:48:48.000 But if you had really strong intercostals...

01:48:52.000 The lower, so the real open valve, wasn't enough resistance to actually cause those muscles to warm up.

01:48:59.000 So that didn't help your performance.

01:49:02.000 So what we found is, my point here basically is the individualization of the approach here is really, really important.

01:49:08.000 So there's something there for all of us, but you're going to have to titrate out.

01:49:11.000 You might need heavy, you might need light, you might need middle, and one of those situations might actually make it worse for you.

01:49:18.000 So the individual variability is the important point there.

01:49:20.000 How would you figure out which one you needed?

01:49:23.000 A performance test.

01:49:24.000 And what kind of performance test would you use?

01:49:26.000 You could do anything.

01:49:27.000 You could say, I'm going to run a mile and a half and record my time.

01:49:30.000 And put that thing in your mouth as you're running or after?

01:49:32.000 As your warm-up.

01:49:33.000 As your warm-up.

01:49:34.000 Yeah, so you sit there, you put it in your mouth, and you do...

01:49:36.000 So you only use it to do drills.

01:49:38.000 You don't necessarily use it to actually work out.

01:49:41.000 The vast majority of the time, that's what I recommend.

01:49:43.000 You could do it in your workout, but it would be for different reasons.

01:49:48.000 So when you do it, what would you recommend doing?

01:49:50.000 Like, say...

01:49:51.000 Say if I got an O2 trainer, I put it in, like what kind of workouts am I doing with this thing in my mouth?

01:49:56.000 Or breathing exercises?

01:49:57.000 Again, you're going to hate this.

01:49:59.000 Probably some of your fans are getting irritated by now, but it depends on the goal of the workout. 0.99

01:50:02.000 God damn it! 0.97

01:50:05.000 So, if the goal of the workout is to get the best score possible, then you do probably 30 or 40 breaths with the optimal resistance. 0.99

01:50:13.000 You feel great.

01:50:14.000 Okay.

01:50:15.000 But if the point of the workout is to actually improve...

01:50:18.000 The strength of the diaphragm.

01:50:20.000 Bingo.

01:50:21.000 Right.

01:50:21.000 Then you put yourself in suboptimal positions.

01:50:23.000 It's right back to what I said at the beginning.

01:50:25.000 Adapting or optimizing.

01:50:27.000 Those are different things.

01:50:27.000 So you're talking about the muscles in between the ribs.

01:50:29.000 Can you actually strengthen those to the point where, I mean, that's a huge issue with guys getting injured.

01:50:34.000 Absolutely.

01:50:34.000 You can strengthen those with that O2 training thing?

01:50:37.000 That's one mechanism, but you can do it a bunch of different ways.

01:50:41.000 We have done...

01:50:42.000 You've had Wim Hof on, right?

01:50:44.000 Yeah, sure.

01:50:45.000 So I've been working with Wim for a couple years now.

01:50:47.000 So doing initial stuff with him.

01:50:49.000 And it's very clear, like, we can mess with a lot of different breathing protocols and get you a lot of immediate and delayed up...

01:50:56.000 Sorry, up Brian one more time.

01:50:59.000 He had his conversation with Jon Jones on Wednesday before the fight.

01:51:03.000 First time that ever met.

01:51:05.000 Someone put him in contact.

01:51:06.000 Brian put him through some of these breathing protocols.

01:51:09.000 As soon as they were done, John was like, hey, will you fly down here on Saturday?

01:51:13.000 Flew him down that day, had him in his corner, walked him all the way down, was right next to probably you and Dana.

01:51:17.000 And he's doing all the things.

01:51:18.000 So this is how impactful some of these breathing things are.

01:51:21.000 Our whim was great to get us started.

01:51:23.000 Boss's device was awesome.

01:51:25.000 The training maps were concepts.

01:51:27.000 But now Brian has really evolved and developed and said, actually, there's a bunch of different ways we can do it.

01:51:31.000 And he has protocols.

01:51:32.000 You're going to have to ask him, but he is the one that can say, like, do this for this thing, do exactly this way for this thing, you want this adaptation, you want this effect.

01:51:39.000 Wow.

01:51:40.000 And he has it all dialed in.

01:51:41.000 I go to a cryo chamber, a cryotherapy place, where you put a surgical mask on, earmuffs, and your whole body's immersed.

01:51:49.000 It's not just below the neck.

01:51:50.000 Oh, yeah.

01:51:51.000 Have you seen those?

01:51:52.000 And when I use the Wim Hof breathing method, it's almost like somebody made it 50 degrees warmer.

01:51:57.000 Oh, yeah.

01:51:58.000 It's way easier.

01:51:59.000 I just got back from Montauk.

01:52:00.000 I spent three days jumping in ice baths the whole time out there.

01:52:03.000 But we actually have multiple protocols, so that's more akin to what some would call the breath of fire.

01:52:08.000 Is this when you were with Dennis?

01:52:10.000 Yeah, we were at an event out there with Laird Hamilton and those folks.

01:52:14.000 Laird and Gabby and Brian, Gabby Reese and Laird Hamilton started a company.

01:52:18.000 Called XPT that kind of puts a lot of this lifestyle stuff into practice.

01:52:22.000 And so they put on these live events.

01:52:24.000 They also sent me some of their new superfood stuff that they add to coffee, the creamer stuff.

01:52:29.000 Yeah.

01:52:29.000 It's really good.

01:52:29.000 It's amazing.

01:52:30.000 Yeah.

01:52:31.000 It's a little espresso-based powder plus a non-dairy creamer.

01:52:33.000 Super healthy stuff, too.

01:52:35.000 I like it.

01:52:35.000 It's fantastic.

01:52:36.000 Yeah.

01:52:37.000 So I've been working with that company for a couple of years since they got started.

01:52:42.000 But we go out there and we do these things.

01:52:44.000 And so we can say, okay...

01:52:46.000 We'll get you through the Breath of Fire protocol, and you'll feel like, wow, you get hot, you get warmed up.

01:52:51.000 There's other ways we can do it that'll bring you back down where you're like, yeah, I'm going to take a nap.

01:52:56.000 There's euphoria ones where you can get like, wow, I feel like I'm on psychedelics right now.

01:53:00.000 I'm super high.

01:53:01.000 Like holotropic breathing.

01:53:03.000 Bunch of apnea stuff, pranayama stuff.

01:53:06.000 All these things can have different outcomes depending on what you're looking for.

01:53:11.000 Hmm.

01:53:12.000 So, Brian has got this system developed now where, like, that's what he did with John.

01:53:17.000 The first one he did, it was like 10 o'clock at night, and he's like, alright, let me relax you and kind of bring you down.

01:53:22.000 He's like, oh, this is amazing.

01:53:23.000 But then he's like, I actually got to go train right now.

01:53:24.000 He's like, can you get me back up?

01:53:25.000 It's like, all right.

01:53:27.000 Let's go back the other way.

01:53:28.000 Let's put him back up.

01:53:29.000 So is there any benefit to using those breathing techniques versus an O2 trainer?

01:53:36.000 Or is it different situations?

01:53:38.000 Exactly.

01:53:38.000 It's situation-based.

01:53:39.000 There's things I like.

01:53:40.000 So you mentioned what Boss says.

01:53:42.000 The opening valve at the end of the O2 trainer allows you to dump out carbon dioxide.

01:53:46.000 Okay.

01:53:47.000 The training mask, for example, wouldn't.

01:53:49.000 Right.

01:53:50.000 So it's not right or wrong.

01:53:52.000 Depending on what you're looking to do, because one thing you can train your body to do is how well do you perform when you've generated a bunch of carbon dioxide?

01:54:00.000 Right.

01:54:01.000 So carbon dioxide is what actually makes you feel like you want to breathe.

01:54:04.000 Right.

01:54:04.000 It's not lack of oxygen.

01:54:06.000 Right.

01:54:07.000 So I can put you in a situation where you get a bunch of carbon dioxide buildup, and if I don't let you dump it, then you're gonna fatigue a lot faster.

01:54:16.000 But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

01:54:18.000 You could learn to then deal with a lot of fatigue.

01:54:20.000 Deal with it mentally?

01:54:22.000 Psychologically?

01:54:23.000 As well as physiologically.

01:54:24.000 Really?

01:54:24.000 There's going to be adaptations.

01:54:25.000 So because of the fact that your body has more carbon dioxide in the system, your body adapts to process that carbon dioxide more efficiently?

01:54:33.000 This would be the assumption, yet to be scientifically shown.

01:54:36.000 But this is the thought process.

01:54:40.000 You could feel this intuitively.

01:54:42.000 You're like, wow.

01:54:43.000 And it's also a way for us to get a lot of training volume in, or sorry, a lot of cardiovascular training in because your heart rate goes way up without actually doing a lot of physical work.

01:54:53.000 And so for MMA guys, this is what we're looking for sometimes because of physical work in their training camp is so high.

01:54:59.000 We can't add any more volume to them that's going to beat them up.

01:55:02.000 So now we can get them a cardiovascular workout in that's easy on the joints and ligaments and the bones.

01:55:08.000 So the other approach would be dump all the CO2 or do other things like nasal breathing only.

01:55:14.000 So the whole workout where you're only allowed to breathe through your nose.

01:55:17.000 When you breathe through your nose, it actually can release nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator.

01:55:23.000 So this is why when you...

01:55:25.000 Only when you breathe through your nose?

01:55:26.000 Not only, but especially when you breathe through your nose.

01:55:29.000 Huh.

01:55:31.000 Why does your body produce more nitric oxide when you breathe through your nose?

01:55:34.000 I don't know.

01:55:35.000 I don't know.

01:55:36.000 That's weird because you would think that just breathing...

01:55:38.000 Wim Hof, I was asking him, like, breathe through the nose or breathe through the nose?

01:55:41.000 Just breathe!

01:55:42.000 Just breathe!

01:55:43.000 Yeah, he always says, like, any hole, I don't care.

01:55:45.000 Yeah.

01:55:46.000 But, so, again, Wim's not wrong or anything like that, but Wim's style is great, but there's many styles is the point, I guess.

01:55:55.000 Like, he's great.

01:55:56.000 We've done some science stuff together, but...

01:55:58.000 How do you feel about saunas?

01:56:00.000 Same thing.

01:56:00.000 Amazing benefits there.

01:56:02.000 Potential, but...

01:56:04.000 There's no free passes in physiology.

01:56:06.000 So when you get something, you're probably coming at a compromise of something else.

01:56:09.000 What would the compromise be when you do a sauna?

01:56:11.000 Don't know.

01:56:12.000 We just don't have enough evidence on this stuff.

01:56:14.000 We know we focused on the heat shock proteins.

01:56:17.000 That's like everyone knows about those by now.

01:56:19.000 Right.

01:56:20.000 The ability to deal with uncomfort and fatigue.

01:56:24.000 There's a lot of stuff.

01:56:25.000 The difficulty is when you run a scientific study, you get one or two or three variables.

01:56:29.000 You don't get a thousand.

01:56:31.000 Right.

01:56:31.000 So we focus on the one or two that you're like, wow, this is moving something here.

01:56:37.000 But, I mean, just like the example we went over with the cold.

01:56:39.000 It's like, yeah, it's great for this, or actually it's terrible, and then people say, no, they want to make blanket statements like heat's good or cold's good or cold's bad.

01:56:46.000 Well, as we study it more, we start finding out, well, actually, it's good for this, and it's good for this, and it's bad for that, and that, and that, and that.

01:56:52.000 So we'd have to assume sauna would be the same way.

01:56:55.000 There has to be consequences to it.

01:56:57.000 It just depends on implication.

01:56:58.000 But there's got to be some sort of benefits in terms of recovery, right?

01:57:02.000 So do you think that someone should do maybe like cryo one day, sauna the next?

01:57:07.000 Should they do them in the same day?

01:57:09.000 So for example, a fighter in camp, I generally don't go out of my way to recommend sauna because they already get really hot in training.

01:57:16.000 You're grappling, especially if they're doing ghee stuff. 1.00

01:57:18.000 They're getting heat shock protein.

01:57:19.000 I don't need to go out of my way.

01:57:20.000 Hot yoga in particular, right?

01:57:22.000 There's a study they're doing right now at Harvard, apparently.

01:57:25.000 Somebody was telling me about it the other day, where they're concentrating on hot yoga and the benefits of hot yoga and heat shock proteins.

01:57:33.000 Yeah, I'm sure they're going to find a lot.

01:57:35.000 That's pretty...

01:57:36.000 I mean, that ship's sailed a little bit.

01:57:38.000 Like, we're confident something...

01:57:39.000 There's a lot of detail to work out, but something's going on there.

01:57:42.000 Probably something similar to sauna.

01:57:43.000 Right.

01:57:43.000 So I generally say for people...

01:57:46.000 Like you and like me, I don't go out of my way to do too much sauna work because of the way I train, I get really hot.

01:57:53.000 And sometimes we'll train specifically with a little bit more clothing sometimes and get kind of like, well, instead of sitting in a sauna for 45 minutes, let me wear a little bit of extra clothing during my training session and get real hot.

01:58:03.000 But for the average people, I think it's a fantastic modality because they're maybe only working out once a week or less and you can get them hot and we can actually work on those health benefits and While we're building good quality habits and we can eventually lead them down the path to more exercise.

01:58:20.000 Emmanuel Stewart used to run the Kronk Gym.

01:58:23.000 He used to crank the temperature up in the gym over 100 degrees.

01:58:27.000 That was his thing.

01:58:28.000 He wanted guys to box in essentially a hot yoga room.

01:58:32.000 Well, there's a couple of things to that.

01:58:34.000 I've done a lot of that in my life and I used to hate it.

01:58:37.000 We used to just fight for the door, like, wait for the round to go over.

01:58:40.000 Wrestling.

01:58:40.000 Yeah, wrestling practice.

01:58:42.000 We used to have it really hot.

01:58:42.000 We used to do MMA with it all the time.

01:58:44.000 And, like, the problem was it was scary because the floor is water.

01:58:47.000 Oh, yeah.

01:58:48.000 And you're like, I'm not kicking.

01:58:49.000 Like, you're terrified.

01:58:50.000 That's not good.

01:58:51.000 It was awful.

01:58:52.000 I hated it.

01:58:52.000 That's real bad for kicking.

01:58:54.000 I skip those practices a lot, Joe.

01:58:57.000 But, so, example...

01:59:00.000 I don't think that's particularly needed, with the exception.

01:59:02.000 One time when Pat Cummins fought in Brazil, it was like 110 outside, and it was 80% humidity or something.

01:59:08.000 Which fight was that?

01:59:09.000 It was...

01:59:11.000 Rafael Feijão?

01:59:13.000 Feijão.

01:59:13.000 Yeah, I remember that fight.

01:59:15.000 It was outdoors, I think?

01:59:16.000 No, it was indoors, but everything was open.

01:59:19.000 Oh, that's what it was.

01:59:19.000 Yeah.

01:59:20.000 So it was super, super hot.

01:59:21.000 Now, we didn't train for that or anticipate that.

01:59:24.000 But you could see if you knew you were fighting at a venue like that.

01:59:26.000 Yeah.

01:59:27.000 Like what they used to do in Bodog in Costa Rica.

01:59:29.000 Oh, yeah.

01:59:30.000 They would fight on the beach.

01:59:31.000 Oh, my God.

01:59:31.000 Yeah.

01:59:32.000 Right?

01:59:32.000 Just whored outside.

01:59:33.000 So you could see, like, well, in that situation, maybe it's needed.

01:59:36.000 But you're fighting in, you know, Vegas or something, indoors.

01:59:40.000 And maybe you don't need it for that.

01:59:42.000 Right.

01:59:43.000 But that doesn't mean you couldn't implement it once or twice.

01:59:46.000 I wouldn't go my way to do it, though.

01:59:48.000 Right.

01:59:48.000 So it wouldn't be a daily thing.

01:59:50.000 No.

01:59:50.000 Because what's going to happen is...

01:59:54.000 We're good to go.

02:00:13.000 So if you're used to fighting at the pace that it takes for you to sustain 10 rounds of sparring in the gym at 110 degrees, and then we come in and you and I fight and I'm ready to go with the speed, you're not ready for that pace.

02:00:23.000 So it's not that you don't physically have the conditioning, but you're just like, oh my, I'm just not, this guy's just...

02:00:28.000 And you don't feel right.

02:00:29.000 So you have to be careful of training too far outside of what you're actually going to encounter.

02:00:34.000 Which is, you know, some of these guys run into those problems when they do, you know, I'm going to spar 10 rounds so that I can go 5 easy.

02:00:40.000 Yeah.

02:00:40.000 Yeah, but your pace for your 5 is way different than your pace for your 10. So you have to be careful there.

02:00:48.000 A lot of questions, man.

02:00:50.000 Physiology, dude.

02:00:50.000 That is part of the problem, right?

02:00:52.000 That there are so many variables, there are so many questions, that there is no real definitive protocol to follow.

02:00:57.000 No.

02:00:58.000 There's a bunch of different ones.

02:00:59.000 The pursuit, the way I always say it is, the truth is mostly a lack of perspective.

02:01:06.000 So when you think that you are on some unbreakable truth, it's because you haven't looked at it from a big enough perspective.

02:01:13.000 Hmm.

02:01:14.000 For the most part.

02:01:15.000 Right.

02:01:16.000 And there's some...

02:01:17.000 We'll put it this way.

02:01:18.000 In biological truth, that's almost always true.

02:01:22.000 In physics truth, that's a lot less true.

02:01:26.000 Like, we're pretty sure gravity's real.

02:01:27.000 Like, we're pretty sure.

02:01:28.000 Right.

02:01:29.000 And we can mechanically prove...

02:01:30.000 Pretty sure water's good for you.

02:01:31.000 Pretty sure.

02:01:31.000 Right.

02:01:32.000 No, quantum mechanics, physics, those get kind of weird, right?

02:01:35.000 But for the most part, that is true.

02:01:37.000 But science, in terms of biological or medical, is a lot less true.

02:01:42.000 I mean, how many times do we have to see that, where it's like, this is true, this is true for 50 years.

02:01:46.000 Oops, it's not.

02:01:47.000 Is this all fun for you?

02:01:49.000 I mean, it seems like you're very passionate about it, but it also seems like, wow, it could be kind of stressful having so many variables and possibilities.

02:01:57.000 I don't think stress is even close.

02:01:59.000 It's, I would say, 99% fun.

02:02:02.000 It's stress for me in terms of it would break my heart if I gave someone the wrong advice and it ruined their career.

02:02:08.000 That would be the stress.

02:02:10.000 Stress in terms of being right or saying a bunch of some stuff and being proof.

02:02:14.000 I don't care about that at all.

02:02:15.000 Yeah, that is an issue with a lot of trainers, right?

02:02:18.000 Where they're giving bad advice and you see it play out in a fight.

02:02:22.000 I mean, one of the reasons I... I used to do a lot of professional athletes in other sports, work with other ones.

02:02:28.000 I gave that almost up entirely.

02:02:30.000 I've done some actors and things like that, but I generally stay away from that, even though the money is far, far higher for me in those things.

02:02:39.000 But I did it because these MMA folks, I have a real passion for someone who's going to put all that on the line.

02:02:45.000 And they're going to risk everything.

02:02:46.000 And they're going to go out there.

02:02:47.000 And that is more exciting to me.

02:02:49.000 And I'm like, that's a really fun investment to me.

02:02:52.000 And it's worth me investing my emotion.

02:02:54.000 I mean, when Helen won a gold in Rio, I just lost it.

02:02:58.000 Emotionally, I was gone for weeks.

02:03:00.000 Just exhausted.

02:03:02.000 Because I invested so much into that.

02:03:03.000 I don't want to do that for somebody so they can make an extra million.

02:03:06.000 Right.

02:03:06.000 On top of their 30 million.

02:03:07.000 Like, it doesn't motivate me that much.

02:03:09.000 So I like working with these folks.

02:03:11.000 And so because of that, like, it breaks my heart if you're like, man, you gave up everything for this kind of a living.

02:03:16.000 And the best outcome for you was that you made 20k instead of 10k.

02:03:21.000 And then I lost that for you because I gave you really bad rehydration advice or something.

02:03:25.000 Right.

02:03:26.000 That's a stress for me.

02:03:27.000 But the rest of the stuff, man, like...

02:03:30.000 It's fun.

02:03:30.000 It's invigorating for me to continue to be like, well, we answered that, but now we don't know this or this.

02:03:36.000 It's continual progress.

02:03:39.000 I take Karl Popper's stance on this one in terms of science is not about identifying truth.

02:03:45.000 It's reducing uncertainty.

02:03:47.000 Hmm, that's a good way to put it.

02:03:49.000 That's all it is, right?

02:03:50.000 I wish I could take credit for it.

02:03:52.000 It's a good way to put it.

02:03:53.000 So, we just, we get closer, and we know more, okay, we know this is now, this is now, but we're still...

02:03:58.000 Do you anticipate a day when we do, like, when it comes to biomechanics or physiology?

02:04:03.000 Well, there are some things that I would be confident in, saying, like, basically, we know that this is true now.

02:04:08.000 You need to drink water.

02:04:10.000 Like, I would basically say that that's true.

02:04:11.000 We need to have a lot of...

02:04:13.000 Like, the very standard stuff.

02:04:15.000 Then those are things I'm comfortable saying this is basically true.

02:04:18.000 And as we go on, we only keep adding to that list.

02:04:21.000 So more things get piled on.

02:04:22.000 Now we know for...

02:04:23.000 I told this story also on my podcast about the history of strength conditioning.

02:04:28.000 And how it went from the 1900s to where it is now.

02:04:32.000 And the quick story is there was a guy named Peter Karpovich...

02:04:36.000 He was a scientist and he was extremely, he was the guy who started the idea that lifting weights causes you to lose flexibility and it's bad for your health and all these things, right?

02:04:47.000 This is 1952, 54, something like that.

02:04:50.000 And he's a scientist, PhD.

02:04:53.000 And he calls in a guy, he gets a guy named Bob Hoffman.

02:04:56.000 He's called in, do you remember Bob Hoffman?

02:04:58.000 You're from the generation you may remember, York Barbell.

02:05:02.000 Muscle and strength, like the magazine.

02:05:04.000 Okay.

02:05:05.000 You may recognize all this stuff.

02:05:07.000 But basically, there was a show.

02:05:09.000 And they said, bring in these weightlifters.

02:05:12.000 Because back then, weightlifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding was all kind of the same thing.

02:05:15.000 They said, bring them in, and let's put on a demonstration. 0.96

02:05:18.000 And so, they bring in all these lifters, and they put on this demonstration in front of the whole school, in front of Dr. Karpovich.

02:05:26.000 And...

02:05:28.000 Everyone's like, oh, they're great, they're strong and athletic, and everyone knows the showdown's coming.

02:05:32.000 Everyone's there to watch the show, but everyone's really there to watch. 0.99

02:05:34.000 Just like they are on the internet now, it's like, let's watch the shit show afterwards. 0.97

02:05:39.000 So everyone's done, and Carpich stands up, and he's like, it's great, you're strong, and you've got a lot of muscle and all that, but let me ask you a question. 0.99

02:05:47.000 Can you scratch your back?

02:05:49.000 The guy was like, sure.

02:05:51.000 You know, where at?

02:05:53.000 Like, where?

02:05:54.000 And he starts scratching, boom, landing everywhere.

02:05:55.000 What do you want to do?

02:05:56.000 What do you want me to do?

02:05:57.000 Drops into a full splits, grabs 50-pound dumbbells, does a standing backflip.

02:06:01.000 And at this point, Karpovich is like, uh-oh.

02:06:04.000 Like, my entire career is that strength training's bad for you, it's unhealthy, you lose flexibility, and these dudes, the strongest in the world, just showed up.

02:06:12.000 Not only are they not inflexible, but they just did his splits.

02:06:15.000 Their bodybuilders were reigning world champions.

02:06:17.000 So he was at a crossroads right there in his career to say like, do I admit in front of the whole world about how wrong my entire research line was?

02:06:25.000 Or do I find some excuse?

02:06:27.000 Well, he does the honorable thing and goes, I'm sorry, I'm wrong.

02:06:33.000 And changes his entire career of research going on to actually studying strength training.

02:06:37.000 And of course shows it doesn't do any of these things we do.

02:06:41.000 So this is the nature of science is we're mostly wrong.

02:06:46.000 Until we actually study, and then we get less and less and less wrong.

02:06:49.000 So that's really where we're at with everything.

02:06:51.000 That's an easy example, but if you told somebody 50 years ago...

02:06:55.000 Ah, flexibility or strength training makes you inflexible.

02:06:57.000 So they're like, well, I don't know.

02:06:58.000 Look at this study.

02:06:59.000 Well, there used to be an issue with boxing, right?

02:07:01.000 They used to always say boxers should never strength train until Evander Holyfield came along with Mackie Shillstone.

02:07:06.000 Right.

02:07:06.000 And won the title as a heavyweight.

02:07:07.000 I just saw Evander yesterday.

02:07:08.000 Yeah?

02:07:09.000 At the airport.

02:07:09.000 He looks great.

02:07:10.000 Oh, man.

02:07:11.000 It's crazy.

02:07:11.000 Huge.

02:07:11.000 He was pulling the, like, walking out of the bathroom by himself and he had, like, his cell phone up to his ear, like, I'm on the phone, but I think his cell phone was dead, but he's, like, didn't want anybody to talk to him.

02:07:19.000 That's funny.

02:07:20.000 Which I don't blame him.

02:07:20.000 No, he looked fantastic.

02:07:22.000 I just signed a buddy of mine.

02:07:23.000 Do you know he's managing fighters now or something?

02:07:27.000 Is he?

02:07:27.000 Yeah.

02:07:28.000 Hopefully not financially.

02:07:30.000 I don't know.

02:07:32.000 And Van just like, buy the biggest house that exists. 0.99

02:07:35.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.98

02:07:36.000 Remember he had that fucking stupendous mansion in Atlanta? 0.98

02:07:39.000 It was like 150 rooms or something like that. 0.99

02:07:42.000 Dude, you put that much money in front of people in a sport like that.

02:07:45.000 Especially when you're balling.

02:07:46.000 When you're balling and other people are balling and you're trying to ball harder, you gotta do what you gotta do.

02:07:50.000 I don't think MMA's ever caught up to that in terms of...

02:07:53.000 Financially?

02:07:54.000 Yeah.

02:07:54.000 It's getting close with Conor McGregor.

02:07:55.000 Sure.

02:07:56.000 But honestly, his biggest windfall right now is a boxing match, so who knows?

02:07:59.000 Right.

02:08:00.000 Um, the...

02:08:01.000 The thing about Evander that's weird is that he never got out of shape.

02:08:05.000 He looked fantastic.

02:08:06.000 Yeah, he's still fit.

02:08:07.000 He's got to be 50+.

02:08:08.000 He's one of the rare guys, and I think he had a fight as recently as a year ago.

02:08:13.000 No.

02:08:14.000 Oh, yeah.

02:08:15.000 Yeah.

02:08:15.000 Oh, wow.

02:08:16.000 We'll find out when Evander Holyfield's last fight was.

02:08:19.000 I really want to say he had a fight like a year ago.

02:08:22.000 Oh, that's terrifying.

02:08:23.000 Yeah, but he's okay.

02:08:24.000 It's weird.

02:08:25.000 He's not like...

02:08:26.000 What's this dude?

02:08:27.000 Just retired or just got smashed really bad.

02:08:30.000 Hopkins.

02:08:31.000 Yes.

02:08:31.000 Bernard.

02:08:31.000 That guy's amazing.

02:08:32.000 Yeah, that was a freak incident, man.

02:08:35.000 That's one of the things about, like, why don't they have paths around the ring in case guys fall through the ropes?

02:08:40.000 Like, I can't imagine that they didn't...

02:08:42.000 They've seen that happen before. 0.99

02:08:44.000 Guys are getting fucked up through that before. 0.96

02:08:45.000 That's all fight style, though, too, right? 0.98

02:08:49.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that was like a fake charity boxing match.

02:08:52.000 Okay.

02:08:53.000 What does it say, though, in terms of when is his last fight?

02:08:57.000 That's what popped up when I hit last fight.

02:08:59.000 Yeah, but that's not real.

02:09:00.000 I think you're lying, Joe.

02:09:01.000 No, just pull up his record.

02:09:04.000 His Wikipedia record.

02:09:07.000 I'm sure there's a Wikipedia on Evander Holyfield.

02:09:10.000 Brian Nielsen.

02:09:14.000 This is 2011. Oh, okay.

02:09:16.000 So six years ago.

02:09:18.000 Yeah, that's pretty recently in consideration.

02:09:20.000 Oh, you know what it was?

02:09:21.000 I believe he was planning a comeback a few years ago, and he was having a really hard time getting licensed.

02:09:28.000 Oh.

02:09:28.000 I think that's what it was.

02:09:30.000 I would still say, if you would have asked me, I would have said 12 years ago.

02:09:33.000 I would have guessed way longer than that.

02:09:35.000 Well, how old is he now?

02:09:40.000 60?

02:09:41.000 What?

02:09:41.000 No, he's not 62. He was born in 62. Oh, okay.

02:09:44.000 So 55?

02:09:45.000 Yeah.

02:09:46.000 So he essentially had his last fight when he was like, what, 48, 49?

02:09:50.000 Something like that.

02:09:51.000 Yeah.

02:09:52.000 Makes sense.

02:09:53.000 That's the style he's...

02:09:54.000 Well, I don't know.

02:09:55.000 I don't really remember his style that much.

02:09:57.000 He didn't take a lot of shots.

02:09:58.000 Did he take a lot of shots?

02:09:59.000 Oh, hell yeah.

02:10:00.000 Yeah.

02:10:00.000 Bruiser?

02:10:00.000 Yeah.

02:10:01.000 I mean, he took some...

02:10:02.000 He just had a tremendous chin.

02:10:04.000 He's just an unbelievably tough guy.

02:10:07.000 And unbelievably fit.

02:10:09.000 That was the thing about Holyfield, was that unbelievably fit, unbelievably game.

02:10:14.000 When he beat Mike Tyson in the first fight, I remember...

02:10:18.000 You know Kevin James.

02:10:20.000 Kevin was actually over at my house.

02:10:22.000 We were watching it together.

02:10:23.000 We were jumping around screaming like a bunch of schoolgirls.

02:10:25.000 Couldn't believe it.

02:10:26.000 It was insane.

02:10:27.000 Because nobody saw that coming.

02:10:28.000 I was like...

02:10:30.000 Right.

02:10:31.000 Yeah, that was amazing.

02:10:32.000 Yeah, he had a spectacular career, though.

02:10:34.000 Oh, he certainly did, yeah.

02:10:35.000 I hope he still got it together upstairs.

02:10:37.000 Like, that's just a tough one.

02:10:38.000 Mm-hmm.

02:10:39.000 Yeah.

02:10:40.000 It certainly is.

02:10:42.000 Yeah, that has got to be weird.

02:10:44.000 I wonder what...

02:10:44.000 Do you ever have that conversation with a fighter?

02:10:46.000 I do.

02:10:47.000 Yeah?

02:10:47.000 It's not my role, so I don't bring it up at all.

02:10:50.000 Right.

02:10:50.000 But if they ask me on, like, a friendly advice thing, and we'll be very careful with names here...

02:10:56.000 But I generally tell them all to retire.

02:10:59.000 Like, regardless.

02:11:01.000 My approach is, no, this is a...

02:11:03.000 The risk is not worth the payout in the UFC. It's just not.

02:11:08.000 Like, there is the occasional Conor, but this is the anomaly that proves the rule, actually.

02:11:13.000 So my advice to all of them is, it's not a good investment.

02:11:17.000 Like, it is not worth the risk.

02:11:19.000 Because even if you get the win bonus and the fight of the night...

02:11:23.000 One fight like that is potentially years.

02:11:26.000 And how much income could you make in those 10 years of working?

02:11:29.000 Probably more than that $100K. Well, in terms of income, for sure.

02:11:31.000 But for a lot of them, it's not really what they're doing it for.

02:11:35.000 Not even close.

02:11:35.000 They're doing it for glory.

02:11:36.000 Right.

02:11:37.000 But I'm taking it from a logical perspective.

02:11:40.000 I'm not telling you what to do.

02:11:41.000 I'm saying, though, like, me as your friend, I would love you to never fight because it's great.

02:11:45.000 But having said that, you do that, so let me help you as much as I can to get there.

02:11:48.000 But, I mean, you can kind of tell, too.

02:11:51.000 Like, if you're...

02:11:54.000 If you're not in that X factor, charisma-wise and stuff, you're never going to make that real life-changing money.

02:12:00.000 Right.

02:12:00.000 We're just talking about money, though.

02:12:01.000 In terms of damage, do you notice in terms of physical performance when you're seeing an athlete move around?

02:12:08.000 I haven't gotten anybody like that.

02:12:10.000 But if you had someone come to you and say, hey, I'm thinking about when I get out.

02:12:15.000 I'm not exactly sure when.

02:12:17.000 What do you think?

02:12:18.000 Yeah.

02:12:18.000 Yeah, I mean, I would look at them from the performance side of it.

02:12:21.000 I wouldn't look at brain damage at all.

02:12:22.000 I would say, well, here are your numbers in the room, stacked up to other folks we've had in this room, and if you're far below their performance-wise, I would say you might have a performance problem in terms of you might not be talented enough physically to compete.

02:12:34.000 Like, I'm not going to make a comment about your other reasons to retire, but if I tested you across the board and you were terrible at everything...

02:12:43.000 Then I might be like, well, physically, from my perspective, I don't know if you have what it takes anymore.

02:12:48.000 Do you see a deterioration in physical skills from, like, punishment?

02:12:53.000 I don't know if I could really say that.

02:12:55.000 But that's just because I don't...

02:12:57.000 I don't have enough exposure to enough of those folks to make a qualified comment on that.

02:13:01.000 Over long periods of time?

02:13:02.000 Yeah.

02:13:02.000 I would need dozens and dozens of guys over years to really fairly...

02:13:06.000 What's the longest you've ever worked with a guy?

02:13:09.000 Five, six years probably.

02:13:11.000 Yeah, probably six years.

02:13:13.000 That's a lot of time.

02:13:14.000 It is.

02:13:14.000 And it's not like...

02:13:16.000 Some of them, it's not every single...

02:13:18.000 I'm not talking to them every day.

02:13:19.000 And sometimes it's like once a camp.

02:13:21.000 Generally, what my goal is, is to teach them how to think as much through the stuff as they can.

02:13:28.000 And so ideally they don't need me after more than a couple of camps other than a few check-ins.

02:13:32.000 Right.

02:13:33.000 I want to come to the lab, get this tested.

02:13:34.000 I got a hunch about this.

02:13:35.000 Or we did this type of training for six weeks.

02:13:38.000 We think we are addressing this problem.

02:13:40.000 Can we come to get it tested to see if it actually got better?

02:13:42.000 Yeah, no problem.

02:13:44.000 But the other stuff I do is, like I said, it's so much usually helping them calm down through all the nonsense that I can give them a settling presence in terms of this is not something you should worry about or get to hear.

02:13:56.000 But yeah, multiple five, six years.

02:13:59.000 And we've got data.

02:14:00.000 We've got biopsy data off them from over the years, which has been very, very interesting, actually.

02:14:05.000 That was one of the first reasons I wanted to get into the sport because I'm like, I want to biopsy these dudes.

02:14:08.000 Yeah, that's got to be really, as a scientist, got to be really an interesting opportunity.

02:14:13.000 Yeah.

02:14:13.000 We had one fighter who was pretty crazy because he was a wrestler and a very, very...

02:14:20.000 He wins through attrition.

02:14:22.000 Like, that's his style.

02:14:23.000 He's not like a knockout artist or anything like that.

02:14:25.000 And he was almost 70, 75% fast twitch.

02:14:29.000 Wow.

02:14:30.000 Yeah.

02:14:31.000 And then we also looked at this other thing.

02:14:33.000 So, one of the things that we measure in our lab is called myonuclear domain.

02:14:37.000 So the nucleus is what holds the DNA, and it tells the cell to grow, shrink, die, like repair.

02:14:44.000 Well, like human muscle is really unique.

02:14:47.000 It's one of the only cells in all of biology that is multinucleated.

02:14:51.000 So that means it's got not only more than one, but it's got thousands of nuclei per cell.

02:14:58.000 The obvious advantage is that allows us a lot more plasticity, so we can recover and repair and adapt and adjust really, really quickly, which is why we see people's fiber type change in a matter of weeks.

02:15:10.000 A paper that came out last year showing actually a high-fat, high-sugar diet can change fiber type.

02:15:15.000 We've seen carbon dioxide concentrations alter fiber type, things like this.

02:15:19.000 So the nucleus is really interesting because the more nuclei you have, The faster you recover.

02:15:27.000 It's also what determines how big a muscle will grow.

02:15:30.000 You've heard of muscle memory?

02:15:32.000 Yeah.

02:15:33.000 So this is what's doing muscle memory.

02:15:35.000 Wow.

02:15:36.000 That makes sense.

02:15:38.000 I always wondered if that was real.

02:15:40.000 Well, working right now through it, a lot of people are, but the old theory would be a satellite cell would come in, it would turn into a nuclei, and the cell will only grow as big as the amount of nuclei that are around it, or that are inside of it.

02:15:56.000 And so what that basically means is there's a certain domain or a certain size that each nucleus will control, and it won't exceed that size because it loses control.

02:16:06.000 So if you, all three of us, were all a nuclei and this whole room was one cell, if we wanted to expand the wall, we would have to bring in another nucleus because you'd be like, dude, it's too much area to control.

02:16:20.000 So when you go through, like, about a training, a year or something of heavy lifting, and we add those satellite cells that turn into myonuclei, and we expand the size, well, we used to think, like, if we stop training and the room gets smaller, we used to think that, well, all right,

02:16:35.000 like, time to kick Jamie out of the room.

02:16:36.000 He's gone.

02:16:37.000 But now what looks like happening is he's staying around.

02:16:41.000 So then when I go to retrain, I've got more of those nuclei right there, and so it's easy...

02:16:45.000 It's easier.

02:16:45.000 Sorry, I got excited.

02:16:46.000 Hit the mic.

02:16:47.000 It's easier for me to expand my size because the nuclei are there.

02:16:49.000 Oh, that makes sense.

02:16:50.000 Okay, so there's an actual scientific reason for muscle memory.

02:16:54.000 Yeah.

02:16:54.000 And you can increase the amount of nuclei just by increasing the size of the muscle, and that makes it easier to go back to that if you lose some muscle.

02:17:03.000 Well, right.

02:17:04.000 The mononucleide would allow for the muscles to get bigger.

02:17:06.000 Yeah, so a little bit inverse, but basically the same thing.

02:17:09.000 Dude, this was really fascinating.

02:17:11.000 Anything else to add before we get out of here?

02:17:14.000 The book, man.

02:17:15.000 I got a book out on all this stuff called Unplugged.

02:17:19.000 Evolving from technology to upgrade your fitness, performance, and consciousness.

02:17:23.000 Is it on Amazon?

02:17:25.000 All that stuff, yeah.

02:17:25.000 Is there an audiobook available?

02:17:27.000 There is, but I'm going to tell you...

02:17:28.000 No, sorry.

02:17:29.000 There's a Kindle, but I would highly recommend you don't get it.

02:17:32.000 Don't get the Kindle?

02:17:34.000 No.

02:17:34.000 You mean that's the digital version?

02:17:35.000 Right.

02:17:36.000 Why?

02:17:36.000 Get the hard copy.

02:17:37.000 Why?

02:17:38.000 Because the book is really a guide for how to use some of these training technologies in your training and how it can ruin your training and how it can help your training.

02:17:46.000 So a part of that is the importance of doing a couple of things.

02:17:50.000 Getting back to nature.

02:17:51.000 And how the physiology behind how that helps.

02:17:54.000 As well as this concept of choosing suffering and choosing discomfort and how that's physiologically important for you.

02:18:02.000 So, a part of the book is built in a way where the photos...

02:18:07.000 The layout, the quality of the paper is all part of the reading experience.

02:18:10.000 They don't have that in Kindle with photographs?

02:18:14.000 No, it's not even close.

02:18:15.000 It's all black and white.

02:18:17.000 The texture of the paper is different.

02:18:18.000 What if you have one of those Kindle HDs?

02:18:21.000 The ones that are digital and...

02:18:23.000 Color?

02:18:24.000 Maybe.

02:18:24.000 Maybe?

02:18:25.000 Yeah, maybe that would be good.

02:18:26.000 That's what you're saying though.

02:18:27.000 But you recommend the hard copy.

02:18:29.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't really care.

02:18:30.000 But for the experience of it?

02:18:32.000 Yeah, it's still cheap.

02:18:33.000 It's not expensive at all.

02:18:35.000 What's the physiological benefit of getting back to nature?

02:18:37.000 Oh, we have so much.

02:18:38.000 Yeah?

02:18:40.000 It's pretty incredible in terms of Everything from visualization, or sorry, eyesight.

02:18:48.000 Did you listen to that amazing podcast?

02:18:51.000 Eyesight?

02:18:51.000 Yeah.

02:18:52.000 Radiolab did one on the color blue.

02:18:55.000 I didn't hear that one.

02:18:56.000 What's it called?

02:18:57.000 This is a teaser.

02:18:58.000 I'm not going to tell you the whole story.

02:18:59.000 What's it called?

02:19:00.000 The episode?

02:19:01.000 I don't know the episode name.

02:19:02.000 We'll find it.

02:19:03.000 If you Google the Radiolab episode on the color blue.

02:19:05.000 Okay.

02:19:06.000 But basically, we as humans didn't really recognize the color blue until the Bible.

02:19:12.000 What?

02:19:13.000 Yeah.

02:19:14.000 So we had the cones, like the physiology didn't change, but we didn't have a word for the color blue until the Bible came along.

02:19:20.000 So if you look at anything past or prior to that, yeah, that's probably...

02:19:25.000 Why isn't the sky blue on Radiolet?

02:19:28.000 Yep, exactly.

02:19:30.000 So what they basically identified is we didn't have a separate word for the color blue because we didn't differentiate blue shades.

02:19:38.000 It wasn't important for the world because blue doesn't happen very frequently in biology, in nature.

02:19:44.000 It wasn't until we had textiles and we started printing and making cloth and paper and stuff like that that we had all these different dyes and shades of blue, so then we developed different shades of blue and different colors.

02:19:54.000 So because of that, we started perceiving and focusing on different shades of blue.

02:19:59.000 So now the average person that comes to the room would be able to identify all these different blues, where prior to this we didn't care about it, we didn't focus on it, so we all just saw that as one color blue.

02:20:08.000 So things like that are important.

02:20:11.000 So what are we paying attention to?

02:20:12.000 What are we being conscious of?

02:20:13.000 What are we perceiving?

02:20:14.000 What are we focusing on?

02:20:15.000 Has a direct influence on our physiology.

02:20:18.000 It's very adaptable to those things.

02:20:21.000 So how does that make going to nature?

02:20:24.000 So if we think about it from this way, what's happening in the exposure when we're in this artificial environment versus being in the external environment like nature?

02:20:32.000 So what are we not being exposed to now that we could be exposed to out in nature?

02:20:38.000 The third part of the book is the consciousness aspect, which is we talk to a lot of people.

02:20:43.000 Tim Ferriss wrote a section or did a little interview thing for it.

02:20:47.000 Stephen Kotler did one as well.

02:20:49.000 And they talk about the things like getting into flow state and the stress relief of it and all the other psychological benefits that we have from detaching a little bit from our constant tech exposure.

02:21:01.000 Dopamine is another great example, right?

02:21:03.000 So if we look at the dopamine rush that we get from the constant exposure, Not from the actual tech, but from things like, oh, I want to look at my likes.

02:21:11.000 I want to continue to look at this.

02:21:13.000 That's completely different than when we get out in nature and expose ourselves to physiological elements.

02:21:19.000 Similar to the cold and the hot and the thirsty, the hungry.

02:21:22.000 I mean, you've been out in the woods and stuff before.

02:21:25.000 You know what it feels like going a full day without food or being extremely cold for a few days and then getting back home.

02:21:31.000 And the euphoria, the sensations.

02:21:34.000 Well, you can, but it's really beneficial to have ourselves exposed to that.

02:21:39.000 And it's a problem now, but really the book is about, wait 20 years and think about the problem that's going to be in 20 years when this technology thing only gets more advanced and it takes more portion of our life.

02:21:53.000 All right, dude.

02:21:53.000 One more time.

02:21:54.000 What's the name of the book?

02:21:55.000 Unplugged.

02:21:55.000 Evolve from technology to upgrade your fitness, performance, and consciousness.

02:21:59.000 Beautiful.

02:22:00.000 Thanks, man.

02:22:01.000 I really enjoyed it.

02:22:01.000 My pleasure.

02:22:01.000 It was a great conversation.

02:22:02.000 Really appreciate it.

02:22:04.000 Andy Galpin, ladies and gentlemen.

02:22:05.000 See ya!

02:22:07.000 That was great, dude.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 09, 2017

Joe Rogan Experience #996 - Dr. Andy Galpin

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