379: Biohacking Addiction, Training For Power & Endurance At The Same Time, Drinking Water On...

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. Biohacking, addiction, training for power and endurance at the same time, business advice for personal trainers, should you drink the water on airplanes and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Green.

Power.

Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Brock. I'm sore. And today it's not from swinging the kettlebells.

Oh, where are you usually sore from swinging kettlebells? Is that, is that your usual M.O.

Of of late? I guess. Yeah.

You're still training for that. The big kettlebell not competition test, I guess it would be called.

Yeah, just the RKC certification. And also it's. Yeah, it's a good way to stay in shape kind of in the off season from obstacle course racing because there's a. There's definitely a. A cardiovascular training effect. But yesterday I took all of the. Not all of them, but the, the liquid gold that I extracted from my fat down in Florida about eight months ago. The stem cells that I got extracted from all the fat my back. Oh, yeah.

The fact that I wanted to turn into soap or candles and sell to all the Ben Greenfield fans out there.

Yep. I went in and I got a digital thermography done on the musculature of my back and my hamstring, which has just been. For the past month, it's just been giving me trouble. We found three huge tears in my spinalis, my ql and my psoas muscles, along with a tear of the obturator internus, which is basically like the part of the hamstring or a section close to the hamstring that's just like nestled right up against the hole. And that's the technical term for. Yes.

Yeah.

Not the sphincter.

But not the sphincter. The. Scientifically. Yes. We did a platelet rich plasma and a stem cell injection into 11 different sites all up and down my back. And I walked out feeling like I had. Like I'd been to hell and back and been hit by a truck on the way to hell. So.

Okay, I have so many questions. So this. What was it? Therm Thermography. Yes.

It's like an ultrasound. It's really cool. I'm writing an article on it and I'll put it@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so you guys can see the videos. But what they can do is they can take the needle and they can target the specific area of tissue like the actual fibers that are torn by holding the thermography up. It's like ultrasound.

If my back were pregnant, we would be seeing the baby inside, but instead we're just seeing muscle fiber tears.

So yeah, you basically use the thermography to not only diagnose where the tears are occurring, but also to direct the needle full of stem cells or platelet rich plasma or whatever else they're injecting. And they're a little bit of dextrose too, which is called prolotherapy. So basically I kinda, I kind of take the next five days easy and let all this settle in and keep my fingers crossed that it heals up. What appears to have been the whole reason, for the past several months I've kind of had some issues with running and back pain and all sorts of stuff. So the good thing is that it is, it's being fixed. The bad thing is I'm sitting right now like I'm freaking on a bed of nails.

News flash issues.

So speaking of using, using kettlebells to enhance endurance, I was thumbing through the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, the big old blue magazine that arrives at my home every month, and I found a term that I actually wasn't familiar with. It's called high intensity interval power training. You ever heard of this, Brock?

No, not until this, until I saw this study as well.

Yeah, it's really interesting. They compare traditional power training, which would be for example, a large amount of force generated over a short period of time against a relatively light load, right? So you can move a muscle as quickly as possible. Like let's say like a bench press, right? 10 seconds as fast as you can go with 90 seconds of recovery. And you'd, you'd do that three times through and then you move on to like a, a rebound jump, you know, three times through 10 seconds, as hard as you can go, 90 seconds recovery. And then maybe like a Wingate cycling protocol where it's, you know, 10 seconds as hard as you can go on the bike and then maybe like a high pole with a barbell. So anyways, what this study wanted to determine was the efficacy of that traditional power training versus what's called high intensity power training. And in the study, what the high Intensity power training looked like was it was like a circuit. So instead of what I just described, you would do like bench press as hard as you can go for 10 seconds and then just basically long enough to walk over to the rebound jump, 10 seconds of rebound jump as hard as you can go, and then a very short recovery period, 10 seconds of a high pole, and then 10 seconds of like the high intensity cycling. So you're almost doing power training as a circuit with very short recovery periods. And then once you've got to the final exercise in the circuit, that's when you would take your recovery. And it turns out that this high intensity power training caused some very significant changes in aerobic and in power performance. But the cool thing that I like about it is it allows you to squeeze a lot more work into a shorter period of time while still training for power. It appears that you don't need quite as long a rest period if you're kind of going from exercise to exercise. In this study, they actually kind of went upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body because they did the bench press, then they did the rebound jump, then they did the high pole, then they did the wingate. But it seems like kind of a cool way to train if you really want to train for power and you've got kind of like a compressed period of time to be able to do so. Yeah.

And when we've seen tons of studies where you're, you're mixing those, the two high intensity things and the, and the powerlifting together that you get all kinds of really advanced benefits. Like a 500% boost in like fat burning.

Yeah.

All that good stuff too. So.

Yeah. And don't get me wrong, like, if you want to get as strong as possible, you need long rest periods in between sets. And if you want to get as powerful as possible and you're a power lifter and form is of the essence, then you would also want long recovery periods. But this is kind of a cool hack, so to speak because. Did you say hack? We all love that word hack. Not a hat, Brock.

Not a hat.

Not a hat.

It'd be better hat.

Yes. It wouldn't. Yeah, powerlifting hat here, Another one. Same, same journal, same research journal looked at hyperventilation literally, almost like kind of, you know, you know, like the WIM HOF protocol where like that kind of hyperventilation, which I heard stuff just shooting.

Out of your nose there.

Yeah. Seriously. Which we've, we've, we've talked might be n acetylcysteine. I've Been doing intranasal glutathione in the morning.

So how does that sound?

Shot glutathione all over the microphone. Anyways, though we know that when you do like this WIM HOF breathwork protocol, or anytime you hyperventilate, you induce what's called respiratory alkalosis. So a net alkalotic state. Yeah, or respiratory if you're in Canada. Anyways, though, you can achieve the same thing. This is the theory behind how something like the supplement carnosine would work to buffer lactic acid, or, you know, using sodium bicarbonate to buffer lactic acid. There are all these different ways you can buffer lactic acid, and just being in a net alkalotic state is another way to do it. It's the same reason a lot of people start off their day with like some lemon juice or apple cider vinegar or something like that to alkalize the body. But it turns out that you can achieve a pretty significant amount of performance enhancing alkalosis by hyperventilating prior to doing, in this case, repeated pedaling sprints on. And this was pretty tough. They did 10 seconds of 10 sets or 10 sets of 10 seconds, like as hard as you can go on a bicycle with 60 second recovery periods. But that's a pretty brutal workout. And what they found was that when you compare like very short hyperventilation and then kind of like longer hyperventilation and then medium Goldilocks style hyperventilation.

My favorite.

Yeah, about 30 seconds. It actually has a significant effect on performance in something like hard.

Ventilatory, demanding work. So it turns out that you could, prior to, let's say, a very intense set in the gym, hyperventilate. It turns out 30 seconds is like the sweet spot, what they found in this study. So you basically kind of do your. Here we go again.

Like that for 30 seconds before you lift, you induce respiratory alkalosis. And that actually helps to buffer lactic acid. And for anything that you're doing, that would be considered kind of like a. Like a glycolytically demanding effort. Right. Like, let's say a hard bicycle sprint, for example. It helps. So there's. There's another cool little hat. Slash hat. Yes, yes.

So you're. So you're basically altering the ph of your blood through breathing rather than through supplementation. Yeah. So it's. Would it be the.

Yeah, you're. You're. You're blowing off CO2.

Yeah. So it's not so much the intake of oxygen as it is the blowing off of the CO2.

Yeah, correct. Which is why you wouldn't want to do this before you go underwater. Because even though it's a technique used by freedivers, CO2 is your body signal to take a breath. And so what would happen is you could stay under the water much longer than you're actually normally able to, but at the same time you'd have a much higher risk of something like shallow water blackout. So don't use this for swimming necessarily, unless you have a good friend who you are comfortable giving you mouth to mouth resuscitation. Otherwise, just focus on doing this one dry land. So.

Or if you're like me and you wear water wings all the time, then yes, it's safe that way.

The SpongeBob SquarePants ones. Okay, so here's another one. I've actually been having a lot of fun with this stuff. You ever heard of nose torque?

No, no, no.

Stork you can get on Amazon. And I think it was Juji Moofu, the guy who goes by the name Anabolic Acrobat, who I actually interviewed on the show. And he's like a power lifter and acrobat is like flips, splits with a 225 pound barbell above his head and crazy stuff. But a lot of power lifters, wrestlers, UFC fighters, etc. They'll use smelling salts, right? Like ammonia based Nose torque is like smelling salts on steroids. I actually travel with it now. I've got some back behind me here in the office and you can smell it. It's like a frickin. Like if you finish up a long day of work and you want to go do a workout, you don't feel like working out, you feel like going home to watch Netflix. This stuff will light a fire, fire under your ass. Like I've, I've even used it. I've, you know, I played jokes on people with it before. I had a bunch of buddies over to my house and we just kind of pass it around to see how amped up we could get, you know, and you sniff it and you just want to go fight somebody or have somebody punch you in the face or go like rip a 600 pound barbell off the ground. It's, it's pretty crazy stuff. It's called nose torque. I got mine off of Amazon. But it turns out that, you know, I've been kind of like messing around with it for the past month and then I see this study that comes out that looks at the acute effects of ammonia inhalants on strength and performance and you know, long story short, no surprises here, is they tested the stuff. It wasn't nose torque, it was smelling salts. Nose torque's like smelling salts on steroids. But they found a very significant stimulatory action and an increase in the rate of force development and a very high rate of force production. Specifically, what they were looking at was maximal isometric strength, which is kind of cool because one of the other things I'm into right now is this concept of about once a week having some kind of a workout where you do single sets to failure, right? So for me, on Saturdays before I take the family snowboarding, I slip downstairs and I do a quick. It's about a 20 minute long workout on this thing called a Peak Fit Pro. Did I talk about this in the last podcast?

I don't think so. This doesn't sound familiar.

Yeah, so it's called the Peak Fit Pro. And you do. It's a. It's basically a force plate that ties via Bluetooth to your phone and it's got a bar on it that you can move up and down. And you just do like five different exercises, right? Like bench press, deadlift, squat, lat, pull down, and shoulder press, let's say.

I think I saw a Snapchat of you doing the, the deadlift one. I was wondering if there was a force plate or some way to measure your output.

Well, the Bluetooth signal from the device ties to your phone and you can set your phone so that once you are no longer producing up to 60% of the force that you started with, the sets over and your phone beeps. So you just go all out as hard as you can until you've dropped off to about 60% of what you'd normally be able to do. And then that's it sets over. And usually that means you're just like going as hard as humanly possible for like 60 to 90 seconds is my max. The guy who designed it, he says he can go three minutes on like a full on squat. And it's. That's impressive because you're like screaming as you do. You know, Jessa wants to come downstairs and see what's. See what's going on when I'm doing this. But anyways, it's a very cool way to train. It's called a Peak Fit Pro. I'll try and remember to put a link to it in the, in the show notes. But basically that combined with smelling salts would probably be quite effective. And so this weekend when I go in and do my little isometric protocol, I'M going to try this, this nose torque stuff and you should, the only thing, and you should get some nose torque yourself up there, Brock, but I know you're Canadian, so please don't confuse it with the nose toque.

Yeah, well, I have a nose to. We all have nose tukes because otherwise, I mean, your nose would freeze off. But, but okay, two things. It sounds like that stuff would smell like a very used kitty litter box.

No, it smells like smelling salts. Smells like ammonia. It smells like people's who are on a ketogenic diet. Smells like that like you shove your nose in a, in a ketogenic toilet bowl. There you go.

And the other thing, if you combine those, especially if you combine those two things you were just talking about, wouldn't that just trash your hrv? Like your, your nervous system would just be, just be demolished because.

Absolutely. And, and you know what? Sundays are my recovery day. Or like Sundays are the day I freaking like fast and meditate and do yoga. So I have that thing on Saturday and after that I go snowboarding. And you know, the rest of the, you know, the next 24, 48 hours I'm not doing much. So my HRV has plenty of time to, to compensate and, and engage in a fitness response. So I'm not too, too worried.

Okay, you kids out there, make sure you, you heed that warning.

Heed that warning. Don't over train with single sets to failure. And then finally, kind of interesting study that looked at passive heating, passive heating meaning like that hot bath that you might go take where you're sweating in the bath or like a long, a long sauna session. And, and I know, you know, maybe I'm the only one, but sometimes I'll sit in like a, like a hot, like a magnesium salts bath that you'll do for soreness sometimes. And I'll just wonder as I'm laying there and I'm like, I sweat in the bath, right? My body will get pretty hot because I like my water warm when I'm taking a bath. And I've wondered what kind of training effect am I, Is there some kind of beneficial metabolic effect that goes above and beyond just me absorbing magnesium salts into my muscles for soreness? And it turns out that they actually looked at 60 minutes of warm water immersion similar to taking a bath in this study. And they compared it specifically the, the metabolic response like, like the drop in blood glucose to doing that. They compared it to cycling like 60 minutes of, of moderate cycling, which is, you know, not, not super easy. So we're not talking about like super aerobic passive cycling, but like kind of jamming on a bike for an hour.

Like time trial kind of.

Right? Well, yeah, maybe not time trial, but yeah, time trial would be like moderate to high. This was moderate, but still more than just riding your bicycle around Central park or whatever. And what they found again was that the effect on the ability to be able to lower blood glucose levels was significant. And of course, we could probably throw sauna into this as well. And they attribute the improvement in cardiometabolic health from what they call passive heating to the expression of these heat shock proteins, which somehow ties into not only a drop in inflammatory cytokines, but also an improvement in the ability to be able to lower blood glucose. So it turns out that it's kind of a metabolic strategy. I don't really encourage people to go take a 60 minute bath so you could eat a cinnamon roll, but at the same time, yet another kind of like a feather in the. In the cap of. Of heat and even passive heat where you're not like exercising hard in the heat, but you're just kind of sweating. Turns out there's a pretty significant blood glucose stabilizing effect.

So all you lazy butts out there who don't want to ride your bike for 60 minutes, you can go sit on your. Sit on your sweaty butt in a sauna instead.

Special announce.

So this is the part of the show where I give you guys all the specials and the discounts and the goodies and the perks that you get for being a Ben Greenfield fitness listener. Brock, you want to join in for this one?

Well, actually, this is also the time when I'm going to put my microphone down and go use the washroom because I forgot to do that before we started. So I'll be back.

You mean you're gonna take a crap? I gotta. You're not going to wash your hands, I assume? Yeah, you're going to.

I was being polite. Yeah, yeah, I am drinking coffee.

So yeah, a little turtle head poking out.

That's enough.

All right?

Don't worry. I got this.

All right? I'll be back.

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Listener Q and A.

Hey Ben, this is Dave Kessler. I need to speak quietly because I just got home from a long day of climbing and my wife is sleeping. So if it's not loud enough, let me know. I'll. I'll send you a better one tomorrow. Okay? I'm a lifelong climber. I've been working in the auto industry for many years as an engineering physicist and now I climb pretty much in retirement. Okay. The holy grail of climbing physical fitness is really we call power endurance. Need to have the power to handle your weight, but also the endurance to stay on a steep climb for a long time, like an overhanging wall, that kind of thing. So although, you know, I know how to improve, you know, fast twitch muscles and slow twitch and improve mitochondria. I'm wondering if there's something that you can add to a climbers repertoire of things to do, things that he can work out better, better nutrition, etc. To improve his power endurance. Now we already know, most of us that you do hypertrophy training for bigger muscles, more powerful, some endurance for mitochondrial endurance. Some of us follow Pavel Tsetsuan for more strength for recruitment. But since I've been a fan of yours for some time and recognize that you've had a very broad scope in these areas, perhaps you could think of it in terms of power endurance as I've defined it and let me know what you might consider.

Some new activities and new dietary measures that we could use to improve our power endurance and thereby improve our climbing. Okay, thanks. Thanks again, Ben. Talk to you later. Bye bye.

Well, this is good timely question since we were just talking about that whole power study in the Journal of Shredding Conditioning Research. David could try that. He could just run around like a chicken with his head cut off, jumping back and forth between the bicycle and the bench press. I'm pretty.

Sounds like he's up for it.

Pretty sure that's what all professional climbers do is the bicycle and the bench press.

I, I gotta say I love that David has like, he's retired, but he's gone like full, full time into climbing instead. That's. That seems like my kind of retirement.

Yeah, exactly, retiring.

That's what I want to do. That's awesome. Good on you, David.

I'll probably play tennis. Honestly. Sure, yeah, yeah, I am. I'm. I don't know. I like to climb, but I don't see myself doing it as like a post retirement infatuation. But there, there is some, some interesting research they've done on the physiology of rock climbing. I remember coming across a study a couple of years ago that I was able to check out again.

Recently. And it just goes into the unique nature of rock climbing because it requires this sustained isometric forearm muscle contraction. But then there's also a simultaneous increase in oxygen consumption and in heart rate. So it's almost like, you know, it'd be like if you were to do an isometric squat, but then somehow be moving at the same time, which I suppose you could snowboarding, right. Might be an example of that. Right. You're a little bit of an isometric contraction and you're kind of moving and jamming the same time and you get a lot of lactic acid built up in the quads because of that when snowboarding. And I'm just saying snowboarding because that's one of my sports and similar physiology just for the lower body. And with climbing, what they have found is because of this, a very significant requirement, not necessarily for VO2 max, but for lactic acid tolerance combined with.

What David alludes to, which is power and strength simultaneously. Right. So it's a very unique physiology that rock climbing requires that we don't see in a lot of sports because you're basically holding onto something and gripping isometrically, creating a lot of lactic acid, but then also having to move in a manner that causes your heart rate to increase and causes a relatively large metabolic requirement. Even though we don't see large VO2 maxes in climbers, there is a large, what's called a whole body VO2 max, meaning you kind of need to shove oxygen around a lot. So even though, like a cyclist or a cross country skier would have bigger lungs, the rock climber would want to develop a better ability to be able to like, shuttle oxygen around the body and buffer lactic acid. And when you look.

That's really cool. I've never heard about that before. It makes sense, though.

Yeah. I can try to link to the study in the show notes. This, this particular study was in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. It's completely free, it's online, and it is called, of all things, the Physiology of Rock Climbing. So there you have it.

How original.

I'll link to that one. And when you look at rock climbing protocols or workouts, you do see this term endurance thrown around, which kind of refers to this fact that you have to develop the ability to be able to tolerate lactic acid while still engaging in efforts that kind of force you to create large amounts of force in short periods of time, like, you know, leaping up to grab the next handhold, for example. And it sounds like David kind of has his head wrapped around the training protocol for something like this. So I'm not going to get too much into the training, but, you know, before I tackle, you know, some of the things he wanted to know about. Right. Like supplements and diets and biohacks. And we all know that you can just sit around and just like, chug baking soda, buffer lactic acid and never train. And so that's, that's what I specialize in.

However, for anybody who wants to improve power and endurance, one guy who I think is kind of interesting in this realm. You ever heard of Alex Viada? I haven't had him on the show before Brock. I.

No, I haven't heard of him.

Yeah, so he's, he's pretty well known for doing what a lot of kind of like old school strength coaches might think is not possible like he'll deadlift £700 and run a 50 mile ultramarathon in the same week. So he's a pretty good power lifter, but he's also an endurance athlete. He's not like an endurance athlete who's going to be like at the front of the bike pack and cone at Ironman Hawaii or something like that. But he will go out and do these pretty long endurance events and also power train at the same time. And he has this. I've got his PDF somewhere on my computer. But he wrote this little book called, called the Hybrid Athlete which goes into his protocol which is, you know, it's essentially a lot of kind of like low level aerobic work combined with brief spurts of incredibly intense heavy lifting. Right. And so I don't necessarily think that that's like the perfect rock climbing program versus doing very rock climbing specific work, but for let's say like a triathlete or a marathoner or an ultra marathoner or someone who would want to develop strength or really more specifically power and endurance simultaneously. Some of his programs, what's called the hybrid training programs, are really interesting. I believe the name of his website is Juggernaut Juggernaut Training.

So that's a great name.

I'll link to that or I'll link to some of his Amazon books in the show notes. But he's got some interesting things going on. I need to have him on the show sometime just because. Yeah, again, if you want to have strength, power and be like a big old gorilla brute riding on a time trial bike, which is probably what you're going to find if you Google Image search Alex Viada V I A D A that might be the program for you. That or there's another chap named Ben Greenfield who wrote a program called Tri Ripped which is kind of similar Build endurance.

I've heard of that one.

Massive amounts of muscle. At the same time, however, like I mentioned, it sounds like David has a lot of the workout component figured out. So.

In my book Beyond Training, I do go into some foods and supplements that could assist with power production. And what I outline in that book is that when it comes to power, the most important consideration from a food standpoint is the support of your nervous system. Since the speed with which your nerves communicate directly influences the speed of your brain speaking to your muscles. And the three best ways to do that that I outline in the book are omega 3 fatty acid intake and amino acid intake and B complex vitamin intake. And the reason for that is that first of all for the Omega 3s is your nerves are wrapped in these sheaths, the myelin sheaths and omega 3 fatty acids and specifically DHA. Right. That's particularly important in building that sheath structure along with oleic acid to a certain extent from you give them extra virgin olive oil and Mediterranean fats. So consuming a lot of cold water, fish and a lot of kind of Mediterranean fats like olive oil or if you're vegan, like doing a lot of spirulina, chlorella, stuff like that, that would be from a food intake pretty important. From the amino acid standpoint, whole food sources of amino acids like you could certainly supplement with essential amino acids, but you could also include, you know, grass fed beef and wild salmon and eggs and a lot of those things that I want to insult David's intelligence by telling him how to get whole good sources of amino acids. But just make sure you're, you're getting a good balance of amino acids. And that would specifically be because those are the precursors for neurotransmitters. And then finally B complex nerves rely quite a bit on those. And that's just not for synthesizing and circulating neurotransmitters, but it's also pretty important in nerve metabolism. So like a good vitamin B source would be, for example, lots of dark leafy greens. Beets. Beets are actually really good, which is nice also because those can provide for good blood flow, which could help buffer some of the lactic acid. And you even find decent sources of B12 in organ meats. Right. Like calves liver is a really great example. So just from a food standpoint, right. Make sure you're getting your good Mediterranean fats and dha, good essential forms of amino acids, which is possibly why vegetarians might be sucky rock climbers.

Sorry. And then B complex vitamin intake, sorry, Vegetarians, you might. Yeah, depends on.

We love you anyways.

We love you anyways. Depending on the source of your amino acids, just make sure you're getting complete amino acids in that wonderful vegetarian based diet. So that all being said, there are also specific supplements that can also help with power. Even before we look at things that could help help to boost lactic acid buffering capabilities. Probably the best supplements, in addition to, as you would probably guess, a good vitamin B complex for the reasons that I just outlined, along with a good essential amino acids blend for the reasons I just outlined, a few of the others would be green tea. Green tea appears to be one of those things that really elevates neuronal activity. And so just like, you know, you could even just like slip some matcha into your, into your, your Nalgene when you're climbing. Right? So green tea extract. And like good, dense sources of green tea, L tyrosine is another one. And L tyrosine is a naturally occurring amino acid, but it's the precursor to the neurotransmitter adrenaline. And so it not only gives you a little bit of a handy boost prior to a power workout, but L tyrosine appears to protect neurons from free radical based oxidation. And so for power, that would be an especially important amino acid to include. And the dosage of that would be about 1 to 2 grams, like 30 to 60 minutes prior to a big climb. And then the last one would be choline. And choline can again allow you to form new neural circuits. But it's also extremely important for nerve health and not only for slowing neurological decline, but also for improving muscle contractability related to neuromuscular performance. So choline would be about 500 milligrams or so. Again, you could take that about an hour before a very power demanding type of workout. You'll find it in a lot of smart drugs too. You know, like everything from Qualia to Tianchi. Those all have choline in them because of the role that it plays in.

The brain and the nervous system.

I didn't realize it had such an acute effect that you'd take it like an hour before doing something and actually benefit from that. Acute.

Yeah, even as little as 30 minutes for Choline. So you can, you can take it directly prior to a workout. Interesting. Yeah. And, and then the only other thing I would mention before I talk about lactic acid buffering specifically, I, I guess this, this is kind of related to lactic acid buffering, but it would be this idea of like explosive body weight training combined with blood flow restriction. So I've been a huge fan lately. I think I mentioned this on the last podcast of doing some body weight workouts on Wednesdays where I' what are called BFR bands, blood flow restriction bands that you wrap like a tourniquet on the arms and, or the legs. It's also known as Katsu training and it causes a whole bunch of lactic acid to build up in tissue. Usually you do like a body weight workout or some kind of like a lighter weight workout with the, with the tourniquets applied and you can keep those on for, for the whole workout. So for like a sample workout, I'll put on the BFR bands on the arms and the legs and Then shuttle back and forth between upper body and lower body. Explosive work, right? Like a 30, 20, 10 round. Like 30 reps, 20 reps. Then 10 reps of push ups, jump squats.

Muscle ups, jump lunges.

Some form of like a core activity. Like it could even be like, just like, you know, like, like a planking type of motion. And then something that's very metabolically demanding, right. Like the 30 burpees. Right. And you just go through that, you know, two to three times with the BFR bands on, which I really like. Cause you can do that like in a hotel room at the base of a mountain that you're gonna climb, whatever. So BFR bands and blood flow restriction training don't do it. The base of amount you're gonna climb. You don't wanna pre exhaust yourself with all that bfr.

Seems like a bad idea if you.

Wanna fall off the mountain. But for improving your lactic acid buffering capacity, those work really, really well. I'm a huge fan of those. They've also done some really interesting research that shows that it can enhance the muscle building effects of body weight training. Brad Schoenfeld's done research over the past few years that does show that you can build significant amounts of muscle by simply working a muscle to failure without the muscle necessarily being subjected to an extremely heavy load. And BFR bands or using some kind of a blood flow restriction method appears to enhance that even more.

So yeah, I saw the, the, the reason for that, or what they assume is the reason for that, is the lactic acid building up to that extreme either causes the cell, the muscle cells to explode or grow.

Yes. One or the other exploding muscle cells. I'm pretty sure that's a good thing. There's also a, there's a significant growth hormone effect as well, so, so there's that. Cool. Anyways though, in terms of lactic acid buffering, which is what that does.

Been shown to be tried and true for lactic acid buffering. Probably one of the more popular ones of course, is baking soda. But I have yet to really implement that successfully in myself or any of the athletes that I coach without getting the side effects of nausea and vomiting and diarrhea. All these studies will say before exercise, take it's like 0.2 to 0.4 grams of baking soda per kilogram of body weight. And some studies they'll space that out over the course of like three hours where every 20 minutes you'll do a dosing of baking soda. And it does really help to buffer acid and even when put into, like, let's say a morning beverage, it can be a little bit alkalizing to the body. You know, very similar, like a squeeze of half a lemon. A lot of people do, like a little lemon, a little baking soda, that type of thing. But doing it to the point where it provides an ergogenic aid for sports performance, I think, is playing with fire. Like, you don't want to be that guy with explosive diarrhea on the wall. So never. There are things that I think afford us a little bit better living through science that don't cause you to have to play with some of the issues with baking soda. Beta alanine is one. Beta alanine, what happens is when you consume that, it gets combined with. It's an amino acid, and it gets combined with another amino acid called histidine when you consume it. And those two together form what's called carnosine. And carnosine is a really potent lactic acid buffer. And the dosage for beta alanine would be about 1 to 4 grams. So the dose range is pretty significantly spread out when it comes to the studies on beta alanine. But beta alanine is a definitely. It is definitely a studied and well proven lactic acid buffer. The thing with beta alanine, though, is because it's converted to carnosine in the body, you could theoretically also just supplement with. With carnosine. And that seems a lot easier. Yeah, because it's like a building block for carnosine. I'm pretty sure beta alanine is a little less expensive than carnosine. And if it's going to get converted anyways, you know, there's kind of like that thought. But I've personally used beta alanine and I found that to be pretty effective. I haven't used carnosine too much. Usually you're going to find carnosine as like carnitine or l. Carnitine. And you'll see it a lot lower, by the way. And sorry to throw you guys under the bus again in vegans or vegetarians. Carnosine. So either carnosine or beta alanine. Those are two examples. And then I did a podcast with this guy named Craig Dinkle who's like, he's a former competitive swimmer. He is a guy who competes at altitude. And he went into.

Didn't he have a lovely Scottish accent as well?

No, you're thinking of someone else. No, he's full on. Sorry, Craig. Full on. American. He talked about citrulline, though. And citrulline is actually a very well documented vasodilator. And we find it in, like, watermelon. That's why watermelon juice or watermelon powder or even just like eating watermelon is something that you'll find bodybuilders doing to get a bigger pump. It's also great before, like, sex or before a workout and.

But don't you have to eat, like, three watermelons to get. It's kind of.

Yeah, it's kind of like beets. Like, you'd want to go with, like, a beet powder or beet juice to really get, like, an ergogenic dose.

Unless you really like.

Unless you really like the watermelon bloat or. Yep. Or red pee and poo from the beets.

You want to slosh around while you're having sex.

Right. Hear the watermelon do or climbing with 2 pounds of watermelon in your stomach. Anyways, though, that was a great sound effect, by the way, Brock. Belly full of water. Your belly full of watermelon sex.

Anyways, though. So L citrulline is the component in a watermelon that causes that vasodilation to occur. And that can actually help out quite a bit with lactic acid buffering as well. So that would be one. And then when you look at some studies that have been done on L citrulline, when it's combined with something called malic acid, which is part of the. It's part of your Krebs cycle, Right. That's the cycle in your body that converts food into energy and water for the body. Well, malic acid also appears to be a pretty potent alkalizing agent that buffers ammonia and buffers lactic acid. So kind of like stacking malic acid with L citrulline. And that's actually, you know, the reason Craig and I were talking about this was he actually has a supplement called Oxia. And it's basically like citrulline. It's malic acid. And then he's got some cordyceps in there, Right. For, like, better performance at altitude. But that's a good example of just like, if you wanted like, a done for you supplement, that would be a pretty decent and unique blend of lactic acid buffering compounds. That one's called Ant Oxia, O X C I A. So that would be. That would be another.

I believe I saw you popping some of those before the Spartan World Championships.

I think I had, like, all three of his bottles. He. Because he has another one that's like liver and algae, and then one that is. I think it's like chlorella and beets. And so, like all his formulas are really, really good for either performance at altitude, which is the main reason he makes this stuff. But then also lactic acid buffering. So he's got some good stuff that's biotropic labs. I'll put. I think I've got a 30. 30% discount somewhere. I'll put it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 379 so those are a few biggies, David. I would say, you know, read the sections in my Beyond Training book on food for power. Specifically, I'll link to that Physiology of Sport rock climbing article. If you just are curious about the physiology, you have no better thing to do than to read the British journal. And then I will also put a link to some of the Alex Valleta's juggernaut training stuff and the BFR bands and then some of these supplements that I've talked about that can help to buffer lactic acid. If you fall off of a wall anywhere in the world, we take no responsibility for anything that has occurred, especially if it has anything to do with a giant watermelon in your stomach or explosive diarrhea.

Hey, Ben, question for your podcast. Do you have any tips when it comes to breaking addictions? I mean, like behavioral addictions like gambling or substance abuse? Any tips or information that you have would be great. Thanks.

Are you addicted to anything, Brock?

Yeah, I'd say so.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think of what I. I guess what am I. I'm probably addicted to cough. Even though I, I switched to decaf coffee for one week out of every month to kind of keep myself from getting too into coffee. Like, it's just like the taste. If you. If I can't have decaf or regular coffee, I just go nuts. I tried that green tea thing for like a month and I just, I missed coffee.

That's exactly what I was thinking of when you asked me that. I was like, well, coffee. Coffee is pretty much. Yeah, my, my biggest.

I think I was actually coffee for a little while. I was really into like, vaping at night. But then I did that Peak Brain Institute thing, the, the neurofeedback in la and that. That guy can like reset your tolerance to alcohol, to marijuana, remove addictions. I mean, like Dr. Andrew Hill, he's brilliant at this stuff. We should link to the. I'll link to the podcast that I did with him or to the Peak Brain Institute in la. That's neurofeedback. So neurofeedback basically uses almost like a subconscious type of training to give you a little, give your brain a little slap on the wrist when it errs into areas of brainwave production that you wouldn't want to be in. And in many cases, brainwave ratio abnormalities are related to addictive behavior. So neurofeedback, and specifically going to a professional neurofeedback practitioner like that, I think he's got a clinic in la. I know he's got a clinic in la. That's when I went to San Diego. It's not something you can just like pop on and do online, but neurofeedback I'd certainly look into. Yeah, that would be a big neurofeedback.

I did it in just outside of Seattle though. And it's interesting, you said that it was a slap on the wrist for the wrong kind of brainwaves. The one that I was doing was actually the opposite. It was a reward for the right kind of brainwaves.

Yeah, it's that too. I've done that too. It's kind of both. Right. Because for example, in the game that I played the most, my spaceship that I would fly with, my brain would stop flying and the music would stop and the ignition would stop coming out of the back of the spaceship if I aired into, into, let's say, excess stressful beta brainwave production. But then as soon as I got into the right type of brainwave production, like Better Alpha, for example, the spaceship would not only start flying again, but I would start to collect these little like rewards and jewels that were in the path of the spaceship.

So I got a really cool image of, of my own brain and some lovely music playing whenever I'd hit Alpha. It was very, very soothing and rewarding.

That's awesome.

Cool stuff. But yeah, yeah, that's a great, a great thing for addiction.

Yeah. What we in first world countries do when we're bored, sit in front of computers and fly spaceships with our brains. Anyways, though, so there are a few other things though, when it comes to this whole idea of electricity. They have done some pretty, pretty interesting studies on electrical stimulation of the brain and what's called non invasive brain stimulation. Now granted, I did just record a podcast that hasn't come out yet with the author of the book Beyond Human where she gets into these brain pacemakers that you can now get installed in your brain, at least in some clinical studies that are actually what I guess you would call invasive brain stimulation versus non invasive brain Stimulation, because from what I understand, they're actually using a surgical procedure to put them inside of your brain. But in the meantime, should you not want to get your skull cracked open?

No, thank you.

A few of the forms of brain stimulation that they've used in studies. One is transcranial direct current stimulation. What's called tdcs, which is a low voltage weak current, like the equivalent of about a 9 volt battery, is what would deliver this. So it penetrates the skull to a degree, but it's much too low to have a really significant neuronal firing effect. But it can upregulate the firing of motor neurons a little bit, which is why, you know, there's like this device called the Halo that's a lot of times used for improving sports performance because it increases the activity of the motor neurons prior to sports. But they've also done studies on cocaine and alcohol and cannabis abuse and found that TDCS can have an effect on these.

Have you actually tried the Halo device at all?

Well, not for. Not for, like. See, I was thinking about perhaps putting it on and trying it when I know I'm going to be craving something or when I suppose I could get up in the morning and put it on and see if I'm able to better overcome my craving for a cup of coffee, that type of thing. I don't know if anybody listening in has. I've really only used it for work and it's fantastic for work.

Oh, you find it works.

It makes you feel like a freaking. Oh, my gosh. For workouts, it's like cheating. Yeah, I mean, I should combine that with the nose torque, actually for my next isometric set. But yeah, I mean, it really works very, very, very well for workouts. The TDCS used in these studies, I believe it's been clinically overseen by scientists in white lab coats. And not necessarily a home TDCS device designed to look like beats by Dr. Dre. But you could try it because you can buy this thing for your home. I mean, if it doesn't work out, at least you've got a great little exercise tool.

The only thing, the reason that I asked about that, the reason I brought it up, is I actually have a little bit of inside insider hockey information here, although it's not hockey related. Our buddy, Alex Hutchinson, I was editing another piece of audio a little while ago with him talking about how the Halo device actually sort of gets it wrong because it's passing the current from one part of the brain to the other part of the brain where like something More. More efficacious would be to pass current through the brain and then through the shoulder or something like that. So you're actually getting a throughput rather than a sort of arcing.

That's interesting. I assume that if you're stimulating motor neurons, you're going to have that effect anyways. Yeah, but I could be wrong. I'd love to see what he's. Is he, like, writing an article on this, or.

I think it's in his book that's coming out in February called Endure.

All right, well, we. We digress.

We totally do. But I just. I love that you tried it and you actually felt. Felt a benefit. Cool.

Oh, a ton. Yeah. I still use it every week. It's sitting right back behind me on my desk. I like it because I can just, like, jam on a bike to warm up and go do my workout.

Okay. Anyway, could.

Could be placebo, but I mean, hey.

Placebo is a good thing.

Yeah. So there's also transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation. Most of these, you kind of, you know, you have to go to a clinic to have done, you know, td. You could probably find a home device to experiment with for something like that. Same thing with neurofeedback. You'd have to go to a facility to learn how to do it. But then afterwards, you could probably.

Do, like, what I did. You just buy the equipment and take it home and use it after that. The only other form of brain stimulation that I would think about was there's this device called the Circadia, and it was designed for sleep by a company called Fisher Wallace. But it causes a pretty massive dump of dopamine into your brain when you put it on. It's like one pad goes on one side of your head. The other pad goes on the other side of your head. You dip the pads in water before you put them on, and it's kind of like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Right. You're essentially shocking yourself into a state of submission.

What, you turn into Jack Nicholson and.

Start.

Leering at people. Anyways, though, it's called the circadia, and it upregulates serotonin and dopamine. And because the mechanism of addiction is a lot of times reliant upon you craving the dopamine release that you would get from a specific substance, this would be another thing very related to a lot of the brain stimulation or electrical studies that they've done on people. So if you're going for a home device, I would say you could try the HALO for tdcs. Or you could try the circadia for brain stimulation for dopamine. And those would be be a couple of things in addition to neural feedback that you could look at from almost like a biohacking type of standpoint.

Yeah, yeah, you strapped that circadia on my head while we were in Tahoe and, and I got super mellow.

Yeah.

Like it, it killed any, any of my drive to do anything.

Yeah.

To go out and get drunk or something.

Yeah, you just laid on the couch and ate Doritos and watched family gather the rest of the day. It's horrible.

That was from something else.

It's actually really, really good for sleeping and for naps or if you wake up during the night. So I did interview the folks that designed it, but yeah, it's called the Circadia. I'll link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 379A couple other things I would look into though. First of all, there is a substance called Mucuna pruriens, which is basically something that would be used to rebuild dopamine production. And you can actually just buy this off of, for example, Amazon and Mucuna pruriensis. It's a plant and it contains L Dopa, which is a naturally produced amino acid that turns into dopamine in the brain. And anytime that you want to enhance an experience like sex or eating, or anytime you want to reduce your drive to consume a certain substance, because the dopamine that you're craving from that substance has already been provided by something like Mucuna. This is something that could come in handy. And the dosage is somewhere in the range of 100 to 500 milligrams. You know, I'd start with about 100 milligrams. You could always increase that if you want to, but it's got a very pleasant kind of effect. You know, anything that causes you to release dopamine, you know, whether it be, you know, LSD or Mucuna, I would be careful with because you don't want to necessarily become dependent on it to produce dopamine. But from just like an over the counter supplement standpoint, Mucuna is one that I would certainly look into. And then, speak of the devil, we get into the realm of psychedelics and the fascinating amount of research that's been done on the use of psychedelics for addiction. Psilocybin is probably the one that's been on the tongues of most people of late. Based on the research at Johns Hopkins University that has tested its Ability to stop nicotine addiction specifically. And some other studies are going on that are looking at it for removing dependence on opioids, but and alcohol too.

I saw some on alcohol.

I didn't know that. Interesting. Mushrooms are far more dangerous than alcohol. Far more dangerous than alcohol. Be careful with that. I'm kidding. Anyways, yeah, psilocybin, it appears to be somewhat safe. I interviewed Dr. Anthony, Anthony Beck, who suspected that it may have some kind of a deleterious impact on people who have like methylation issues, which you could test with like a genetic test. But ultimately microdoses of psilocybin may actually be somewhat effective at addiction. And even like trip doses, like single time trip doses appear to in some cases like reboot that addiction. And so look up the research on psilocybin, the ingredient in magic mushrooms for something like this. And LSD is another one that when given in micro doses, we're talking like 10 to 15 micrograms in most cases, whereas a trip dose would start at about 100 micrograms or so. LSD would be another one that appears to have some potential for controlling. I know they have done studies on LSD and alcohol. Alcohol, but acting very similarly on some of these dopaminergic pathways to reduce reliance upon certain substances. And with LSD there's even another form of it that you can find on the Internet for far less expensively. You'd still have to use in most cases Bitcoin or cryptocurrency to buy any of these things that would be considered illegal. But it's called plsd. Plsd, very similar analog to lsd, acts very similarly.

I have used it and both LSD in microdoses and found them to act somewhat similarly. Although you need slightly more of the plsd, it's also far less cost prohibitive and far easier to find without necessarily using like the dark web and a cloaked browser. You'd still need in most cases or every case as far as I know, cryptocurrency to actually purchase it. Because most of these websites don't want to deal with payment processors and banks shutting them down for selling a potentially psychedelic substance not intended for human consumption. But either microdosing with LSD or microdosing with PLSD would be another thing that you could look into doing along with microdosing with psilocybin. And then the big guns really for full on addiction would be the, the West African psychedelic bush. I believe it's a bush extract called ibogaine. Ibogaine. And yeah, the DMT well, yeah, ibogaine is like dmt, not, not to overuse this analogy, but on steroids, kind of like, kind of like nose Turk is, is like smelling salts on steroids. So a single dose of ibogaine, like a very, very large like, like trypto seems to be effective for a very long time in reversing or permanently eliminating addiction. And you can go to these clinics for example, in Costa Rica and you can actually go to a week long ibogaine clinic where this is administered. And a lot of people will find great success with ibogaine when it comes to things like heroin or opiate or other substance addictions. It's also been used for alcohol, for marijuana, for tobacco, cocaine.

Pretty sure there's a clinic in Mexico now as well. Yeah, even have to go all the way to Costa Rica.

Yeah, there might be a guy interviewed on the show before, Dr. Dan Engel. He speaks quite highly of a place in Costa Rica and I'm trying to remember the name he was trying to get me to go for. I think Anthony Esposito is the guy that runs is called because I have somewhere a note that he sent me. Ebogawellness I B o g a wellness ebogawellness.com.

So I've got a little bit of a curiosity, almost like an interest in seeing what that particular substance would feel like. But at the same time it's very powerful and somewhat uncomfortable. Kind of like you go to some pretty intense places when you use something like Ayahuasca or dmt. Ibogaine is a little bit stronger than that. So that would.

The place I'm thinking of isn't even in Mexico, it's in New Mexico.

There you go even closer.

Crossroads Treatment center. And actually Dan. Yeah, Crossroads also associated.

Yeah, Crossroads, that's the one. Yep, yep, exactly. So you can also very similar to microdosing with lsd, you can also microdose with, with iboga. I actually have some up in my, up in my pantry. It's great for like before a workout, take like 300 milligrams of a Boga because a lot of like African tribes will use this for like whipping themselves up into a frenzy. And it only sticks with you for like two or three hours but it kind of gives you a little bit of, a little bit of a perk Iboga if you want to just like microdose with it. But anyway, so, so that's the drug lecture kids. And I'd say Steve, hopefully some of that stuff helps you out if you wind up addicted to lsd, psilocybin and going nuts on ibogaine in Mexico or Costa Rica. Very similar to David having explosives of diarrhea or watermelon baby belly while climbing a rock. We take no responsibility for anything that happens to you or your brain after listening to this advice.

Hey Ben, I've been spending a lot of time listening to your podcast as well as digging for any research I can find on gut health, especially inflammatory responses in the body. So I have a scenario and question for you. I work in an airline in the United States, but I won't say which, although I'm sure this is a common problem. The problem is I frequently see our aircraft are written up for maintenance because they have no functioning potable water supply for drinking water and for washing hands. The reason being is that the water tanks have built up an unacceptable level of E. Coli and need to be cleaned. My question is, is the risk of drinking from such a water supply ever worthwhile for the sake of triggering a hormetic response in the body? It seems many pilots are split between two schools of thought. On one side, the answer is absolutely not. On the other side, it is viewed as a way to prepare and build the immune system for a sort of end of days bacteria breakout. Either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the situation. Thanks.

Yeah. Did you hear about these studies, Brock, on water in airplanes?

No, not the water. I heard about the studies they did on like the backs of the seats in front of you and how much bacteria is in there versus, like how much is in the bathrooms.

It's nice. I mean, not that, not that I hope anybody's like, freaking like, bending down an airport bathroom and sucking water out of the tap, but even, even like the stuff the stewardess walks up and down the aisle with, you know, those plastic cups of water. I don't know if those always come out of the Fuji bottled water that they've got there in the back or if that's false advertising. And they're really just like, you know, taking that stuff straight out of the tap of the airplane tank, which has been shown to be a pretty significant breeding ground for bacteria. I mean, they did a study in 2015 on aircraft water quality and they found that water tanks are, quote, conducive for microbial growth, meaning that they had like a huge amount of coliform, which you're going to find in feces, and also a huge amount of. Drumroll, please. E. Coli, which of course Alex is. Alex is considering consuming for its potential hormetic purposes. And it turns out that, you know, I wouldn't drink water from a water tank on an airplane for a variety of reasons that go far beyond E. Coli, like, for example.

Fluoride and metals and chlorine and Lord knows what else is lining that tank that who knows when it's been cleaned. But E. Coli is actually really interesting because, you know, it's basically a bacterium that we find naturally within the human body. Yeah, we've always got E. Coli. Yeah. Many of us host a population of E. Coli in our gut that aids digestion and that protects from a lot of harmful microbes. And, you know, in her book, I believe it was her book Pharmacology, Dr. Daphne Miller, who I interviewed, even goes into the fact that when you look at Listeria and E. Coli and a lot of these potentially pathogenic organisms, they only appear to be deleterious when the gut is absent in flourishing bacteria, like a good range of other bacteria, which is why kids who grow up on farms and drink raw milk, when you look at their stomachs, they actually do have a lot of Listeria and E. Coli and a lot of these other potentially pathogenic bacteria, but they're asymptomatic because they have so many of the other good bacteria that they're getting from the soil and the plants and the pets and the farm animals and all these other things that are around them. So maintaining a really strong flourishing microbial community in your gut appears to be the most important thing to do if you are going to get exposed to E. Coli. But pathogenic E. Coli there is bad E. Coli. You know, there's E. Coli that actually carries a few extra genes that provide the information needed to produce components that make those strains pretty harmful. And once skinny genes, right? Yep. Once they get into the gut, they specifically release biological poisons, toxins, and that's what causes, like, the diarrhea and the stomach upset and. And everything else. And harmless E. Coli can pass through the digestive tract or just remain in the digestive tract and allow for the production of vitamins and protection against parasites and a lot of other beneficial effect. But pathogenic E. Coli, such as you might find, like E. Coli that's either had DNA modified, or the type of E. Coli you might find in drinking water on airplanes, that would be something you'd want to be careful with. And I don't really see a huge benefit to the hormetic effect from some of the poison that these things can produce. Like, you know, Shiga toxin is one that you'll find and that causes Bloody diarrhea and kidney damage. Right. There's another form of E. Coli that basically causes leaky gut and breaks down the lining of the cells in the colon and also causes a pretty significant fever. Could that potentially be protective if you had some, like a rampant parasitic infection or something like that? Maybe. But I don't see that similar, like sunshine or cold thermogenesis that that's going to produce a lot of a beneficial hormetic effect that.

Offers you.

A lot of benefit compared to the risk and the discomfort that it creates. And so E. Coli and a lot of other bacteria will exchange genes.

And they'll do that with special viruses that target bacteria called bacteriophages. And those viruses reproduce themselves by injecting their genes into E. Coli. And that kind of hijacks the bacterium's internal machinery, takes it over, and causes it to become capable of producing a lot of these toxins. And so.

I think that when you look at airplane water or a lot of these foods that can get contaminated with a pathogenic source of E. Coli, it's kind of like a perfect storm of a lot of different bacteria and then the presence of E. Coli all kind of in this soupy mixture, and that potentially produces like, like a pathogenic E. Coli. So ultimately, I'm pretty careful about stuff like that. And I don't really think that there'd be a huge hormetic effect to like, sucking down E. Coli or popping an E. Coli pill or anything like that if it really is truly this, this pathogenic E. Coli. Although I don't know the form of the E. Coli that they actually found in the drinking tanks of the airplanes in this study that they did. I would just be careful, you know, raw cookie dough and raw beef and raw eggs. Just, you know, make sure that, you know, what it's been exposed to, how much bacteria it's passed through. And, you know, I'm. I'm no expert on E. Coli. I know that some can be good for you and we shouldn't shove it all under the bus. But I'd be careful the stuff in the water plane tanks, personally.

Hey, Ben Kieran here from Sydney, Australia. My question is noting the dynamic landscape of the fitness industry today. And with a constant barrage of new information and a flooded market, what advice would you give someone starting out as a personal trainer in 2018? Thanks, Ben.

So Kieran clearly doesn't want to actually, like, make a lot of money or become a millionaire at any point.

You kidding me? Have you seen Jillian Michaels lately? Jillian Michaels, the personal Trainer. The world famous personal trainer or Bob. Bob Harper.

Yeah, but we have to kill her off before somebody can take her throne.

Speaking of Bob Harper people getting killed off. Bob Harper almost died. He had like extremely high LP content and I think he had like a, like a heart attack. So. Yeah, sorry Bob. Yeah, sorry about that, Bob. Anyways though. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I used to actually get hired to travel to all these fitness business conferences and give advice to personal trainers and teach people how to, how to kind of like make money with brick and mortar gyms and personal training facilities. Because that was what I did. And there were definitely certain models that worked really well that I wish I'd known about that kind of beat the pants off of just like private one on $1 for hours personal training. And there are, there are a variety of such things like group training, right? Like where you're going to train a group of individuals versus one person, one on one. And in most cases those clients are paying like a monthly subscription fee and you're training them in groups of 10 to 25 clients. Right. Or semi private training where maybe they're paying a little bit more, but it's like two to four people that you're training at a time. Again, all kind of like a subscription based month to month model. There's online coaching, which I think is. It's a model that's overused by personal trainers who haven't spent enough time with people in actual gyms, in actually facility, in actual facilities. Seeing how people move, doing like functional movement screens on people, assessing how the programming that that personal trainer is providing is actually affecting someone versus just like shooting in the dark and delivering it online. I do not recommend like getting, getting all excited about being an online personal trainer unless you've really put in the time in the gym first in a brick and mortar setting like all these Instagram personal trainers ripping their shirts off and doing special acrobatic moves on Instagram is pretty, but I wouldn't necessarily listen to them when it comes to actual programming, especially if you're, if your body is on the line. So I agree the online personal training can be an adjunct or something to add on to something like a combination of private training and then group training and then semi private training. But it shouldn't be the bread and butter mostly because you got to be out there actually helping people and doing it in a situation where you can physically be there seeing people move. Even myself, when I travel to seminars and conferences, I still will teach fitness classes, lead morning workouts, I'll still help people out with certain moves. I'll assess people. And that's because I still want to, I still want to maintain that edge of being able to see how people move and to be able to program for them accordingly. And so just from a pure business standpoint, and I mean I wrote a whole book on this. It's called, you could probably find it somewhere. It's called Train for Top Dollar super cheesy name. Oh man, I forgot about way back in the day. I think the website still exists now. Yeah, it's still on Amazon. I think it's called the Personal Trainer's Guide to earning top dollars 2010. Yeah, it's like a $20 book on, on Amazon. I, it was kind of funny though. Like somebody, the last I was in Panama, I think teaching at a retreat in Panama and somebody came up to me and they had that, that book and they were like, I've been reading this book to enhance my personal time. I'm like, you know, that book's like 10 years old. I don't think it talks about like anything regarding like, you know, self quantification or HRV or pro or any of the stuff that we do now. And like the, like, you know, we've got for example, our, our Kion Coach certification that we're, that we're building out where we go into a lot of that stuff, which is kind of like the next level of the Superhuman Coach certification that I, that I, that I currently have over@superhuman coach.com but that personal Trainer's Guide to Earning Top Dollars. I did write a book about this back in the day, so that would be one that you could look at. But, but in addition to just setting up your business using some of those resources that I just talked about, I'm a big fan of continuing education and just real briefly, I'm going to give you the top things that, that I would do if I were a personal trainer and things that, that I, I, I do do. And that would be, I'm not even.

I'm not going to say anything.

I know you got, you got rid of your do do earlier in this podcast, Brock, so that should be off your mind. The Examine Research Digest comes out twice a month. Great synopsis of up to date research in the nutrition and the fitness and the supplementation industry. I would subscribe to that. Alan Argon's Research review. That one also comes out about once a month, chock full of really good research and breaking down that research and also teaching you how to analyze the Statistical power and the significance of a research study. Big fan of that. The Weston A. Price Foundation. I really like their magazine. I believe it's a quarterly, but when it comes to pretty solid nutrition and supplementation advice, I'm pretty on board with most of what they do from a nutrition standpoint, everything from liver and raw milk. They're just not very dogmatic in their dietary approach. Meaning if it's real food and it grows on God's good earth and it can be rendered digestible and it's nutrient dense, eat it. So there is no bread, there's no dairy, there's no. Lectins are the devil. It's pretty much just a be smarter than the food approach. And yeah, and I.

And they're location based too. Like, don't necessarily say, like, everybody should eat this. If you live in this part of the world that doesn't have X, Y or zed, you don't eat X, Y or Z.

Right, right. So.

Which is great.

Exactly, exactly. So the Weston A. Price Foundation, I'd follow them. I would get on. Get on their, get on their newsletter as well. And then in terms of CEUs, like I mentioned, go to Brock. Do you know what the URL is for people to go and get signed up to kind of like be first in line for the new coach certification that we're building out for personal trainers and docs and chiropractic physicians, et cetera, over at Kion.

I. I don't know the exact URL, but you can easily find it from getkeyon.com okay, so just go to get. And there's a coaching link somewhere in there.

Yeah, go to getkion.com and where we're building out a pretty robust coach certification that involves a whole bunch of my own modules and teachings. And we're upgrading the superhuman coach curriculum and kind of replacing all that with, with that curriculum. And so that.

And we're currently taking all of Ben's chicken scratch that he wrote down on napkins and stuff and turning it into a real program.

Yeah, exactly. And then the check I like Paul check and I like his certification process. And if I had to choose one that I would use as kind of like something to put on top of a good personal training cert or a college degree, I would do something like the Czech certification combined with some of those other resources that I just described. Like I would hire a personal trainer who was like a check certified personal trainer who was following what the Wesley Price foundation had to say about diet, who was reading Alan Argon's research review every month. Who is consuming the Examine Research Digest and who was, narcissistically enough, following my own Kion Coach certification, where I go over, you know, strength, power, speed, endurance, air, light, water, electricity, all that stuff that's kind of like the, the full package. So, Kieran, I will put links to some of these resources for you in the show notes. And yeah, that's. That's what I'll do, man.

So, yeah, and, and don't, don't shortchange or skip the advice to, to work with real people and get out there and like, coach in person. Because not only is that, like Ben said, it's really important to know how people move and, and be able to watch them, but it's also a great way to, to kick off your. Your business, really. Like, I used to work with, I used to coach like 70 or 80 people at the same time twice a week. And basically when I opened up my. My coaching business, I had like, hundreds of people who already knew who I was. And it was, it was a lot easier to start a business when you've already got, like, boots on the ground.

That was actually how I got this podcast started, was I had like 30 people that I taught a weekly triathlon training class to over in Liberty Lake, Washington, and I started sending them newsletters with the latest research. And then I was like, screw that. This is taking too long to type, so I'm going to record them videos. And then I started putting those videos up on itunes. And then eventually I realized you got to do your hair and makeup to do a video, but you don't for audio. And so I started recording audios. And this was like 10 years ago. And that was like the. That was like the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. That was, that was how it started, though. It was just like supplying information to this small group of people who I was teaching triathlon training classes to. So.

Yeah, well, you had an audience. You have to develop that audience.

Yeah, that was, that was, that was actually. That was my email list. It was 30 people. And. And that's literally. That's like the same. I don't even know how many. I think we have, like 90,000 plus people on our email list now. But it was originally just like those 30 people in Washington state. So. Yeah, funny how things change. Anyways, though, let's give some stuff away. Let's give some crap away, shall we? Yeah, so this is the part of the show where we give a T shirt and a BPA free water bottle and a sweet little Ben Greenfield Fitness beanie to the person whose review we read on this show. So if you leave us a five star review review in itunes or any review that's nice or entertaining and you hear it read on the show, then all you need to do is email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's gearreenfieldfitnesssystems dot com with your T shirt size and we will send you a handy dandy gear pack straight to your house. So Brock, this one's called 10 Steps Ahead of the Game. It's a five star review by Pebalane. You want to take this one away? It's kind of long in the tooth, but we'll read it anyways. Make it entertaining. Brock. Okay.

Yeah, it goes like this.

Wow.

That's it? No, I'm just kidding. I've been listening for about two years and just now realized that I have yet to leave a review. Slacker.

Ben is always ahead of the game. I can't thank him enough for his transparency and willingness to question conventional wisdom or any otherwise unsupported claim. He is part of the less than 1% in the industry that provides unbiased information and does not stand in his own way when uncovering the facts. With that said, I do admire when he is quick to point out the seemingly woo woo status of a good story that ends up in a discovery of a larger sense of well being and the other or other sense of enlightenment. But we are complex creatures and we are learning crazy facts about our true nature each day. So bring it on. I was 19 when I began listening to the show and have gained so much insight and insight about life by listening on a regular basis. I feel confident about my future well being. Thank you. And also a special lil shout out to Rachel. Really missing her awesome vibes. Come visit us soon.

Smoochy Face Who's Rachel?

It's an emoji. Smoochy face. What?

Who's Rachel?

Oh sorry Rachel. Come on. Sorry Rachel. Not funny. Our old podcast host. Our hot Australian host who we lost and had to replace with the ugly pooping Canadian. Anyways though, great review Pebbleen. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the kind words and for the rest of you. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 379 for the rest of you suckers who didn't get a gift pack, go leave a review on itunes. You might be able to snag one for yourself and also spread some good karma in the process.

But leave a short one because you know I'll just butcher it if it gets too long.

Brock's Dyslexic Keep it short so Ben Green and I can say that because my wife's dyslexic, I'm allowed to make fun of dyslexic people. If someone you love has a condition, you're allowed to make fun of that condition. I think that's the rule anyways, though. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 379 that's where the shownotes are. We'll stack them all up there for you. All the studies, the smelling salts, that isometric thing that I use, all the devices for biohacking addiction, all the little business advice for personal trainers, including the book I wrote like 10 years ago. All that stuff. BenGreenfieldThitness.com Power Endurance Hat that's right, Brock's hats. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 379 have an amazing week.

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