Exoskeletons For Human Performance, Will Robots Rule The World, Ketosis For Muscle Gain & Much More.

Hey, I hunted down a pretty dang smart cookie for today's podcast episode. Kenneth Ford, he runs this thing called the IHMC in Florida and we talk about exoskeletons for human performance and where the robots are gonna rule the world. Ketosis for muscle gain, some cool fringe training tactics, and a lot more. His name is Kenneth Ford. I think you'll, you'll dig him. Speaking of cool things, I've got two cool things to tell you about.

Is over in the corner of my office right now. And you may have heard me talk about HEPA air filters before, but the last major innovation in air purification was actually back in the 1940s, and that was with the invention of the HEPA air filter. It was part of the Manhattan project. But that's 50 year old antiquated technology if you know how to do your math. And imagine if you're like your smartphone was the same as it was in the 1940s. Smartphones didn't exist in the 1940s anyways. So this company has completely blown out of the water what a HEPA air filter can do. It can destroy the full spectrum of indoor air pollutants, including those a thousand times smaller than what a HEPA air filter can catch. It's awesome. If you have asthma, if you suffer from allergies, if you're concerned about mold, if you just want like a pristine, clear, Himalayan mountaintop esque environment, which, which is basically what my office is now based on the fact that it's here in my office, you gotta grab one of these. It's been verified by science, been tested by real people, and I personally feel like again, my office is on top of a mountain when I have this thing running. Anyways, it's called the Molecule. M O L E K U L E the Molecule. And from the materials they use in this device, like its sleek solid aluminum shell, to its streamlined filter subscription to allow you to automatically get replacement filters. It makes breathing clean, healthy air seamless and easy. And you get a $75 discount on this. You just go to molecule.com that's m o l e k u l e molecule.com and you use promo code Molecule Ben. Use promo code Ben.

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You know, one size doesn't fit all, and what's good for one isn't good for the other. But I think an intelligent supplementation program, especially depending on your diet. So for people that are in ketosis, carnitine, both LCAR and the tartarate form I think are important.

But also you couple that with decreased anabolic hormone production as you age. We all know that. So you typically see lower levels of testosterone, IGF1 and other anabolic elements.

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 Greenfield.

Power.

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

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And as I always am doing, I'm constantly on a quest to kind of keep my ear to the ground, so to speak, about very cool new ways for you to to harness information on everything from fitness tactics to biohacking to ketosis and nutrition and exercising outdoors and optimizing the mind and body and spirit. And so I occasionally come across individuals who I feel would be a really good fit to kind of speak to a lot of parts of that spectrum that I just described. And my guest on today's show, he's really no exception. He actually has a really good podcast I've listened to a few times. It's called the STEM Talk podcast. We'll talk about that later.

Later.

But his name is Ken Ford, and Ken is the founder and the CEO of what's called the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. That's a mouthful. It's abbreviated ihmc and it's actually one of the nation's top research organizations that investigates everything from like AI to extending human cognition, to locomotion to resilience. They describe it as a new model for interdisciplinary research that strives to be both entrepreneurial and academic. And I would say, based on the podcast that I've heard Ken record, he's certainly achieving that. He's authored hundreds of scientific papers. He's got six books out there. I'll link to his websites in the show notes for today's show, which you can access@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenford if you want to.

Learn a little bit more about Ken.

And what he does. And in our emails back and forth, and I think it was another fellow podcaster, Rob Wolf, who may have introduced us, if I remember correctly. That's who it was. But in our emails back and forth, I discovered that chem has a lot of other interests too, and everything from steel bicycles and outdoor training to anti aging, to using biohacks like power dots and vibration training, to blood flow restriction training, to a whole host of things that I think is it'll turn this into a relatively fascinating discussion or something that could go off the deep end pretty quickly, I'll warn you. So anyways, Ken, welcome to the show, man.

Great. Good to be here.

Yeah, well, it's fantastic to have you. And I guess the first place that I'd like to start is this mouthful of a place that you work at, this ihmc. What exactly is that, man? Because I'm intrigued. I don't quite have my head wrapped around what you do.

Yeah, it's an unpoetic acronym. Some people think it means I hate, I hate my cubicle or all kinds of other potential meanings. But as you said, it means Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. And what that is is IHMC is a not for profit research lab that focuses on developing science and technology in service of leveraging and extending human performance. So it starts with the human. That's why the human comes first in our name and then by Whatever means necessary or in whatever means appropriate, we work to extend human performance. And by performance I mean cognitive performance, perceptual performance and locomotion, movement as well as resilience. Increasing human resilience is one of our focus areas.

What's an example of something you guys have done?

Well, you know, we work in from robotics to AI to exoskeletons for paraplegics, to exoskeletons for superhuman performance, to ketone work, you know, broad range of subjects.

Okay, I have to ask, the exoskeleton for human performance, what is that?

Well, there's a couple groups working on that. Ours was for NASA and it was for providing both exercise in space, but also, if necessary, for example, in a spacesuit on a planet with sufficient gravity, you might need extra strength. And the military has worked on several exoskeletons for increased performance. Essentially robots that you wear.

Really? So how do you actually design one of those? What's a robot that you wear do? Is it just a bunch of joints.

And metal pieces that move like Iron man or.

Describe to me how this looks.

Essentially it's a machine that's fitted to the human. And this is a complicated thing to do. You know, it's difficult to relatively painlessly and seamlessly fit a machine that follows human motion and then amplifies our abilities. And again, these could be physical abilities, and they usually are, but also cognitive, for example, or perception.

So when you're doing an exoskeleton for human performance, does one of these actually exist or are you guys just kind of researching right now?

Several exist and none of them are suitable for a prime time. These are all research machines that have cables and wires hanging off them and intermittently break.

What's driving exoskeletons, both in terms of increased human performance and also for paraplegics, is really these much improved actuators over the last few years. So we have excellent force control actuators now that enable these kinds of devices, as well as a new category of exercise device that will be a spinoff of these machines and of these actuators.

What's the exercise device do?

Well, it's a control motor enabled exercise device. Again, it's, it's built for NASA. You know, the exercise device they currently use on space station weighs 2,000 pounds, is called ARED and is reasonably efficacious on space station, but you can't bring it anywhere. It's too big to bring beyond low earth orbit. And without the space shuttle, you couldn't even bring it There. So essentially in the future, the in space exercise devices will be motor controlled or even rely on things like bands. But they, you know, they need to weigh something like £50 or less and have very low power consumption. And I think these sorts of devices will have a big spin off from space, as many things have, into the normal market channel.

So rather than like going to the gym to exercise, you would just be able to like put on a suit.

Yes. Or you would use one of these new exercise devices that are derivative from exoskeletons, but not themselves an exoskeleton. And with the force control motors, you can have the force or the load be a function of any input. So it could be a function of position, it could be a function of rate of motion, it could be a function of heart rate, it could be a random function. And this would be both safer but more efficacious as well, because you could do, for example, heavy eccentric squats.

Right.

Very, very heavy squats. Well, that's hard to do at home or that's even hard to do in the gym. Unless you've got some big guys helping you with the barbell.

Right. Or unless you have like one of these. These Arcs Fit machines.

Exactly.

That's pretty expensive and more of like an industrial machine.

Yeah. And they're very large. I actually like the Arcs Fit machines. I work out with them sometimes, but they are big and you wouldn't take them on a deep space mission.

Right.

And so the next sort of development of that idea, that kind of idea are the sort of machines that we're talking about.

So what you're saying is you could wear this machine that would, for example, force you downwards in an eccentric squat pattern and then allow you to stand up, remove the load and then force you downwards again as an example of something you could do.

Right. And so the, the current version of the device.

You don't need to wear, you get in it in a position very much like if you're doing squats, it's very much like a barbell squat and you get in the position, but there's no load on the bar. Right. And then the machine, the bar starts to load and it essentially feels like it's trying to pull you down through the floor and you're resisting being squashed like a bug. And so every rep is pretty devastating, much like ar, you know, that thing will wipe you out pretty quick. And then you stand up with very little resistance and, you know, rinse, wash and repeat the cycle. The motor is directly programmable and is A force control motor, so it can exquisitely control the loads.

Wow, this is so cool. And, you know, I think a lot of people probably hear this and think about this idea of, like, artificial intelligence intelligence being built into an exoskeleton robot and robots running down the street killing people. And I actually wanted to ask you about this idea behind artificial intelligence and where it fits into this equation, because I know you guys do a lot of work on artificial intelligence as well.

Right, right. In fact, that's my primary research area, and it's one of the largest and most important research areas here at the lab.

So what are you studying right now when it comes to artificial intelligence?

Well, we have a lot of areas of focus, but one of the biggest areas of focus is language, human computer interaction, and dialogue. By that, I don't mean speech recognition. I mean the actual understanding where the computer is understanding the intent and the meaning of what you said and then responding in an appropriate way.

Interesting. So when it comes to the AI that you're developing, are you doing anything when it comes to, like, the. The exercise or the. Or the fitness or the performance market?

No. Most of our AI work is for organizations like DARPA and for other research organizations in the government. And it's mostly, as I said, focused either on language and dialogue or on robotics and in sort of endowing our machines with some degree of initiative and ability to make rational choices.

Yeah, interesting. Well, I mean, it sounds like maybe like an exercise machine could, for example, be equipped with enough artificial intelligence to detect and change your own movements or your own strength patterns. You know, almost like that. Like that arcs fit machine does. You know, it detects when your force curve drops off, and then that's the end of the set.

Yeah. And that doesn't require AI. But you're onto something, Ben, because, you know, the next generation of these machines, well, could employ AI techniques. The newer machines will know when you're out of balance and when your loads are inappropriate on your feet, and it'll provide an additional cushion or safety, an increased element of safety, as well as efficacy.

Now, there's something I saw recently from Elon Musk where he talks about how there needs to be some kind of, like, artificial intelligence legislation created because AI could. I think the way he phrased it was there was a higher risk of AI going rogue at this point than North Korea. Like, when you're working with AI, what are your thoughts on a lot of talk about the risks or the potential for robots to rule the world?

Who knows why he says these things? I think he's either trying to entertain himself or test how credulous the media is. But.

AI is a field of intellectual inquiry. It's an academic field of study and then a commercial area of development. It's not a thing that runs amok.

When people refer to an AI in the singular, as he and others do. It's akin to me saying something like this. Toward the end Of World War II, the United States dropped a physics on Japan. No, we didn't drop a physics. Right, we dropped a bomb. We dropped the product of physics. And there's not an area of human inquiry that should be off limits. In fact, Musk tries to be a leader in automotive AI. It's kind of a strange thing to be saying. You know, it's an old story, though. If you look at heavier than air flight, we used to call it AF artificial flight, and now no one would call it artificial flight. It really, truly is flying. But there was great outrage and, you know, in the early days of artificial flight, it was seen to be the greatest threat facing humanity. And just like artificial flight, AI can be used for good or ill, and it depends on the wisdom of the society and the culture that wields that capability.

Yeah, that's super interesting. By the way, are there any photographs online of these exoskeletons that you're talking about?

Sure, I can send you some.

Yeah, send me some and I'll put them in the show notes. And again, for those of you listening, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Ken Ford, because I'm personally curious how closely they. They resemble Iron Man. That's really all I want to know. So just because I have, I have, I have a secret desire and a bucket list wish to be able to fight Captain America one day. You talked about a little bit earlier the ketogenic diet. And I know that you guys have done some research on that. And from what I understand, like, it's. It's something that you personally got into, apparently, even before ketosis became the, the sexy latest diet trend and everybody and their dog were, you know, shoveling exogenous ketones into their gaping maw. I'm curious how you got into. How you got into being interested in something like ketosis.

Sure, that's a long, long and old story, but I'll give you the short version. I first became aware of the ketogenic diet in the late 60s or early 70s when I was cutting weight for wrestling. And, you know, this diet, like any other way of eating, is not ideal for Everyone. But for a wrestler, it's great because I was able to effectively cut weight and maintain muscle mass. And that's tough. You know, in the off season in wrestling, you tend to gain both weight, both fat and muscle, and then the season comes and if you're a lightweight, you've got a significant amount of weight. And so that's what got me into it. I had never heard of the ketogenic diet, but I had a problem with seizures and wrestling is impossible on phenobarbital. And so the, the, I didn't seize. I quit taking the phenobarbital and didn't seize. And it turned out the neurologist explained to me that you must be in ketosis. And that's the first time I ever heard the word. So I was in starvation ketosis. You know, I was wrestling, I was a freshman and I was wrestling 119, and normally I weighed about 160 and so I was cutting to get to 119 and.

That was that. So I maintained it most of my life. I went out a few times with negative consequences, but generally I'm most days well ensconced in ketosis.

Interesting.

So what would a typical day of.

Eating look like for you right now?

Well, I usually have an early dinner and I hate eating late, so I like to have an early dinner and I usually skip breakfast and then have lunch. So it's about a 16 or 17 hour gap between dinner and the next meal. But I like to mix things up. So like today I had nice breakfast of grass fed beef and three egg yolks cooked in butter.

Lots of espresso, that kind of thing.

Interesting. Now you guys do research on ketosis too?

Yes, in particular on the effects, the performance effects of the ketone esters and the diet. You know, again, as I mentioned earlier, we like to apply technology and science in the service of the human experience. So we're interested in can you perform better. Whether it's AI, we're not trying to make a standalone AI like some goofy science fiction AI. We're trying to make us all smarter. So for our point of view, AI should stand for augmented intelligence or amplified intelligence. And so this is true for nutrition as well. So we're looking, when we look at something like ketones, we want to know, does it make you more resilient? Can you operate in places a human otherwise can't effectively operate? Can you operate at a higher physical level and can you operate in a better cognitive level?

Interesting. For me, I first started getting into ketosis when I was racing Ironman triathlon and I was looking for ways to increase endurance and get a fuel source for the liver and the heart and the diaphragm that was a little bit longer lasting and stable than like maltodextrin or fructose. And so I started first of all just shifting to a lower carbohydrate, higher fat intake, and then to using things like MCT oil during the race. And then I'd combine that with exogenous ketones and amino acids and electrolytes and kind of eventually had a whole cocktail that I'd race on and have enormous amounts of endurance for something like an ultra endurance event like an Ironman. So I can definitely personally attest to the resilience factor there. But I'm curious what you guys have studied. What areas of resilience have you found something like a ketone to be effective for? And also, don't let me forget to mention or highlight the fact that you said ketone esters, and I'm curious why you're using those versus what you find in most supplements these days, which would be a ketone salt.

Okay, well, you know, some of it is stuff that not at leisure to talk about, but you can imagine that our customer base is, are the research agencies and organizations in support of NASA and the Department of Defense. And so in general, we would be looking at.

Important measures of either perceptual acuity, cognitive function, or physical function. One I can tell you about that we will be doing is looking at the effect of ketone esters and hypoxia. So if you reduce the oxygen available to a human, some very predictable things happen. Now, if you reduce it to zero, the most predictable thing happens. But on the way to zero, all kinds of predictable degradations in performance happen. And we're interested in knowing, for example, would a ketone ester mitigate some of those cognitive and visual performance decrements?

So when you're using a ketone ester, why did you make that choice versus a salt?

Well, you know, it would depend on the application, but for most of our applications, we would, in fact, as you suggest, use the ester. The reason is that the esters will much more greatly elevate the circulating blood ketone body level. And in many cases we want to make sure that we're getting an effect. So the ketone salts are great for what they are. And if you're eating the ketogenic diet and the person needs a little boost, you know, you might get a 1 millimolar boost or half A millimolar boost. With the esters.

The person does not need to be consuming the diet and will be very quickly around 4 millimolars or higher.

Yeah, it's through the roof. I have a video somewhere of me getting ready to race a tough mudder and I swallowed a bottle of the exogenous, the ketone esters I got from Dr. Jeff Veach's lab because I had interviewed him about esters. And then I tested and I did this on camera. And so my ketones at rest were at wherever 1 millimolar or slightly below what you would expect like a fat adapted athlete to be at. And then I chugged this bottle and they went up to like 8.0 by about the 20 minute mark. So. And it was crazy. It was almost like cheating. Now, of course, I always question, and I'd love to hear your take on this.

How natural that is for the human body. Like even from an ancestral or an evolutionary standpoint, you don't see situations in the past where humans would have had access to copious amounts of ketones all at once. And, and although I, I don't necessarily make every decision by the rule that I'm only gonna do it if our ancestors would have done it, I'm a total fan of better living through science. But I'm wondering what you feel about the potential physiological implications of something like that.

Well, that's an interesting question. And you know, the folks that are well informed and sensible have different opinions on it.

And I think it's important to make the distinction between the things you do to achieve peak performance in sport, especially elite, or in elite war fighting, or that you might do for space travel. Those things you might do might not necessarily be what you would do for longevity health span. So in the case of exogenous ketones, I think the right answer is that nobody knows what the long term effects would be. We see so many positive effects that I would think the effects generally would be good. But it's not a state that humans have traditionally been in.

The. And this is why there's a great need for research in the area. But the diet I am very confident for most people is a step in the right direction. And a large number of people are essentially metabolically broken.

Or have, and, or have neurodegenerative disorders or other disease states for which I think the ketone esters would be a blessing. So it's, in general, I'm very optimistic about them.

Yeah. One thing that you mentioned when you were talking about how you first became experienced with that diet when you were a wrestler and trying to lose fat without losing too much muscle. Is this idea behind whether or not you really can adequately avoid, whether it is muscle loss or whether you can gain muscle, or perhaps could you even avoid age related loss of muscle mass or muscle function with a strategy like this? And I know this is something that you've looked into a little bit, and I'm curious what you've found when it comes to ketones and muscle and specifically, are they gaining muscle or just not losing it?

Yes, it's an area of great interest to me and it's one that's still taking shape. The science is just emerging on this. And essentially everyone has seen the age related loss of muscle. You see it in people around you every day. You see it in your family members. And it's a major challenge for society and for the aging population in general, leading to frailty and, you know, the loss of independence. And we sometimes hear this phenomena called sarcopenia, or perhaps better the word dynapenia. You know, sarcopenia talks about, you know, what it implies is a poverty of flesh. It's about the loss of muscle mass. And for the aging population, that is a problem, but it's not the big problem. The big problem is dynapenia, which is the age related loss of strength and power.

You call that dynopenia, Right.

And as we age, we lose strength and power much more quickly than we lose mass. And so that's really at the heart of the problem. And the causes for this loss of muscle mass and quality. And when I say quality, I mean power and strength. Right. Is multifactorial. It's not one of these simple things. You hear, you know, you hear somebody blogging away and they'll say, oh, it's because of this? No, it's, it's complicated. And it has to do with most of the components of aging. And I, you know, I would say insulin resistance and its cousin, anabolic resistance are huge players. So anabolic resistance is quite like insulin resistance that you're very familiar with. But also you couple that with decreased anabolic hormone production as you age. Right. We all know that. So you typically see lower levels of testosterone, IGF1 and other anabolic elements. And myostatin is really not your friend at some point. And as you age, myostatin signaling goes up a lot. And then as you age, you get chronic inflammation and you have declining autophagy and all kinds of mitochondrial abnormalities and, you know, reduction in satellite cell effectiveness. So it's a tough road you know, you've decreased motor neuron units. I'm sure I'm forgetting tons and tons of it, muscle fiber, denervation, but you get the point. But interestingly, think about those things I just said. Most of them are affected by the ketogenic diet and it doesn't. It's not curative with respect to these things, but it moves the needle in a positive direction, which is one of the reasons why I'm optimistic about ketone esters as well, as I mentioned earlier. And so in my view, the benefits of the ketogenic diet are greater as we age. You know, as we age, most of us are to some degree increasingly insulin resistant and increasingly pudgy. You see it, you know, in the general population. And it's where I think the diet will make the biggest difference. And you know, in the last, I don't know, in the last year there must have been 10 papers dealing with ketogenic diet and longevity. And some of them have dealt directly with health span. And to me, strength and health into old age is more important than just living a long time. You know, somebody told me that there's a podcaster out there that claims he's going to live to 180. Well, you know, I really don't want to live to 180.

You know, I want to square the aging.

I'll live to 180 if I can still be having sex and playing tennis when I'm 175. Otherwise I don't have a deep desire.

That's a big F. Yeah. So anyway, these new papers are really stressing the role of ketones not as energy sources, but as signaling agents. And the papers are somewhat, the science is somewhat complicated, but it's fascinating. So you see tissue specific effects of the ketones, so specific to muscle tissue, a different effect than you do in the liver, for example. So in many of these things you want for longevity, you would like reduced circulating IGF1, you would like reduced MTOR activation. But to maintain muscle mass, you want elevated MTOR, you want elevated IGF1. So normally these would be seen as in conflict. And what's being teased apart now is the tissue dependent nature where you can have increased sensitivity to these to say IGF1 in the muscle while circulating IGF1 is reduced in ketogenic diet about 30%, same with MTOR activation. And this is really exciting to me and this area is going to be one of real focus in the next few years in the research literature.

Interesting. So could you get a lot of the benefits that you've just described from using a ketone ester and eating perhaps a non ketogenic diet versus eating a strict high fat diet. Do you think?

And, and the answer is no one knows. So you mentioned Dr. Veach earlier. He's just a wonderful man and.

His view is. Yes, and so in his view he is not a fan of the diet. And, and I'll say again that I am. Right. But in his view, especially when you think about an aging population not interested in changing its lifestyle or its diet.

And you know, he believes that these benefits and many others would accrue to those ingesting the esters. And in my case, I just don't know.

Yeah. The only thing that I, that I would suspect could be deleterious would be simultaneous high blood glucose and high ketone levels just because of the net acidic state that could create. That's something that I would be nervous about people doing, you know, eating their potatoes for breakfast and their, their sandwich for lunch and their bread for dinner and then also taking a bunch of ketones at the same time. That that's where I can see people, people going wrong.

Normally, normally that wouldn't happen. So for a non malfunctioning human, if you did that, and let's say you ate a bunch of potatoes and your glucose level was 110 and then you drank the ester, your glucose level would be probably 80.

Oh, really?

Sure.

So it's going to drop blood glucose level simply by putting the ketone into your body.

Right.

How does that occur mechanistically?

Well, you get an insulin response is part of the story. But the, you know, it's more complicated than.

Meets the eye at first. It's not clear in my view what the long term safety profile of the esters are. And we can't know that. Right. This is a new thing. And you know, with everything having to do with human health, Spanish.

You make your choices. If we're going to wait for a random double blind study, we'll both be dead before that's humans.

Right?

Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about my pantry. My pantry is a sexy place to be. Some of my favorite things in there include liver bites, lots and lots of cans of sardines and extra virgin olive oil. Toasted sushi. Nori. I've got a bunch of amazing cacao nibs and a couple of my favorites. These are coconut wraps. They're actual coconut wraps, almost like Nori wraps, except you can make like these little burritos out of these little Gluten free, amazingly tasty coconut wraps. That and a whole lot more I get from this online grocery store called Thrive. It's like a Costco for everything healthy. It's an online shopping club that gives you all these amazing brands at 50% off of retail prices shipped anywhere in the USA for free. And you can go there and use their filters to filter by like paleo, gluten free, vegan, raw, non gmo, organic, fair trade, you name it. And they also, for every paid membership, donate a free membership to a low income family or teacher or military family. And so I like it because you order stuff from them and you get exposed to this huge variety of healthy packaged food you normally otherwise would never have had a chance to discover or to experience. There's like a page on there where it shows all of my own favorite eats, the things that I order from Thrive Market. And in addition to that, they've got pet supplies, they've got home fragrance and bedding and yoga and home fitness. Like if you currently shop at Amazon or at Whole Foods or at Costco, I know that's convenient. But once you kind of make that mental switch, change up your habits and start to order from Thrive instead, not only is it just as much if not more convenient, but the prices are the same or better. And you, I mean you can just like go there and you click on whatever ketogenic diet and you've got like 30 different things that you could easily add to a ketogenic diet to ensure that you don't feel like you're like eating cardboard and fake bread all day long. So anyways, it's called Thrive Market. And the way that you can get $60 of free organic groceries from them right off the bat is@thrivemarket.com Ben that's thrive market.com Ben. I'm going to say in full disclosure, I invested in this company. I believe in it so much. Back in the day when they first started, I actually invested in them and I am amazed at what they've done with this company.

You need to just go to the website to see what I mean.

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Well, well worth it.

And again, they donate a free membership to a low income family or teacher or military family anytime that you get a membership. So thrivemarket.com Ben, check it out.

So I also wanted to ask you about some of these exercise protocols that you've looked into and that I know you, you've, you've kind of studied yourself or implemented in Your own routine. And I'm curious, when it comes to resistance training, and especially resistance training aimed at avoiding what we were just talking about, like age related loss of muscle mass or muscle function, what kind of strategies you found to give people the most bang for their buck from an exercise standpoint?

Yeah. So especially as we age. My first goal in the gym is to avoid injury. You know, you heal less quickly. And I just. First goal, don't hurt yourself. But going from there. I'm a big advocate in whole body resistance training with occasional tabata sessions thrown in, you know, like kind of rowing machine. I quite like those evil devices. And of course I think it's great to spend a lot of time outdoors and in nature. I like to spend a lot of time hiking in Wyoming and Maine.

But if you said, what is your preferred method in terms of exercise, I'd say it's resistance training. And in the nutshell, I incorporate methods that are intended to allow you to train intensely and safely. So one method I use is hierarchical sets. Another, as we mentioned earlier, is occasional eccentric movements. Another would be kettlebells. Another would be blood restriction training, and I'm a big advocate of that. Another would be electrical muscle stimulation. And I quite like vibration platform as well.

What are the hierarchical sets?

Well, essentially these are typically done. You can do as many sets as you like, but they're typically done three. And another advocate, in fact, is Art Devaney for this. He's a fascinating fellow and oh yeah.

He'S a super cool dude. I got a chance to hang out with him at this last year's Paleo fx. One of the fittest, most ripped. I don't know. How old is he now? 80 something?

Yeah, he's old, but he's super cool. Right. And so he visited IHMC to do a stem talk interview and we were talking about weightlifting. And.

It turns out we both are advocates for these hierarchical sets. And essentially what they are is the first set you've selected a weight that you can knock out about 15 really perfect reps. Right. And you know, the next set, you pick a weight that you achieve about eight. And the next set maybe four or five. And you know, in my case, I don't go to failure on these. You know, I don't want to entrain failure. It's always when I'm near failure that I get hurt anyway. You know, it's when your form goes out the window.

Right.

So I don't do that. And I like it because the first set is almost a very intense warmup. Right. I mean, you know, you're not gonna, you know, I feel well within the safety zone when you're doing 15 and. But doing those 15 and then the 8 and the 4. By the time I'm to the 4, the last set, I've typically fatigued out most of the slow twitch muscle fiber, and I'm being able to hit some of the fast twitch, which are hard to hit safely. So a lot of my exercise methods that are just rattled off to you in a boring list, they're really mostly all about, how do you get at fast twitch? Because as we age, what we lose mostly is fast twitch. And this is why, you know, you have the increased falls. You know, it's not that old people are spectacularly uncoordinated. We're all out of shape all the time when we're walking. We're all in a compromised spot. But young people correct it with their fast twitch muscles so quickly and so well that they're hardly even aware of it. And you see an older person as they start to fall, they're almost running to catch themselves and they're in a bad position. And so preservation of fast twitch is very, very important.

You know, this is something that, that I really like the idea of. So you would start with a relatively lightweight, like 15 reps. You rest just a very short period of time, like, like as long as it takes to just add more weight. Or if you're on a machine to change the pin, then you would do eight with a heavier weight and then you would do like, like four to five with another heavier weight. And the rest period, it sounds to me like that's just barely long enough to reload creatine phosphate or ATP stores. Then you go on to the next set.

Yep, you've got it. That's exactly very cool. That's how you do it.

So that's the hierarchical set. And you said you also use blood flow restriction training.

Yes, and I use it quite a bit and I've turned a lot of my friends onto it, both in sport.

And older people. For folks engaged in sort of casual sport, people involved in elite sport, they're often performing relatively injured and, you know, they don't have the option of not performing. This is either their job or it's an important part of their life and they want to maintain muscle mass. So what I like about blood flow restriction training, and again, we're talking about restriction, not occlusion. So we're restricting the venous outflow with.

A strap that you would wrap around.

Like an arm Leg, a cuff that looks kind of like a blood pressure cuff. It's not one, and you shouldn't use one for this purpose, but there's a cuff, and you put it on the limb as high up as you can, and you pressurize it either with a motorized pump system Kasu uses or with hand pump like Gobi Strong uses. And again, I said, you're occluding the venous outflow of blood distal to the occlusion site. Now, you know, the benefit of this is profound in that you can do your workout with maybe 20% of your normal weight. So for each exercise in each person that will vary, the amount of weight you can lift is a function partly of how tightly restricted the band is and how much the weight is, of course. And the proper protocol for this would be high rep sets. So I typically do. I try to do three sets of 30, but if I can do 30 the first set, I probably maybe don't get to 30 on the second set. Right. And the third set, maybe I get to 20. But by then the hydrogen ions are causing a great burning sensation.

Using the lightweight is a wonderful advantage. So also when you're on the road, I travel a lot, so I go to a hotel and I see, oh, they have little blue weights. Oh, this is going to be great.

The cute little pink concrete dumbbells with the lycra lining on them.

Yeah, that's always so much fun. And the leg press machine goes to like, 300 or something, you know, so with BFR, blood flow restriction, lightweights are all you need, you know, so even a strong man is doing curls with like, 15 or 20 pounds, because that would imply that you would Curl, you know, 80 or 100. Right. So I like this. It preserves your joints, and as you get older, your joints are the limiting factor for an aging athlete to stay in the game and to keep exercising. It tends to be orthopedic problems that take us out. So, you know, and then you asked, I think you mentioned, how does it work? Right. And there's a lot of theorizing about this, but, you know, there's certainly mechanical tension, but I would say metabolic stress signals, a large number of mechanisms. And essentially, when you're doing this, you're sending a huge stress signal. And so when you test this, you find reduced protein breakdown compared to traditional weightlifting. So you're not tearing the muscle down and then waiting for a few days for it to build up. You're trying to have the build phase without the teardown. You find accumulations of metabolites, you see decreased myostatin. I mentioned that, that earlier. Myostatin pops its head up all over the place. And when you use bfr, your myostatin is diminished. The expression of the myostatin, you see suppression of foxotranscription. You know, you see a great proliferation of satellite cells. And for me, one thing I'm interested in, you see increased fast twitch fiber recruitment because your body thinks you're an extremist. Like what are you doing here? All right, and.

And, and, and so there's nothing left in the tank. And you know, tremendous nitrous oxide production, heat shock proteins and just. It's fun, right? You get this huge pump. You know, it lasts for a while, like an hour or two.

So I, I enjoy it. Nobody really knows the relative contribution of each of the things I just named. We all know they're in the mix. There's also a big increase in IGF1. We know they're all in the mix, but we don't know what the blend is. One of the research things that we're going to do here in the next couple months, we have a project that's led by Dr. Adam Ans at the Andrews Institute, which is located nearby. And so Adam, myself and Jim Stray Gunderson, an expert on using blood flow restriction with athletes, is going to look at whether BFR is increasing the mobilization of stem cells from marrow because we see healing effects. And we're wondering is some of the effect caused by and some of the recovery effect a consequence of increased stem cell activity? Directly. So that should be interesting.

That's super fascinating.

And again, I like both the Gobi Strong system and the Kaatsu system. They're both just excellent. You know, I think Gobi Strong is still giving a 15% discount with the discount code IHMC. We don't gain money from them or anything, of course, but they're both good.

Cool.

They're both Primo Katsu and Gobi Strong. Both really good.

And those are the ones that you can actually adjust the millimeters of mercury of pressure on. So rather than just like wrapping something around your, around your arm like a tourniquet, like I used to do back in the days when I was a bodybuilder. These things you can actually micro adjust the exact amount of pressure on each limb, right?

Yes. And that's more important than some pundits led on. Right. So it allows you to be consistent and, and consistency and repeatability I think is pretty important.

Cool. I'll put a link to those in the show notes. If you guys want those with with Ken's discount code, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com KenFit forward now. Ken, one of the thing you briefly mentioned was kettlebells. Do you have a favorite kettlebell exercise.

That you feel gives you the most bang for your buck? Because the one that I swear by when I walk in this is like my warmup a lot of times at the gym for hip mobility and for bone density and for shoulder range of motion is I'll go into a gym and the very first thing I do is five to 10 Turkish getups on each side with the kettlebell, because it's just moving me through full range of motion on both sides. But I'm, I'm curious if you have a favorite for the kettlebells.

Well, first of all, let me say I think your choice and the way you use the Turkish get up is wonderful, and it would be in my top three if I had the shoulder integrity and shoulder to do that. But I completely appreciate the Turkish get up. In my case, I do mostly carries and swings, and.

I am an advocate for the hard style kettlebell or Russian style kettlebell workouts. And what I like about the swing is it's less boring than most sort of aerobic workouts. And it gives each of us the rare opportunity to express physical power without negative societal ramifications. And I just like it. I like the explosion coming up, you know, out of the hip hinge. But, you know, if you said, what's my very favorite? And I like, it's kind of like sprinting. I like that about it, too. I like to sprint. But I guess if you said, what's my very favorite? I would say carries. I like heavy farmers walks. And my, my number one kettlebell exercise is the bottoms up carry, where you carry the bell by the horn and the bell is upside down, not racked on your forearm, but directly vertical above the horn. And so this hits all kinds of activation all over your body. I think it was Stuart McGill that told me in his testing it activated more different muscle than any other thing he'd seen. And it requires some physical ability, not just strength, but some degree of athleticism if the weight is heavy, you know, because you have to deal with the center of mass. So as you walk around the gym, besides looking peculiar, you're getting quite a challenge. You know, the thing wants to flop. I like that so much that I overdid it and tweaked my elbow. So I've been dealing with elbow drama Which I'm sure is a direct result of my love of that particular exercise.

Yeah, it's freaking hard, the bottoms up movements, but they're incredible for especially stability. Like I'll do a bottoms up walking lunge with a lighter kettlebell. And I mean, you can use a tiny, tiny kettlebell with that and feel every muscle in your body twitching. So I love it. I love that you're into, into these different forms of exercise because it's, you know, you're definitely a man who's studying up quite a bit on anti aging protocols. And I like to hear that I'm at least doing a few things right on my end. Now, speaking of anti aging, you sent me a grip strength article yesterday that I thought was fascinating. Can you talk about that one? Because that kind of had to do with aging as well.

Yeah, that article is so depressing. But, you know.

It'S sort of part of a bigger issue. You know, the article I sent you noted that it was about grip strength in millennials, and it noted that they were much, not just a little, but much weaker than their fathers. And you know, this is not a good state of affairs and not substantially stronger than their wives. So it said in 1985, the average 30 to 34 year old.

Could, could squeeze on a diameter at least 31 pounds more than a woman of the same age. But today, as I said, it's about the same. There's a slight edge for the guys, but very little. And they're not even close to their fathers. Right. Their fathers would just crush them. And the response to the societal response to this and academia, you know, this is published in a journal, wasn't shock and dismay and it wasn't wonder. You know, if they tested thumb strength, I bet you the millennials would have strong thumbs from all their texting.

Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, the response wasn't what I would expect. The response was, oh, well, we need to change the standard now. So now they're rewriting the standards. So what's considered normal for a 30 year old, they're going to lower it a lot to. So normal is a dangerous word. And it's something, I guess I'll mention it. You know, I don't usually want to talk about it, but you don't want to be normal. Homer Simpson's normal. Normal is the average of society. And if you walk around in an airport, as I unfortunately do, my eye falls on a lot of normal people. And you don't want to be normal.

Yeah, I, I agree. When we want to take People from good to great on this show. Now, when you're, when you're, you're talking about grip strength. That's one of the reasons I always, even when I travel, I throw a suspension strap in my bag and I have, you know, rings hanging outside my patio. I've got a pull up bar in the door of my office. I've got a yoga trapeze swing, to my wife's chagrin, hanging above the, the dining room table. I pretty much hang. And my kids see me doing this too, which is great because my kids see me doing it and so they stop to hang during the day and they just consider it a form of play. Right? You stop, you hang, you toy around, you swing like a monkey. And you know, I don't know what came first, the chicken or the egg when it comes to grip strength and accelerated aging, but in my opinion, it's one of the best things you can do for your body is to maintain, maintain good grip strength. And for those of you listening in, I'll put a link to that grip strength article that was on npr. I believe in the, in the show notes, but I just wanted to touch on the, the importance of grip strength before I asked you one other question about muscle loss or maintaining muscle mass. And that would be the fact that I know we touched a little bit about how you've looked into the loss of muscle mass in space. And I'm curious if, other than us rushing out to buy an exoskeleton to hang in our closet, if you, if you found anything else from like the space research that you think would be really palatable or applicable for people who aren't necessarily astronauts?

Well, I think in the near term the most applicable outcome are the technologies, you know, the exercise devices like I mentioned, and also, you know, electrical muscle stimulation devices, which I'm a big advocate of.

I'm actually, I'm hooked up to electrical muscle stimulation right now or talking actually.

Good man.

I'm sitting in a chair while we're podcasting, which I usually have a standing workstation at home, but I'm at an NAD injection clinic getting an 8 hour long IV. So I've got EMS hooked up to both my legs and my calves. So literally as we're talking right now, I'm stimulating primarily slow twitch muscle fiber, but still getting a big blood flow effect.

And they're adjustable. I'm particularly a fan of the power dot unit.

It's just so much sleeker. I used to use the compact unit and it was fine, but it's this big clunky 1980s looking thing with cables all over the place. And the software is built into the machine. You're not updating that software and there's not a way to interface to it or to write code for it. Whereas the power dot runs on your phone. So, you know, the world is your oyster. You can change the protocols, they can constantly update the software. And it's a much more powerful computer than came with these other devices.

Probably far more portable too, right?

Oh, it's hugely portable. It's the size of your, you got your phone, it looks like something Apple would make. You know, the packaging. So you have your phone and you've got the power dot and it's partly wireless through Bluetooth and you got a few wires. But, you know, you're talking about, you're using EMS now. I recently used my power dot on a very long flight, you know, a flight to Dubai. And you know, those flights are just flat out unhealthy. So I was using it on my legs and I hadn't realized that it was causing distress for the person. And I was in business class, so she wasn't too close to me, but I, I think she was concerned about this man with cables and wires and limbs twitching, you know, so she pushed the button for the flight attendant. And I got the opportunity to explain it all to this lovely flight attendant who seemed really interested in.

Yeah, I've been there, brother, I've been there. I've had all manner of things strapped to my body and coming out multiple orifices on airplanes. And yeah, you just have to pretend you have to dance like nobody's watching, basically.

Yeah, you got it. You know, one of the things I like so much about EMS and what sort of drives my interest in it is that it in general induces a preferential recruitment of the fast motor units. And that's because the axons are physically larger in size. So thereby, all things being equal, they have lower electrical resistance than the smaller axons that you see on the type 1 fibers. And so you can focus it on the fast twitch pretty easily. And that's interesting again, as one gets older or if you're in a recovery or injured state.

So when you're looking at some of the other things that you do in addition to the power dot that you might be considering as almost like a biohack. Right. Are there any more advanced exercise protocols, supplements, devices, things, things that you've discovered because you're, you're a pretty scientific fellow. So I always like to pick the Brains of a guy like you who's, who's steeped in the research on stuff like this. What else have you found to be big wins when it comes to emerging tech?

Well, you know, I'm big on supplements in general, but very focused. You know, I don't take a shotgun approach and I do a lot of testing, as you can imagine. So it, you know, one size doesn't fit all and what's good for one isn't good for the other. But I think an intelligent supplementation program, especially depending on your diet, you know. So for people that are in ketosis carnitine, both LCAR and the charter rate form I think are important. I also use vibration training. You know, it seems kind of tedious or people look at it and say, what is that guy doing? But there's a big literature that would lead one to believe there could be benefit. I have the power Plate brand in my office and use it quite, quite a bit.

That's what I have in my basement. The Power plate.

Yeah, I have the small one. You know, they, they just came out with a portable one, you know, packs up in a bag. You can take it easily on a plane. It'd be great for a road trip, you know, so I can throw it in my car. It just came out like a couple months ago. And it's really cool. It works just the same. But it doesn't have the vertical stanchion, you know, the, that you can hang on to.

Right.

You know, you wouldn't need or you don't really need the vertical. It's more of a safety feature. And it works just like the regular one. I like it because it hits muscles that are otherwise, they're super hard to hit and hits them in different ways. And there's a big literature showing a benefit, especially in older men and women. And then in young resistance trained or athletic young men and women, the advantage really diminishes in the upper body, but you still see a strong advantage in legs. And of course that's because you're typically closer to the vibration source. You know, you're standing on it.

Give me an example of something you do on a vibration platform.

I like to do like pistols, if you know what those are like. And I like to do squats and.

I like to do sort of explosive push ups on it. And you know, I, when I'm doing push ups on it, I have the pad on it, you know, the little pad. But when you're standing on it with any kind of footwork, you really shouldn't Use the pad. And I think where it, in a relatively strong person where it makes the biggest differences in the legs, you know, you, when you look at the literature for athletes, you don't see a big difference difference in upper body benefit. But also there's probably lymph system benefits apart from muscle and they're probably cardiovascular benefits. I think it's interesting and it's low impact and it's something you can do during the day without much trouble if one wants to.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I didn't know about the portable one. I'll hunt it down and link to it in the show notes for those of you listening in. And yeah, I mean what I do often is I've got it next to my office so I'll just go in there and do some Hindu squats and some push ups with my hands up on the platform and a few little moves that just kind of get blood flowing. It's a great device. Now another thing that you had mentioned was L Carnitine and that one's relatively well known when it comes to doing things like improving mitochondrial function or fatty acid metabolism as what you called like an exercise memetic. But what do you think about other things that are, that are, that are called SARMs that are now used, you know that they, they term these as like exercise in a pill. Like there's one that I wrote an article on called GW5015 and, and, and they said that massively improves endurance in mice. I'm curious what your thoughts are about safety and efficacy with things like that.

Sure. Well, you know, this is a fascinating subject and you know, back to L. Carnitine just for a moment. You know, the LCAR version of that can be seen as a kind of an exercise mimetic primarily by function of, you know, it strongly induces muscle glucose uptake and fatty acid oxidization and that's why it couples nicely with the ketogenic diet. I just wanted to give you that.

Aside but interesting when you say alcar. Just to clarify, for people that's acetyl L Carnitine.

Yes, exactly. And then you mentioned SARMs and those are selective energy and reuptake modulators. And SARMs are very interesting. They're again mostly developed for the older population who are suffering loss of muscle and for people with various diseases, wasting diseases, as well as people with cancer.

They're very interesting. There are several in phase two and I think one in phase three trials.

What to say about SARMs? Well.

They'Re less selective than One would hope so. One of the things that slowed their advance into widespread use is in reasonable doses, you do get some degree of shutdown. In other words, they reduce the endogenous production of testosterone. And the thought was they wouldn't. And so they're less selective than had hoped. The new ones are getting better and better and better. Now, it's important to note these are currently research items, not for human consumption. You also mentioned GW 501516. So GW is not a SARM. It's typically marketed as a SARM, but it's not a SARM and it's very, very different. Technically, a mechanism of action is completely unrelated. So that's a fascinating substance.

It's in a category of exercise mimetics that are PPAR delta agonists. And essentially these improve endurance. And, you know, the one way to think of it is they push the wall back. You know, we all know the saying, he hit the wall, Right. So what this does is essentially pushes the wall back. And in people ingesting a PPAR delta agonist, which again, they shouldn't be doing because it's, it's a research drug.

You.

Know, they will, if you test them, you will see.

Signs of exercise. So it looks like exercise. And this is why they call them exercise mimetics. You know, you see improved mitochondrial function and increased fatty acid metabolism. And, you know, in fact, ketogenic diets do both of those things as well.

Increased endurance, reduced inflammation, lower blood glucose levels, interestingly. Right. And of course, they're banned in sport. The interesting thing to me is that 501516.

Is not the end of the line. So that substance is never going to find its way to the market. And study on it has been discontinued for a wide range of reasons.

But that category of drug is under active development and one can expect much more focused PPAR delta agonists to come to the fore.

Do you use both of those yourself?

No.

The GW 501516 is the exercise mimetic that we mentioned. You know, I'm not really interested in endurance activities that much, and I try to get whatever benefit I would get from the, from that ketogenic diet. It's important to note that in mouse models, GW gives a tremendous benefit in endurance and by anecdotal report.

Also is beneficial in endurance for humans. And then the sarms are still early days. They're also going to get better quickly.

So when it comes to endurance, that's actually another question I wanted to ask you. Do you do any cardio at all or do you have any research based approach to cardiovascular training for things like VO2 max or lactate threshold or anything along those lines?

Yeah, I don't care about VO2 max, but the, the kind of cardio I like to do is sprinting, kettlebell swings, tabata sessions, you know, the, or short sessions on the rowing machine, like the 500 meter. It's, you know, it's almost a sprint. You know, I really like, I really like that. What I really don't like are the chronic cardio. You know, I, you know, you see people in the gym and you see them. Well, they're not really gyms anymore, they're like fitness centers now. But anyway, you see, you know, there's no gymnastics equipment in there, but they call it a gym. But you see the dude on the elliptical machine and he's watching tv, he's got his back scratcher, he's probably has a snack with him on the machine and he's sort of going at about 20% VO2 max or something for two hours. And then the machine tells him, Congratulations, you burned 600 calories. Well, there's so much wrong with that whole story.

So that's sort of the opposite of my approach. If I want to do that kind of long duration stuff, I like to hike in the mountains and that kind of thing. Otherwise I'm into short, efficient exercise.

Yeah, I am too. I think dipping into stamina every now and again, like doing like that hike in the mountains is a good idea. But I completely agree, most people overdo it. Although before sitting here in this, in this chair for eight hours, I decided to opt for the metabolic boost rather than the weight training. And so I'll typically do like a high intensity interval training session when I know I want to increase my post exercise oxygen consumption for a long period of time after. So if I'm going to be sedentary for a long time, that's when I'll choose the high intensity interval training type of approach. But, but yeah, for the most part you actually do get a lot more out of some of the other strategies that you talked about. So this is all super fascinating and I know you take a lot of deep dives with people on your own show, from scientists to engineers to people in exercise technology and beyond. You say you select your guests with, I think what you call a double secret selection committee to be among the most interesting people on the planet, especially working in science and technology and medicine. And I'm curious if people want to go and I'll put a link to your shows over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenford but if people want to go and take a listen to an episode, do you have. I know this is always tough. It's like choosing a favorite child, but a favorite episode that you think would be just really mind blowingly compelling for the listeners of my show.

Well, for your show, I think the, the most beneficial episodes would be those about health, nutrition, exercise, you know, so we had a deep dive on blood flow restriction training with Jim Stray Gunderson. We've had.

All kinds of shows touching on intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets and exogenous ketones. One of the shows that I liked best, even though, you know, it's hard to pick, as you said, it's like, what kid do you like best? And I wouldn't have a favorite except about two weeks ago our guest from episode number 10, Barry Barish, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics and the prize was for his work on detection of gravitational waves. So right now you got to go with Barry. Right? But you know, for your guests, for your audience, I think the health and performance shows and it's cool, you know, Stem Talk won first place in the annual People's Choice Podcast awards a couple weeks ago in the category of science and medicine. And I think it was the runner up in the overall category.

Oh, wow.

So that's kind of cool, dude.

That's cool. You guys must be, must be doing something right. And obviously you study up on this stuff quite a bit yourself. And I think people, people are going to go nuts over the show notes I've created for this one because I've got plenty of resources for those of you listening in to find out more about Ken and also everything from the vibration plates that you can take on airplanes to acetyl L carnitine to ketones and arcs fit machines, much, much more. So I'll put a link to all that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kenford and in the meantime, Ken, thank you for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us. You are one fascinating dude.

Well, thanks, Ben. I had a good time.

All right, folks. Well, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Ken Ford, the IHMC signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.