Episode #133: The Ultimate System To Learn How To Swim Faster, Even If You’re Just Getting Started.

In this podcast how to Swim Faster Even if you're just getting started, how fast do you lose muscle memory? Supplements for anxiety what are the effects of long term endurance training? More on multivitamins how much urination is normal? Does hot or cold exposure burn more calories? What type of water filter is best? How you get skinny Fat pie Science water Trigger point Dry needling what is nadh for sleep? Is flax oil bad for you? Pain on the top of the foot and how many carbohydrates to eat after weight training?

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 edge content from Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. This is Ben Greenfield. I have a guest on the show today who has been creating for the past several years a new type of way to learn how to swim based on on your body type. His name is Paul Newsom. He's from Swim Smooth. I'll put some links in the show notes for you as you listen in so that you can go check out his program. We also of course have a listener Q and A. So let's go ahead and jump right into the special announcements for this week.

Special Announcements.

First of all, you may have noticed earlier this week if you're listening to this podcast, when it first comes out that I did a post on a valiant Valentine's Day special. Specifically, it was a post that linked over to my friend Jeff Anderson's website where he taught you how to make your own supplements. Or at least has a book over there where he teaches you how to make your own supplements. In the actual post itself, I mentioned a couple of supplements that Jeff recommends using, especially in males, to, shall we say, enhance your performance. But over at Jeff's website he actually has an entire book devoted to making your own muscle building supplements, fat loss supplements, etc. I got lots of questions and concerns about that post. First of all, let me address the concerns. After reading back over the post, it did make it look like Jeff was actually giving away some stuff for free over on his website. I apologize for making it sound like that. After reading over the post, I did realize that it sounds like that his book actually does cost $27 to go over there and get that book about making your own supplements. And then the questions that I received were do I actually recommend doing that? Let's just put it this way. You need to be a real do it yourselfer and you need to make sure that you do your research and use higher quality ingredients. And Jeff gives some pointers about how to do that in his book. And as a matter of fact, the whole Valentine's Day special that he's running, where you get access to not only his muscle building and fat loss do it yourself supplements, but also his sexual supplements, is going to be going until this Friday. So you've still got time to go over there and check it out. And I'll put a link to that in the Show Notes. A couple other things. The first is that this particular podcast gets lots of traffic. We are one of the top podcasts on itunes. The blog itself gets anywhere from 30 to 40,000 visitors each month. And you can now have the opportunity to advertise on the BenGreenfieldFitness.com website. I've put a link to our advertising sheet there. So if you or your business are in the health or fitness or nutrition type of industry, go check out that link to our new advertising information. And then finally, over at the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page, we're doing lots of new things. I'm now recording workouts. For example, today I will be riding my bike, but that bike ride will go live to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page and I'll be explaining some of the things I'm doing with heart rates, intervals, etc. Now that's only available over at the Facebook page and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Or you can just go to facebook.com bgfitness now the other thing is that everything that I have available in terms of nutrition, consulting, personal training, supplements, gear, anything like that is now available on the Facebook page and I am giving $20 to anybody who wants to use 20 bucks to shop on that page. If you put a link to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page on your Facebook page, all you got to do is just shoot me a note once you've done it and I will send you the coupon for $20 that you can use to shop for anything over at the new shopping page@facebook.com bgfitness so links to all of those things are in the show notes. We've got one special announcement and then we're going to move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

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Listener Q and A.

If you have a question for the show, you can call toll free to 877209 9439. You can Skype to username PacificFit or you can simply use the Ask a Question form, which is located on the show Notes to any of the podcast episodes and this episode is podcast number one 32. And our first question this week comes from Andy, who asks I trained 20 weeks for an Ironman and completed it last August. Since then I've not been on my bike or swam at all and I've just started to pick up running. As a 49 year old male, how much muscle mass and memory would I have lost? Well, this concept of muscle memory is kind of interesting. The idea is that when you're participating in any sport, all of these motor skills and these movement combinations that you're using are requiring some type of strength or endurance or skill to perform. Now what happens is that not only do you build new muscle fibers to accommodate the different directions in which you're moving, but you also get enhanced motor neuron excitability, meaning that your motor neurons actually will increase the amount of nerves and the number of motor neurons that are stimulated in the muscle itself. And so there's this better communication between your nervous system and your muscles. Now studies have looked at what happens when you actually quit training and you quit stimulating a muscle. Your actual efficiency does not decrease. And the way that they inspect something like this is they look at the neuromuscular activity compared to the actual torque that's generated by the muscle itself that doesn't decrease. So whereas you would think that when you quit running or swimming or cycling, you'll lose a lot of your economy or your efficiency or your skill of movement when you return to the sport, you actually don't lose too much of that, according to research. Now what you do lose, and you do lose fairly quickly, is the actual strength and specifically the muscle fibers. So you lose the neuron's ability to actually excite the muscle. So you get a decrease in strength of the muscle from that. And then you also get a loss of actual muscle fiber or a conversion of your endurance muscle fiber into into your more non endurance strength or power type of muscle fiber. So what happens is that whereas you can, you can get right back in to swimming and cycling and running without a significant loss of skill. You are going to experience a significant loss of actual fitness and you're going to get tired sooner, you're going to be able to produce less force, you'll be able to not travel quite as quickly, and all of that stuff will have to be rebuilt through fitness training. But you can actually not have to worry too much about, say, quitting swimming for two months, picking it back up and having to relearn the skill all over again. The body picks that up very quickly because again, that efficiency is not lost. Now, of course, there is something to be said for consistency in training. And I don't really recommend the process of training for a long period of time and then just going cold turkey or quitting cold turkey for a while. I've had many athletes who I coach who will train for say, eight months and then take four months off. And the people that do that and come back after those four months always literally lose almost 50% of the next eight months just getting back into shape. So consistency in training really is one of my secrets for staying fit. I never really stop training, it's just that I'm always training in new modes. So I don't ever really have say like an off season or rest period as much as I have periods where I change up the type of training that I do. So we're going to move on to the next question, which is from Jacob. Jacob says I take prescription to help control anxiety and depression. Any thoughts on supplements to assist these? And have you heard of any science that would indicate that lots of workout volume would either help or hinder anxiety? Well, for the first part of your question, absolutely. There are tons of natural therapies and supplements for anxiety disorders. One of the ones that I've mentioned on this show before, in terms of its ability to kind of calm you down, is maca or maca root powder. That's spelled M A, C A. I actually will occasionally take some of that dissolved in water. Another one that's kind of like the Hawaiian equivalent of marijuana that I've used before when I've been down in Hawaii. It's completely legal, but it's one of their main anti anxiety herbs. It's called kava kava. And you can get that in a liquid form, you can get it in a powder form, but that's also used for things like anxiety, tension, stress. St. John's Wort is another and that's traditionally used in herbal medicine for depression or Anxiety. And both the kava kava and the St. John's you wouldn't want to combine those with a medical antidepressant drug. There are some interactions there you'd want to be careful with. A few others that can kind of calm you down would of course, be the things that we would use for sleep, like valerian or chamomile. There are other things that kind of fly under the radar in terms of homeopathic remedies for anxiety and depression or what are called ayurvedic herbs. Withania is one, passion flower is another. There's one called skullcup. All of these things you can typically get as tinctures, which are basically like little oil extracts that you can use in aromatherapy. Some of them you just place directly under your tongue, some of them you ingest. But any of those would be stuff that you could try for sure. I'm not prescribing those. I'm not saying they're going to be more efficacious than your medication. But considering that some anxiety and depression medication can have some side effects, specifically one of the more serious ones being that it can actually increase the risk of suicidal thoughts, especially in younger people. And you can also get some, some agitation, some irritability, there may be, there may be something in it for you to look at some of the alternatives. Now, in addition to that, as far as actually being more prone to anxiety or depression from your training, there are definite disorders that can occur when you are regularly stressing your body. And this can include basically a hyperactive stress response. And the reason that the hyperactive stress response occurs is when you're working out a lot, your body produces a ton of stress hormones, produces a lot of cortisol, it produces a lot of adrenaline, a lot of noradrenaline, and excessive or chronic exposure to these type of hormones can result in anxiety and depression. As a matter of fact, an over training syndrome, which is something that is experienced a lot, especially among endurance athletes. Antidepressant medications have been one of the things that have been traditionally described to actually restore performance after you've been over training. Now, I'm not necessarily in agreement that those type of medications would be more efficacious than simply resting and using some of the herbal type of medications that I talked about earlier. However, there is a direct link between overtraining or excessive training, especially excessive endurance training or excessive aerobic exercise and the subsequent production of cortisol and the chronically elevated levels of cortisol that can lead to anxiety and depression. Now, in an upcoming interview with Phil Maffetone, we're going to talk about overtraining in more detail, but suffice it to say it is an issue and it's a bigger issue for aerobic and endurance athletes than it is for people who are, say, weightlifting or doing high intensity interval training. Next question is from Mike and it's kind of related. Mike says. Ben, now that the big four are all approaching or past 50, have there been any studies conducted on the long term health effects of ultra endurance training? Now, when Mike says the Big Four specifically, what he's referring to are the Big four traditionally like the top Big four Ironman triathletes. And that would be Dave Scott, Mark Allen, Scott Tinley and Scott Molina. Don't feel bad if you didn't know who the Big Four are or were. They were big big triathletes back in the 80s though, and now many of them are coaches and authors and advisors. Now, as far as the chronic effects of ultra endurance athletes, there haven't been any long term studies that I'm aware of on say, like Ironman triathletes. There has been a study that's cited quite frequently that shows better cardiovascular parameters in, in people who have run for a long period of time. There was a study done on elderly runners and they were found to have significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease and positive effects on their immune system and also their endocrine system. And these active elderly subjects reported running about 50 to 60 minutes four days a week. So they were covering about 35 to 40 miles a week in their training. Now, traditionally that volume is significantly less than what an Ironman triathlete is going to experience in their Ironman training. You know, many of these big four athletes, they were training anywhere from 25 to 40 hours a week in many cases, which is a lot of training. Now there are some things that happen after something like an Ironman triathlon that may affect you long term. So if you look at people who they've studied after endurance events such as marathons, what happens is after you've finished and this stays in your system for up to several weeks after you finish, your good cholesterol goes down and your bad cholesterol goes up and your red blood cell counts and your white blood cell counts can go down. And so your liver gets damaged a little bit, your gallbladder function is decreased, testosterone goes way down, cortisol goes way up, you get infiltration of collagen into your muscle fibers, which can cause some degeneration of your mitochondria which are the little portions of your cell responsible for cellular metabolism. So we may see a dip or a damage to the metabolic rate. There's some renal abnormalities or kidney dysfunction that can occur after the marathon or ultra endurance event has been finished, as well as damage to the vascular system. The actual blood vessels get inflamed and damaged. Now, there was one study, or actually a couple studies that showed that marathon running elevates markers of cancer, specifically a tumor necrosis factor. And again, this was close to the marathon. It wasn't done long term. Looking at someone who'd run marathons for 30 years and compared them to someone who hadn't, it was specifically looking at people who had just run a marathon versus people who hadn't. There is some brain trauma, brain damage, dysfunction in the blood, brain barrier that can occur after you've completed an ultra endurance event or even a marathon. There's some heart damage that can occur. Specifically, echocardiographic studies have found cardiac dysfunction following ultra endurance exercise. And that was in trained individuals. And that particular study was actually done on people who had competed in Ironman and Half Ironman. And all of these abnormalities in terms of some of the loss of function in the heart are all reversible. Okay, I'm just reporting this information to you. I'm not saying that any of this would not be reversible or that would result in long term damage. There has been some evidence that endurance athletes have more spinal degeneration. Now, I'm not quite sure it's going to be anything different than what you'd see in say like a football player, but there's definite joint degeneration that occurs. There's been at least four people who did the Boston marathon who died of brain cancer in the past 10 years. And part of that was due to elevated levels of some of those cancer factors that I mentioned earlier, that tumor necrosis factor. And if you think about the very first guy who ever did a marathon, he did collapse and die at the finish of the race. So there's definite stress that occurs from a cardiovascular, an endocrine and an immune system perspective directly after you've finished. But the argument can be made that that actually makes you stronger because our bodies do grow stronger from our immune systems to our muscles in response to stress. So there really isn't much evidence that shows that that type of stress that occurs after doing like an Ironman triathlon is necessarily going to be making you weaker or shortening your life. Now next we get to the question about joint health, Arthritis, joint Breakdown. One of the big four that you mentioned, Scott Tanley, I know, has had a hip replacement. But studies that have looked at osteoarthritis in aging athletes have actually found less musculoskeletal pain and a lower risk of cartilage breakdown or lower cartilage breakdown, period. And part of what's suggested for that reason is that most endurance athletes are simply lighter and they're carrying around less excess body weight in general. And so, you know, in addition to that, they've got better stability, better strength around the muscles that support that joint. From an aging perspective, I can definitely say from just walking around triathlons and marathons in the days leading up to the race, endurance athletes definitely have an issue with premature aging in terms of wrinkles, skin, etc. Most of that is due to a combination of excessive sun exposure and also free radical formation, meaning that the more food that you eat, the more carbohydrates that you eat, the more oxygen that you consume, the more free radicals that you produce, the more damage that can occur, and a lot of that will show up on the skin. Now, if you're taking antioxidants regularly, or at least using them in moderation, and you're also taking care of your skin, not engaging in excessive sun exposure, using a sunscreen where it matters, you may be able to actually take care of that as well if you're just smart about things. So, ultimately, I would say that the research doesn't really go either way at this point. The final thing that I would say is that there was one study done on the telomeres, which is the sequence at the end of the human chromosome, and they have actually found shortened telomeres in endurance athletes. And shortened telomere length can suggest that the ability to repair muscle damage is actually diminished. And I do think that endurance athletes in general, due to their chronic training and usually a little bit less focus on recovery, probably do walk around with more muscle damage on a daily basis than the average individual. But again, there's not necessarily a direct correlation that's been drawn between that and your longitivity or, for example, your risk of cancer. So, at this point, I'm a bit neutral on the matter, But I would say that it benefits you to be eating very well, managing your carbohydrate and your total calorie intake to make sure that you're not contributing to an inflammatory or an acidic condition that produces a lot of free radicals, doing things like taking care of your skin, doing things like using supplements that help to balance out a lot of the damaging training that you are doing and allowing for proper recovery when the time comes. So good question. This is an interesting discussion and I'm sure that people have their own thoughts on this, so be sure to leave them as comments on the show. Notes to this podcast podcast number 132Jim says I'm looking for a good multivitamin to take. What would you recommend? Also can you recommend a vitamin for my kids? As far as the multivitamin for you, Jim, I've talked about this on the show before. It's my opinion that a lot of multivitamins are a waste of money because many of the things that they're giving you, for example the vitamin C and some of the B complex, some of the other minerals, etc. Can be gotten from a high vegetable intake and eating lots of real whole foods. However, I do recommend that even if you're not taking a multivitamin, you supplement with some type of greens supplement as well as a vitamin D, a magnesium and an omega 3 fatty acid source. That's exactly what I do. I don't take a multivitamin but I do take a green supplement, a magnesium, a vitamin D and an omega 3 fatty acid. I will occasionally take like an energy complex that's got some vitamin B12 in it and you know, sometimes I'll use like an effervescent tablet that has some other vitamins thrown in, but I don't take a multivitamin per se. I would say that if you're vegan or vegetarian, you may need to think a little bit more seriously about taking a multi, for example to get those levels of something like a B12 as far as your kids go. My kids do take a multivitamin and they take one that is a liquid multivitamin. I will put a link to it in the show notes for you. But I do think that because of kids rapid growth and metabolism cellular turnover that getting multivitamin into them is a wise thing to do. And the multivitamin should contain some omega 3s because your kids brains are rapidly growing. It should contain a good balance of minerals, meaning it should balance out the calcium levels with magnesium levels. It should not have artificial sweeteners in it. The stuff that I use is sweetened with organic stevia and it should actually be tailored to the needs of the kid. So we use a liquid multivitamin because liquid vitamins are better absorbed and the one that we use is called Kids Natural Calm. Our kids get that and a little bit of water with breakfast each morning and I love this stuff. I think it's great. I wish I had had the opportunity to take it when I was a kid. There's a lot of other things in there that are specifically tailored for children that I don't have time to get into, but I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go check it out yourself and see if it's something that you want to do. Alex asks I drink lots of water throughout the day to keep hydrated. Although I work at an office, I urinate a lot as a consequence. I've heard this is not ideal, but I'm not sure what to do. Any advice? Well, I drink a lot of water too. I drink about the equivalent of a water bottle, like a 24 ounce water bottle every couple hours or so, and I urinate every couple hours or so. I pay attention to the color of my urine and make sure that it's never a dark yellow. And the only time that I would want it to be that color is if I had just taken something that contained, for example, a lot of vitamin B. But for the most part, I do urinate more frequently than many of my peers, and that is because I'm not in a constant state of dehydration. The average person urinates about two cups every two hours or so. Now, if you do have frequent urination and you're concerned about it, you may want to look into checking with your physician to make sure that you don't have diabetes or what would be referred to as water diabetes or diabetes insipidus. That's something you could look into. It's probably not the case, but ultimately one side effect of drinking lots of water and staying hydrated is that you will urinate more frequently. If you want to try and back it off a little bit, then just back it off until you get to the point where you're not urinating light yellow or clear. At that point, you've probably gotten to the point where you're drinking too little. If you want a really easy starting point for how much you drink during the day, take your body weight in pounds, divide that in half, and that's approximately how many ounces of water you would be drinking. So if you weigh 180 pounds, 90 ounces of water during the day, and more than that if you exercise. But ultimately I think you don't have to worry about it too much.

Hey Ben, My name is Army Leg and I love the podcast. But of course, really, who doesn't? I had a question about Hot Cold weather, exercising. Now, recently you had Ray Kronice on the NASA Science materials engineer, and he talked about how when you decrease your external body temperature, your superficial body temperature, like your skin, and through ice baths and that kind of thing, that your body, through its struggle to maintain homeostasis, will increase metabolism for a period of time in order to counter that, obviously burning more calories and expending more energy. Then also when you talk about saunas and that kind of thing, we hear that when you are trying to shuttle blood to the surface of the skin, that that is also expending more energy. And obviously we're expending it through sweat because we have to heat up the water and it evaporates through our skin. All of which requires energy. Basically my question is, which actually uses more energy? Working out in cold weather, Working out in warm weather.

Well, the idea behind you being able to burn more calories in hot weather is because your heart has to work harder. Your heart pumps extra blood to bring oxygen to your muscles, and also at the same time needs to pump all the hot blood from your hot muscles to your skin, where that heat gets dissipated. And so the process of doing that would actually cause you to burn more calories versus your heart not actually having to pump harder. And that's why if you just walk into a room that is, say 20 degrees warmer and your heart starts to beat faster. The heart is a muscle and it does require additional calories to beat faster in cold weather, what happens? And we talked about this in detail in podcast, I believe it was number 129 where we, we talked with Tim Ferriss and Ray Cronice about cold exposure and calorie burning. The idea is that in cold weather, not only do you have to warm the air you breathe and you have to shiver to stay a little bit warm, but your body actually can adjust your metabolism to produce more heat to basically fight off the drop in body temperature. And there actually was one study that showed that scantily clad research subjects who exercise in cold weather burned about 30, 13% more calories than when they performed that same exercise at room temperature. And Ray Kronice, in that interview that we did, went into a bunch of other research that he's done on himself when it comes to weight and body fat. Now, there haven't really been any big studies that have looked into how much cold exposure could actually affect calorie burning or really how much warm exposure could increased calorie burning. Most of the studies that have looked into this have been pretty small, but ultimately what it comes down to is that your body does have to burn calories for thermogenesis or to maintain your normal body temperature. And whether you are exposing yourself to cold temperatures or hot temperatures, either one is going to cause you to burn more calories. Now, I suspect expect that when research is actually done on this, it's going to find that the metabolic process of keeping the body warm probably burns more calories in the metabolic process of keeping the body cool, because keeping the body cool mostly requires the heart to just pump a little harder. Because the heart is a very efficient muscle, it doesn't have to burn a ton of extra calories to do that. But keeping the body warm not only requires some adjustments to your metabolic rate, but also shivering and muscular contractions to actually keep you warm. And skeletal muscle contractions can burn more calories than cardiac muscle contraction. So even though I don't have any solid numbers to throw at you, I would hazard a guess that what you're going to be seeing is that cold temperature exposure can burn more calories. And that can be accomplished through something as simple as taking a few cold showers during the day, making sure that you go work out in the cold every now and again, doing something like incorporating stuff, swimming into your exercise routine, etc. I personally every week get kind of a mix of hot exposure when I'm, for example, riding my bike indoors, with cold exposure, for example, when I'm taking a cold shower or swimming. So try and give yourself the best of both worlds. I suspect that just from say, an evolutionary fitness perspective, and I'll talk about this more with Art Devaney in our interview as well, that our ancestors had strengthened immune systems because large fluctuations in temperature and the needs to actually regulate their body temperature based on being exposed to various elements. I think that if you sit at room temperature all day long and never get out and get a little uncomfortable, make yourself heat your body up or cool your body down, you're probably not taking full advantage of some of the immune strengthening and calorie burning benefits of that temperature exposure. Next question is from Andy, who says, hi Ben, in Inner Circle Podcast number six. You mentioned the benefits of using a reverse osmosis water filter to remove fluoride from drinking water. But isn't it true that such a filter would also remove all other potentially good and healthy minerals from the water? Yes, that that is a potential negative. Thing about reverse osmosis filtration is that if you're using reverse osmosis, it can reduce the minerals that are actually in the Water that you're drinking. Now, I personally use a central carbon water filter in my home. And whereas a carbon water filter can block a lot of industrial chemicals from getting into your drinking water, you know, including something like chlorine, it is not going to block minerals, but you know, at the same time it's really not going to block fluoride either. The city that I live in actually doesn't fluoridate its water. Spokane doesn't fluoridate its water. So that's really not something that I have to worry about. It would definitely be a bridge I'd have to cross if I did live in a city that fluoridated its water. And that's just something that you can't do a whole lot about. A dual stage filter system does use a combination of carbon filtration and what's called ion exchange filtration. And that leaves in natural trace minerals. So it may actually allow a little less fluoride to come through. It's called a dual stage filter system. That's something to look into. I'm not like the water filter expert, but I personally, because I live in an area that has non fluoridated water, use a carbon filter. Reverse osmosis is going to remove the fluoride, but you'll also lose the minerals. So I guess your other option would be use a reverse osmosis, but then you also pick up a liquid Angstrom mineral that you can take orally to make sure that you're replacing the minerals that you're not getting from the water that you're drinking. So I suppose that would be another option as well. It's a great question. Another water question Kyle asks. What are your thoughts on pie science products? Their products claim to influence the zeta potential of water to make it much more easily absorbed by the body. So I looked into this pie water and basically what they do is they have this, this thing called silica hydride that they add to the water along with hydrogen. And they claim that what this does is it increases the zeta potential of the water. And they describe zeta potential as the electric potential or the charge that exists in a hydrated particle and its surrounding solution. And so they say that when they increase the zeta potential in water that the water becomes more stable because all these charged particles repel one another and overcome their natural tendency to aggregate. So there's more space between the cells and the water that you're taking in. And supposedly what they're saying, based on the blood sample that they demonstrate on their website from a Single test subject is that if you're drinking water with cells that are more evenly dispersed, the blood in your body, which is made up of water volume, actually has cells that are also more evenly dispersed and that allows more nutrients into the cells because you have more of the cell membrane surface exposed and allows you to remove more toxins from the cell. So that's the idea behind it. There's not, aside from that single case study that they have listed on their website, any research that I could find, aside from a research that used the same thing, a silica hydride in water, to look at its potential to reduce liver damage in mice. And so the mice were treated with water very similar to this pie water with this silica hydride added to it. And it was found that it increased the activities of all of the different antioxidants inside the mice. So things like superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase and some of these things that we know are really, really powerful free radical buffers or antioxidants. And they also found that it reduced the incidence of the liver lesions in the mice. So it had this, this kind of liver protective effect and increase in antioxidant activity. So there's a little bit of evidence there that it may provide some benefit. I'm not completely certain that there is a life extending benefit to it or say an effect on your immune system. But it's interesting that there was a study that looked into this addition of silica hydride and did find that in mice there was a step up in the level of antioxidant activity. So it may be something to try. I don't know how much it costs. You know, there's always that cost benefit analysis, but it's an interesting concept. So those are my thoughts on it. I don't think it's going to hurt you. I'm just not convinced that it's necessarily worth the benefit until I saw some bigger studies in human subjects. A question from Alberto, who says, I'm 5 5, around £145. I look slender. What bothers me is that although I look slender, I have a beer gut. I would love any suggestions or advice. Okay, this is what I call skinny fat. Now, a skinny fat person is typically a lean person with skinny arms and skinny legs who has a gut and some type of abdominal protrusion that they can't seem to get rid of. It typically happens most often in two populations. Number one, vegetarians or vegans, and number two, endurance athletes. Not Saying that to make enemies among those populations. It's just a fact. And the reason for that is, is because there are typically two things that are happening in those populations. I'm not painting with a broad brush. There are many very, very healthy and fit and muscular and good looking vegans and vegetarians and endurance athletes. But for those who do experience the skinny fat syndrome, it's typically a combination of excessive carbohydrate intake combined with a lack of resistance training. So you get this decrease in the muscularity of your appendages because they're not being exposed to a strong enough stimulus to actually build muscle, because they're spending all their time, you know, just basically, you know, sitting in a, in a bike saddle or, you know, doing chronic repetitive running on the side of the road. And there's also a lack of high protein intake or good fat intake combined with a lot of things that are going to cause abdominal inflammation and abdominal fat deposition, specifically sugar and starch consumption. So my recommendation, if you are skinny fat, if you have skinny arms, skinny legs and a big belly, do a couple of things. First of all, increase your healthy protein and healthy fat intake. And number two, replace some of your endurance training with resistance training or weight training. You do those two things and you can usually begin to reverse or change the way that your body looks. So it could obviously be a lot bigger discussion than that, but that is basically what I would do if I were you. Ron asks, what is your take on trigger point dry needling? Trigger point dry needling is a little bit like acupuncture, so what a trigger point is, and it's kind of a catch all term sometimes, but it's either pain that can't be expressed, explained upon like a neurological examination. So you have this area that hurts. It's painful, it's sort of the touch. Typically, you know, like something the size of a quarter that basically hurts when you touch it. But when you're examined by a physician, they can't figure out like a neurological explanation for it. Typically when you palpate or you touch the area, the pain radiates around into the muscle that surrounds that area. Sometimes it feels like a band or an area very tight or hard tissue. Sometimes you can get the muscle to twitch if you stimulate the trigger point. And it can't be something that's caused by like trauma, like a bruising or any type of inflammation or infection. So all of those would be used to describe or classify something as a trigger point. Now the idea behind trigger point dry needling is that when Muscles develop these trigger points. They're very, very tight, and that hampers the normal function of the tissue around them. So if you use something like an acupuncture needle, and you basically put the needle into the trigger point, it causes this twitch response in the muscle fibers that surround that trigger point, and that actually decreases or reduces the electrical activity of the chemicals that actually are activating that trigger point. So rather than relying on explaining trigger point dry needling because of, say, like an increase in energy flow in the meridian surrounding the area, which is how it would be explained if we're using acupuncture, trigger point dry needling is saying that it's actually causing this electrical signal to be released that's decreasing the activity of the chemicals that could be causing the trigger point to be activated. I realize that when you hear that explanation, it all sounds a little bit mysterious and perhaps non scientific. And I'll be the first to admit that some of these acupuncture type of needling protocols really can't be explained completely from a scientific perspective. And some of it is energy based or based off of a reaction that we actually haven't been able to identify yet in medicine. But the idea is that you use the needle, it deactivates the trigger point and reduces the activity of the chemicals that could be causing inflammation in the muscle area. So that is trigger point dry needling. I personally do not have any athletes that I've coached or people who I work with who have tried trigger point dry needling. However, I have many people that I've worked with who have seen significant positive benefits from acupuncture. So I definitely think that trigger point dry needling is something that is worth trying if you have an injury that other methods have not been able to address, specifically a trigger point that other treatments have not been able to address. Next question is from Darrell. He says, what can you tell us about nadh? They ran an article about it in Men's Health recently, and the article was about sleep in Men's Health. Well, NADH is like one of the very, very first things that you learn about in biology and physiology. NADH stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. And it's basically this cofactor that helps enzymes in your body to do the work that they do. It's used all over the place in your body, and specifically, one of the places that it participates in in your body is in the production of L dopa, which your body turns into dopamine. And so the idea is that if you Supplement with nadh, you may actually have some type of positive mental benefit. And specifically, the study that was cited in Men's Health was a study on 35 people who took an overnight flight across four different time zones and they were given NADH under the tongue on the morning that they arrived in the place that they were flying to. Now, the people who were given the NADH scored significantly better on wakefulness and mental function 10 tests compared to the people who didn't get the NADH. There was another study that actually wasn't published. And in this study, people were kept awake all night and one group was given nadh, one group was not. Despite the sleep deprivation, the people who were given the NADH performed a lot better on a bunch of different measures of mental function and they were taking about 5 milligrams of NADH. So I guess if you pulled an all nighter, if you're like in school and you pull an all nighter and you want to try a supplement to help you do better on a test, then maybe the NADH would be something to actually look into from a safety issue perspective. It's one of those things where there haven't been a lot of formal safety studies that have been completed. So I can't tell you either way. I do know it. You know, it naturally occurs within your body and some stuff that naturally occurs in the body is a little bit safer to supplement with and stuff that doesn't. But ultimately your safety is in your own hands. If you decide to say, take 5 milligrams of NADH in the morning after you've pulled an all nighter before you go take a test, but, you know, could be worth a try. Another question from Mark, who is also reading Men's Health and says that in Men's Health it said taking flax supplements increased by 3,38% the markers of a free radical. The article said to stay away from flax and use omega 3 fatty acids instead. What is your take on this? I did see that study they supplemented with a flax oil and they did find that it increased the level of free radical activity. Now, the likely reason for this, which we've talked about this on the show before, is that many oils, if they are rancid or if they have been exposed to to high temperatures, can have increased free radical activity. And this is certainly an issue with commercially processed flaxseed oil. The way that flaxseed oil is made is not really regulated and it can be exposed to very high pressures or temperatures when the oil is extracted from the seed or bottled or capsuled or, you know, eventually wind up on the shelf wherever you're buying it. And if you're not looking into the source of your flaxseed oil, you could definitely be consuming something that may actually be bad for you. Or if you're even getting a good flaxseed oil but you're allowing it to be exposed to hot temperatures, it could also be bad for you. The flaxseed oil that I personally take is made from a certified organic flaxseed. A lot of the damage from heat and light and oxygen is eliminated because it uses a cold expeller press method of extraction. And all of the fatty acids are independently testified. They're certified pure. And the flax also contains an evening primrose oil as an added antioxidant source. So the stuff that I take for flaxseed oil is called nrefa. Now I take both a flaxseed oil as well as a fish oil. If you're vegan or vegetarian, obviously flaxseed oil would be a choice for you, but really look into the source of the flaxseed oil that you're taking. I will put a link to NREFA after your question in the show notes Mark and I definitely think it's something that you should think about when you're supplementing with an omega 3 fatty acid source.

Hi Ben, it's Naj from Chicago. I love both your podcasts and they've made a huge impact on my life. So I wanted to ask you some questions about a running related problem I've been having. I started running on interval in May and when I hit a 71 in September I had to go get some new shoes for overpronation and that fixed some shin splint problems I was having. But since about November I've had some new issues with a burning sensation in the front part of my ankles and the top of my foot arch starts occurring about 10 to 12 minutes into my run and since about January it started occurring about five minutes in and a few weeks ago it got so bad that I had to kind of sit down for three or four minutes to relax because the pain was just too intense before going home. My friends have said it's everything to do from the fact that I need some lower body weight training to strengthen muscles to not wearing some compression tights that I wear because of some circulation. Possible circulation issues, I'm not sure, but the evidence for the compression tights might be that when I ran in India I was there in December. There was no issues because I wasn't wearing those because it's cold in Chicago. That's why I wear them. I'm 6ft tall, 140 pounds. So if you can suggest the course of action, I'd really appreciate it.

So this pain at the top of the foot is something that I see very commonly among people who get new shoes, typically because the shoe doesn't fit right or it's stressing the foot in a different place than the individual is used to. So some of the things that can be related to pain at the top of the foot. Excuse me, can be a nerve entrapment. There's these little nerves that run down from your ankle to your toes, and they're located right underneath your skin. They're sensory nerves. And a lot of times simply the pressure from a shoe that might be tied too tight or even like a half size too small puts pressure on those nerves. They get jammed into the bones that are underneath them, and the nerve becomes entrapped and it becomes inflamed. And the only way to really fix that is to combine rest with getting bigger shoe or not tying your shoes quite as tightly. Stress fracture in the metatarsals on the bottom of the foot can result in pain on the top of the foot. And usually you're going to see some swelling or some redness. If that's the case, you can get bone spurs on the top of your foot, and typically you're going to notice some type of abnormal protrusion on the top of your foot. If that's the case, and that would usually be from damage to a joint or pressure from the shoe. If it's there for a long time, that can also cause a bone spur on the top of the foot. And then simple tendonitis or overuse can also be an issue. So there's a lot of different things that could be going on there. About 90% of the time I see that an issue like this is fixed when somebody goes to a bigger shoe, ties their laces less tightly, or gets the same size shoe, but looks into maybe doing a different type of insert or arch. So, for example, if you did an insert, it may have simply been too thick of an insert. Increase the pressure at the top of the foot because it made your shoe tighter, and you may simply want to look at a lower profile insert. So that's, that's what I think about. And then final question is from Chuck, who says, are the protocols for cardiovascular versus resistance training the same for post workout Nutrition should you use the 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 carb to protein protocol? I was under this impression, but in meeting with my nutritionist the other day, she said, after weightlifting, your body really only needs protein as the carbohydrate expenditure is not as intense as a hard cardio workout. Chuck, you're kind of going down the right path. Even though research shows that from a recovery perspective, whether it's endurance training or resistance training, a 3 to 1 or a 4 to 1 carbohydrate to protein ratio is ideal. From a weight loss or a fat loss perspective, you should consider that most of the time weight training is going to burn fewer calories and use overall less carbohydrate than a cardio training session. It is true that when you're lifting a weight, as far as the percentage of carbohydrate you use, it's greater, but the total number of calories that you burn and thus the total amount of carbohydrate that you burn is less. So you could potentially very easily over fuel on carbohydrate. If you're using a 3 to 1 or a 4 to 1 carbohydrate to protein ratio after a weight training session, my recommendation is that you take in about a 2 to 1 carbohydrate to protein ratio or even a 1 to 1 ratio. I typically see a lot better results in my clients who don't do a ton of carbohydrates after weight training session and instead just get a real meal down the hatch that has lots of healthy proteins or fats in it or do something closer to a 2 to 1 or 1 to 1 ratio. So basically what it comes down to is, yeah, from a weight loss or a fat loss perspective, you definitely don't need as many carbs after a weight training session. If you're doing this from a peer recovery perspective, then yes, you're going to. You're going to still benefit the most from using that 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 carbohydrate protein ratio. So that wraps up all the questions for this week. I will put a link to everything in the show notes and we do have the interview now with Paul Newsom from Swim Smooth and I will put a link to all his information in the show notes to podcast number 133.

Featured Topic.

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and if you were over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com this week, the week that this interview is coming out, then you may have noticed a pretty interesting article that went into A type of swim coaching that you may not have ever seen before or be familiar with at all. It's called swim typing. It's brand new and I've got the guy who invented it here on the call with me. His name is Paul Newsome. He is part of Swim Smooth. And I'll put a link to Swim Smooth in the show notes and a link to the swim typing things that we talk about today. But Paul has been swimming competitively in the open water for a long time. He's coached some of the top athletes around the world in swimming. He coaches right now down in Australia for a ton of super fast athletes down there. He really knows what he's talking about. So, Paul, thanks for coming on the call. You cut out there for just a second. What did you say?

Sorry, mate. Not a problem at all, Ben. It's a pleasure to be here.

All right, cool. So this whole swim typing thing, when I first saw it, I was kind of scratching my head for a minute and then I started to look over all these different swim types you guys have created. You know, we have all these books out there like Eat right for your metabolic type or what's your blood type. So the swim typing thing comes along and how does it actually work? What have you guys done in terms of creating a swim typing protocol?

Well, I think essentially, Ben, we've over the years, conventional swim coaching has had like a sort of one size fits all model. So the classic being monitoring how long somebody's swim stroke is. So the idea being that the longer you can make your stroke, the more efficiently you're swimming. But we started to notice over time that that doesn't really work for every swimmer out there. You might be hitting maybe 60% of your swimmers, but maybe not everybody. So we started to look a little bit closer and started to recognize that obviously everybody, when they swim, they have their own individual style. But through experience working with a range of different swimmers, we can start to see that there's like classic trends basically arising. And we've been able to identify six different swimmers based on things such as their body type and build, how long they've been swimming. Even personality, believe it or not, plays into it quite a bit. And as a coach itself and working with other coaches around the world, that's become quite an interesting system whereby coaches are able to easily and quickly identify maybe what swim type the swimmer is that they're dealing with. But not only how to actually deal with them from a technical perspective, but also how to communicate them. Communicate them on a verbal Perspective based on such things as, like personality traits, etc.

Right now, I thought it was kind of cool. The swim types that you guys have come up with. Can you go over those six different swim types, just like the basic overview, because you've named them kind of kind of funky names that I thought was interesting.

Absolutely. And we've given them fairly fun sort of caricatures to go with each one. So if we start off at the top, the first swimmer, which we see, and this swimmer's usually a very inexperienced swimmer, they often come to us saying that they're quite frustrated with their swimming. They're often quite a fit athlete, especially if they're doing triathlons. So very fit on the bike and run, but just can't seem to transfer that fitness or that strength as they see it across into their swimming. This swimmer's biggest holdback is that they tend to sink very, very low with their legs in the water and really look like they're fighting the water. They're often quite typically male, but there are female vers. We call them the Arnie or the female version, the Arnet. They tend to be quite muscular, quite strong, although there are obviously leaner versions out there as well. But this particular swim type is somebody who's very committed to getting much, much better with their swimming. They just maybe don't know how to do it and at the moment might be quite frustrated with their swimming. We then have the bambino. Now, the bambino usually is a female swimmer. They tend to be a much more lower powered version of the Arnie. So they look similar in some respects, but just without that sort of ump the arnie tends to have. They're typically swimming a little bit slower than the Arnie. But the big thing holding this particular swimmer back is sometimes a fear or anxiety of actually being in the water. And that's often due to the fact that their arm stroke or the coordination in the water is not conducive to supporting them well enough to take a proper breath of air in. So a lot of swimmers complain about not feeling comfortable with their breathing, but really the bambino is the type that really suffers with this the most.

Now, do you see bambinos just based on that name? Do you see that more among the female swimmers or is that pretty general across both sexes?

I would say maybe 70% female would be bambino. Oh, sorry, 70% of the bambinos we see would be maybe female and the other 30% would be male. Sometimes guys in particular don't want to think of themselves as being like a low powered version or a low powered athlete sort of thing. But really the whole basis or principle behind the swim types is really to not really to stereotype people as such, but to sort of give them a clear view of how they want to be improving their stroke based on how they're swimming at this moment in time. So it's quite possible, and what we'd be looking for is for that swimmer to obviously progress through the swim types system by following one of the training programs and actually become the best swimmer that they can be based on their starting points and body type and build and all those sort of things. So following on from the Bambino, we then have the kicktastic. Now the kicktastic is quite a common swim type. They tend to be in swimming for quite a long time, might have been involved in squad training programs as kids and juniors and maybe now getting into triathlon or open water swimming, for example. This swimmer has a very, very dominant leg kick. I think back to my days as a swimmer when I was growing up. As a kid, the coaches used to really stress a very, very strong, powerful leg kick. And we used to spend thousands of meters in training working on developing this really powerful leg kick. Now many of the kicktastics that we see these days tend to be swimming somewhere in of about a minute 25 to 215 per 100 meters roughly. And that'd be for a sustained effort swim. But oftentimes the really big powerful leg kick is masking some inefficiency within that swimmer's stroke. So maybe it's a lack of catch and feel for the water, maybe it's poor body position in the water and they're actually, rather than sort of dragging their legs through the water like an arnie would do, they're actually kicking very, very hard to try and keep their bum and legs up. Now as you can probably appreciate, this becomes very, very fatiguing indeed. And ultimately for triathlon in particular, the last thing you want to be doing is working overly hard with the legs and ruining things for the bike and run. So the kicktastic also tends to swim relatively flat in the water, lacks a bit of body rotation. But generally speaking, they do enjoy their swimming. What can be quite frustrating for the kicktastic, and sometimes they're not sure why this is slowing them down, is they tend to swim a lot slower with a pull buoy between their legs or even with a wetsuit on. Now if you appreciate if somebody's got good natural buoyancy in the water and they're kicking very, very strongly. If you give them a buoyancy aid, such as a pool buoy or in particular a wetsuit, which lifts them much higher at the back end of the stroke, where that might actually help the Arnie and help the Arnie swim a lot faster. For the kicktastic, that often throws their coordination balance out completely, and they end up swimming a lot slower as a result. So, you know, talking to your swimmers out there, Ben, if some of them are actually finding that in a squad situation, you know, the coach is saying, okay, guys, grab the pull buoys. And they find that they rapidly drift to the air to the back of the. To the back of the lane using the pull buoy, that can be quite a frustrating experience. And oftentimes people would sort of determine, therefore, that they're lacking strength. But it's not necessarily a strength thing. It's just typically like a technique thing, getting the. Getting the actual catching position correct underneath the water. So that's quite a nice swim type to deal with is the kicktastic, especially because in the open water with the wetsuit on, they often find that they don't go faster like most of the other swim types do. And because of that, they find it quite frustrating. So it's always nice to help this type of swimmer. We then move on to the overglider. Now, the overglider, there's a strong correlation.

Can I interrupt you for just a second? Just for the listeners, I'm an overglider. Okay, go ahead.

Hands up. Okay, no problem. Now, the overglider is quite an interesting swim type. This swimmer, the caricature that we've got there is a sort of lean, athletic looking male with quite a pensive look on his face. The overglider tends to be an overthinker. And like I say, historically swim coaches have looked at trying to improve people's efficiency by encouraging people to take as few strokes down the lap as possible. But ultimately, what determines how fast somebody moves through the water is a combination of the length of their stroke and the rate of their stroke. Now, many overgliders try and make their stroke almost a little bit too long. And sure, they might be going down the pool in quite a limited number of strokes, but how does this actually affect the rate of their stroke? Now, what we tend to see with this swimmer underneath the water when viewed on video analysis, is that as they stretch forward, they don't mean to do this, but as they stretch forward, their wrist and elbow tends to drop in the water and they effectively end up Applying the brakes, causing pressure at the front end of the stroke and effectively slowing themselves down. So this in itself actually slows the stroke rate down. So as an over glider, people often comment, you look great in the water, nice and smooth, but the frustrating thing is that you might still be quite slow. You might have reached a peak at around about 6 minutes or 6 minutes 30 for a 400 meter swimming. It's quite. You want to get faster, but somebody might say, okay, we just need to turn your arms over faster. But that's not necessarily the solution. If you're still swimming with this braking effect at the front end of the stroke and Ben, you might want to pull up on your show notes, we can send you over an example image of this and you recognize it immediately. Is this sort of deadening or breaking effect at the front end of the stroke slows that stroke right down. And if that's still there, if that's still present in the technique, it doesn't matter. If you try and turn your arms over faster, that's just going to simply feel like you're working very, very much harder. It's a little bit akin, I suppose, to driving down the freeway with your handbrake in the car. So in order for an over glider to get better, yes, the stroke rate needs to come up, but it needs to come up by actually removing that dead spot or delay at the front end of the stroke. Gotcha.

So for that dead spot visualization, that would actually be awesome if you could note to yourself to send that to me. And for people listening in, I'll put that in the show notes.

You can see it.

Not a problem at all. It looks a little bit like a stop sign, let's say, with the hand. Now, we've just very recently released a brand new DVD called the Catch Masterclass and it's focused specifically on the catch phase of the freestyle stroke. And we talk very, we talk in detail there about why the catch is quite, or the feel for the water is quite an elusive term for swimmers. And one of the reasons it's quite elusive is if you appreciate if you're actually creating like a stop sign as you stretch forward underneath the water, you might feel like you're gliding and you might feel like you're keeping pressure against the palm of the hand is very, very easy to misinterpret as actually being a good catch. When people get the catch right, people, a lot of people are expecting the catch to feel like a really strong sensation. But in reality, when you get the catch right and get the mechanics set up so that you're actually pressing water back behind you, then chances are you actually might feel less water pressure on the, certainly on the palm of the hand than what you would be if you're applying the brakes. So the overglider, really, that's what they need to be working on. They've already got very good body position, usually in the water. They've got good alignment, they've got a good sensation of what they need to be doing to get, be getting faster. They might have good rotation within the stroke, et cetera. But the big thing that's sort of causing them to plateau off is this lack of propulsion within the stroke. And Ben, I just took a guy for a session a couple of weeks back and he came down and he said, the first thing he told me was, I've been trying this technique now for five years and I can do 28 strokes per 50 meters. And he followed that on by saying, and that's better than Ian Thorpe, the, the famed Australian swimmer. That's better than Ian Thorpe. He said, but I still can't swim faster than 25 minutes. And I said, so I was thinking 20, what, 25 minutes for 1500, but he actually meant 25 minutes for a kilometer. So this guy was averaging 2 minutes 30 per 100 meters. And sure, he was doing 28 strokes per lap, but his stroke rate was 33 strokes per minute. Now, most of you are triathletes out there. Ben, listening to this podcast will probably have a stroke rate of somewhere between 50 and 60 strokes per minute. So sure, this guy had a long stroke, but it was a long and very, very slow stroke indeed. Completely coming to a pause at the end of each stroke. We could literally time the dead spot with a stopwatch as opposed to actually watching it on video analysis later. And that delay at the front end of the stroke was around about 0.8 or 0.9 of a second. So it's quite a lengthy pause. He thought he was doing this pause at the front end of the stroke to actually, in his own words, said he was actually taking almost like a pause, like he was taking it easy for a minute and then it go again, then he'd surge again. But it was resulting in very much like an acceleration deceleration. Acceleration, deceleration. And many over gliders, whilst they might look very, very smooth in the pool, tend to really struggle in rougher open water swimming events or even at the start of a triathlon when there's a thousand other people swimming on top of you. So don't get me wrong, this swimmer looks very, very smooth in the water and certainly a lot more efficient than the Arnie. But if that message of a really long stroke is taken a little bit too far, then that can really cause problems.

Yeah, I learned to swim with kind of the Total Immersion Swim program, which isn't a bad program, but you definitely see a lot of over gliders coming out of that. And one of the best things I ever did initially was take up the advice that you gave me, Paul, about using an underwater metronome to keep track my stroke rate. And then after that, I discovered that as long as I used an underwater MP3 player and chose my songs wisely, that that was another great way to keep my stroke rate up.

Absolutely. And it's interesting, you know, when I often with these. The over gliders tend to. A lot of over gliders tend to be in some sort of analytical profession. So we see a lot of engineers, believe it or not, who like to think analytically about things. And, you know, the way you sort of approach and deal with that swimmer is quite different to maybe how you approach a bambino who's maybe lacking a little bit of confidence. Confidence in their own swimming performance. Now, in terms of the actual stroke rate, going back to what you're saying there about the metronome, or what we call the wetronome, at the end of a session, what I'll typically do is I'll take through the swimmer what I call a rhythm section. And the thing with the overglider is that they have this long stroke, but they're really lacking fluidity and rhythm to their stroke. So maybe at the start of the session, when we're doing the video analysis, I'll actually measure how many strokes they're doing per minute, not necessarily how many strokes they're doing per lap. They're usually telling me how many they can do per lap, but how many strokes they've done per minute. And many of them haven't ever tried that before. So at the end of the session, once we've worked on that technique and hopefully helped to remove some of that dead spot, we'll then do a section where we've got. Using. Using a wetronome, I'll actually set the wetronome at what their stroke rate was at the start of the session. They'll use that. And nine times out of 10, they actually find that stroke rate to be ridiculously slow at that point. Because obviously we've been working on removing the dead spot. They've got more fluidity and rhythm and they start to appreciate how those two factors, stroke length and stroke rate, really working together. So of all the swim types, I love working with an overglider because myself, in the job that I do in the profession that I've got here as a swim coach, I have to be very analytical. So I like to communicate with this athlete. But equally, sometimes if you have been trying a specific technique for a long, long time and you've plateaued off, and then we're suggesting, you know, maybe we're suggesting something which sounds a little bit controversial or sounds a little bit different to what you do, what you've been doing in the past, then oftentimes the barriers can come up. So, you know, it's like with anything that I suppose that people talk about the definition of madness being trying to do something the same thing and expect sort of trying to do the same thing and expecting a different result. So if you are finding yourself on a little bit of a plateau, then maybe having a little look at Ben's show notes in terms of the. What we've got up there for the over glider might be really quite interesting for you.

Yeah, well, I'm analytical, but you definitely.

Wouldn'T want me building a bridge.

So you talked about Arnie and Bambino and the kicktastic style, and then we just talked about the overglider over glider. We've got two swim types left. What are the last two swim types?

Okay, so the fifth one is really my favorite. I suppose recently I've actually got into. I've been racing a long, long time now, 14 or 15 years as a triathlete. So I've got quite a bit of experience in open and just looking at, as a coach now looking at the different styles of the world's best open water swimmers, typically they all tend to swim with a very, very high stroke rate and a much more straighter arm recovery. It almost looks like they're swinging their arms over the top of the water. So this next swim type we actually call the swinger. And whilst this swimmer might not look as pretty in the pool as maybe an over glider or our final swim type, which is the smooth, the swinger tends to be very, very dominant and very, very effective in the open water situation, especially when it gets very, very rough indeed. So this slightly straighter arm recovery, whilst it might not be the conventional high elbow recovery which coaches have talked about for years and years, it does give the swimmer quite a bit of it gives them arm clearance over the surface of the water for rough conditions. It also means that they're able to maintain a much higher stroke rate as well, which is quite good for again maintaining momentum as they're going to along. Now we use one of our classic swim types, sorry, classic swimmers who we use to epitomize the swinger is a swimmer called Shelly Taylor Smith. Now if I didn't tell you anything about Shelley, but just mentioned the fact that she takes around about 52 or 53 strokes per 50 meters, if you've been maybe following some of the advice of the over glider, whereby typically people are talking about trying to get under 40 strokes per lap, if this was all you knew about Shelly was that she took 52 or 53 strokes per lap, you'd automatically think that she wasn't very efficient. Now Shelly Taylor Smith is actually seven times world marathon swimming champion. So while she might have a slightly shorter stroke than somebody like Ian Thorpe, she's obviously a lot shorter. I think shelly's around about 57 or 5 8. She's a lot shorter, but the way she matches it is with a substantially higher stroke rate. Shelly is famed for swimming 70km from Sydney to Wollongong over on the east coast of Australia. 70km. So I think for your American listeners, There's around about 40 or 45 miles with an average stroke rate of 88 strokes per minute, which is phenomenally quick for such a long distance time. So you know, conventionally we'd look at a stroke like that where somebody's swimming with very, very high revs and you'd say that person can't be efficient at all. And yet some of the world's best endurance swimmers that we see do swim with this slightly shorter str, but with a much higher turnover arm stroke. And it's very, very interesting. I think Shelly's actually won the round the Manhattan island swim over there in the US six times in a row and was actually ranked world number one for men and for women in her heyday in the late 90s. So you can sort of see how a swimmer like that, whilst they might look a little bit unconventional in the pool, in the open water, they're very, very dominant. Other examples would be around the world would be Janet Evans from the us. You know, thinking back to her stroke, Janet would be very much a swinger style as we see it. Interestingly enough, Janet and Shelley are best mates. So I don't know if swingers hang around together, but there's a useful bit of information for you. So very, very high stroke rate in Janet Evans. When everyone saw it, everyone said it looks Horrible. She's spiking the water. It's terrible. Totally unorthodox. And yet this amazing swimmer stood completely unbeatable for such a long period. And then her own world record stood up until just very recently when Rebecca Adlington from the UK broke that 800 freestyle world record, albeit in a speed suit as well there. So, you know, sometimes you have to look past what those swimmers look like, especially over the top of the water and look at what they look like underneath the water and just thinking to other classic examples. David Davies from the UK finished third in the Athens Olympics in the 1500 freestyle and in Beijing finished second in the open water 10k championship. He's very much a swinger. So too would Laura Manadu From France, the 400 freestyle Olympic gold medalist from Athens. Very, very strange style, two beat leg kick, almost looking like she's not doing anything with her legs. But Laura Manadu was swimming there at a stroke rate of 110 strokes per minute, which if you've ever tried swimming that quick, is phenomenally quick. What's really interesting about these swingers, Ben though is the fact that if you were to ask Shelly to try and swim under 40 strokes per 50 meters, she would actually slow down significantly and she would actually find it significantly harder to swim like that than she does at this higher stroke rate tempo. It's much more with these really long strokes. Don't get me wrong, really long strokes do suit very, very tall swimmers with long arm reach, etc. But if you're a shorter swimmer with shorter arms in particular, especially female swimmers, then that higher tempo stroke might be what you're after to help take you off your bit of a plateau. So I love working with swingers. I've recently changed my own technique, Ben, to become a little bit of a swinger myself. I've got a 20k or a 13 mile open water race in three weeks time over to the Rottnest island here and in September I'll be taking on the English Channel from England to France. So it's a distance of around about 26 or 27 miles in the cold open water swimming through these busy shipping lanes there. So it's a very, very economical style of stroke, especially for distance freestyle swimming.

Interesting. It's especially interesting because I'm always my fastest in open water swimming during a race like a triathlon, when I'm counting to myself the entire race to keep.

My stroke count up.

Yes, that's exactly right. We certainly come across a lot of swimmers, you know, the whole swim type System might seem to be a little bit stereotypical, but there's stereotyping. Sorry. But when you work through, we've actually got a questionnaire on the website where you can answer a series of about 15 questions or so about your swimming. And it will give you a reasonable indication, just based on those answers, as to what swim type you are. But some of you will answer that and you'll get 100% Arnie, or you might find that you get 30% Kicktastic and 30% Overglading. A little bit, bit of bambino in there. And you could sort of say, well, surely this is not working. But what you'll actually find is that the people, especially the people who are quite untrained and sort of like naturally getting into the water, they will typically very much fall within one of these swim types. And the idea being then to actually sort of try and improve them, to get them to be the best they can be. But it's interesting there what you say about yourself. You recognize yourself as a bit of an over glider and yet you normally swim better in the open water. Now normally it would be the other way around. Many over gliders are quite frustrated that they don't swim well in the open water because of this very slow stroke rate. So it could be, Ben, like you say, you're counting to keep your stroke rate up. It could be that there are people out there who sort of naturally change their stroke to the open water, adapt to those situations. And that's quite a natural sort of progression to do. It's the swimmer who feels like they need to swim exactly the same way in the pool as they do in the open water, who runs into a little bit of trouble and also frustration down the line there.

Gotcha.

All right, so the final one is smooth.

What's that?

It's like swimming perfect.

Yeah. If indeed there is such thing as a perfect freestyle stroke. You know, we've designed Mr. Smooth as our example to show, you know, the principles behind getting a nice efficient freestyle stroke. And he has good body position in the water, nice and horizontal. He has excellent rotation, he's got a good catch and pull through. He's got a six beat leg kick as opposed to the swinger which typically has a two beat leg kick. So the smooth really is the sort of swimmer that you go down to the pool and you look at them and they're the envy of the swimming squad or the envy of the pool. They're the fast lane swimmers. I suppose the biggest difference when you eyeball the swimmer compared to the over glider is that they're simply swimming much, much faster than an overglider. So an overglider might sort of peak at around about, let's say, one minute thirty per hundred for a sustained effort swimming. Whereas the smooth, and you classify people such as Grant Hackett, Ian Thorpe, those sort of guys, even Michael Phelps has got a little bit of a lopsided stroke, but obviously you still recognize him as a very smooth, brilliant, brilliant swimmer. These guys are. Maybe up to 1 minute 10, 1 minute 15 per 100 meters. So these are really the creme de la creme. Now, as you'd probably appreciate, Ben, when people download the specific training guides from our website based on these swim types, we keep a bit of a check to see the demographics, let's say, of the swimming world out there as to which programs are being downloaded the most. And as you'd probably expect, the overglider literally constitutes maybe only 4% of the population that are actually reading our website. So, like I say, these are really, really very good swimmers. And what they need to do improve their swimming is a lot of these smooths maybe had a bit of time out of competitive freestyle swimming and we all know that triathlon is booming around the world. This swimmer might have had a bit of a layoff and wants to get back into the water and maybe don't know quite so well how to transfer their skills to the open water environment, such as sighting, taking benefits of the draft, et cetera, and just generally tidying up or tweaking up their stroke as they go along. We ran a really interesting blog, quite a popular blog, a few months back, talking about how behind every smooth there's a gaggle of blood sucking swingers tagging onto the toes. So when these guys get into the open water, they're still essentially still the fastest swimmers out there, but they tend to go off very, very fast. And the swingers, who tend to be very, very versatile and adapted to drafting and to the environment, they can sit on the toes of these swingers to the smooths, much to the annoyance of the smooth, maybe when they get out. To think that Joe Bloggs from two lanes down has stayed with me through that swim and yet I can beat him by three minutes over 1500 meters in the pool. So, yeah, sure, it's a fantastic swimmer and male, female, etc. Can be smooth for sure.

Gotcha.

So let's say that somebody, they go and read the show notes for this podcast and they read in there about how to identify themselves, what's their swim type, and they find that out, obviously at that point they've got to do something. So what is the next step?

Well, the next step, obviously the hardest thing I suppose, is identifying it. And we recognize we've had our Swim Smooth website out as it stands at the moment with Mr. Smooth and all the free articles and information on there for around about 18 months now. And people around the world send us feedback saying it's great, all this information is great, but how do I identify myself, what do I need to do, especially if they're not training with a coach, etc. So the first step, just to track back a little bit there, Ben, the first step is this observation process. We have three ways in which you can observe, you can analyze and work out which swim type you are. One is to follow that questionnaire, which, like I said, gives a rough indication, but you can probably appreciate that there's only so much that you can actually do with a questionnaire. The second one is on each page on the Swim Types website. We give four very specific swim styles. So maybe if you've got a buddy that you go down to the swimming pool with who can follow you or even want to recommend it to your coach, we show you four very specific video clips which you can look at and say, hey, that looks like me, or your buddy can say, yes, that definitely looks like you, and you can work on it. The buddy or the swim coach can actually download for free our Swim types observation sheet. And that just gives you sort of almost like a very basic checklist of what you want to be looking for, just with a couple of very simple pictures to highlight those things. So once you pass that stage, let's say, for example, you identify that you're a kicktastic. What you can then do is you have the option on the website of downloading one of our Swim types training guides. And the swim type training guide is a PDF document which basically takes you through the step by step process of what to work on within your freestyle stroke and in which order. More importantly, we all know that there's loads of information out there on the Internet about what you should be doing with your freestyle stroke. But sometimes that can become a little bit too all consuming and you might need to just get down to the nitty gritty, what two or three things are going to really have the biggest impact in the smallest amount of time to help me swim faster and more efficiently, rather than trying to scatter, blast and work on 10 or 12 different things at the same time, because that's only going to lead to frustration and poor results. So by downloading the training guide, you can work through step by step, what it means to be a kicktastic first and foremost. So we delve a little bit deeper into the personalities behind those types, which I find quite fascinating as a coach, and then working on the specific drills and techniques that you can do to improve it. So we take you through a range of different drills and as you can probably appreciate, you know, in years gone by, you can still, or I can still run a squad session or coaches can still run squad sessions and have generic drills in there which will help each one of those swim types. So there is some cross referencing between the type guides. But if you work through in a step by step format following those drills, and then there's four very specific training sessions that you can work through as a kicktastic to help improve your efficiency in the water and help you essentially as a kicktastic, help you catch the water better, then that's going to be really quite useful for you. And we're getting a lot of really good feedback from people saying that the guides are helping them improve their efficiency, especially when they're training by themselves and maybe don't have the access to a coach to look over their swimming. And we find a lot of people, particularly in the US and the uk, are in those situations. Over here in Australia we're blessed to have, we've got a population here in Perth of a million people and we have 25 or 2650 metre pools all within a 10k radius. So that sort of facility, you know, you can appreciate there's a lot of coaches out here helping a lot of swimmers, etc. Whereas over in the UK and the US you might not have that same sort of access to coaching structure and it might need a little help here and there pushing along forward, you know, it's also, you know, you might find a full video analysis and stroke correction session might simply be out of your budget at the moment to work with, work with one to one directly with a coach. So this might be a nice little stepping stone for you.

Gotcha. And you've also got, just for people who aren't really text learners, you've got a bunch of videos that kind of demonstrate and show examples of each one of the swim types, which is really.

Useful as well, I thought.

Absolutely, yeah. Because it's useful to be able to see those and see what you're looking for. I think most people are sort of pretty observant people and like yourself, not everyone's a, a Text learner. I personally don't like reading from text. I prefer being the visual learner sort of thing. And I suppose that's what's really over the years, that's what sort of prompted my creation of this swim type system, is that you look around the pool and you definitely see trends out there. And you might have even seen this yourself when you've been down to the pool deck. You might have seen, you know, that guy's over there, he's fighting the water, his legs seem to be sinking, whereas, you know, that guy over there or you know, that girl over there might be kicking really hard. What is it that's making them do that, et cetera. And I think when you look at those video clips, even if you're just trying to do it for a friend or a buddy, you'll be able to recognize those swim types quite easy and quite quickly and be able to then obviously pass it on to yourself or pass it on to your training partner and say, hey, this is what you want to be working on to improve that.

Right?

Okay, well, cool. What I'm going to do is not only tell people, go read the post@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that comes out on Monday, February 7th. If you're listening to this after this interview comes out, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search there for swim smooth. Or you can also just check out all of the resources that Paul just talked about in the show notes to this episode that you're listening to right now, which you can also get over at Ben Greenfield Fitness Day. Again, one of the coolest ways to learn how to swim or learn how to get better at swimming that I have truly ever seen.

And maybe it's just me.

I like the whole, you know, figure out what's going on with your body type and then get a customized solution versus kind of using a shotgun method. But ultimately, I think this is really going to catch on. Paul, and congratulations for creating a very cool way to learn how to swim.

Thanks very much. It's been quite a number of years in the process. We've been working on it for about the last three or four years, really. And you're always nervous putting out something like this, which is, I suppose, going against the grain of what a lot of people believe. Everyone should be doing the same sort of thing. But like I say, we're getting some fantastic feedback and without that sort of feedback from the swimmers who are trying this system, it makes it very hard for us to actually develop and come up with new ideas and put it it forward. So we really thank everyone out there for supporting what we're doing and giving it a try and getting the results that they truly deserve for their swimming.

Cool.

All right. Well, folks, that's Paul from Swim Smooth. And Paul, thanks for coming on the call today.

Not a problem, Ben. Thanks for being here.

Well, that's it, folks. If you want access to the Swim Smooth Swim typing protocol, visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com and check out the link that I've got right there in the show notes. And if you want to check out anything else I've talked about today, from the make your own supplements website to the new Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page shopping section, to the advertising information for Ben Greenfield Fitness, the Kids Calm Multivitamin, the nrefa, you can get all that on the show notes. This is episode number 133 and if you have any comments or questions, you can also leave leave them over there as well. Until next time, this is Ben Greenfield wishing you a healthy week.

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