Episode #131: 10 Ways To Get More Out Of Your Indoor Cycling

In this podcast 10 Ways to Get More out of Indoor Cycling can sugar in probiotics make you fat? Can caffeine help you store carbohydrates? Is a paleo diet low carb? What are natural flavors? How to stop getting sick? Can protein decrease soreness? Is Costco healthy? What do world triathlon champions eat low testosterone and weight gain? Is grapeseed oil healthy? Is organic yogurt healthy? Advocare, nighttime recovery products, Lactose intolerance and how to figure out what to eat.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here. Today's guest is Jennifer Sage and she's been on the podcast a few times before, but she's made some updates to her book Keep It Real, which is a guide for indoor cycling instructors and for people who are who want to get more out of their indoor cycling. And she's going to tell us how to get more out of spinning, sitting on an indoor bike trainer and doing the things that you might be doing on a bike this winter in today's podcast. In addition, we of course have our usual jam packed listener Q and A. We've got a few special announcements to kick things off. So let's get started with today's podcast.

Special announcements.

First of all, you may remember the fitness, nutrition and breakthroughs of 2010 hour long live video that I did just about a month ago. Well, that video is going to be released@BenGreenfieldFitness.com in just four days and along with that video is going to be a transcribed PDF for you to read, full of tons of links and resources for you. So beware. That's coming up if you're part of my VIP text club or part of the Inner Circle, you've already had access to that for the past couple weeks, but it's going to be going public here in just a few days so you don't want to miss that. It'll be a great resource for you to go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and download. In addition, we have a bunch of new supplements over at Pacific Elite Fitness and one of the things that is kind of unique is the new Vitamin D and fish oil super pack and what that is is I've picked the two supplements that would probably be most important for you to take, and the two supplements that are most often tainted in terms of being low quality, having toxins in them, being absorbed at a very low level. And so I've picked the highest absorbed, highest quality vitamin D and fish oil to kind of keep your immune system and performance going over this winter. And I've put them over at Pacific Elite Fitness, so if you go over there to the main page, they're on special right now for. For free shipping. And then the other thing that I have in terms of a request from you is I know that a lot of you listen to other podcasts other than this one, and that's great. That's cool. I know that many of you use podcasts for commuting, for workouts, for wandering around your house, and I am 100% behind that. I think it's a great way to get smarter. I think it's a lot better use of your time, a lot of the times in something like music. But I'm really interested in what type of podcast you're listening to, and I'm really interested in the type of hosts that are on those podcasts. And here's how you can help me. If you have a favorite podcast that you listen to on a regular basis other than this one, then what I'd like you to do, if you can, is email that podcast or Facebook them or Twitter them or however they like for you to get a hold of them and ask them if they'd like to have me come on as a guest. And in some cases it may be me coming on to debate them about their philosophy in terms of nutrition or coaching or performance, in some cases, maybe I'd just be coming on to give a little bit of extra value to them or their audience. So if you have a podcast that you listen to that you'd like to hear me on, to hear my viewpoint contrasted with that of the host, or even just hear me supplement what the host has to say, then email that podcast, tell them about my show, give them my email address, which is easy to remember, it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com and tell them that they should get me on the show and I would be happy to participate. So that would be a huge favor that you could do for me. I truly appreciate it. All right, let's go ahead and have a special message and move on to 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 and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free.

Listener Q and A.

Before we hop into the questions for this week, let me give you a quick clarification. I recently had someone ask me what type of questions were appropriate to ask for the podcast in terms of content. And let me break it down for you like this. The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast is designed for any questions about fat loss, human performance or nutrition. The other podcasts that I run can go into other realms. For example, many of you may not know that I do another Q and A, a very sports specific sports nutrition Q and a over@EndurancePlanet.com that's a good place to ask very, very triathlon marathon focused questions. And it's a brand new podcast that we're really developing and improving and it's kind of in beta phase right now. We just picked up that and are trying to really turn it into a smash bang podcast, but it's very, very endurance sports focused. That's a great place to ask endurance sports questions. My inner circle podcast, which, yes, it is member protected, meaning that you need to be a member for $17 a month to get into that. That's more focused on like holistic, healthy family type of stuff. Helping your kids to eat better, getting your family to eat better, reinventing your home, your pantry, your kitchen, things of that nature. So that's what that forum and that podcast is all about. And then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast is pretty much anything that doesn't really fall into those categories. So that's the deal with the Q and A. All right, so that being said, let's go ahead and jump into this week's first question. And the first question is from Sarah.

Hi Ben, this is Sarah. I had a question about fermented foods. I drink a lot of kombucha. My main questions are about kombucha and kimchi. I don't make my own kombucha, but I drink a lot of it. Probably maybe one bottle a day, sometimes two, depending. Of course, it does not replace my water. I drink the Synergy brand. I do all the flavors. And my main question was I know there's sugar in them, but from my study on probiotics, the sugars are eaten up by the bacteria, so the bacteria will prosper and grow and the Same with the kimchi. And I made kimchi recently with beets. And I know beets are kind of high in sugar, and although they're not sweet because they've been eaten, the sugar's been eaten up by the bacteria. They're a little bit tart. But my main question is, if you're doing a lot of probiotic foods, namely kombucha or kimchi made with carrots or beets or high sugar vegetables, can that hinder any kind of fat loss goals?

Well, first of all, congratulations on making your own kombucha. That's actually pretty cool that you're making that at home. And for those of you who don't know what kombucha is, it's a sparkling drink and you make it by fermenting bacteria and yeast, typically in a tea. And you produce the fermentation by using a sugar. And it sounds like Sarah is using a beet based sugar in hers. And what happens is the bacteria are a, they're probiotics, similar to yogurt. And so it's a good bacteria that lives in your stomach. And the belief is that weight gain in a lot of people is because of poor digestion and an inability to process foods effectively. So the weight loss promise of kombucha is that it could bring your digestive system into a better state of well being and help you to absorb your food better so you get a greater sense of fullness and you do more with the calories that you do consume. So you can consume fewer calories and still have a decent amount of energy. Now, probiotics themselves are very low in calories. And as long as you're not adding extra sugar to your kombucha like they do a lot of times at a place like Whole Foods, you're only getting in like an eight ounce glass of kombucha, about 30 to 40 calories. And it is true that the probiotics in there actually need a certain, certain amount of sugar calories in order to feed. But these are not. It's not really a significant source of sugar, especially when you compare it to soda and other sweet drinks that you could be consuming. So you shouldn't worry too much. The sugar in kombucha is necessary. It's not even necessary evil, because the sugars are doing a great deal of good. And as long as you are accounting for those sugars in your daily carbohydrate intake and you're not taking in a large, large percentage of carbohydrates, especially for people who are trying to lose weight, I recommend that they only consume a total of about 40 to 50% of their daily intake from carbohydrate. Then that'll help out quite a bit. I know that those of you who are out in the high protein, low carb diet land had a sharp intake of breath when I said 30 to 40% carbohydrate. But I guess my assumption is that you're also being very active and you're actually burning those carbohydrates and keeping your blood sugar level stabilized with activity. So from the probiotics, you're not only going to get a healthier gut, but they also promote balance of your white blood cells. So specifically, they help you produce more of what are called T cells, which help to destroy invading cells that may cause immune system damage. And they also help to heal some of the unnecessary damage that occurs when you. When you have an immune system attack. And they help to break down protein into peptides, meaning that your protein can be broken down to be absorbed a little bit more fully and used in repair and recovery. And then probiotics also eat prebiotics or plant fibers as their foods in addition to sugars. So they can help you digest plant fibers and break down the plant fibers into their basic chemical building blocks. So you get a lot of benefits from taking in these probiotics. Now, another probiotic source that you talk about is this kimchi that you're making. And kimchi is a traditional fermented Korean dish. I love Korean barbecue, by the way. If you really, really want to make my day, take me out to Korean barbecue. I could sit there for hours. And the way that you'd actually make a kimchi if you were going to do it, like Sarah's doing at home, is you just take cabbage and you immerse it in a little bit of salt water, and then you add a paste to it that's like a chili pepper, red pepper flake paste. And then you can add garlic, you can throw some onions in. And then the thing that it's going to feed on in terms of sugar for fermenting is you put the equivalent of about a piece of fruit in there, like half of an apple and half of a pear. And those are all blended up with water. You mix all that together with the kimchi, and some people do add a bunch of extra sugar, which if you wanted to do a lower calorie kimchi, you wouldn't need to do, but it would cause the fermentation process to be a little bit more Active, you jar it and you let it sit for about a day and it ferments. And again, you're getting sugar with that. But if you're not putting like, you know, two cups of sugar in the kimchi, which some recipes can ask for, and you're just mostly using like the fruit based blend that you throw in there, all of the nutrients and the probiotics and the fiber, fiber and all that other good stuff that you're getting with the kimchi is really going to balance out the 30 to 40, possibly 50 calories you're going to get of sugar per serving. So there are much, much bigger fish to fry. And unless you have a large amount of carbohydrates and sugar coming in from other sources, kimchi and kombucha is not going to affect your fat loss, especially if you're making it at home, because you're in even greater control of how much sugar is actually used in the fermentation process. So, great question. Remember, if you want to ask an audio question, just call toll free to 877-209-9439. Now next we have a question from Chuck, who said, I recently read that athletes who drink caffeine before exercise have 66% more glycogen in their muscles, giving them greater endurance. I know you've talked about the benefits of taking caffeine on the show before, but what does this increase in glycogen in the muscles really mean? With more glycogen, will that mean that the body uses less of other fuel sources like carbohydrates or fat for energy? This is a good question, kind of a basic physiology question. And what glycogen is, and sometimes I use that word on the show quite a bit without really explaining what it is, is it's just storage carbohydrate. When you consume, say a piece of bread, your salivary enzymes and your digestive enzymes in your stomach and your small intestine will break that bread into little molecules of sugar. And the sugar ends up getting absorbed into your bloodstream and some of it gets transported into your muscles where it is stored away as muscle glycogen, which is just basically long chains of those sugars. And some of it ends up in the liver getting converted into liver glycogen, which is again, just long chains of sugars. And when you start exercising, what your body's going to do first is tap into any blood sugar that may be circulating, which is essentially only the equivalent of about like a packet of sugar that you put into your coffee and then once it's burnt through that it begins to break down glycogen and use the glycogen as a fuel. And at rest you tend to use a little bit more of your liver's glycogen stores. But as soon as you begin to exercise, you really start to tap into your muscles glycogen stores. So if you drink caffeine before exercise and it allows you, and by the way, you do need to eat a carbohydrate along with the caffeine. But if you take can take that carbohydrate and with the caffeine circulating in your system store up to 66% more of that carbohydrate, then absolutely you're going to have more energy to draw on during exercise because that caffeine has helped you to create greater levels of storage glycogen. It's the same reason that people would do something like carbohydrate load prior to competing in a sporting event. It's the same reason that you can incorporate and I wrote about this in a Recent post@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Same reason you can incorporate some low carbohydrate or fasted sessions into your exercise routine, because that also helps you to utilize carbohydrate a little bit more efficiently and store more carbohydrate away when you actually do eat food. So having those high levels of glycogen is a great thing. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to alter the way that your body uses fuel. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to shift you towards burning more carbohydrate or burning more fat. It just means you're going to have that much more energy to draw on. Next question is from Kai. And Kai says during the last few months you have conducted interviews on paleo and low carb diets. These seem to be good choices for someone who needs to lose weight or jump start their weight loss. But my concern is is that is a diet for a fit athlete. Given the energy system under that approach, my concern is that that is fat and not carbs. My concern is that if I start with paleolow carb, lose the weight, then transition to a different diet, that will throw my system completely out of whack. Well, this is a good concern, Kai, and let me clear something up. First of all, a paleo diet is not necessarily a low carb diet. A paleo diet is based on avoiding foods that have come into being since our Agricultural revolution. So you're avoiding a lot of foods that agriculture brought us, like cereals, dairy products, fatty meats, high salted foods, refined sugars, processed oils. So the paleo diet is a very holistic diet, but it's not necessarily low carbohydrate. You can still eat fruit, you can still eat potatoes. There are some people that have adaptations of the paleo diet that would, that would say otherwise. But overall, the paleo diet doesn't outlaw carbs. It's not a low carb diet. Now, if you started eating Paleo, it's likely that the amount of carbohydrates you consume is naturally going to drop. But I wouldn't say that makes it a low carb diet. That simply makes the diet that is lower in carbohydrates than the typical Western diet would be. A low carb diet is only going to allow you somewhere in the range of like 100, 200 calories of carbohydrate. In any given day, some of them will get up to 400 calories of carbohydrates. And that's a very, very little bit for especially people that are exercising or, say, competing. So I would not classify low carb and paleo, or I would not lump them together. But either way, that doesn't answer your question. You're asking, if you do go low carb and then you switch to a diet higher in carbohydrate, once you start exercising more, is it going to throw your system out of whack? The answer is no. And the reason for that is that when you're exercising, you're going to be burning those excess carbohydrates for energy. And some people may say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Won't those carbohydrates throw off your hormones a little bit once you get that insulin release and the cortisol release and the drop in blood sugar? The answer is yes if you're sedentary, but the answer is no if you're exercising, especially if you're stacking those carbohydrates so that you're taking them in after an exercise session. So I wish there was a more complex answer to your question, but basically it all comes down to if you are on a low carb diet and then you start exercising and, and when you start exercising, you increase the amount of carbohydrates that you take in. There's nothing magical that's going to happen at the metabolic level that will make you gain weight. You will simply burn that fuel for energy. Jeff asks what are natural flavors in a foods ingredient list? Now we talked about this a little bit before in a previous podcast, but According to the U.S. code of Federal regulations, a natural flavor is the essential oil essence or extracted protein, hydrosylate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis which contains the flavoring consistence derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf, or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products or fermentation products thereof, whose significant form function in food is flavoring rather than nutrition. And of course, we would all prefer to see natural flavors on a label because we believe that those are somehow more helpful. But really the distinction between the artificial and the natural flavors is pretty arbitrary, and it's more based on the way that the flavor was extracted more than what the actual flavor contains. So, for example, you can take like an almond flavor, which is derived from peach and apricot pits, and it's basically a chemical. It's benzaldehyde and it contains traces of cyanide, which is actually a deadly poison. You have to eat a lot of almonds to actually get that, or drink a lot of almond oil to actually get toxicity from it. But it is really an artificial flavor that can be marketed as a completely natural product because it's been extracted from peach and apricot pits. And, you know, we could take this to the nth degree and begin to look at natural flavors and just about everything that we consume and assume that they're all really just synthetic chemicals that have been masked. But what it comes down to is simply moderating the amount of foods that you eat that contain any type of added flavoring or preservative or chemical. If you eat something in its natural holistic state, then this is a concern that you're not really going to have to have anyways. And the way that I like to think about it is this. If you say you take an apple and you buy an apple from a gas station, and then you go buy an apple from a natural organic health food store, if you were to take the logic applied to natural and artificial flavorings, then we would say that the apple that you bought from the gas station is artificial because its source is not a fruit stand or a grocery store. And the apple that you buy from the organic health food store is natural because it does come from a fruit stand or a health food store. And that's just ludicrous. What it comes down to is we as consumers really can't control Too much of these food politics with anything other than our voting and our lobbying. But when we're grabbing something off a shelf and glancing at the back of it to see whether it says natural flavoring versus if it says artificial flavoring, there's not going to really be a way for us to really truly know how healthy that source is from which the natural or the artificial flavoring has been derived. And I simply stand by avoiding, for the most part, sucralose, acesulfamy, potassium and aspartame, and then trying to mostly eat things that don't have labels on them in the first place. And if you do that, this is a worry that is not going to need to be at the forefront of your mind Now. Next, Mike writes in and Mike asks. Hi, Ben, I'm emailing you because I'm finding myself with cold flu symptoms much more often than ever before. I eat healthy, stay away from a lot of processed foods, and eat around 3,000 calories a day. This has been occurring over the past three to four months. I've been feeling very well for a few weeks, then getting a new cold all over again. What can I do to stop getting sick so often? Well, let's go ahead and invert this question and look at the things that could cause you to be getting sick more often. One would be a dietary deficiency. So a lot of times, like having chronically low levels of storage energy or not being able to absorb the food that you are eating, which we already talked about a little bit, could both cause immune system deficits. The fact that you're eating 3,000 calories a day, and I'm going to assume you're a very active individual. A lot of people that listen to this show are. Then it's probably unlikely that you have a dietary deficiency. If you are exercising a ton, let's say you're eating 3,000 calories a day and you're one of those Ironman triathletes who's training three or four hours a day. Absolutely. You may want to bump up to 4 or 5,000 calories a day, bump up your carbohydrate level so that you're actually not in a state of constant glycogen depletion and just see what happens. On the flip side, we talked about malabsorption and the fact that your digestive health could affect your actual absorption of the foods that you're. That you're the nutrients from the foods that you're consuming. Get on a digestive enzyme, get on a probiotic and see what Happens now, the next thing that you may be looking at is some type of vitamin or mineral deficiency. I don't know if you're on a multi. I don't know if you're taking something like the Ener prime that I've talked about before, which is a green supplement. I don't know if you're taking any type of magnesium or mineral supplement. But again, if you're a very active person, correctly choosing supplements and vitamins and minerals can help out quite a bit as can, including things like fatty acids and amino acids. So for example, if you had to eat, say, 1,000 calories worth of salmon a day to get the amount of fish oil that's necessary to support your immune system versus taking six highly concentrated fish oil capsules a day, then you may want to go with the latter from simply a weight maintenance point of view. So that's a consideration as well. Depression, stress, anxiety, those are all things to think about. I don't know what type of stress is in your life, but chronic stress from anything related to work or marital problems or family issues or anything else that might be hanging over your head can also decrease your immune function. Multiple studies have shown that high levels of anxiety are associated with decreased immune function. I would also look at the level of inflammation that's in your diet. For example, if you are consuming 3,000 calories a day and a high amount of that is from acidic foods like sugars and starches, pro inflammatory chemicals can also cause that immune system deficit. And then the last thing that I would look at is the fact that chronic sleep sleep deprivation can also lower your immune system function. And again, if you're the type of person who's consuming thousands of calories a day and you're doing that because you're exercising a ton, then you should be sleeping anywhere from seven and a half up to nine hours a night. And you may want to consider doing things like using a sleep mask or earplugs, unplugging everything in your room, taking magnesium before you go to bed, keeping your room as dark as possible possible, taking steps to ensure that all the sleep that you do get is high quality and is giving your immune system as much of a step up as possible. So all of the above that I just talked about are things that I do. I train a lot and rarely if ever get sick. I've been sick once in the past three years, so knock on wood. But those are some of the things that I do. Next question is from Laurel, who says, since I started using protein, I swear it has decreased my muscle soreness by an amazing amount. Is there science to back this up or am I enjoying the placebo effect? Well, I have another podcast called the Get Fit Guy Podcast and in it I talk about muscle soreness and how you get muscle soreness. It's a very quick 5 to 10 minute podcast over at quickanddirtytips.com but one of the top ways to reduce muscle soreness and to give your body the amino acids that it needs to repair muscle tissue more quickly after muscle damage is a protein supplement. And most of the studies that have been done have utilized a whey protein. The most recent was a study in the January 2010 Journal of Science and Medicine and Sport in which whey protein relieved muscle soreness brought on by repetitions during a leg extension exercise. All they did was consume 25 grams. That's about a scoop and a half to two scoops of whey protein after exercise. And at six hours, the group who were given the whey protein recovered fully with zero soreness and full muscle function restored. So protein's not the only thing that can help out with that fish oil which I just talked about. That's a huge help. They've done studies on fish oil, most recently in 2009 and 2010 that again showed that almost complete alleviation of delayed onset muscle soreness. And believe it or not, fruit actually has some components in it that can help quite a bit in terms of decreased incidence of arthritis or cartilage based issues after exercise. So for example, using something like fruit along with protein as your post exercise muscle recovery blend, maybe swallowing a few fish oil capsules as well, could be highly, highly beneficial in terms of reducing muscle soreness. So you're not imagining things. It is true protein can decrease muscle soreness. Question from Howard. Howard says, my wife and I routinely shop at Costco. There are a few products we buy that appear to be nutritious, but we wanted to see what you thought. In no particular order, first one he lists is Naked Juice Green Machine. Naked Juice Green Machine is a blend of a bunch of different fruits. It's one of those bottles that brags that it's got a pound of fruit in every bottle. If you are being very active, let's say you've just finished an hour long hard bike ride and you want to replace your energy, go ahead and suck one of these bad boys down because you're not only getting the energy, but there's also a lot of great vitamins and greens in it. If you're Sitting at work, you will get fat. If you are drinking this, not only will you get fat, but you'll produce a great amount of inflammation from the high levels of circulating blood sugar that are going to occur after you suck down one of these. A ton of calories in a bottle. Anytime you shove a pound of fruit into a bottle, you're going to get a lot of calories. And remember that the 130 calories listed on the label is for a half serving. Good luck opening this stuff and drinking just 4 ounces of it. All right. The next one that he asked about is the Kirkland organic carrot juice. And the organic carrot juice, which is a Kirkland brand, which of course means you're probably only going to find it at Costco, is about almost completely carbohydrates. It's about 90% carbohydrates, but it's only 70 calories. And that is in a full bottle. So I wouldn't be worrying about this stuff too much. It's not going to pack a huge punch if you are pre diabetic or if you're very sensitive to blood sugar. If you take your resting blood glucose and it happens to run very high, this is something you'd want to be cautious with. But for the most part, if you're an active individual, this is going to be fine. It's going to be, of course, a much better choice than sodas and energy drinks. Clif bars. Ask about Clif bars. I'm actually a fan of Clif bars. Assuming you're using them properly for exercise and you're not sitting at your desk in the middle of the afternoon with your feet up mowing down a Clif bar. Clif bars use about 70% organic ingredients and they try to avoid anything that's genetically modified or that has a lot of pesticide residue. So they do include good ingredients. They try and stick with companies for their products. They that practice sustainable agriculture, which creates less pollution, helps to create nutrient rich soil, increases biodiversity. So they are supporting good farming practices and they don't use a lot of what would be considered bioengineered or GMO based, genetically modified organism based ingredients. So I would say that Clif bars would be up there in terms of one of the energy bars that's doing a good job choosing good ingredients. Again, just use energy bars the way they're supposed to be used, which is during exercise. And then we come to the Nature's Path cereal, their granola cereal. And for the most part you got to be really careful with granola Granola tends to have a lot of vegetable oils in it. It tends to have a lot of wheat gluten sugar. They just pack a ton of stuff into granola. And if you're out hiking in the middle of the wilderness, it's not going to be that bad. But eating breakfast before a day of work, not the best thing on the planet. But they've done a pretty good job with this Nature's Choice cereal that they're selling now at Costco. The ingredients are organic whole grain cornmeal, organic evaporated cane juice, organic brown rice flour, organic yellow corn flour, organic inulin, which is a fiber, organic quinoa puffs, organic maple syrup, organic flaxseeds, natural maple flavor, organic buckwheat flour, organic quinoa, sea salt, organic amaranth, organic molasses, and a natural vitamin E. If you are trying to lose weight, don't touch the stuff, it will make you fat. If you are in a, in just a caloric maintenance mode and you want to get your hands on something healthy to eat for breakfast and you are looking for something that's gluten free and you're an active person who is able to burn carbohydrates and use them for energy, then this is one of the healthier cereals that you could choose. But don't get me wrong, there are definitely quite a few tablespoons of the equivalent of table sugar in this stuff. So yeah, that's it. For the most part. Costco sells stuff that appeals to the masses. So it's always going to be sweet. That's just the way it is. But again, if you're active, you can handle most of this stuff. Justin says, I was listening to an interview with Ironman world champion Chris McCormack and during the interview he stated his diet was 50% protein, 30% carbs and 20% fat. This seems contradictory to everything else I've read, including Chris Carmichael's Eat Right to Train. Right. And for those of you who don't know, Chris Carmichael is Lance Armstrong's coach. He says, can you describe the reasoning behind using this diet as well as how someone would implement this into their own life and training? Well, it's very likely that Chris McCormack was mistaken and that he misspoke. He probably meant 50% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 20% fat. But let's just say he did mean that he was eating 50% protein. Well, let's say that he was eating a conservative amount for an Ironman triathlete. Let's Say he was eating 5,000 calories a day, which would be a conservative amount, and he was getting 2,500 calories of that from protein. If he was eating 50% protein intake, 2,500 calories of protein is. Let's see how many grams of protein that is. That's 625 grams of protein. Now, the upper tolerable safe limit of protein for someone to be taking in without doing damage to their kidneys or their liver is 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. So if we take 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and he's eating 625, that would mean that he would need to weigh 156 kilograms. So Chris McCormack, to be at 50% protein diet and be healthy, he needed to weigh 343 pounds, which he doesn't, to get away with this. I'm really guessing that he meant 50% carbohydrate. If not, he's doing some pretty good damage to his kidney and his liver. The amount of protein that he should be taking in would be closer to about 500 calories of protein a day, assuming he's about 70 kg or so. So you got to be really careful with protein. Once you're eating 5,000 calories a day, most of that will be coming from carbohydrates simply because you're in training. So some things to think about in terms of protein, for sure. I really doubt that's what he's taking in. So Brian asks. Hi, Ben. I've been training and doing endurance events for nine years, and I consistently log all my food and all my workouts. Right. Recently I had a physical and my doctor told me I have low testosterone and I need to see an endocrinologist. After more blood work, the endocrinologist confirmed that my testosterone was low and I need to go on a patch, gel or shot every two weeks. My question is, first of all, I'm doing two ironman and three half ironman events this year, along with a marathon or two. Will this testosterone injection be a problem? Number two, my goal is to be at my high school weight of 175. Could this low testosterone be why I cannot lose weight? Number three, what would you do in this situation and should I use a patch, a gel, or a shot? So first of all, if you listen to any of the previous episodes that we've done on low testosterone, Testosterone is one of the critical components for everything from cellular metabolism to muscle fiber formation. And by having low testosterone levels, you would certainly see an increase in weight gain or a decrease in the ability to lose weight. Second, if you go to the World Anti Doping association website, which is the association that lays down the rules for something like the wtc, which puts on Ironman and Half Ironman events, then you will see that testosterone is essentially outlawed by the wada, unless you have clinically diagnosed male hypogonadism. And hypogonadism would be if your physician has diagnosed you as being simply unable to produce the proper amount of testosterone. And if that is the case, then they would actually allow for the medical best practice treatment, which would be intramuscularly injected testosterone. And they do also allow for the use of transdermal testosterone skin patches as an alternative to consider. And they do still say that you can't use an oral androgen like an oral testosterone replacement. The dosage that you could actually use would be 50 to 250 milligrams of testosterone every two weeks. And that's going to be supplied to you by either an injection or by a patch. Now, if you look at the charts that show what happens in your blood when you inject a testosterone versus when you use a patch, you get a similar overall release of the testosterone. But the injection is a very, very quick release, and then it declines fairly quickly, whereas the patch is a more stable release. There's a few people that I coach for Ironman, especially males who have andropause or have low testosterone, and they all use the Androderm testosterone patch. There are, of course, other things you can do from a dietary standpoint that I talk about in that breakthrough talk that's coming out on Friday, when it comes to increasing testosterone naturally. But if you do have hypogonadism or clinically diagnosed low testosterone, then it's likely that a patch or injection will be necessary. You just need to be prepared to show proof. If you are tested after, say, an Ironman or a half Ironman, eventually, that your physician has prescribed you testosterone based on a medically diagnosed condition. Now, the last thing that you may want to consider is what's called your testosterone to epitestosterone levels. And when the WADA administers a test, they would consider anything that's greater than a ratio of 4 to 1 to be outside the norms for that test. And cyclists like in the Tour de France who have failed this test were using about 100 milligrams of an orally administered testosterone per week. And an orally administered testosterone is going to result in a lot higher levels in terms of the blood levels of testosterone than say, an injection or an Androderm patch. So I would definitely stay with the injection or the patch. And you just need to realize that you could be drawn aside and tested. And if you are found with a high testosterone to epitestosterone ratio or higher than normal levels of synthetic testosterone circulating in your bloodstream, then you could be out of the running or disqualified in terms of like prize money or podium finishes if you're going after either of those things. And then also remember that the use of testosterone is associated with some electrolyte disturbances, specifically the retention of salts. So if you were to use something like this, then you would definitely want to practice with using it in training and realize that you may need to drink a little bit of extra water or keep track of your electrolyte intake and make sure that you're not taking in too many electrolytes. So a lot of places we can go with this. We could talk about it for a full hour, I'm sure, but go back and listen to some of the previous episodes we've done on testosterone. If I were in your shoes, I'd use a patch just because I don't like shots and the patch gives you a more stable release anyways. Deborah asks, I've been making my own mayonnaise for a few months now and it's working great. But I was wondering if grapeseed oil is good for you. I've used olive oil and it's okay, but a little strong in the taste for me. I've also used sunflower oil, but I heard that it's only good if you don't heat it. I would like to use grapeseed oil. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Well, grapeseed oil does have a pretty high smoke point, which is great. That means that you can cook it at a higher temperature than olive oil or say, like canola oil. So it's a pretty good choice for sauteing or stir frying in my opinion. A gentleman I had on the show a few weeks ago, Udo Erasmus, would say don't heat any oils or any fats because of the free radicals that can be produced. But grapeseed oil would definitely be the lesser of two evils if you're going to use it versus like an olive oil or even like a flaxseed oil so it is a little bit more stable at higher temperatures. It's a healthy what would be considered a polyunsaturated fat. And as long as you're not heating it at really, really high temperatures, it would be fine to use. I actually don't make mayonnaise myself. I'm not quite sure of the type of temperatures you'd have to use to create a mayonnaise. I don't think you have to heat it to a real high temperature. But grapeseed oil would be fine to use and does have a higher smoke point than olive oil or flaxseed oil. So it's good to have around. Next question is from Gio who asks and they asked us via Facebook. We do have a Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page where we've actually been having some good discussions lately. Go to Facebook and do a search for Ben Greenfield Fitness and I do have a personal page and then I also have the Ben Greenfield Fitness page. If you try and friend me on my personal page, I cannot vouch for the content of those posts, but I can say that the Ben Greenfield Fitness, the official Ben Greenfield Fitness page will be along the lines of what you get on this podcast and@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but Geo asks via Facebook, I want to know what you think about organic yogurt. And my answer to Geo is to go back and listen to the episode that I did on insulin like growth Factor. I believe that was last week. I talked about how it can really cause people to gain weight quickly because it was designed to turn baby animals into big animals. That being said, it's also great as a recovery supplement. Well, dairy tends to be very high in insulin like growth factor, and organic yogurt is going to be a little bit healthier for you than the non organic variety. Now the other thing that you may want to consider is the source of the cows from which the yogurt was derived. And you want to try and choose the type of cows that are raised in organic pastures on grass. And that would be kind of the ideal situation, like a grass fed organic yogurt. And as long as you're not lactose intolerant, which we'll talk about in a second, then it can be a good source of probiotics. It can be a good source of that insulin like growth factor. But again, if you're eating it in a sedentary position at your desk during the day, it will make you get fat. Seems like I'm saying that a lot on this show. Unless you're exercising, it will make you get fat. Okay, Chris asks, I'm curious about your opinion on Advocare products, in particular their nighttime recovery. Well, Advocare is one of these nutrition supplement companies that's really big globally. And they make this nighttime recovery supplement that has amino acids in it, something called maca root and something called ashwagandha extract. They put a few other extracts and herbal roots in there. And it is what would be considered something that's high in adaptogens, which we also talked about last week. Those can help stabilize stress levels. Amino acid levels can help with stabilization of your. Just certain components of your brain that are responsible for relaxing you before you go to sleep. And some of the herbs in here are traditionally used in relaxation and nighttime sleep aid. I don't see anything in here that I would be concerned about in terms of the levels. It does have zinc in it, and you do need to be careful with zinc when it comes to overdosing. But most of these type of supplements are nowhere near the doses that you would be concerned about in terms of overdosing. So when I look at this, it looks like a solid nighttime sleep aid. So I guess the answer to you would be, if you can afford it, it would be fine to take for nighttime recovery. There's not any red flags in this product. Now, the next question is from Robert, and I believe that Robert, my apologies to you. Robert, I'm not saying this to offend you, but your question is very difficult to interpret because the English is a little bit off. But I'm going to interpret what you're saying. You're asking me, if you're lactose intolerant, is it still okay for you to drink milk if you can handle the bloating? Well, lactose intolerance is, of course, that lack of the enzyme lactase that's necessary for you to digest lactose, which is a common milk or dairy sugar. And the lining of your small intestine has all these little microscopic projections in it called microvilli, and those produce these digestive enzymes if your intestine is damaged. So if these microvilli are damaged, that can interfere with lactase production and your digestion of dairy. And also if you have any type of bacterial overgrowth, if you have any type of infection, if you have, for example, excessive consumption of processed food, foods, all of those type of things can cause inflammation as well. So a lot of times you can give yourself lactose intolerance based on the foods that you eat or based on your diet. You can also be born genetically with the inability to produce ample amounts of lactase, and that would just be based on your heritage. And a lot of times there are certain populations that tend to have higher amounts of lactose intolerance India would be one example. Now, if this is the case for you, you have a couple choices. One, you could take a lactase enzyme or a digestive enzyme before you consume milk or dairy products. Two, you could just avoid milk or dairy products. And three, you could consume them and just put up with the bloating. Would they do any damage if you do that? If you're lactose intolerant and you have undigested food fragments circulating through your small intestine because you weren't able to break down that lactose based sugar, then yes, you could get what's called leaky gut syndrome. You could get the presence of undigested food fragments in your bloodstream that can cause your body to mount an allergenic reaction against those foods and give you something like chronic fatigue or immune system deficit or any of the other nasty things that can happen when you have leaky gut syndrome. So just put. Putting up with this red flag or signal that your body is sending you to step back on the lactose consumption would not be such a good idea. I would instead get on a lactase enzyme. If that doesn't help, then I would make sure that you're cleaning up your diet, getting some processed foods, potentially inflammatory foods out of your diet. And if that doesn't help, then I would just try and choose alternatives to milk like an almond milk, a rice milk, some type of protein source like a hemp, or a rice based protein source that doesn't have those lactose sources in it. And then our final question is from Trey. And Trey says, I listen and read so much on nutrition and I realize the importance. It's never been a biggest priority for me day in and day out, and I know this is why I continue to struggle. But there seems like so much information and so many things I'm supposed to be eating and taking. It can be overwhelming. Would you tell a novice where to begin with all of this? Well, Trey, in our day and age, it can be annoyingly difficult to know what type of diet or what type of nutritional protocol to use, whether you're an athlete or whether you're just somebody who's trying to lose weight. There are tons of diets, there are tons of books out there, and the truth is there is more than one way to skin a cat. The best advice that I can give you is to find something that is customized to you, your genes and your body type. For example, listen to the interview that I did with Tim Monaco from Bio Letics about metabolic typing where you just one time for your Whole life. One time you sit down and you do pay, but you take this questionnaire, comprehensive questionnaire that tells you what type of foods you should or should not be eating. Next thing, one time, you only got to do this one time, go over to a website like PacificFit.net and get the GI Home Test Kit where you, for lack of a better word, poop into an envelope and you send that off and you find out everything that's going on in your gut and everything that you should or should not be avoiding. Once you have those two pieces of crucial information, you know for the rest of your life, the ideal foods that you should be eating. Now, if you wanted to kind of put the icing on the cake, the very last thing you do is you go to a laboratory and you get your resting metabolic rate test done so that you know how many calories you should be eating during the day. So now you know not only the qualitative aspect of the foods that you should be eating, but the quantitative aspect as well. Now, I have done all of the above in my diet. I never have to guess for the rest of my life when any diet book comes out. I don't care if it's the Paleo diet or the anti inflammatory diet or the Zone or the Atkins or whatever. It doesn't matter to me because I'm looking at things through new eyeballs because I simply know, okay, check. Yes, that would work for me. Check. No, that wouldn't work for me. And I just have a few PDFs on my computer that give me a snapshot of everything I need to know about my body. Now, if you do these tests and you still want somebody to hold your hand and walk you through it, then you do something like you grab. Do like a month of nutrition consulting with me. People do that all the time. It's 250 bucks. They do it one time for one month. And we do a bunch of phone calls and emails and get everything sorted out. $17 a month. You join the inner circle and you've got unlimited access to my wife and I to ask as many questions as you want about your diet, about your lifestyle, about your health, about your exercise. And not only that, but we give all the research that we get on a daily basis to you, you as well, and do things like live webinars and handouts and PDFs and videos. So that's another option, is you just get somebody to help you out. Gold standard. You get those three tests that I talked about, Metabolic questionnaire, GI test, resting metabolic Rate test and then you do something like join the inner circle and it's $17 a month. And that's for complete hand holding with everything you need in terms of your diet and your nutrition. So that is what I would do. I will put a link to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle for you. You know what, right now I will sit down and put a link to the other three things that I talked about as well, and that will help you out. So that being said, we are going to move on to this week's interview with Jennifer Sage and I will put a link to Jennifer and all her information as well as her email, Indoor Cycling Instructor Academy, and her book Keep It Real in the Show Notes, where I put everything that you would ever need, including the Ask Ben form so you can ask questions. So I'll put those in the show notes to this episode, episode number 132.

Featured Topic.

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and I'm here with Jennifer Sage. Now, if you have been A fan of BenGreenfieldFitness.com for a while or visited the website, you may know Jennifer Sage from her book Keep It Real, which is a book that's just jam packed with a bunch of tips and tricks and really valuable information about indoor bicycling and also some information about what many of us know as spin classes. There have been a few different posts with Jennifer over@bengreedfulfitness.com and you can just go there and do a search for Jennifer Sage if you want to listen to other interviews I've done with Jennifer or even check out some of the videos and some of the really, really popular blog posts that have appeared over there that have to do with indoor cycling. So Jennifer herself is a master spinning instructor. She knows more about indoor cycling than anybody that I know, both from a performance and a weight loss perspective. So, Jennifer, thanks for coming on the call.

My pleasure. Good to be back.

Yeah. For people who haven't really heard you before on the show, can you tell me a little bit about the book Keep It Real and why you wrote it?

Well, I worked for spinning for 12 years actually for the spinning company and I traveled around the country and certified instructors and presented at conferences and, you know, some of the things that I was seeing that was going on in these spin classes and not just spinning, just indoor cycling in general. It just didn't make sense to me. And I started, you know, asking questions and inquiring and some of the instructors I was training, you know, would ask me, well, what about this move or that move. And I. And I'd say, well, that's not very effective and it's pretty dangerous, and so why would you do it? And they say, but all the instructors do it. So I started doing a little bit more research and working with. As you know, I'm an outdoor cyclist, and I know a lot of these things an outdoor cyclist would never do. And this is one of the reasons that some cyclists won't go near a spin class or an indoor cycling class because of that kind of aerobics on a bike mentality. So I have spent the better part of the last five, six, even seven years interviewing cyclists, coaches, talking with biomechanists and looking for the most effective way to train indoors. And that's where Keep It Real came from. Its original target is cyclists. So to teach cyclists how to come to an indoor cycling class and tell them what to avoid. Things that would take away from their cycling ability, from their technique, and maybe potentially be dangerous. But then I realized that it's not just for cyclists. It's for anybody. It's for anybody who wants to know how to go into a indoor cycling class and make sure it's effective training and safe. Because a lot of these very popular movements are really not that safe, Ben. I mean, there's, you know, potential injuries, aches and pains, and people have a misconception of what a good workout is.

What type of things? Like, can you give me a couple examples of, like, things that people might experience in indoor spin class that they shouldn't be doing and why?

Okay. Some of the more popular ones are if you've ever been in a class where the instructor says to freeze or to isolate a certain part of the body, like hold your shoulders still or hold your hips really still, and what you're doing is you're preventing the normal natural movement that needs to occur. All that stress goes into the joints. I mean, you start feeling it at your hips and knees. But what they think is a good workout is that the quads or the glutes start to burn a little bit. And the misconception is that that's an effective way to train. It doesn't make you stronger. It's not going to make you better cyclists. It's not going to make you burn more calories. It's not going to improve your indoor cycling. It's going to do absolutely nothing for you fitness wise. But it does have some potentially dangerous or uncomfortable side effects. And that's problems in the joints you never want to hold still. Well, you wouldn't do that on a bike outside, but outdoors, your bike moves side to side and it flexes underneath you. Indoors, the bike doesn't move at all. So by freezing, all of that movement it needs to go somewhere. It goes right into the joints. And so it often could even lead to back pain, which would prevent people from coming back. And we don't want that. We want people to keep coming back. So never freeze. Don't do any isolations. Just always have subtle movement as you're riding the bike.

Gotcha.

Another really popular, very popular thing to do indoors is to pedal really, really fast. And as you know, that'll raise your heart rate. But just because your heart rate is high does not mean, one, that you're getting a good workout or two, that you're even burning that many calories. Because exercise scientists, physiologists, know the principle of burning calories is really more related to your. How much work you're doing. Right, Right. And work indoors on a bike, we can measure with a power meter. Now, obviously, most bikes don't have power meters, but if we were to put a power meter on those bikes, I could prove to these people who are pedaling at 120, 130, 140rpms with no resistance that they're actually not putting out the power, and therefore they're not burning calories. It is much better to slow down the cadence and turn up the resistance. I think people who are unfamiliar with cycling, who take indoor cycling classes, I think they're a little bit. Some of them are a little bit afraid of resistance. They think it's going to give them big legs or, you know, kind of. I'm not sure exactly why, but resistance indoors is good. You shouldn't pedal faster than, say, around 100 rpm unless. There's always exceptions, Ben. I mean, nothing is ever black and white. You can do it in drills for short periods or unless you really are a super strong, effective, and, you know, efficient cyclist. So all those classes where you just. We like to say they look like hamsters on crack with the feet going around. Or the Road Runner, where the feet are going around so fast, but there's no resistance so that the people are bouncing around in the saddles. Better to slow it down, turn it up. You will burn more calories.

Interesting. So in your book, Keep It Real, what is it that you put in there? Is it just a bunch of workouts, or do you talk more about what you were just outlining to me or how is that book put together?

Well, the first half is devoted to what movements are safe and what movements are unsafe and. Or ineffective. You know, there's some things that, you know, maybe you're not going to get injured doing in them, but they're not very effective. You'd be better off, like the example I just gave, better off turning up the resistance and slowing the legs down if you want to burn more calories and if you want to get stronger. So that's the first half I described the. In the indoor cycling world, we call those kind of ineffective moves, we call them contraindicated moves. So that I highlight a lot of the contraindications in spinning or indoor cycling. And then I describe the most effective way to ride a bike. How to do a seated flat, how to do a standing climb, how to do a proper sprint. And so the movements that are what we know from cycling to be very effective in, in producing increasing performance and increasing power output and increasing strength. Muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance, aerobic endurance, all those elements of fitness that we really want, I just tell you how to do them properly. And this is not. This is not a philosophy of indoor cycling like some people say, oh, Jennifer, that's just the spinning way, or that's just the, you know, your way of doing it. No, this is not a philosophy. This is based on science and understanding of proper training principles. My style is different. That's how I teach. But always using the proper training principles.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Then the second half of the book is a lot of workouts. It's. It's like, okay, now that I've told you how to do it, what to avoid, and how to do it properly, here are some really great ways to improve your performance and to get more fit. So there's a lot of interval workouts in there.

Yeah, I've actually tried some of them out because I used to do a lot of spin instructing myself. And yeah, they're good workouts. By the way, is your cell phone on?

I just turned it off. Sorry.

Anyways, moving on. Is this book something that would be for. For just like a spin instructor or could the average person who just wants to get into indoor cycling make it through the book?

Well, like I said at the beginning, my original target was cyclists, but then I realized that anybody wanting to take indoor cycling should read this. And Ben, I'll tell your listeners you probably sold the most books from me, so people listen to you. So a lot of your readers and listeners have actually purchased this book and I've gotten emails from some of them that it really has helped Them feedback from people.

That's why I continue to recommend it as pretty much like the bible for indoor cyclists and indoor cycling instructors.

Instructors as well. Now, because that's my passion is obviously indoor cycling and making it safe and effective.

But.

But I train instructors now. I've since moved on from spinning and have started my own indoor cycling online indoor cycling instructor training program.

I noticed that and I was going to ask you about it.

Yeah, it's been really exciting because I'm not associated with one program. We like to say we're non denominational. It doesn't matter your certification, whether it's spinning or Schwinn or there's so many out there, we will take instructors to the next level. We're not teaching them a philosophy, we're just teaching them proper training principles taken from the cycling world because it works and because it's based on science, but brought indoors so that even the non cyclist, the non athlete, the person who's only interested in general fitness or weight loss or getting stronger, they're going to benefit too. And in this process of creating this, I've realized that Keep It Real is also, like you said, the bible for indoor cycling instructors. Again, it's not based on one program.

Right, right. Well, I want to put a link to that indoor cycling instructor website that you now have and I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes. So if you're listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com when you hear this and I'll put a link in there over to Jennifer's new site. But I want to go back.

Yeah, it's www.indoorcycle.

I'Ll throw a link in the show notes and people can just grab it. What are your tips? If you were going to take your book and you were going to give like the top three tips from the book to people who are listening in, who maybe they're cycling instructors or maybe they just go to an indoor cycling class. If you were going to tell people how to get the most bang for their buck out of a spin class or an indoor cycling class, what would be the top things that they could do? Let's go ahead and initially say to get the most performance benefit out of an indoor cycling or spin class, okay.

There are so many, but I have one which I will put above all else. And it's probably the most challenging Ben I know for as instructors, you know, they say I can't get my students to wear heart rate monitors. And one of the reasons is because all those Heart rate zones out there just don't make sense because they're based on max heart rate.

Right.

So my number one tip is to get a heart rate monitor and to learn about threshold training. Forget the charts that say 220 minus your age. It's like you might as well put a blindfold on and throw darts. And you'll probably get better training zones.

Right. Because those charts don't work when you learn. They're really inaccurate.

They're inaccurate. Now, threshold is somewhat complicated, and I do describe it in the book lactate threshold, anaerobic threshold. You know, there's various ways to describe it, but basically, in a nutshell, it's the level where your body moves from predominantly aerobic metabolism to predominantly much more anaerobic. You still use anaerobic metabolism above it. That's. Some people think it's a button. You just, you know, it switches on and off. But when you find out that intensity. And I'll just take a number. Suppose it's a heart rate of around 150. You can train so much more intelligently below it. You're going to burn more fat. But you don't have to go easy to burn fat. That's kind of a myth out there. You can still work all the way up to it and still burn fat and burn calories. When you work at that number, it's challenging, but you really. It probably gives you the most bang for your buck for your workout, because it really does a lot of very good things for you on a cellular and physiological level, and then you do intervals above it. So you just mix those three things in in a nice balanced way. Boom. That's like the easiest way to get fit. Balance your workouts. Base it on threshold.

Awesome. So number one tip, that's number one, don't use that maximum heart rate chart. Use a heart rate monitor and use, like, the threshold charts that you have in your book or the instructions you have in your book based off of determining your threshold.

Yes.

Cool. All right. What's number two?

Number two, one of the things that indoor cyclists who don't ride outside, they have a hard time. And I totally understand. You don't want to just sit in the saddle the whole time. It can get boring. You don't have to do that. On the other hand, you want to try to avoid the constant up, down, up, down, up, down. Some instructors think their students are getting bored. So I got to get them up and then I got to get them down. They're constantly changing. If you're used to changing every minute or every 30 seconds. Try to extend it, sit in the saddle a little bit longer. See if you can try three minutes and then four minutes and five minutes. You know, you don't have to go for a 30 minute, you know, seated flat. I'm not telling you that a cyclist would do that. But just try to extend the amount of time that you do each movement. And I'll tell you what, you're going to get stronger. You're going to, you can improve your leg speed, you're going to work on your pedal stroke, you're going to increase your muscular endurance and your strength. But all that stuff is not going to happen if you're constantly changing.

Gotcha. Yeah, it's a good point that you make that for someone who's say cyclists or triathlete, don't think twice about just sitting on a bike for an hour and pedaling.

Right.

But yeah, it's true that in indoor cycling we're used to up, down, up, down, up, down, and that's not necessarily the best way to be riding.

No. And you know, their heart rate might be high, but again, you know, the heart rate is not always a good indication of work because there are so many things that affect heart rate. If you're lucky enough to go to a spin program or indoor cycling program that has bikes with power, you probably recognize that it's all about power output and not necessarily heart rate. But people like that up and down stuff because they get this false sensation that they're getting such a great workout simply because their heart rate is high.

Gotcha. All right, so number three way that you could get the most bang for your buck out of an indoor cycling class, what would it be be?

Keep it real. Keep it real means, and that's the title of the book and the theme behind the book, if you think about it. If a cyclist wouldn't do it outside, then there's reasons for that. It's because it's going to make them cycle worse. They're not going to be able to do what they're doing very well if they're squatting on the bike, or if they're holding their abdominals in tight, or if they're doing push ups on the bike, or if they're doing any kind of twist or turns or popping up and down. If a cyclist wouldn't do it outdoors, you wouldn't do it indoors. Now, that doesn't mean we don't do drills. Indoors. We can do drills, but just leave the aerobics on a bike elsewhere. Keep the weights off the bike. Do them when you're done. Go into the weight room and do your, you know, your, your bicep curls and your shoulder presses. Don't do them while you're cycling. Do your abdominal crunches off the bike. They don't do anything for you when you're sitting on the bike and pulling down towards the handlebars. It just, it's, it goes against everything we know about proper training.

Yeah, I learned to be an indoor cycling instructor kind of in the typical spin class environment. A lot of happy clappy up, down, get off the bike, do push ups, get back on, or else just put on 10 songs and everybody go hard when the song goes through the chorus type of thing. Right after I instructed for about a year and a half or two, I really started to get into triathlon and cycling and began to use a lot of the physiological concepts that I'd learned in triathlon and cycling and brought them into the spin class. So the classes became a lot more structured and a lot more similar to the type of workout you do if you were a cyclist or if you were a triathlete. And even the non cyclists and non triathletes in that class started to get results that were just through the roof in terms of like their butt toning, the way their legs looked, the amount of weight they were losing and calories they were burning. And the class was wait list only for the next two years until I quit instructing because of that.

Well, it's too bad you quit. They could use you. I know you're so busy. Well, that gives me. That reminds me of, along those lines of an example. I was doing a instructor certification down in Florida. It was in Miami years ago. In fact, this one instance is one of the things that got my brain thinking, oh my God, there's a disconnect out there. And so I had instructors to be in the room and I was on the segment we're talking about proper cadence while seated on a flat road. And I actually had a metronome which would, you know, I could put it up to the microphone. And it beeped. And I was trying to get them to ride somewhere around 90 RPM. So 90 RPM, which is pretty quick. She, it's one instructor, one person up in the front was pedaling at about 140 RPM. And again, she looked like the roadrunner, couldn't see her legs. And so I stood next to her and I held the microphone, I mean the metronome up so she can See the light beeping? I was like, that's one leg. Come on, let's, you know, add resistance. So she would add like, you know, a couple millimeters at a time. I said, no, no, you've got to add more. You never want to touch someone's resistance knob. You want to inspire them to turn it up themselves. So finally, it took a long time, but finally she added enough that slowed her legs down to about 90 RPM. And I said, there, that's it. And you know what she said? She said, oh, you mean a hill? And I went, no, no, no, no, that's not a hill. A flat road has resistance, and phenom cyclists may not understand that. So it's always, you know, it's beneficial even if you don't ride bike. This is what I tell instructors. Even if you don't ride a bike, even if your students don't ride a bike, to get out on a bike and experience some of those things I'm talking about, because a cyclist pedaling at 140rpm, you know what? They're going to have to be in their granny gear. And you and I know what a granny gear. It's the tiny, tiny gear that allows your feet to go fast. But if you're on a flat road, a child on a tricycle will go faster than you.

Right.

So we know outdoors, you would instinctively raise your gear so that you can pedal slower but make the bike go faster. Well, we're missing that indoors. So they don't have that movement or lack of forward movement on the bike to tell them that, no, this 140 RPM is not very effective.

Right, right.

All of that is described in the book.

Yeah. And folks, definitely, you know, this interview is coming in the winter, so if you haven't taken an indoor cycling class or a spin class and something you're interested in getting into, I do recommend it. But I recommend that before you step foot in there, you read Jennifer's book. So I'll put a link to the book in the show notes. And for you indoor cycling instructors out there, check out the indoor cycling instructor website. I'll put a link to that as well.

It's called ICI Pro.

So be sure to check that out. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the call today.

Well, it's been my pleasure.

Awesome. Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Jennifer Sage signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. well, folks, that's going to wrap up today's podcast. Be sure to go to the show notes to get links to everything that we went over in this podcast. You do that by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and surfing down to podcast number 1332 or using the handy search function that's right there. By the way, all the podcasts are transcribed too, so if you don't like to listen to them, you can read them. Or if you heard something that you don't want to surf through an MP3 file to find, just go to the website, do a search for the phrase that you were looking for, and you can just read that section of the podcast transcription. And typically they're transcribed within two weeks after they come out. Now, the last thing is, of course, if you like the podcast, please go to itunes, leave a ranking, leave a comment. And of course, if you haven't subscribed yet in itunes, be sure to subscribe because that really drives the ranking of the podcast up. Last thing, remember, if you have a podcast that you like to listen to and you want to tell the host of that podcast to write me about having me onto their podcast, I would love to be a guest subject or interview. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.