Episode #109: Ben Reveals One Of His Favorite Sources For Fitness Music!

In this podcast episode, a source for fitness music, exercising when you're sore, plantar fasciitis, something called gym dick. Do you burn calories in hot or cold weather? Running socks, fruit and vegetable supplements, whey versus soy protein, and buying local versus buying organic.

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Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here. I am pretty excited because this week I am going to be releasing that second podcast that I promised you last week. We're going to be calling this one the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle and that's going to be downloaded free to the same itunes feed and the same podcast subscription that you're currently listening to. That should come out free Friday or Saturday, assuming that nothing goes wrong as my wife and I finish recording that for you this week. In addition, for those of you who are going to be up in Penticton, Canada this weekend at the Ironman Triathlon Canada, I'll be up there. Be sure to drop me a line. I'll be twittering and facebooking and sending out posts straight from the race, so be sure that you follow me on twitter over@twitter.com BenGreenfield Be sure to check out the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page by going to facebook.com and doing a search for Ben Greenfield. And maybe I'll see you up there in Penticton, Canada if you're a triathlete. We're going to have some special announcements this week. We're going to have a Q and A and we also have an interview with Skip Oram, who is host of a podcast called the Get Fit Pod Podcast. Not to be confused with my Get Fit Guy podcast, the Get Fit Pod Podcast is a fitness music podcast that also delivers some cool knowledge to you while you're working out as well. So you get a combination of tunes with a little bit of talk. As usual, I will be giving comprehensive show notes for this episode and also as I've been doing the past few weeks, delivering the show notes to you in the itunes feed as well, so they come straight to you. All right, folks, let's go ahead and move forward into this week's special announcements.

Special announcements.

First of all, as promised, I am working on getting the podcast episodes number one all the way up through this one transcribed and I've actually started that process and you're going to have full access to searchable archives of the transcription of of every single podcast that'll be convenient for if you wanted to go back and read answers to questions in the past or even just do a comprehensive search for any questions or topics that you want to know more about market on your calendars on September 5th. That's a Sunday night from 6 to 7:30pm that's not this coming Sunday if you're listening to this the week it's released, but the following Sunday from 6 to 7:30pm I'll be doing a live video nutrition and fitness Q and A. So it's free to attend. You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com There'll be a link that you click on. You'll be able to go watch that live video Q and A engage with me via chat. I'll be answering your questions via video and of course, audio. Now, for those of you who haven't yet signed up for the 2011 triathlon training camp that I'm teaching for half Ironman and Ironman triathletes down in Austin, Texas, be sure to get on that. I'll put a link in the show notes there's still time to get in at the early bird price. It's one of the most affordable, all inclusive triathlon training camps that you're going to find anywhere. We have a ton of fun. It's one big week of partying and training, so be sure to sign up for that. Go talk to your spouse or to your parents or go wherever else you need to go to get permission and open up the calendar and get into that event. It's January 31st through February 7th, 2011 at our Endurance Ranch in Austin, Texas. And then finally, this podcast is being released on August 26th. So if you hear it, you have four days to get a hold of me. If you want to go to the triathlon trip to Thailand that I'm organizing, you have four days to get a hold of me. Email Ben Greenfield Fitness if you want in. I can still get you into that race. All right folks, let's go ahead and move on to a special announcement in this week's Listener Q and A. Get the Inside Edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts.

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Listener Q and A.

Well, folks, remember, if you have a question, you can email me ben greenfieldfitness.com you can Skype, which is especially useful if you're international to Pacific Fit. Or you can call toll free and leave an Audio question to 877-209-9439. That's 877-209-9439. And our first question actually came through via Twitter. And by the way, it's another way to ask a question is go to twitter.com follow BenGreenfield and ask your question to N. Greenfield and Davidography asks via Twitter Is it harmful to exercise over the top of soreness from a previous workout? This is a really good question because as most of you probably know, when you workout, muscle damage occurs. And specifically when you do workout that involves impact or involves slowing down a force or a weight, such as what's called a negative, in the weight room where you would lower a bar to your chest slowly or lower a dumbbell slowly, there's quite a bit of muscle damage that occurs. And of course along with that muscle damage, you get muscle soreness, what's called delayed onset muscle soreness. You can get muscle proteins basically increase in the blood, something called creatine kinase, which is a marker of muscle damage, it's an inflammatory marker. You can get loss of strength, you can get reduced range of motion. So there's all sorts of things that happen that go hand in hand with that soreness. But your muscles themselves actually have this protective adaptation and it's actually described in research as the repeated bout effect. The repeated bout effect. And what the repeated bout effect refers to is the fact that muscles are able to repeat a bout of exercise within 24 or 48 hours. And they actually have protective adaptations that keep them from getting damaged in the same fiber areas. Essentially what happens is the motor units that actually recruit the muscles and the muscle fibers recruit muscle fibers that either travel in different directions or were not recruited during the initial activity that caused muscles the muscle soreness. And so technically you can go do a workout that works similar muscles still get a response in terms of a training response to that because of that protective adaptation. Now, that being said, it would be best if you were going to work out when you're sore to actually do a workout that works out your body in a different mode than the day before. So what I mean by that is if you're going to work Your legs and your legs are sore and you're going to work your legs two days in a row. One day you might do weight room squats, lunges and leg extensions, but the next day you might do a bicycle ride. So basically you're able to load those fibers in different directions, stress them differently with a different mode of exercise with different weights and still be able to get a training effect and not further damage what's called the myofibril or the myofibril or unit without producing a lot of excess excess creatine kinase, excess inflammatory muscle proteins in the bloodstream. Now there's a caveat to that and that is that if you're doing an exercise that involves maximum motor unit recruitment, meaning that if you're going into the weight room and you're doing like an all out maximum squat and a bench press, then you're going in the next day and doing the same thing or you're going in the next day and using the same muscles. And those muscles have literally been fatigued and torn to the extent to where there is no ability to have that protective adaptation or to have that repeated bout effect. That's where working out when you're sore would actually not be a good idea, could do further damage and definitely would not have a training effect. Now for those of you research heads who like to get out there and, and find the research, one really good study that I'm going to refer you to, that was the latest study done on this matter in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research. And the title of the study is called Effects of Exhaustive Dumbbell Exercise after Eccentric Damage Recovery of Static and Dynamic Muscle Performance. That has a good review of the literature today to date and also talks a little bit more about working out sore or if you just want the Cliff Notes. Basically what I just told you is all you need to know. So as long as you're not injured or excessively fatigued, you can get away with it. The next question is from Mike and Mike asks. I've had plantar fasciitis for a while in a foot. I had it about a year ago and went to a podiatrist who gave me two cortisone shots along with icing and strengthening exercises. And the plantar fasciitis went away completely about two weeks ago. I changed my running shoe from a, or my running style from a heel plant to, to a mid foot plant and the plantar fasciitis came back in the same foot. I've been to physical therapy and I've tried icing, stretching, night splint, massaging orthotics and everything. It doesn't hurt when I run. Do you know of anything else I could try to heal this? Well, a plantar fasciitis injury mic is very interesting because a lot of times it won't hurt when you run, but it will hurt when you get out of bed in the morning, when you're walking around, when you're stressing the plantar fasciitis in any mode other than running. And the whole idea behind plantar fasciitis is that it arises from an inflammatory process of the plantar fascia, which is a ligament that runs along, or basically fascia that runs along the bottom of your foot and it supports your foot in weight bearing. And when you have plantar fasciitis, what happens is that plantar fascia becomes inflamed. A lot of times it's inflamed, flexible, and you're moving it through ranges of motion that's not able to move through and you essentially get pain in your, in your kind of the bottom of your heel and also the bottom of your foot. Now of course, I don't want to insult your intelligence because you've done a lot of things that I would initially recommend to you for planning for plantar fasciitis, such as the icing and strengthening exercises, the, the night splint, especially massaging orthotics. So if your plantar fasciitis is still hurting you, of course you kind of answered your own question and that is that you may not really be ready for a mid foot plant or you may have tried to change up your running style too quickly or with too much volume. So a lot of times if you've been running for 10 or 15 or 20 years, maybe you played high school football or basketball or baseball and you ran with a heel plant then and your body is completely used to running with a heel plant, you cannot expect your body to adapt within a week. There's no way that it's going to happen. And when you're trying a new running style, you may need to spend just 10 minutes the first week with that running style and then get that up to a half hour the next week and then an hour the next week and eventually do a full conversion, but gradually ease yourself into it in the meantime to make the plantar fasciitis go away. Since you're doing a lot of things that I would have recommended to you, it may take complete non weight bearing rest to allow that inflammatory process to die down. Of course, you could try an oral inflammatory. You could try something like the phenocaine that I recommend as an alternative to ibuprofen. You could try like a topical magnesium and those might help a little bit, but we're talking about an extra 5 to 10% when inactivity and rest may be what you actually require. If you get really tired of that and not putting any weight on your foot, try aqua jogging to maintain your VO2 max and maintain fitness and that can keep you very fit without putting any stress on that plantar fasciitis. So aqua jogging just requires a flotation belt, maybe an MP3 player because it gets pretty boring and essentially you just pump your arms and your legs in a deep pool where you can't touch bottom. Good question. Now we've got a question from Sean, and the question from Sean is related to a post this week on BenGreenfieldFitness.com where I talked about the top five criteria that my underwear must have. Yes, that's right. I did a post on men's underwear. I'm really not an expert in women's underwear, fortunately, but I am an expert in men's underwear in that I am very picky about the underwear that I use. And I did a post about that and I'll put a link to that in the show notes about the five things that I demand my underwear and Sean asks While we are on the topic of male underwear, I have a male fitness related question. If there are any children listening, I am going to use some words that you may want to be ready to explain to them. I'm not sure how to make this word appropriate for the podcast, but here it goes. While working out hard, I noticed that my penis shrinks considerably. Often referred to as gym dick. It happens when I'm training with weights and cardio. It feels rather uncomfortable and I'm wondering if there's anything to be worried about. I've heard a couple reasons for this happening. First, that it's the body's primal instinct to protect itself during strenuous activity. And second, that the body is focusing on sending blood to other areas of the body that need more blood. Does that seem accurate? And does it have anything to do with the type of underwear that I use? Good question, Shawn. First of all, let me say that it's a complete myth that your penis is going to shrink during exercise because of the body's primal instinct to protect itself during strenuous activity. And the reason for that is that sex itself is a strenuous activity. And it would be quite inconvenient if your body was shunting blood away from that area during sex. So it's not a primal instinct to protect itself, but it's rather a shunting of the blood away to areas that are working very hard. Especially during an activity where that area of your body is not working very hard. At least in most weight room exercises that I've seen, that area of your body is not working very hard. If you have some exercises that you're doing that do work that part of your body, I'd be very interested to hear about that particular workout plan. However, the actual mechanism is that your body is shunting blood away from that area. But you should not be wearing overly restrictive garments while you're working out. Specifically, a lot of the boxer briefs can be restrictive. A lot of the kind of like the bikini style underwear. If you're working out in your Speedo, if you're triathlete and hitting the weight room after a swim, none of that is very healthy, that amount of constriction, unless the constriction is absolutely necessary. So, for example, if you're swimming and you need to be streamlined and you're wearing a Speedo, that type of constriction is something that you just need to deal with. But there's no reason that you should be doing that all the time. And it's actually very damaging to your reproductive organs and the tissues to be constantly compressing that area of the body. I talk in more detail about that in the recent post that I did on the five Things I Demand of My Underwear. But ultimately the idea is that all that happens during exercise is that your body is. Is shunting blood away. It's not nothing. It's not anything you need to worry about unless you're wearing overly restrictive garments that are going to reduce the ability of the blood to return to that area after exercise. So, good question. Christian asks, do you burn more calories exercising in the cold trying to keep the core temperature up, or in the heat trying to keep the core temperature down? Down. This is a good question because a lot of people think, and this is something that I talked about recently with a couple people, I believe it was over on our Facebook page or via Twitter when someone was wondering if they shouldn't take a cold shower after workout because they were afraid of their metabolism dipping back down after the workout and they wanted to burn more calories when they were hot. When you're hot, your heart rate beats more quickly because you're Having to shunt blood out to the extremities, that's one of the ways that your body cools itself. But your heart is not beating more quickly because there are higher oxygen demands or higher metabolic demands. It's beating more quickly just because it has to get more blood to more places. As a result, you don't burn more calories in the heat. Being hot does not increase your your metabolism. Granted, there is a little bit of thermoregulation that occurs when you're going from a cold to a hot environment or a hot to a cold environment. That's going to affect your metabolic rate slightly. But the amount of calories or extra calories that you're going to burn in the heat or in hot conditions is fairly negligible compared to the amount of calories that you're going to burn when you're trying to stay warm in the cold. Okay, the muscles tend to move a lot more. The shivering mechanism, the increase in metabolism that's necessary to raise the body's core temperature is going to be significant in the cold. So you're going to burn more calories exercising in the cold, trying to keep your core temperature up. I'm not saying that you should try and figure out a way to maybe duck into the freezer at your local grocery store or into the beer cooler and sit there and read a magazine so you burn extra calories. I'm not saying that you should turn the air conditioner on high in your house as a weight loss strategy, but I am saying that if you exercise in the cold, you're going to burn more calories. Ultimately, those calories from thermoregulation are going to be pretty insignificant compared to what you're going to burn with exercise. So it may be a moot point here, but just to tackle that myth or that belief that exercising in the heat burns more calories, it doesn't. So for example, if you're doing a hot yoga class and your heart rate's through the roof, you're not burning more calories. Your blood or your heart's just working harder to keep you cool. Now Christian has a follow up question. He says, when I do long distance runs, 20 to 25 miles each week, I sweat a lot. My socks are soaked by mile 18. Then I start to get hot spots and blisters. Any suggestions about running socks? This is an area that I think a lot of runners neglect and they think that it's normal for their feet to be miserable like Christians are or like Christians are, but basically cotton in Socks retains a lot of moisture. And so when you get moisture, you get a lot of heat that's stuck in the sock. You get a lot more friction. And the combination of the moisture, the heat and the friction can give you blisters, it can give you calluses, it can give you hot spots. And it just gets worse and worse the more wet a sock becomes. So what you want to do is look for socks that aren't made out of cotton. Look for socks with ingredients like nylon or polyester. There's a fabric on the market in a lot of running socks called coolmax. Coolmax is really good for avoiding a lot of these moisture issues. A lot of these fibers are synthetic fibers. And a lot of synthetic fibers are what's called hydrophobic, which means that they don't draw water and they actually pull moisture away from your foot. So it kind of maximizes cooling and evaporation on your feet. Wool is also a natural fiber, non synthetic, but a natural fiber that works pretty well in a sock. There's even some socks now that are made out of bamboo, that are made out of coconut. Any of those are fine as well. The other thing that you want to think about is the stitching in your sock. So if the stitching is seamless, kind of like the underwear that I talked about earlier this week, the seamless nature of a sock or underwear is going to eliminate a lot of the friction, a lot of the rubbing, a lot of the irritation that you're going to get on the top and the bottom of your toes. So if you can get rid of seams in the socks, that's quite helpful as well. And there are, there are a lot of socks out there that do that. Coolmax is just one example. There's a good website called sockgeek.com that's sockgeek.com they've got some good socks on there as well. But ultimately, if you switch up your socks, you could definitely be a lot more comfortable on those runs. Next question is from Tom. And Tom says, I'm a 53 year old ultra distance runner cyclist who is putting in three to four hours of training on most days. What is your opinion of fruit and vegetable supplements? I am considering juice festive from Sans Club. What benefits might I expect to receive from taking this product? Well, Tom, like most of the high antioxidant juice based or high vegetable based compounds that are out there on the market today, the first thing that you want to look for is to make sure that they haven't added a bunch of artificial sweeteners to it like acesulfamipotassium or sucralose. You don't want a lot of artificial colors in it. If it's green, that's fine. If they've added FDC red to it to make it a more palatable color, then you'd want to avoid that. You want to avoid as many synthetic compounds as possible in those juice and vegetable compounds. They are good in terms of giving you more antioxidants. If you're a heavy exerciser and if you're putting in three to four hours of training on most days, you are a heavy exerciser. So you may need to protect your body against free radical damage more than the average exerciser. And the amount of calories and fiber that you may need to get from regular fruits and vegetables in order to get that amount of antioxidants might upset your stomach. So there's definitely an argument to be made for fruit and vegetable supplements for heavy exercisers. As many of you know who use one of the products that I frequently recommend called Ener Prime. Enerprime is a high vegetable based compound. It's got about 32 different types of superfoods in it. Another reason that I recommend these type of supplements is because many times it's simply difficult to eat as many vegetables as you really should be eating on a daily basis. So you add the vegetable based powders or the vegetable based supplements in to essentially cover what you're not getting, to bump up the immune system a little bit and essentially help yourself to be more healthy without having to go out of your way to eat huge salads every day. Now, of course I know that the holistic ingredients of eating a whole piece of fruit or an entire vegetable and the synergistic interaction of those ingredients is going to beat hands down any juice extract or vegetable powder that you could get. But again, I'm not saying that fruits or vegetables are inferior. I'm just saying that sometimes you'd have to eat a lot of them to get what you need. I took a look at the juice Festive from Sam's Club that you asked about, Tom, and it looks okay. I haven't tried it, but it doesn't have a lot of those artificial products in it. Now, I'm not going to vouch for it because I haven't used it, but I will vouch for the Enerprime product that I just talked about. And you can get that@pacificfit.net it's called Ener Prime. @pacificfit.net I'd take that over a juice and vegetable supplement any day of the week. Now, Tom has a second part to his question. He says, I sometimes feel overtrained and lethargic. My diet is borderline vegan. Would switching from soy to whey protein in my smoothies give me additional energy? Well, whey protein and soy protein are pretty different. So let's talk about some of the differences between them. First of all, before I get into the differences, understand a few quick definitions here. When I say amino acids, amino acids are building blocks of protein. Protein. So basically, amino acids are essentially, if you were to dismantle a protein, you'd be left with a bunch of amino acids. So when I'm talking about amino acids, they're essentially just made up of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. And all those components together are going to make up protein. So first thing you want to look at is the biological value of a protein. What the biological value is is it measures the amount of nitrogen that you get from those amino acids and. And it measures the amount of nitrogen that you get when you consume that protein versus the amount of nitrogen that you would actually have in a fasted state. So it indicates how digestible the protein is and how available the protein is for use by your body. Now, a whole egg, just like a regular egg, has a biological value of 100. And everything else is compared to the biological value of an egg. Some things are higher, some things are lower. In terms of the amount of nitrogen that's available to your system, soy protein has a biological value of 74, whey protein has a biological value of 104. So in terms of nitrogen utilization and biological value, whey protein is going to be a little bit higher. Now, the other thing you want to look at with a protein is what's called the net protein utilization. And the net protein utilization is actually the amount of amino acids that are actually converted into a protein in your body versus the amount of amino acids that are actually in the protein that you eat. So if the protein utilization is 100, that means your body used 100% of the amino acids that you can consumed. And zero would mean it didn't use any of the amino acids. So when you look at the net protein utilization, soy protein scores A61 and whey protein scores A92. Now, the next thing you can look at is what's called an efficiency ratio. And the efficiency ratio is basically the gain in lean muscle that you're going to get from a protein divided by the weight of the actual protein consumed. Granted, that's something that they measure in rats with protein in terms of how quickly it can help you to grow or help the human body to build muscle. And a ratio of anything bigger than about 2.7 is considered to be pretty good for a protein. Soy protein ranks a 2.2 and whey protein ranks a 3.2. Now, the next thing you can measure with the protein is what's called the amino acid score. And the amino acid score just looks at the amount of essential amino acids that are in a protein. It doesn't measure how digestible that protein is, but it does measure the actual essential amino acid content. So essential amino acid content for soy protein is at 0.99 and essential amino acid content for whey protein is at 1.14. And anything greater than 1 means that the protein actually contains the essential amino acids that you require. So both are pretty close to one, but whey is significantly over one. Now, the next thing, it kind of gets a little bit technical here, but the next thing is the protein digestibility corrected amino acids score. I know that's a mouthful, but basically what it measures is the essential amino acids in a protein compared to the essential amino acids in a reference protein. And so the reason that that's measured is it basically gives you an idea of the actual protein quality. So you're looking at the density of the amino acids in the protein. The protein digestibility corrected amino acid score is the same for both soy protein and whey protein. Okay, so it's one of the for both. So they're both a high quality protein. But so far, the whey protein is more digestible in the amount of amino acids it delivers to your body and the actual rate at which your body and extent to which your body can use those amino acids. Now, the next thing you want to look at is the protein digestibility percentage, and that measures the percentage of the protein eaten that gets absorbed by your body. 95% of a soy protein concentrate is absorbed by 99% of whey protein is absorbed. Glutamine content is another thing to look to. Glutamine is actually one of the most beneficial amino acids you're going to get in a protein. It's a non essential amino acid, but it's something that your body actually uses to transport the nitrogen and those amino acids into your tissue. So as far as the amount of glutamine in a protein, soy protein actually has 10.5 grams of glutamine for every 100 grams of soy protein, whereas whey protein only has 4.9 grams of glutamine in it. So one of the things you may want to consider is if you're taking a whey protein, take away protein that has added glutamine, but you've got your glutamine covered, or at least you got a much greater amount of glutamine in soy protein. Now, as far as essential amino acids, we talked about how much of the essential amino acids are actually used by your body, but as far as which has the most essential amino acids. And essential amino acids are something that's not produced by your body. It's something that a protein has to give to your body. Whey protein has about 480mg of your essential amino acids, whereas soy protein has about 378 milligrams. So whey protein has significantly greater amounts of amino acids in it. Next thing you want to look at is something called arginine. And arginine, like glutamine, is a non essential amino acid. Your body makes it. But it's really important to help with muscle growth because it promotes the release of growth hormone and insulin in your body. And it's a precursor to something called nitric oxide, which helps to increase blood flow. Soy protein has 7.6 grams of arginine, whereas whey protein has 2.9 grams of arginine. So a lot less arginine in the soy protein as well. So when it comes down to it, based on all of this information, I know I just knocked you out with a bunch of information. Here's the way that I would look at this whey protein. You could take by itself, but you should definitely get arginine and glutamine on board if you're going to use whey protein. Soy protein, if you're going to use soy protein, I would highly recommend that you supplement along with the soy protein some type of essential amino acid source. For example, the bio letics amino acids. I actually use those. I take whey protein and I still use the bioetics amino acids just because I know that if I keep my amino acids levels elevated as much as possible, I'm going to really stave off the degradation of my lean muscle tissue Even if I'm at a negative calorie balance, even if I'm not eating enough calories, I will still stave off cannibalization of lean muscle mass if I can get those amino acids high, high in the bloodstream. So I take amino acids no matter what. If you're using soy protein as your main source, Rather than whey protein, you should absolutely take those amino acids along with your soy protein. So whey protein would, would definitely be superior to soy in terms of the amount of training that you're putting in. Especially now. We have a question from Tommy and Tommy says, I'm conflicted on purchasing overseas organic versus US non organic foods. After reading Thrive by Brendan Brazier, I learned that half of the greenhouse gas emission, emission in North America is from the transportation of food. For example, I'm stuck at a grocery store wondering if it's more beneficial to buy organic apples from Chile or non organic apples from Washington. Should I save Earth or save myself? It's a great question. And in that book, Brennan is correct in that the emission to get, say, you know, bananas, organic bananas from Chile up to you in the U.S. wherever you are, such as Washington, is going to be pretty significant. And you actually end up not doing the planet a favor by purchasing something like that. Now, when we get down to something like organic apples, where you actually have the choice to buy local or to buy something that's been shipped in but the local source is non organic, then I would encourage you to think about this. One of the reasons that you're going to be purchasing organic food is because there hasn't been a lot of herbicide or pesticide use on that food. And it is doable on a lot of foods to remove much of that herbicide and pesticide residue through washing. So for example, you can soak those non organic apples in like a vinegar based solution in your kitchen sink, leave them there for about 10 minutes, rinse them off, and you're going to get rid of a lot of those worries. The other thing that you can do that Dr. Ann Louise Gittleman talked about on our show a few months back is actually a Clorox wash. She washes her meat, her fruit and her vegetables in Clorox. I haven't actually taken on that practice. I think it's just a little bit suspect. I can't get over the fact that I'm putting bleach on my vegetables and fruits. But if you were stuck with the decision to buy organic or non organic, and you didn't want to buy the organic stuff that had been shipped in just based on the amount of carbon that's required to bring those in, you could go with the non organic and you could just make sure that you wash it carefully. And that's one way that you'll at least be able to avoid. So some of the herbicides and pesticides. Now the Final thing I want to leave you with is that herbicides and pesticides are not the only reason to buy organic. A lot of times because of the farming practices used by especially like an organic local farmer or a lot of organic farms. The organic vegetables and fruits tend to be higher in nutrients, minerals, vitamins. And so if you're buying non organic, even though you may not be getting some of the herbicides and pesticides, you're still probably getting a subpar piece of produce. So it's something to think about. I mean, best case scenario you can buy local organic and in most places that's doable. And one of the things that you know is kind of like gasoline. You know, it always drives me nuts when I see people who will drive an extra four miles to save 2 cents on gasoline. I've been guilty of doing that myself. But when you really think about it, it's like I'm paying 99 cents for a non organic local version or $1.29 for a local organic version. Unless you're buying a lot of fruits and vegetables, that's not going to add up to be that much extra that you're spending. So don't let the pennies and the nickels fool you too much into shying away from putting good things into your body. Factor in other things like your happiness, the way you feel, your health care bills, and not just the extra few cents that you may pay at the grocer. So before we move on to the interview with Get Fit Pod host Skip Oram, I'd like to play just a couple of calls that came in this week that I think you would like to hear.

Hi Ben, this is Todd Houston from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I'm about a week and a half away from Ironman Canada, which is my first Ironman. I'm about to have my 10 minute personal pep talk phone call with you that each Ironman Dominator gets. But before I did that, I wanted to provide you with a pre race testimonial of the Ironman Dominator program. I have had a lot of fun with this program and I've seen more results this year than any year since I started training. Seriously in 2005, I lived, ate and breathed this program and discovered that this will not only be the basis for how I train for life, but how it will fuel my body as well. I won't lie, Ben, there have been days that I was cursing your name as I went through horrible carbohydrate cravings. Only to praise you the next week when the cravings were gone and my energy levels were through the roof. You hooked me up with Bioletics, we figured out what was going on internally, and once I was able to boost my deficient levels, I felt even better. I stuck to the prescribed hours you gave me, averaged about 12 hours a week, and still reached my goal weight and body fat percentage for Ironman. I'm in better shape than I've been in 10 years, and I'm ready to take on my first Ironman with a passion. And oh Ben, here's the best part. My wife is so supportive of my training with this Dominator plan that she's the one encouraging me to sign up for Ironman again next year. I can't imagine a better endorsement than that. I just wish I'd discovered a program like this 10 years ago. So for those of you who are thinking you don't have enough time to train for an Ironman because you don't have 20 hours a week to train, I'm living proof that you can do it in four far less with the Ironman Dominator program. Thanks again, Ben for getting me prepared for what I'm sure will be one of the most memorable days of my life. Have a great day.

Bye.

Well, best of luck in Ironman Canada, Todd. I'll be up there this week cheering for you. And if you want to learn more about that program Todd is talking about, you can find out@triathlon dominator.com that's triathlondominator.com we also got a call in from listener Kara who used one of the programs from pacificfit.net hey Ben, this is.

Kara Zahler, a very loyal listener to your podcast. I was going to leave you a testimonial back in June when I did my sprint race and came in third in my age group, but I was not sure that it was a fluke that I came in third after following the training Pete's Preference program for such a short amount of time. But I just finished my Iron Girl Sprint Triathlon today and have been doing this race for the past four years. This is my fifth year and after doing your trainingpeaks Advanced Sprint program, I took seven minutes off my fastest time and came in fourth which was a podium finish for this race in my age group. So I am floored and amazed and just want to be tell you that I'm very thankful that I came across your podcast and it made a huge difference. So thank you.

All right folks, that wraps up the questions and the comments for this week, so let's go ahead and move into the interview and the featured topic for this week. Featured Topics so folks, as promised, I have Skip Oram on the line, the brains behind the Get Fit Pod. And he's going to tell you about the Get Fit Pod and exactly what it is, along with some very cool ways that he has found for you to motivate yourself and for you to get better results with exercise. So Skip, thanks for coming on the call.

Oh, it's great to be here, Ben. Thank you so much for having me on.

So can you explain to people what the Get Fit Pod actually is? Because it's a little bit different than a lot of other podcasts you're going to find floating around on itunes. In the fitness category, it is a.

Little different and I'll go back to why I started it in the first place. I've been for most of my life, at least since junior high school, a runner. I can't actually say, except for injuries. I've run almost every day of my life since junior junior high school. And a couple of years ago there was a point that I ran marathons and then I kind of cut that back simply because I didn't have the time to train for marathons. But I continued running and I found that even though I could go out and run for an hour or so and do my eight minute miles, which is about what I train at, that I didn't like the way I looked. I hadn't watched my diet, I had a gut, I had more weight, a fat weight than what I wanted to have. And I really felt I think I'm in shape because I run every day, but I'm totally out of shape. So I decided what I was going to do was to take a year and just devote all of my time to getting in shape. I am unfortunate in the job I have. I can create, run my own schedule and it's a 247 kind of thing where I can decide when I'm going to work. So I decided that the bulk of my focus was going to be on getting myself back in shape for the next year. I call it 247365 Focus on Fitness. And because my main real job is that I'm a voiceover person, I thought what better way to keep me motivated than to tell people about it via a podcast. And I had a I already had the sound studio, so I was good to go. And so I started the Get Fit Pod back in May of 2007. And really what it began with, what it began as was targeted for folks over 50 who wanted to get back in shape. We'll keep that in mind as I continue to explain this because some interesting things happen to the dynamics of it, of the listeners anyways. But anyways, I started this podcast based on my plan to get myself in shape, which I call the Get Fit Pod Fitness strategy has five components. Exercise. Exercise has subcomponents of cardio and strength, then diet, then music knowledge and journaling. Equal time focused on those five areas to kind of keep you motivated and going with your fitness. And we kind of preached that beginning with day one of the podcast. And some interesting things happened. Probably the first, it was a weekly podcast and probably the first six or seven weeks I think, I think I was really proud one week that I had 70 listeners. But somewhere in the Australian New Zealand area we got mentioned on a radio show that hit nationally and then there was some print stuff after that and I dropped the 10. I actually next week from that was getting 10 to 15,000 hits on iTunes of people at least downloading the podcast. I don't know that they're listening, but they were at least downloading it. And I also started getting these emails from Australia, New Zealand and asking me questions and things they wanted to hear on the podcast. So I started really as a person that is not a fitness guru at all, but somebody that just wants to get themselves shape. I started doing research and focusing in the different areas, talking to people like yourself and then also getting information from my listeners. And they kind of directed the way the podcast became from after that. And then we got featured on itunes and so we really have a ton of listeners and we get a lot of them because every third or fourth episode I usually do a structured workout where and it's been interval training. Some of them are high intensity. Other ones are just regular interval training where with some music I coach our folks through the work, you know, a 30 to 45 minute workout. And when those things come out, our listenership it'll double from what it typically is just based on the workout episodes. So they, they like the free workouts more than they want to hear me pontificate about fitness. But I do have a lot of listeners that listen regularly to us on the Get Fit pod. So we've just grown over time. And the strength of that is I get my information from my listeners or at least they direct me where they want more information and I can go out and get it for them. And then the other thing we do is we play. These are actual warm up mini workouts on a regular Episode though, usually will be two to three times to break up the episode where I'll play music and, and most people during that time, if they're listening at their computer, it's a chance for them to get up and get moving around. A lot of the ladies say they with their children, they'll get up and dance with their kids. Most people just get up and dance and move around. A lot of people that listen to the podcast while they're working out that they treat that as like a high intensity interval. And so they'll go a little faster, work a little harder as they do that. And the neat thing has been because the podcast is free, I don't really make any money on it, that there's no way I can pay to have commercial music on the podcast to pay the rights fees. And so what I've done is begin playing unsigned artists, musical artists, and there are just some great ones out there. I've probably played over 300 different artists on the 150 something episodes that we've.

That we've done so far.

And it's neat because a lot of them are on itunes. You know, they're just in business for themselves. They're recording their work, they're putting on itunes and they're trying to sell their songs for 99 cents. And a lot of them will say, you know, you played my song. And then we re release usually on a Sunday, they'll say, you played my song. And the next day my sales went up on itunes. So it's kind of fun to watch them grow. Some of them have really grown and.

And gotten a following not so much based on the podcast, but on what they're doing to market themselves. It's really a change in the music industry from what was at one time very corporate driven, studio driven, label driven kind of stuff where these people could actually start on their own and get their career going. And some of them, then all of me get signed, some of them are offered to get signed and won't do it because they want to keep the money for themselves as they, they go on about their career. So it's kind of a neat thing and it really is. One of the hallmarks of the regular episodes is that you get to hear three songs that you probably wouldn't otherwise hear during the podcast and then the workout episodes. I play the music also to motivate folks through the workout episodes. Some of the songs I do myself, I mean, a 15 or 30 second highly intense interval. Nobody's really listening to music at that point in Time. So, you know, I'll put together drum beats and put some guitar on it, stuff like that, just to kind of keep people moving, doing those short intervals. But the longer intervals, we're playing these unsigned artists. And I just get email all the time from listeners now. Who did you say that was? And how can I find them? And. And those kind of things. So that's been kind of neat. So it's a combination that what the gitfit pot has become a combination of those five things. Information on diet, Diet, exercise, music, journaling, and then your overall fitness. And we've just grown with listeners. They love the workouts. And that's essentially where we are right now, just last week releasing our 150th episode.

Does somebody have to go back and start with episode one? Or let's say someone is listening to this interview with you right now and they want to go download an episode and do a workout. Can they just basically go over to your website, which I'll put a link to in the show notes, or over to the get feature fit pod on itunes and just download any episode and do a workout?

First of all, nobody gets to ever hear again episode one. I challenge you to find anybody's episode one of their podcast because they tend to disappear after a while. But I do keep probably the last, I think on iTunes, the last 30 episodes, and then on my own on my podcast site, when you go to my blog, where all the episodes are there, there's probably 50 of the past episodes there. Most of the workouts I do keep there, and I wouldn't say no, you don't have to go back and listen from day one. It's not. It's not a build thing, because I do repeat, you know, the core values of the fitness strategy and what we're trying to do with things like that. Almost every podcast, but. And you can see the workout episodes are clearly identified. So I would suggest if you're just interested in some workouts and hearing some new music while you're doing that, download a couple of workout episodes and see what you think. And then as you get to know me, coaching you through the workout, if you want to hear more, especially if you're at the stage right now where you and I suspect this doesn't involve a lot of your listeners. But if you're at the stage right now where you want to start getting yourself back in shape, you know, start listening some of the regular episodes, too, because there's good information, there's good people on there that we talk to We've interviewed you on one of our podcasts, so it's a really good opportunity for people to get fitness information. Especially if you're a newbie. Especially if you're a newbie. But I talked Ben about our listeners. So my target audience starting this thing out was guys like me, over 50, out of shape, want to get back in shape. My. My lister, my average lister right now is a female in her 30s, either wanting to get back in shape or in the process of exercising and looking for some ways to help them with their exercising. So it's kind of interesting the path that the podcast took as it continued to grow, and especially geographically, because we started out with, like I said, My 70 listeners. We just grew tremendously in Australia, New Zealand. And now I'm just thrilled to get these emails from people all Hong Kong, the uk, Germany, some I have to have translated. And it's just fun to know that the podcast reaches out to that many people, and they're very good at telling me what I did wrong on the podcast, what they'd like to see on the podcast, and of course, praising us when we do some good things.

Now, one of the things that you talked about, Skip, was journaling. And that's something you don't really run into a lot when people talk about the basic components of fitness. I mean, sure, you mentioned that you guys cover on the podcast, the diet, the exercise, the music, and the knowledge of fitness and all that makes sense. But tell me about journaling in terms of where that fits in as a fitness tool.

Sure, you elite athletes are motivated by the competition and the training of the competition. Us average folks out there trying to get fit need motivation. And for some of us, it's a personal coach. For others, it's music. And what I've always used from when I got out of high school, and there was a while in college, I didn't run. When I started running again, my motivation has always been journaling because I would write down, I know this is a little anal for some people. I don't advocate that you need to do this, but I would write down, you know, the distance of my run, how I felt, the weather, you know, just some information about the day in a journal every day. I had a daytimer at the time. They didn't have iPhones and things like that that you could actually, you know, schedule your calendar in. So I always wrote that stuff in my calendar, and sometimes that was the motivation to do the workout. If I don't do a workout today, I'm going to have a blank spot there. So I need to do that. And then it's cool even to this day to look at things I wrote 20 years ago about a particular day and a particular run that I did. So it motivated me. So I've encouraged our listeners to really write about your fitness because it's good to have that log. It's excellent in terms of seeing the progress of what you're doing. It's really a motivator in terms of you're out there, you're accountable to yourself, you're in this fitness program. You need to write about your progress so that you know where you are. A lot of our listeners have taken that even a step further. And just to go back, that's the whole reason for the get. Why I started the podcast was going to be my form of journaling about what I'm doing fitness wise to kind of hold my feet to the fire, getting fit. So I've got listeners now that do the journaling. I mean, there's a lot of sites where you can, you know, log your run in, log your times that you're you're doing and you know, heart rates and all that kind of stuff. But I've got listeners that also taking it seriously. They have their own blogs where they're talking about. Some people blog about their runs daily, others will, even though they're tracking their daily workouts, they'll blog occasionally about the workouts they're doing. They'll meet friends from blogging that. And so there are a lot of people out there on the Internet, some connected with Get Pod, some just doing blogging, journaling for fitness, who are using that as a motivating tool for their fitness. And that's why I have those extra elements in there. Because fitness, sure, it's all about exercise and it's all about what you're putting in your body. But my folks, me anyways need to be motivated and so that the not. Well, I think knowledge is important because you need to know everything that's going on and you need to know about fitness and diet in your body and things like that. But journaling and the music part that we use on the Get Fit podcast, that's a good motivator and that's what I was looking for when I added journaling into that whole Get Fit Pod fitness strategy.

Yeah, I think that that's, that's such an important component and I think there's even a little bit of social proof there, especially now with the Internet, where if, you know people are reading your blog or looking at your. Your Facebook updates on your training routine or whatever. It makes you a little bit more likely to stick with it when you know other people are pulling for you. Right.

And you're accountable to them and you, too. Exactly.

Well, there's a few different ways. Skip to access the Get Fit pod and I'll put a link to all of this in the show notes. But you've got the website getfitpod.com where you have some of your upcoming episodes and you're doing an upcoming episode on barefoot running. Any other topics that you're going to be covering that would be of interest to folks?

Well, the big thing that's coming up that what we did this last year and again trying to keep people motivated, was that we had. We put a goal in place, and we usually do that, you know, start in September and put some goal for the following September because that kind of dovetails with school starting and change of seasons and those kind of things. And so our goal we set last year was to destroy Camelback Mountain. And by destroy, I mean in a way, like if you seize the day, you destroy the day. You make it your own. You own it. That's what our plan was with Camelback Mountain. We were going to destroy that thing by making it our own. We were going to own it. And depending on our level of fitness, we were either going to run up that mountain or we were going to walk up the mountain or crawl up the mountain. But the goal was to get in good enough shape that you can get up Camelback Mountain in this coming September. We started the project last September, so a lot of us are going out there next month to do our climb. I'm actually going to be one of the people that's going to run up. And I've done it before. It's interesting. I did it when I was younger. I ran up the mountain. Then there was a time I couldn't get up the mountain, and then a couple times I walked up it. So it's going to be fun again because I know I'm going to be able to do this is to run to the top of that mountain. Now, you can't run all the way because there's some points where you've got to be on all fours navigating boulders, rocks, and things like that. But for the bulk of it, you're looking at about an average 6% grade.

So we've got people.

We're not going to do it as a pack because we didn't want to destroy other people's fun on the mountain by having a pack of walkers or runners all kind of hung together. So we're all doing it on individual times. Some of us will be on at the same time, others will be on different days and so forth. But that's kind of the culmination of a years long fitness goal that we set for ourselves. And so that's the big exciting thing that's happening in September. We're going to report back on that in future podcasts. But as we've mentioned, the next two are barefoot running. So if you have any interest in that, check us out. And as you mentioned, Ben, you can get a getfit pop search on iTunes, you search on getfit pod, or you search on getfitguy. You're gonna get fitpod or get fit Guy down in the corner there as an additional pod because they're both very popular podcasts. So give us a listen to it. And I would recommend, as you said, Ben, one of our workout episodes. To start with, we do a couple of different types of workouts. We do just regular interval training. Some are designed specifically for walkers, some are designed for the treadmill, and some are designed to be done outside. And it's just typical interval training. But the ones that have really gotten popular is the high intensity interval training where you're doing those short all out intervals and with a little tiny bit of rest in between and going like crazy again. And we've done those primarily for runners. I've done them on the treadmill. It's a little bit different of a challenge because the treadmill is a little slow on the optic as far as changing speeds quickly. But we have done it in such a way we allow for the treadmill to catch up and stuff like that. So I would definitely try one of those running workouts because they're a good way to motivate you. And above all, great music involved in those workouts that you haven't heard before. I guarantee you you're going to hear some groups that you haven't heard before.

Yeah, absolutely folks. I've listened to a few of Skip's podcasts and they really are good. Good music, good choice of tunes, good workouts. So definitely check them out. If you're looking for a podcast to listen to. I would give Skip's Get Fit podcast a listen. So Skip, thank you for coming on the call.

Thanks Ben. It was a pleasure and really nice to talk with you.

All right, folks, be sure to check out Skip's podcast podcast. I'll put a link to that in the show notes@getfitpod podcast.com now if you have not yet gone to itunes and left the BenGreenfieldFitness.com show a ranking, please do so and write a review. If you have a chance, I'd really appreciate it. And if you want to donate to the show, I will drop a free T shirt and a bunch of goodies in the mail to you. If you donate to the show, just make sure on that donation tab, which you can reach at the bottom of any of the posts@BenGreenfieldFitness.com let me know not only your address but also your T shirt size. Until next time, this is Ben Greenfield. Keep your eyes peeled on your podcast feed for another podcast coming later this week from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.