Episode #138: Tim Noakes Tells You How You Can Use The “Central Governor” To Tap Into Your Muscle’s Hidden Potential.

In this podcast, the Central Governor with Dr. Tim Nokes is non alcoholic beer, healthy, receding gum serum versus free testosterone, isometric ab exercises, how to raise natural hormone levels in women, and indoor cycling workouts.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlois and wellness advice from the top 50 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 BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. This is Ben Greenfield. I think that last week I told you I'd be podcasting today from the Caribbean, but I'm actually not quite there yet. I'm going to be heading down there tomorrow to go race in an event called the Tristar Nevis. Or maybe it's Nevis. I actually don't even know. I should probably figure that out before I get there. But basically it's a triathlon. It's a 1000 meter swim followed by 100k bike and a 10k run. So it should be an interesting event and I will be releasing lots of videos and stories from that over at one of my parts partner media websites called everymantry.com so stay tuned for that. And by the way, Today's interview with Dr. Timothy Noakes is fascinating. It actually really changed the way that I work out and the way that I train. It kind of, it really put off a light bulb in my head and changed some of my previous beliefs about the way that the body responds to pain and intensity, particularly during exercise. So be sure to tune into that interview if you really want to change your paradigms about exercise and working out and training and competing. We'll also have a Q and A, of course. So let's get on to this week's special announcements.

Special Announcements.

So the first announcement today is that I will be teaching an interactive live video webinar webinar with Dr. Rick Cohen from Bioletics. And the title of this webinar is the Shocking Truth about Vitamin D and Fish Oil. And the purpose of it is to teach you about why both of us believe that vitamin D and fish oil are two supplements that everyone should be taking. And we're also going to be talking about what goes into making them and how to actually choose vitamin D in fish oil, how to get tested to see if you actually need them, and pretty much everything you'd ever need to know about these. So I have put a link in the show notes to this episode, episode number 138 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so that you can RSVP for that live video webinar. You're actually going to be able to ask your questions via video. And so I would highly recommend that if you plan on participating in this webinar, you go over to the website BenGreenfieldFitness.com to RSVP because it allows you to do a camera and mic check on your computer. If you want to ask your questions via video, there are also options during that webinar to ask your questions via a chat box. Now the date of that is Tuesday, April 12th at 6pm Pacific Time. It's going to be about an hour to an hour and a half. For anybody who's interested in learning more from either a scientific or a consumer perspective about vitamin D and fish oil, why they work, how they work, etc. You aren't going to want to miss the shocking truth about vitamin D and fish oil. The next thing is that it was just announced yesterday to the athletes who I coach, but it will open up this Friday to the general public. And that is my Ironman Coeur d' Alene 2011 triathlon training camp. It's going to be March 13th through 15th and it's not open for entry yet. But if you want to learn right away when when it does become open for entry to the general public, you will need to subscribe to the Ben Greenfield Fitness newsletter or follow Ben Greenfield on Twitter or go over to the Facebook page for Ben Greenfield Fitness. And any of those methods will allow you to tune in and be one of the first people to find out when that camp actually opens to the general public. The camp itself is going to take place May 13th through 15th in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, and it will be jam packed with both seminars and workouts and of course a little bit of fun and partying thrown in too. So don't miss that. And then the last really special announcement here is that as many of you know, my wife Jessa and I run a kind of secret section of BenGreenfieldFitness.com called the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, where we dish out tons of advice on healthy lifestyle, on family fitness, tips on cooking. We do live video webinars each month. Folks inside there have 24? 7 access to both Jess and I to ask questions about everything from cooking and cleaning supplies to fitness and nutrition. We just decided to make that available to anybody who just wants to go check it out for a dollar. So you can get in full access to everything 14 day sneak peek for $1 at the BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle. So just go to BenGreenfieldFitness inner circle to check that out. All right, let's go ahead and start right into this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

Remember, if you have a question for the podcast, you can use the free Ben Greenfield Fitness iPhone or Android app to ask your question. And you can download either of those from the Itunes store or the Android App store. Or you can Simply call to 877-209-9439 or you can Skype Pacific Fit. Any of those methods would allow you to ask your question. And of course, there's always the handy dandy Ask Ben form over@the BenGreenfieldFitness.com website. And the first question this week is from listener Jeff.

Hey Ben, this is Jeff from Tampa, Florida. Have a question for the show. Hey, what's your take on non alcoholic beer as sort of like a nice little treat in the evenings after work? Is that nutritious? Does the lack of alcohol have issues with the sugars or yeast or anything like that? Just curious what you think. Kind of enjoy Odule's Amber in particular. That's actually pretty tasty. So appreciate your take. Thanks, man. Bye.

All right, so first of all, let's start with this. Most of the benefits that they found with alcohol in terms of reducing your risk of cardiac disease or stroke and even Alzheimer's or cognitive decline, most of that is because of the actual alcohol in the beer. So you're not going to get a ton of those benefits when you remove alcohol from the beer in terms of the health effects of alcohol itself and from the moderate consumption of alcohol. However, they have had a few studies that show that even low alcohol or no alcohol beer can have some anti carcinogenic or anti cancer properties. And there was one small study that showed that alcoholic beer, or I'm sorry, non alcoholic beer, might mimic some of the cardiovascular benefits associated with regular alcohol containing beer. But most of the research suggests that the primary health benefit from beer itself is going to come from the alcohol. Now, they do use a brewer's yeast to make both alcoholic and non alcoholic beer. And that does contain a lot of nutrients, a ton of minerals like magnesium and potassium. There's a lot of B vitamins in there as well. So you're going to get all those benefits. But as far as any type of sugars, added sweeteners, syrups, herbs, extra compounds, anything else that they throw into a regular alcoholic beer, all that is still going to be in the non alcoholic beer. So for example, if you're very sensitive to something like gluten, a non alcoholic beer is going to mess you up just as much as an alcoholic beer. So the idea is that when they make the non alcoholic beer, the important thing is to maintain the flavor of the beer so it tastes really close to beer. So you don't get rid of the alcohol by actually heating up the final product. They typically will remove alcohol either through what's called a vacuum distillation process, which basically changes the pressure. It allows you to boil off the alcohol at a lower temperature. The other way that they'll do it is through something called reverse osmosis, which basically involves passing the alcoholic beer through a filter that has tiny, tiny pores that only allow alcohol and water to pass through. So you move the alcohol and the water and then everything else that's left over, you add back into whatever mixture of sugars and other flavor compounds that you have from the original beer and you've got your non alcoholic beer. Incidentally, it still does have a little bit of alcohol in can actually contain up to 0.5% alcohol and still be called non alcoholic. So you're still getting a little bit of alcohol in there. But ultimately the only real thing that's different in terms of the content of non alcoholic beer and alcoholic beer is the alcohol itself. So in terms of whether or not non alcoholic beer would be healthy for you, even though you do get some of those minerals and some of those B vitamins, ultimately it's mostly empty calories. You know, it's very close to just kind of like munching on bread after your workout. So it's not doing you a ton of favors. You know, like I mentioned, maybe some of those anti cancer properties, but it's also not going to be a big issue if you're not super sensitive to something like gluten, or you're not trying to eliminate things like that from your diet. The other thing that's important to remember is that if you're doing it because you maybe struggle with alcohol or alcohol addiction, or have in the past, there has been some research that shows that any type of anything that even remotely resembles beer can trigger enough of a dopamine release in your brain to cause a relapse into heavy use of alcohol. So a recovering alcoholic still would want to be careful with non alcoholic beer. And as far as O'Dools, that's fine. There's a ton of other companies out there that make non alcoholic beer. Beck's makes one, Coors has a non alcoholic, Old Milwaukee, San Poly has one. And as far as gluten free beers, since I did mention that they're not non alcoholic but gluten free beers, three of the ones I know of are Bards. Bards Tail Ale is gluten free. There's another one called Redbridge that's gluten free. And then the Woodchuck Ciders, which I actually enjoy quite a bit. High sugar but also gluten free. So great question. And our next question comes through from Kara, who says, I read the book Digestive Wellness and the author states that receding gum lines in the mouth are due to bone loss. I eat Paleo, but I do eat plenty of vegetables and I strength train. Is that enough to prevent bone loss? Should I not supplement with any calcium or should I do something different? Well, the idea that receding gum lines in the mouth are due to bone loss is possible, but it's only one of the causes of a receding gum line. You know, everything from over aggressive brushing, which kind of wears away some of the enamel at the gum line, to kind of like an abnormal tooth position, an eating disorder like bulimia, inadequate brushing, inadequate flossing, any type of gum infection, all of that stuff could result in a receding gum line as well. So essentially what it comes down to is take care of your mouth. That's very important. But when it comes to not eating dairy but still eating plenty of vegetables and strength training, you know, dairy is going to be one of your primary sources of calcium and especially for women over 50, but for women in general, that's of course very important. And so if you aren't consuming dairy, it may be prudent to include a calcium supplement. Definitely prudent to include a magnesium supplement, which is a crucial CO factor to allow calcium to work properly. And then also look into things like canned fish, for example. Canned fish is a great source of calcium, incidentally. It also has a really good level of vitamin D in it. So like sardines, canned salmons, those contain these tiny little bones that are super soft so you don't notice them, but they're really good sources of calcium. Tofu, if you're okay with soy, would be a decent source of calcium as well because it's made with calcium sulfate. That's what's used as a setting agent for tofu and even like a half cup of tofu can give you about 50% of your calcium needs. As far as vegetables go, definitely continue to consume those, especially anything in the cabbage family. So that's like broccoli, kale, bok choy, cabbage, mustard greens, turnip greens. All of those have a lot of really highly bioavailable calcium in them. So again, if you're doing like, say, a half cup of a good bok choy, that will almost get you as much absorbable calcium as a glass of milk. So, again, keeping up with those is good. Some foods are fortified with calcium. You know, you take something like soy milk or orange juice, a lot of times, they'll fortify those with calcium. Unfortunately, there's some other issues with those that may make them not the best thing to be relying on as a staple in your diet. But, you know, from a, from a gum receding standpoint, I would also make sure that you're just taking care of your mouth in general. And as far as taking a calcium supplement, if you have a really solid diet, you could probably get away with not taking a calcium supplement. If you're an active, heavily sweating individual or a woman over 50, you definitely want to make sure that you're addressing your calcium needs and probably taking a calcium supplement. And of course, take a magnesium citrate supplement as well. Something like Natural calm is a really good one. So I'm going to stop there because I'm not a dentist. I do know from our, from our fluoride backlash that we got when we did the fluoride podcast that dentists do listen into this show. So if you are a dentist and you're listening in, or you're in the dental profession, I'd be happy to pass on to Kara anything that you leave as a comment on this on the show. Notes of this podcast, podcast number 138. All right, next question is from Jerry, who says, I know you've talked about serum testosterone. Is there a direct relationship between serum testosterone levels in the blood and free testosterone levels? My serum testosterone levels are at 843. Well, the basic idea behind this question is that no matter where your testosterone levels are at, what really matters is how much testosterone is actually bioavailable. And your bioavailable testosterone would be the actual free testosterone that's present in your blood, which only really makes up anywhere from like 1 to 4% of your blood. And the rest of the testosterone is bound to something. So it's bound to one of two things. It's either bound to albumin, which is a protein in your serum, in your blood, or it's bound to what's called sex steroid binding globulin or sex hormone binding globulin. And when you look at the binding between testosterone and albumin, that's not very strong and it's easily reversed. So that counts towards the bioavailable testosterone. So the sex hormone binding globulin that binds testosterone far more strongly, and you can't count the sex hormone bound testosterone as your actual free bioavailable testosterone levels. So typically, if you were to get like a serum test that's testing your total testosterone levels, everything, what's free, what's bound to the sex hormone globulin, pretty much everything. And anything that is below 300 from like a morning serum sample is considered to be low. 843 is fairly high. But again, it doesn't give a very good picture of how much of that testosterone is actually free and available for you to use. And that's why doing something like a salivary testosterone test gives you a far, far better idea of where your testosterone is at. We've talked about the salivary test before in this show. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com do a search for testosterone, there's two different interviews that we've done with kind of like one of the world's experts on this, Dr. Cohen, and he talks quite extensively about why it's a good idea to get a salivary testosterone test rather than this total serum blood testosterone test. Just because what you're testing with that test doesn't give you an idea of how much of your testosterone is actually bioavailable and free and how much is bound tightly to this sex hormone binding globulin. So ultimately what it comes down to is even though your serum Testosterone levels at 843 would be considered high, it still doesn't give you an idea of how that's going to affect what your body can actually do in terms of its use of bioavailable free testosterone. So I'd get a salivary test done. I'd recommend any male that really wants to know what they're doing with their testosterone levels, get a salivary test done. Okay. Julie writes in and says, I had a back surgery on L4 and L5 a few months ago. My doctor cleared me to start exercising, but recommended avoiding exercises that involve a crunching bending motion. Can you outline effective abdominal and lower back exercises that are isometric? So when Julie says isometric, that basically means that you are contracting the muscles in the abdomen, but there's not an actual movement that's occurring around the joint. So taking like the biceps as an example, you could squeeze your biceps and flex without bending your elbow. And that's an isometric contraction of the actual biceps. What that means is that your elbow joint isn't undergoing a stress, but the muscle itself is still being stimulated. So, for example, some of the ways that you could do this with an abdominal exercise. First of all, the most popular one would be just a plank. So you get down into a plank position, feet on the ground or just one foot on the ground. If you elevate one leg, it makes it more difficult. And you're just resting on your forearms with your abdominal muscles kind of contracted and so squeezed in imagining you have almost like a zipper zipping up your midsection from your sternum to your pelvis, or from your pelvis up to your sternum. You could also do a side plank. So a plank variation with a side plank. And when you're in the planking position, you can do things. You can row in the planking position, you can hold onto a dumbbell and do side raises or front raises in a plank position. So you can put quite a bit of stress on the abdominals without bending. When you're using the plank position, lying leg holds where you place a couple of or both your hands underneath your low back to support your low back. And then you simply lift your legs off the ground while you're lying on your back. You'll feel a really strong contraction in your abdominals when you do that. Simply doing a stomach vacuum or a stomach flattening exercise. When you're driving in your car, sitting on an airplane, sitting at your desk, flatten your stomach and hold it for 20 seconds and then release. That works really well. Anything like a decline hold where you lift your legs as high as possible off the ground and then you slowly lower them and hold them in the most difficult position for anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. That's going to put a huge amount of stress on the abs without really hitting the joints too much. And then finally, if you wanted to do like a partner based exercise, you can lie flat on the floor. So with your back on the floor, bring your knees up so that they're above your hips, so your knees are bent, your hips are bent. And then you have somebody put their hands on your shins and push down hard for anywhere from like 10 to 30 seconds. And if you contract your abs, you're going to try to resist your heels from dropping as somebody pushes down on your shins. That's a really good partner based isometric AB exercise. And then the last thing that you could look into would be something like one of these electro stimulation devices. I have one, I've used it on my abdominals before. You sit in a chair when the thing contracts and it tightens up your abs, your goal is to not let your back bend. And so that works really well to strengthen the low back as well and the abdominals without actually causing you to bend at that joint. So that's called an electro stimulation device. You can get them for like 70 bucks. They can also cost as much as $1,000 if you get one with like preset programs and that type of thing. Not totally necessary to get one with the preset programs, but it certainly does give you a little bit more versatility in terms of your workout. So we now have a question from Liz.

My question is essentially about menstruation and hormone levels. I'm a 33 year old active female, obviously. I run an average of about 40 miles a week. Qualify for Boston. And that is primarily due to your marathon Dominator package, which is absolutely stellar. I would recommend it to anyone. I am pretty lean. Low percentage of body fat. I'm about 5, 6 and 117 to 120 pounds. Lift weights about five days a week. I stopped getting my period about a year and a half ago. And although irregular menstruation runs in my family, my sister somewhat similar to you. It used to be like a three month thing. So this is unusual. And I did up my fitness level about a year and a half ago quite a bit. And I've kept that up. So it coincided with that and my general fitness level definitely. And my weight has gone down in that time frame as well. And my doctor recently prescribed a 10 day dose of progesterone to induce a period. And he was saying that he preferred that I get my period at least three times a year. So I was wondering if you could offer any nutritional guidelines for helping to raise my hormone levels naturally.

Well, this is a big issue among female athletes. The amenorrhea or loss of the period due to a drop in hormones associated with that increased level of activity, especially common in endurance athletes. And of course the number one recommendation that I give is to women who are in this category is to increase overall caloric consumption and especially focus on higher consumption of fats, specifically from things like avocados and coconut milk, seeds and nuts to a limited extent. And lots of Mediterranean based healthy fats. You can also consume foods that contain natural amounts of progesterone, which we'll talk about in a second that this doctor has put you on. For example, eggs, specifically the yolk of the eggs and dairy products both contain some amounts of natural progesterone. Walnuts have a good amount of vitamin B6, so do any cereal or whole grain that's fortified with vitamin B6. Again, I'm not a huge fan of heavy consumption of especially the cereals and the whole grains, but B6 is good for maintaining your estrogen progesterone balance. Zinc, just like it helps with testosterone. And guys, it can be essential to help you produce adequate levels of progesterone. So high zinc foods like consuming red meat, shellfish, chicken, turkey, all of that could help with your progesterone levels. And then curries. Anything that has turmeric in it is going to help with the body's progesterone levels, as can a couple of other herbs, particularly thyme and oregano. So I would be looking at including those compounds in your diet. And then when it comes to progesterone in particular, what that is is that's a steroid hormone and it's made by your ovary and it's made a little bit by the adrenal glands as well. And it's a precursor to a bunch of your other steroid hormones. And so it plays a very, very important role. And it essentially balances out estrogen. It's kind of like magnesium balances out calcium. I think that progesterone balances out estrogen. And if you don't have estrogen balanced out, then you create a strong risk for yourself, for things like breast cancer or reproductive cancer. And it's also essential to have a proper hormonal balance so that you are able to have your period. Now, a lot of doctors will prescribe non natural progesterone replacement, specifically something called progestin, via a medication called Provera. And that unfortunately has a lot of undesirable side effects. And it's not natural. However, you can get your hands on natural progesterone. My wife actually uses it. She finds it helps out tremendously with a drop of energy, with headaches and with some of the symptoms of pms. And she uses that progesterone cream at a certain time period during her cycle and it helps tremendously with that. So it's a natural progesterone cream. It's very different than a non natural Provera medication. The progesterone creams themselves, they're applied through the skin. They're extremely fat soluble, so they absorb well through anywhere where you find that you blush, for example, because that means you've got a lot of capillaries. So like your face, your neck, your chest, your breasts, your inner arms, the palms of your hands, all of those are good places for application of something like a progesterone cream. And it's basically, for the most part extracted from plant fats or plant oils. Mexican wild yams are one of the primary sources. Soybeans are another. You can actually chemically synthesize progesterone in the lab too, from a precursor. But most of these natural creams and lotions are made from something like a wild yam extract. The dosage varies. I'm not a doctor, so I'm not going to dish out dosage on this show. I tell my wife how much to take, but that's because she's my wife and she's not going to sue me if I tell her how much progesterone she should take. So that's something you need to talk to your doc about. I can also point you to a great resource on all this stuff. Go to johnlee md.com John Lee has written a bunch of books basically entitled things like what your doctor won't tell you about menopause and he's a great resource in terms of finding out more about this topic. But I would definitely look into using a progesterone cream. And by the way, my wife is an endurance athlete and she is 100% regular in terms of her periods. And I attribute a great deal of that success that she's had to her consumption of higher levels of good fats and the use of this progesterone cream. I hope that helps. Last question is from Chris. Chris says indoor bike sessions are painful and I would much rather be outside. My question to you is how long is a fair amount of time to spend on the bike trainer? And what kind of drills, intervals, etc. Can I do on the trainer? I agree. Indoor bike sessions, because you don't have birds and trees and wind in your hair and all that jazz, can be pretty boring. And even when you have a movie on or your favorite music, they still kind of creep by pretty slowly. The nice part is that because you're not interrupted, you're not stopping at stop signs or stop lights or cruising, you can actually get a lot more done during an indoor bike session than you can when you are outdoors. So typically you can take the amount of time that you spend on an indoor bike trainer and multiply that by about 1.2 to get the equivalent of how much you you would have ridden outdoors. So if you ride for say like, you know, an hour inside, that can count for like an hour and 10 minutes in terms of its translation to outside riding. You know, I've spent an hour on an indoor trainer, I've spent up to four hours on an indoor trainer when training for Ironman. And as far as drills, intervals, etc. I'll give you my favorite drill workout and my favorite indoor trainer workout. For a drill workout, what I like to do is basically do single leg pedaling efforts followed by super fast cadence efforts. So what I'll do is I'll warm up on the bike and I'll go anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds of just the right leg, then 30 to 60 seconds of just the left leg, and then 30 to 60 seconds of pedaling with both legs. Now when I'm pedaling with just one leg, I don't remove the other leg from the pedal, I instead de weight it. So I imagine I have pins and needles on the pedal of the side that I'm not trying to pedal with. And I'm trying to make those pins and needles imagine that they would pierce my foot if I put any pressure on that pedal. So I'll go right side, left side to both sides and go through that anywhere from five to six times. And then what I'll do is some super fast spin efforts that really train your body how to efficiently recruit muscles. So I'll do something like 10 by 100 plus RPM efforts, each one lasting for 20 to 30 seconds. And that can really improve your efficiency on the bike. Now as far as an actual interval training session, I'm going to tell you the one that I did yesterday. It's a great one for kind of easing you into intensity. I'll get on the bike, I'll do an eight minute warm up and then I'll do two minutes hard, like at a real tempo, you know, 85% intensity pace. And then I'll do seven minutes easy, three minutes hard, six minutes easy, four minutes hard, five minutes easy, five minutes hard, and go all the way through until I get to basically where I'm going one minute easy in the final nine minutes hard. Great workout. And it's a nice little ladder. And you can do it for anywhere from 30 minutes all the way up to if you do the full workout, you're going to be on there for longer than an hour. So lots of ways you can go with indoor bike sessions, as any of my clients that I coach will tell you, during the winter, they get a great deal of variety in terms of the indoor bike sessions, but they always have that one workout during the week where you're just at that aerobic heart rate, training yourself for the intensity that you're going to have to sustain during the race itself. And sometimes you're just there for two hours watching a movie. I think this is a great question to segue into the discussion with Dr. Tim Noakes on training and racing and the central governor theory. So fascinating interview. I really enjoyed this one. We're gonna have a special message and then move straight into that interview.

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Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield, and as promised, I am here with Dr. Timothy Noakes, who is in South Africa, professor of exercise and Sports science at the University of Cape Town. The man himself has multiple studies and multiple books to his name, the most popular being the running book called the Lore of Running, which is one of the most comprehensive guides to that particular sport that you will ever find. And he himself has run more than 70 marathons and ultra marathons. So a very accomplished author and athlete. Dr. Noakes, thank you for coming on the call today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Ben.

One of the things that you are most well known for, or that seems to be popping up more and more in the news these days, is something called the Central Governor model. Can you describe what the Central Governor model actually is?

Yes, Ben. The basic philosophy behind the Central Governor model is that the body's function and performance during exercise is a regulated process. This conflicts with the traditional explanation, which is that the body has certain limitations. And then when you explain those limitations, the system fails and you get tired. As a consequence, you stop running. Now, the reality is that the human body could not be designed in that way. We couldn't run to the point where catastrophe occurs and then we stop. Because in evolutionary terms, we wouldn't have got to where we are today. There has to be a control mechanism. Over a period of about 20 years research, it slowly dawned on me that the old limitations model simply didn't work, that humans don't run to the point of failure. The brain anticipates what's going to happen in the future and sets up a pacing strategy that allows you to get to the finish of whatever you're doing, be it a training session or a race, all in perfect health and good condition. Essentially, what the central governor model, he says, is that the brain regulates all performances to ensure that you get to the finish line in homeostasis. That means with the bodily systems all balance and before there's a catastrophic failure. That conflicts absolutely with the traditional explanation, which is a brainless model, which is that you exercise to the point where the system breaks down and then you stop. And that, as I've indicated, is a brainless model.

This brainless model. If I could interrupt briefly, why does the brainless model propose that people become fatigued during exercise? How would that model propose that fatigue occurs?

Well, what that model says is that there's some limiting condition or limiting factor in exercise. So, for example, if we put you on a treadmill and make you run faster and faster and faster, or, for example, we have you run 400 meters or 800 meters, the reason why you stop is because you run out of oxygen supply to the muscles, and the muscles become anaerobic and as a consequence, produce lactic acid. The lactic acid then impairs the function of the muscle, causing fatigue, and so you stop. Or conversely, when you're running a marathon, you hit the wall when you run out of glycogen, so that the system has no anticipatory control, and it allows you to run as hard as you can until the system fails. So what physiologists have spent the last 50 or 80 years doing is trying to define what's the limiting factor under all conditions. And they've never included the brain or very seldom included the brain. So it's always some other biological process in the body which doesn't include the function of the brain.

Now, to me, it does seem to make a little bit of sense what you're proposing, because in other situations, it does seem like the body will protect the brain with something like, say, hypoglycemia. The way that I understand it is the body will kind of shove glucose over to the brain. As with the brain being the preferential organ. How does the body actually work in the sense of regulating exercise when it comes to the brain? I mean, what goes on, on the neural level to actually hold you back from complete fatigue during exercise?

Great question. I would frame it slightly differently. The brain is there to protect itself and at the same time it protects the, the body. Because if the body breaks down, the brain breaks down. So the brain is incredibly selfish and looks after itself. But now let's take the examples that when you're exercising and you were at risk of running out of oxygen to the muscles, at the same time, the brain is getting a blood supply and it's also getting oxygenated. And the brain will make sure that it doesn't itself doesn't run out of oxygen. So we think that perhaps during maximal exercise, what the brain is actually sensing is its own blood and oxygen supply. And it protects that. Absolutely. Now, how does it protect it? Well, it protects it by only recruiting or activating a certain mass of muscle. Now, what no one ever tells you is that to run faster, the first thing that happens is the brain must activate a larger muscle mass. Then the heart comes along and pumps more oxygen to the muscles. But no one ever tells you that the reason why Haile Gebre Selassie is such a good runner is because he recruits better muscle and perhaps more muscle than anyone else in the world. They say, oh, but it's because he transports more oxygen. Of course he does. But that's not the cause, that's a consequence. And the cause is that rain actually activates the muscles. Everyone knows that if you want to lift a heavy weight, you must activate more muscle. And eventually the brain says, hold on, you can't activate more muscle because if you do, you're going to rupture a muscle or you're going to break the bones. And it says, no, you can't recruit more muscle. Exactly the same in running, to run faster, you recruit more muscle up to a point at which recruiting more muscle will threaten the brain and the rest of the body and will cause damage. So the brain says, hold. I'll just finish there. So what the brain says is, hold on. If you activate this much muscle for this long, something's going to go wrong. So we won't allow that to happen. That's the way the brain protects itself and the rest of the body from damage.

Now, I know that many people believe that the heart is kind of the big important organ of the body. It sounds like you're kind of saying that the brain predominates, but I believe that many people think that the idea of fatigue occurs with the heart rate getting very high and then being unable to deliver oxygen to the muscles. How does that philosophy jive with the central governor model that you've described?

Well, absolutely, you have to protect the heart and the heart is at great risk. And in fact, it's one of the best ways of disproving the other model that if the heart ever were to reach a limit, in other words, it can't pump any more blood or at a faster rate to the muscles, in fact, the first muscle to be affected would be the heart itself. The heart cannot ever reach a maximum output or else the heart will suffer and you will die as a consequence. And we see that every few weeks a patient with heart disease exercises to the point where they overstress the heart. There's not enough blood getting to the heart and they die as a consequence. They don't die because there's not enough blood getting to the muscles, they die because there's not enough blood getting to the heart. So the brain would never, ever, ever allow the heart to reach maximum. Fascinating. Otherwise you would die. So that's one of the protective mechanisms. But of course, everyone knows that when you run a marathon, you don't run at a maximum cardiac output and you don't run at a maximum heart rate, you run at submaximal values. How could anyone ever say that the heart limits performance during more endurance type exercises? So what we believe, we believe that the sensations of fatigue are utterly, completely unrelated to what's going on in the rest of the body. All they there tells you how close you are to the finish, that's clear, that those sensations of discomfort and fatigue rise as a linear function of how close you are to the finish. And it starts right from the start of exercise. And that in a sense tells us that the brain already knows when it's going to stop you, almost as it starts. And if something occurs during the activity that is going to make it more difficult for you to finish, your fatigue sensation will rise and you will slow down as a consequence.

Oh, go ahead.

So we don't see fatigue as a physical phenomenon, we see it purely as an emotion. And that's one of the great benefits on this model because it tells you however bad you feel, it's actually just your brain playing a trick on you and trying to make sure that you don't damage yourself. Once you understand that, it becomes so much easier to exercise, in my view, and certainly helped my career a bit late to become a good runner, but certainly I find it much easier to train and to compete knowing that the sensations I'm actually generating that sensation to try to fool myself and I should perhaps try to control them and then I will be able to run faster.

So when we look at this from a training perspective, obviously we don't want to completely neglect doing things like training our body to have more muscular endurance because I don't think you're saying that you don't need to train. But, but would training based on this model only involve some type of mental or emotional training or do you actually also try to train to help your body to recruit more muscles so that the brain fatigues less quickly, or both?

Absolutely. I think that the great coaches have always known that they're really training the brain, not the body. But maybe they haven't put it that way. And so they use all these techniques that will make it make you believe you can do a little bit more than you thought when you started. So I mean, someone described coaching as merely putting someone in another zone of effort that they didn't believe they could achieve. But that's what you do. You keep pushing them harder and harder and you slowly tell the brain that actually can do these things. So that's the focus on training and we do it all the time. If we're training for a marathon, we slowly increase the distance until eventually we believe we can do it. And once you've got the self belief that you can do it, then it happens.

Do you believe that a greater amount of intensity or a greater amount of volume is best for helping to reduce this central governor fatigue that you've described?

I think intensity is the key. And if you look back in law of running, I think that the great runners were the ones who trained at the highest intensity. It wasn't the ones who did the most volume.

And why is that?

Because I think they teach themselves, they teach the brain that it can cope with the extra effort and that they slowly get their sensations of fatigue slightly less. I have a lovely story. One of the things that the Governor predicts is that if you have a running race or any particular race and the distance between the first and the second runners is inches or a few feet, then it's clear that the second runner chose to lose. He chose to come second. People said how do you know that? And it's simple. The athlete didn't die. And our model tells us that he had reserve. So why couldn't he activate that reserve and kill himself? And the answer is because the brain said no. But why does the brain say no? And the brain says no because under those circumstances the athlete couldn't convince himself that it was important to hurt even more, to be so that they produce more discomfort than actually they need and they accept coming second.

Interesting.

The winner does the opposite. Now, what we used to say is the guy who comes second hasn't trained hard enough and therefore he's got too much lactic acid and his heart's not pumping enough oxygen and so on and so forth. So what do you do? You go and train the guy harder when that's not. You got to understand, why did that guy accept coming second? What was it in his makeup that came from his childhood and his training and how he sees himself that caused him to come second? And that's the real question. Because it's not training and it's not physiology that makes you come second under those circumstances. It's a mental choice you make probably at a subconscious level. I've got many videos where the moment of truth, that's the key in the sporting event, the moment of truth. What is the guy thinking when he quits or he wins? And the difference is that the guy who loses says, I can't do it and then they can't do it. Whereas the winner says, I can do it and then they do it. What determines that is the key to superior performance when it comes to recruiting.

These motor units and teaching your body how to neurally activate more muscles in training so that perhaps you may be able to go a little bit harder or a little bit longer during the race? Do you think that athletes who are training in a fatigued state or say an. An endurance athlete would be a perfect example who's pushing themselves every day, is actually holding themselves back in terms of allowing their body to be in a state to actually recruit as many muscles as possible during the training session for the day.

Absolutely. So that the intensity comes down. And the intensity is the key, in my view, because that teaches the brain that it can go a bit harder. And so I'm not suggesting that you can ever do away with distance training, but if you read, as I said, the great runners are the ones who did the high intensity training and they did enough endurance training, but not too much. And I think that the average runner, and I'm the classic example of the average runner in my career, I also thought that you can get away with just your endurance training, because I think a lot of athletes train to train that actually don't train to race, and it's very few athletes who really train to race. Most of us love racing because it gives us an excuse to train. We train and train and train and it's much easier to train with your friends and talk to them and chat and so on and so forth. And not to do the intense training. But if you want to change how your brain functions, I think you have to do a good proportion must be at a high intensity. And when we studied the best South African runners, the black runners in South Africa, they were training at a much higher intensity than the sort of second rung of athletes.

Interesting.

And if you look at the Kenyans, it's the same. They have a different attitude and they push the high intensity. In a moment, In a moment, I.

Want to ask you about good mental tricks that you can use during the race to take advantage of something like this. But just on a personal note and on a coaching note, you know, one of the things that I found to really help my running that I literally changed this year was I switched two kind of longer one hour runs that I went on during the week to 10 by 10 treadmill sprints for 20 to 30 seconds. And I actually gained speed and gained endurance.

And it seems that the athletes who.

I coach, who limit their volume and when they get more time, they go harder instead of going longer, seem to do better. So it's interesting, a lot of that seems to jive with what you're saying now during the race. Once you get to the race and you are in the pain cave, are there things that you can do to actually get your central governor to shut down a little less quickly?

Well, two weeks ago I was with Rouen Larson, who has won the Spartathlon three times and done many. He ran across America, for example, so he's a Swedish ultramarathon runner. He's in fact also rode across the Atlantic. And when people said, now tell me why did he do it? He said, you know, he's a 218 marathon. There are many 218 marathon runners who haven't achieved what he's achieved. I said it's because his brain's different and his brain sees things slightly differently than the rest of us. And I'm not sure quite what those differences are, but when they get discomfort, I don't think they see it as pain and discomfort in the same way that others might. They see it as a challenge. This is a feature of the sport. You get sore, but you carry on. So that's what I think you have to see, that pain is going to be absolutely individual. No one has ever really studied how do I feel pain? And how do you feel pain when we've run three quarters of a marathon Is it the same? Do we conceptualize it equally? What the central governor says is that it's your unique brain which is producing unique symptoms in you, and you need to learn how to cope with those symptoms. And your brain will do it slightly differently than my brain will do it. And I suspect that the best runners have got a different way of handling that discomfort. So I don't know what the answers are, but all I can say is that if you realize it's your brain playing a trick on you and you start talking to yourself in those contexts, I think it gets easier to handle because now you can understand what's actually going on. The only reason you're feeling fatigued is because your brain's trying to make sure you don't damage yourself, rather than, I'm at the wall and I'm limited and my muscles are going to break down the next second if I carry on. No, no. The answer is you can still go faster, but you can only go faster if you can control your thought. Thinking process. And so, again, I mean, the beauty of running is that it's all about emotional control and mental control. That's why we love it. All we're adding is a dimension to that emotional control.

Okay, gotcha. Well, I've got just a couple more questions for you. The first is kind of interesting. Do you actually do anything like lifting weights or resistance training to improve neural activation or recruitment of more of your motor units for endurance training?

Okay. I don't personally, but I absolutely believe you should. So let's now get back to what makes a great runner. So what makes a great runner is they have incredibly powerful calf and lower limb muscles. If you don't have powerful muscles, you can't run fast. No one has ever said that, I'm sure, on your show I always say you have to have a high cardiac output. Nonsense. You first have these incredibly powerful muscles that can drive you off the ground, because the limiting factor in running is your contact time. The foot's on the ground. So to be a great runner, your foot must never, ever, ever be on the ground. It must be on the ground for a millisecond, and then it must shoot you off the ground and propel you through space. So the great runners, their feet are never on the ground, and when they're on the ground, they're on the ground, for instance. And so your peak speed is determined by how much you can reduce your contact time. To have a short contact time, you have to have incredibly powerful muscles. But in addition, if you have incredibly powerful muscles, but the rest of the system doesn't work so that when you activate too much muscle, you threaten the homeostasis of your heart or your lungs or whatever, or your muscles. You're not going to run fast, so that's not going to help. You have to have everything in sync, but ultimately you've got to have very strong muscles and so you must also develop the strength of the muscles. And my colleagues, Dr. Nimela and Dr. Pavlova, sorry, Pavlovanan from Finland, have done many studies showing that weight training and specific eccentric training of the lower limb does improve your running performance. Yes, you have to have a great cardiovascular system, but if you don't have the muscles to power you to run through space, you're not going to run fast.

Interesting.

And people make a mistake because they look at a Kenyans for a leg and they see a so small and it's so lean and that can't be powerful. Those muscles are in and they can produce enormous forces and without that you can't run fast.

What type of research is going on right now in this area? Is there anything that's cutting edge or new or anything that you're involved in that you want to tell people about?

Yeah, we're doing brain imaging studies and these are very difficult to do for a number of reasons. And firstly, the equipment's expensive and so on, but so what we do is. And secondly, the brain moves, so the head moves and you've got to stop the head movement to get the imaging of what structures in the brain are active. And so we spent the last year developing a system where we can get people to cycle to their maximum whilst keeping their head still. You know, that sounds silly, but in the equipment that we use, it's really difficult. We're about to embark on that study and what we hope to show is which parts of the brain become active. And we hope to show that the sensory parts become active and that they become more active the harder you exercise and that it's these sensory parts that are inhibiting the motor part. So in the past people have looked only at the motor components and say, okay, as you run faster, you're recruiting more muscle. Because the motor parts of the brain are active. We're trying to look at which parts of the sensory control mechanisms.

Well, I'm looking forward to seeing what actually goes on with that. This is fascinating, a fascinating topic, fascinating area of research. Dr. Noakes, I know you have a lecture to head off to, so I'd like to thank you for coming onto the call today and sharing some of this research and this central governor model with us.

It's been a great pleasure, Ben, and I must tell you, I'm just going to speak to one of the local state rugby teams. Rugby, of course, is our game, not American football, by the way. We just praise American football. To me, it's the greatest and most complex sport in the world. Greatest coaches, greatest athletes. And we just study everything you guys do and try to apply it to our game. But anyway, the point is I'm going to speak to these guys about self belief and how self belief is so critical in determining the outcome.

Self belief is so critical in determining.

Their what to determining the outcome. Even in team like rugby, Americans, of course, American coaches understand that, but we kind of haven't learned that yet in South Africa. But that's the message and that's, that's what I've come to believe from looking at how the brain regulates exercise performance.

So big transfer over from your research into not just endurance sports but also some of these team sports.

Absolutely. And the video clips I have are of Michael Phelps swimming and Jason lisak swimming the 4x100 and swimming out of his socks on one particular day. And you can't explain it, how he does it, but his performance went up like about 5% in the final 100 meters and it's just astonishing. And it had to be in his brain, nowhere else. Wow.

Well, Dr. Noakes, thank you for your time today.

I'm pleasant on your show.

All right, goodbye.

Bye bye.

Well, folks, despite the somewhat Canny Audio from Dr. Noakes, I hope that you picked up as much as I did from that interview. Now remember, mark it on your calendars. Tuesday, April 12th is the shocking truth about Vitamin D and fish oil with Dr. Rick Cohen. I put a link to that in the show notes. I've of course put a link to everything that I talk about, including Tim's books in the show notes to this Episode, episode number 138@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Remember that a 14 day sneak peek at the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is available for $1 over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle. And as usual, the free Ben Greenfield fitness iPhone apps and Android apps are available in those stores. Tons of cool stuff in those. And of course, if you're a triathlete, stay tuned to the newsletter, the Facebook page or Ben Greenfield on Twitter to learn about the 2011 Ironman Coeur d' Alene training camp. Coming up May 13th through the 15th. It's limited to 20 people. All the athletes that I coach got first dibs on it a few days ago. Your chance will be coming up here in a couple days. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Sa.