Episode #147: What Is Crossfit Endurance & Can You Use It For Marathons or Triathlons?

In this podcast, what is CrossFit Endurance? Protein intake and supplements for young athletes, Blood sugar spikes from protein powder, taking supplements with coffee, birth control and weight loss. Losing weight for Ironman elbow pain from bicep curls is casein okay for vegans and the pose running method.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon, 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 BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here. And for any of you who have wondered what CrossFit is all about and whether you can actually use CrossFit to train for triathlon or marathon, this podcast is for you. Because today's featured topic is with Brian McKenzie of CrossFit Endurance. And this is the guy that probably knows more about CrossFit endurance than anybody else on the face of the planet. So we've got an interview with him coming up after of course, our Q and A. Now a couple of quick announcements. You may have noticed that this week the official Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirt, the new T shirt came out. And what I am going to offer to you right now, and nobody else is getting this offer other than the people who listen to the podcast, is if you send me a photo of you wearing the T shirt, then you will get a complimentary consult with me, a phone consult with me to go over your nutrition and your fitness program. So all you need to do is get the T shirt and send me a photo of you wearing it wherever, at the gym, on the edge of a cliff, in the shower, at Disneyland. I don't care where it's at. But if you send me that photo then you will get a free console. And the other option is you can simply upload the photo to your Facebook page and tag it with Ben Greenfield Fitness. And I'll see it if you do that. So the other special announcement is that we have a new kind of sponsor for the podcast or a new advertiser for the podcast. And because there are so many of you out there who listen to the podcast and who do triathlon, I actually have a really good line on a brand new triathlon store online called the tri shop@thetryshop.com I'll put a link to it over@bengreenfieldfitness.com but not only are they offering you on anything that you order over there a 10% discount. But they also have a very, very cool website. It's the best website I've seen in terms of its ease of use, its navigation, its functionality. Everything that they have is in stock. Everything you see on the website is in stock at the moment. So they ship that. They get ordered from you by 2pm the same day that you order it and they guarantee that they don't do any big blowout sales throughout the year. Instead, they just provide as low a price as they're able to offer every day, day in and day out. So they've got really good deals, really great brands in terms of triathlon on that website. And the discount code, I'm not going to give it to you. You got to go get it. It's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com right side of the page, scroll down, you'll see the tri shop ad. If you cl and use your discount code, you'll get 10% off already. Pretty low prices. So if you're getting ready for a triathlon, that's a good website for you to go to. So that's about it. Remember, if you like the podcast, be sure to leave a donation. We're gonna have one quick special announcement and then move forward to this week's listener Q and A.

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So if you have a question for the podcast, you can call toll free to 877-209-9439. You can grab the free iPhone or the free Android app from BenGreenfieldFitness.com over on the right side of the page and you can use the ask be on either of those apps or you can go to of course the Handy Dandy Ask Ben form that's right there on the site. And our first question today comes from Gina.

Hi Ben, this is Gina. I have a question about my 13 year old daughter. She's a swimmer and her practices are two and a half hours long, four times a week, and she attends about two practices a month. In the summer her practices will bump up to six to seven a week and they're two hours long and two days out of the week she'll have double practices. My daughter is 5 foot 3 inches and she weighs 103 pounds. She swims year round and is off three weeks in the fall and three weeks in the spring. I noticed during her fall and winter season she is often sick, fatigued and her swim times didn't really improve. I was evaluating her food intake and I noticed she was only getting about 20 to 30 grams of protein a day. She's a picky eater and prefers definitely carbs over protein. I've been really pushing protein, but I'm having difficulties getting her to eat a variety of sources. She'll eat chicken, turkey and eggs and I've also tried whey protein smoothies and shakes and she just doesn't like the taste of them. She takes a multivitamin, but I will be changing her to one that you recommended on your website. So my questions for you are how much protein should she be getting and what other supplements would you recommend that would be helpful for her? Thank you so much for all your wonderful advice and information.

So let's talk about young athletes and the way that they're different than the rest of us. Because kids are not just little adults. Their bodies are different, there's ways that they process things differently, and there's also some specific micronutrient and carbohydrate protein fat considerations that you should bear in mind when you're trying to fuel your daughter who's a swimmer, or for any of you who are out there who have children, or maybe you are a child yourself listening in, then these are things to think about. So first of all, there's a few different ways that kids are different than adults. And specifically kids all the way up through puberty are different. They've done very big nutritional surveys on specifically young athletes ranging from about 12 to 18 years old. And what they find is that on average, when they look at the type of fueling ratios that athletes are able to be successful on, female athletes actually can get away with lower carbohydrate intake than their male counterparts. Usually in these studies, on average female athletes would be taking in about 44 grams per kilogram. And male athletes, like young male athletes were up at about 7 grams per kilogram. So what that means is like say like a 90 pound young female athlete would need about 165 grams of carb daily, or about 650 calories of carbohydrate. Whereas a male athlete, like a young athlete, is going to be closer up to if they were the same size, up around 1,000 calories of carbohydrate. So what it comes down to is that females can get away with taking in a little bit lower carbohydrate intake than males when it comes to young athletes up to 18 years old. Now, the other interesting thing about young athletes is they've done studies in them and found that they've got Almost up to 40% higher fat oxidation rates compared to adults. So what that means is that fat is kind of the preferred exercise fuel in young athletes. And that means that fueling a young athlete with, like, energy bars, sports drinks, you know, candy, juices, things of that nature, may not be as effective as fueling them with things like avocados, coconuts, nuts, seeds, things of that nature. And as a matter of fact, studies have shown that when kids or young athletes are exercising for about 75 minutes or less, eating carbohydrates during the actual exercise session doesn't even give them any extra performance advantage. And that's probably because they're much, much better at using fat as a fuel. Now, it's always something that I've wondered whether or not kids simply use fat as a fuel more efficiently based off of a higher amount of baby fat, or do they use fat more efficiently compared to adults? Because we, as adults are eating higher amounts of sugar, high amounts of carbohydrates. And so by the time we get through puberty and everything, we've essentially shut down some of our ability to oxidize fat. I'm actually not sure which is true. It might be a combination of both, but what it comes down to is that you really don't have to shove a lot of carbohydrate down the hatch of a young athlete for exercise sessions that are 75 minutes or less. And a lot of what's taught to us in sports nutrition is really based off adult studies and not young athlete studies. So I think that some of our sports nutrition recommendations actually need to change. Now, compared to exercising adults, exercising children also burn lower amounts of storage carbohydrate, but higher amounts of carbohydrate from food sources. And so what that means is that kids don't tap into their body's own carbohydrate stores very much during exercise. They instead tend to rely more on carbohydrate. Sources from food. And that's because they have lower levels of the enzymes that are responsible for kind of breaking down the storage muscle carbohydrate and using that as a fuel. It's probably some type of a carbohydrate conservation mechanism that leaves more storage carbohydrate for a child to grow and to develop. So the interesting thing is that even though kids will burn higher amounts of carbohydrate from food sources during exercise than they will burn from their actual onboard storage carbohydrates, that still doesn't mean that you need to fuel them for exercise sessions of 75 minutes or less, assuming that they've been kind of fueled during the rest of the day leading into that exercise session. So once you get above 75 minutes, it certainly is prudent to make sure that they do have carbohydrate on board, because they actually don't really have as high of an ability compared to adults to be able to tap into storage carbohydrate. It would be interesting to actually see some formulations for kids that are more skewed towards fat. Based off of the fact that kids seem to be using fat as a preferred exercise fuel, specifically young athletes in the 12 to 18 year old range, it would be very, very interest to actually see some higher fat blends for kids to eat during exercise. And for my kids, as they're moving forward, they're already playing soccer and tennis and swimming. We're focusing on supplying them with lots of oils, avocados, coconut milk, nuts, seeds, things of that nature, rather than giving them a lot of the sugar based exercise fuels. And I think that you're going to find that kids do fairly well on that. Now, as far as your question about the actual protein needs, protein is obviously going to be really essential for building and maintaining and repairing lean muscle. And for kids, you're generally looking at a minimum protein intake of about 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. And if you are wanting to convert that into pounds, it's about 3 grams per pound of body weight. And remember that there's about 4 calories of protein per gram. So about 3 grams per pound is what you'd be looking for in terms of the minimum for kids. And you can definitely get up to more than that. I wouldn't really try to exceed more than about 2 grams per kilogram just because specifically for kids, that could lead to dehydration, it could lead to a little bit of calcium loss. So I'd be careful going over and above two grams per kilogram. And that would be about four and a half grams per pound. So, you know, depending on who's listening and how heavy your child is, you can kind of. You can kind of get that figured out. But I wouldn't go more than 4, 4.5 grams per pound and around 3 grams per pound to 4.5 grams per pound in terms of protein intake for a young athlete. And then a few other things to think about are that kids have a smaller surface area to body mass ratio, so they're really at a greater risk of experiencing dehydration. And you really should pay attention to things like dark urine color, low urine production, muscle cramps, their sweat rate. If they get a high heart rate or get headache or get nausea, all of that could be a sign of dehydration. So you'll want to make sure that you give them the equivalent of about a full bottle of water for each pound of body weight that they lose. If you're actually weighing them before or after exercise. With our kids, I just keep a close eye on their urine color and I explain to them that they need to tell me if they are ever thirsty, because thirst is a very good indicator of potential for dehydration. And then I give them water. Now, remember that in addition to protein and water, you of course, have those carbohydrate and fat considerations. I recommend basic ratio for most young athletes who are active, about 50 to 60% carbohydrate, 20 to 30% fat, 20 to 30% protein, right in that range. And then as far as, like supplements, vitamins go, you know, calcium, especially for a kid, is fairly important because it really is crucial for things like bone growth, bone mass, muscle contractions, things of that nature. And I would recommend, if you're able to, that you give your kids, like a multivitamin with a full spectrum of minerals in it. For example, our kids use the kids calm liquid multivitamin. And that kids calm liquid multivitamin actually has things like magnesium and calcium and minerals in it. So they're getting what they need for bone growth and bone mass. Just because kids, it is important that they not be losing bone density while they're out there training. Iron is really important for kids as well. A young athlete who's iron deficient is going to display a lot of symptoms of anemia, like low power speed. They'll get sick a lot. They'll be chronically fatigued. Sometimes they have fuzzy thinking that affects their grades. So I would make sure that you're including Iron rich foods, specifically things like red meat, vitamin C rich fruits and vegetables, because vitamin C will improve the iron absorption a little bit. Dark, leafy greens, things of that nature. If they do okay with dairy foods, including Greek yogurt, something of that nature would also be okay. Zinc is pretty important for kids too. Zinc deficiencies are something that can be an issue with young athletes. It's something that would make sure that you're getting into your kid more of a serious, more of a common issue in like vegan or vegetarian kids or young athletes. But zinc supplementation might be something that you want to look into with the caveat that you can overdose on zinc. So make sure that you're using that prudently. And then I would make sure that your kid's on a good B vitamin. If they're on a liquid multivitamin like the kids calm liquid multivitamin I mentioned, they're going to get the calcium, the minerals, the zinc. They also get the B vitamins. But B vitamins are really, really important for metabolism and protein utilization, especially in a young athlete. And you get a lot of the same symptoms as anemia when they're deficient in that, like fatigue and fuzzy thinking. You know, meat's a good vitamin B source to a limited extent. Whole grains are. I'm not a huge fan of shoving a ton of whole grains into your kid. And if you do, try and choose some of the ones like quinoa, amaranth, millet, the ones that are a little bit more amino acid packed versus a whole wheat bagel or something like that. But you can get pretty good vitamin B from a whole grain, even better from meat. So those are some things that I would bear in mind. Hopefully I didn't knock you out with too much information, but if you have questions, be sure and leave them as a comment in this podcast. Podcast number 147ngreenfieldfitness.com and we'll go ahead and move on to the next question from Lori, who says, because I've been observing a pattern in myself in the last few months about protein powders, I'm hoping you can help me make sense of this puzzle. I've noticed when I consume a protein shake with whey that my blood sugar takes a dive within an hour and I have to eat something else. I've observed this with any mix of protein powder that has whey in it. On the other hand, if I consume a protein powder with other kinds of protein, like brown rice or yellow pea protein or hemp protein powder, I can go four to five hours quite comfortably. Does this mean I just don't do well with whey? What is going on here? I am perplexed. Well, a lot of people don't realize that meat whey, just about any full protein, especially animal based protein, it's going to have a really high, what's called an insulinotropic effect. And what that means is it can result in postprandial glycemia. And what that means is that when you consume a protein like this, you get a big release of insulin from the pancreas. That big release of insulin is designed to assist with delivery of amino acids and any sugars that are consumed with the protein into the muscles and allow for recovery, repair, utilization of the proteins, etc. However, if you are very insulin sensitive, or even if you're comparing like a whey based protein to a vegetable based protein, you're going to find that that that insulin spike is going to in many cases give you a quick burst of energy and then kind of a crash related to that drop in insulin. And this may be an issue, especially if you are very insulin sensitive, more especially if you have something like type 2 diabetes. But if that's an issue with you when you're consuming whey protein, then it may be that the insulin index of whey protein is a little bit too high. And this surprises a lot of people. Remember, it's not a blood glucose issue. It's not necessarily a health issue. Remember, it's the very, very high levels of circulating blood glucose that are more of an issue than that insulin release. But it certainly is an issue if you're very insulin sensitive and you tend to be very responsive to that quick drop in energy following that spike in insulin. So whey protein has a very good biological value, meaning that it's very, very usable by your body's cells. You get a lot of essential amino acids from it. It also has a really high, what's called a protein digestibility corrected amino acid score. And that's a method by which the World Health Organization actually evaluates the value of a protein. And it's based on the amino acid requirements of humans and specifically kids, which we actually just got done talking about. But basically the pdcaa, which is that protein digestibility corrected amino acid score, it's really, really high for like egg white proteins and whey proteins and casein based proteins, all of which are animal based proteins. And it tends to drop with things like pea protein or rice protein or hemp protein. And so what happens is that as that tends to drop. You also tend to get kind of a drop in the insulin releasing effect of the protein as well. So ultimately what it comes down to is that everybody is different and you need to find out what works for you. It sounds like doing like a vegan protein blend, something like the living protein. I'll put a link to that in the show notes for you. Something like that might be better for you than going with the whey protein. Now I personally use both whey protein as well as a pea rice hemp protein blend. I use a double bonded Mount Capra whey protein. In the morning, usually with my hot cereal, I mix it up with oatmeal or quinoa and then in the afternoon I'll typically do a living protein blend. And I find that I tend to do very well on either. I don't really notice that drop in energy, but if you do, you may want to stick to the protein powders like the vegetable based protein powders that are going to cause a little bit less of that insulin releasing effect. So hopefully that helps you out. Mike says Ben, you've mentioned that taking vitamin supplements near the time of drinking coffee. Coffee can reduce the effects of the supplements. How long before or after drinking coffee should one take supplements to get the most benefit? Well, caffeine can help certain supplements and inhibit others, but specifically the ones that you're going to have an issue with is that caffeine in the coffee can cause calcium to be excreted in your urine and in your fecal matter as well. So you're basically going to excrete more calcium. When you're consuming caffeine, you lose about 5 milligrams of calcium for every cup of coffee that you take in. Assuming that your cup of coffee has about 150 milligrams of caffeine, which is pretty typical. And so obviously that's a concern for women. And the issue with that is that it doesn't matter too much whether you're taking in the caffeine at the same time as the calcium or not. If you're drinking a bunch of coffee, you're simply going to excrete more calcium whether or not the coffee is consumed at the same time that you're taking in a calcium supplement. And while I do think that the importance of calcium is blown out of proportion compared to the importance of magnesium, especially for women, I really don't recommend that women be drinking more than about 300 milligrams of caffeine per day or more than a couple cups of coffee. Per day. And better yet would be like just a small, like 8 ounce cup of coffee in the morning. And that you'd be able to kind of cut yourself off from that if you need to. Because if you find yourself having caffeine withdrawal issues, it's probably a sign that you're drinking too much caffeine. Caffeine can inhibit the vitamin D receptors, so it can limit the amount of vitamin D absorption. That's another issue. I would not be taking in caffeine at the same time as your vitamin D. If you're concerned about that, especially if you're a heavy morning caffeine drinker, again, we're talking about taking in more than one cup of coffee. So if you're a multiple latte, multiple black coffee person, you may want to consider if you're using a vitamin D supplement to not be taking your vitamin D supplement at the same time as the caffeine iron. Caffeine is going to interfere with your absorption of iron and iron is obviously going to be necessary for your red blood cell production. So if you're drinking coffee at the same time that you're taking in an iron supplement, that can actually reduce the absorption of the iron by up to about 80%. So that's a huge issue, especially if you're concerned about anemia. If you're supplementing with iron because you are low in iron, definitely wouldn't be drinking coffee at the same time as you take in your iron supplement. Coffee, obviously it's a diuretic. Caffeine has this diuretic effect. So it increases the amount of fluids that you excrete, increases your urination. And if you're taking in a water soluble vitamin like a B vitamin, some of that can be depleted as a result of the fluid loss. The other issue is that caffeine can kind of interfere with some of the metabolism of thiamine, which is vitamin B1. And so you know, if you're taking a bunch of caffeine with a vitamin B supplement, it could be an issue. Lots of people get enough vitamin B as it is. Especially if you're taking one of these like energy type of multivitamins that just has thousands and thousands and thousands of your percentage of vitamin B. So that's not as big of an issue. Kind of the flip side of that is that caffeine actually does stimulate the production of stomach acid acid and that assists with absorption of vitamin B12. So I wouldn't worry too much about taking in caffeine with a B vitamin. I'd be Worrying more about taking it with like a calcium, vitamin D or an iron. And as far as other vitamins, other minerals. Caffeine is going to reduce some of the absorption of like a zinc supplement, a copper supplement. So if you're especially a guy, a lot of guys are taking like these zinc containing supplements to improve testosterone. That'll be reduced, the absorption will be reduced a little bit with caffeine intake. Caffeine could interfere with the action of vitamin A and also with the absorption of some of your electrolytes like magnesium and potassium and sodium. So ultimately like a cup of coffee or a cup of green tea a day really isn't going to be an issue. That's not going to have a big negative effect on your overall health or your absorption. But if you are a multi cup a day coffee drinker, you may want to consider, for example, taking all your supplements in the evening with the problem being that a lot of times you're really not feeling the metabolic enhancing effects of supplements and vitamins if you're taking those in the evening. What I personally do is I have a very small cup of coffee in the morning. If I need to have another cup of coffee, it's usually decaf. And I take my supplements typically, most of them with a meal to improve absorption. So that's, that's the way that I do it. The half life of caffeine in your body is going to be anywhere from three to seven hours. Females metabolize caffeine a lot more quickly, usually about 20 to 30% more quickly than males. So, you know, basically that means that if you are taking all your supplements, you know, around noon, a lot of that caffeine is going to have cleared by, have been cleared by your body. So that's another thing to think about is you could just like take supplements with lunch rather than with breakfast if you're drinking a bunch of coffee with breakfast. So that is the issue with that. Remember that. And I'll put a link to this in the show notes. I have a bunch of articles on whether or not coffee is kind of good or bad and some healthy alternatives to coffee. I have a bunch of articles about that up on the site. I will put a link to kind of a centralized collection of those articles right after Mike's question. The next question is from Rebecca who says, I recently listened to one of your podcasts where you talked about the negative effects of hormonal birth control. I've seriously been thinking about switching to a non hormonal IUD because I think being on the pill has been hindering my ability to lose weight. And for those of you who want to listen to that podcast where I talked about the negative effects of hormonal birth control and how it can cause you to gain weight, I'll put a link to that in the show notes right there with Rebecca. Rebecca's question. This is the show notes for episode number 147. So Rebecca goes on, she says, in your experience, how much easier is it to lose weight being off of hormonal birth control? And what is your opinion of non hormonal IUDs? Some people will have some issues right when they go off birth control. Now, once the birth control hormones are out of your system, which usually is just a couple of days, your body starts producing hormones to reinitiate your menstrual cycle. And some women will start to ovulate literally within a couple of weeks. Other women, it can take several months for ovulation to begin again. Generally speaking, it's about two to three months to have your body kind of back in its normal hormonal mode, its normal menstruation mode. And that's about the point where you would start to notice that if the pill was inhibiting weight loss, that that would start to be more of a non issue once you've gotten into your regular period. I'll warn you that when you get off the pill, you can get some periods of nausea, like breast tenderness, headaches, there's sometimes some acne breakouts, there's some weird things that can happen hormonally when you get off the pill. So I'll just kind of warn you that sometimes it takes about two to three months for everything to kind of even out once you do get off the pillow. But more importantly, you're kind of looking at some alternatives in terms of an intrauterine device or an iud. And that's basically like a plastic or a metal birth control device and it gets placed in your uterus. And there's a few different types, but some are hormone free, some actually have hormones. The ones that have hormones, you're going to have some of the same issues in terms of a big release of progestin. And I talked about that in a previous podcast about how there are some hormonal issues with that that could cause weight gain or resistance to weight loss. For the non hormonal IUDs, what happens is they kind of have this spermicidal effect. Usually it's like a copper, and that can affect the lining of your uterus. It can have that spermicidal effect. It can kind of keep the fertilized egg from actually implanting in the uterus. And it stimulates the production of prostaglandins, which are inflammatory chemicals that affect the hormones that are needed to support a pregnancy. The issue is that because so many prostaglandins are produced when you actually get something like a copper IUD place, there's a lot of potential for some more serious inflammatory issues, including pelvic inflammatory disease, which is basically a bacterial infection of your reproductive organs, your uterine lining, your fallopian tubes, tubes, your ovaries. And that can be a big issue. It can be very unpleasant and it's basically like a full blown infection. So if you get an iud, what you need to understand is that what you're doing is you're causing inflammation in your uterus that's keeping you from getting pregnant. That, in my opinion, is not healthy. I would still recommend, and again, this isn't like a sex help podcast, but I would still recommend that if you are trying to prevent pregnancy, you just go with a spermicidal based condom. That's kind of the healthiest way to go if you're really trying to make as few adjustments to your body's chemistry as possible. And I'm just putting this out there, that I personally use that and have done so for eight years with zero issues in terms of surprises. And yeah, it works just fine. And I do know that we are a fertile couple because when we do not use that method in the past, as a matter of fact, the couple times that we did not, we had twins. So there you go. Next question is from Bill, who says, I've listened to a number of your podcasts and hoping you can advise me on how best to lose approximately 10 pounds over the next two to three months before I enter my build up phase for my next Ironman. The area I'd like to target is stomach and thighs. Your advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. Okay, so fat loss. This is like a really basic general fat loss question. And as those of you who have listened to previous episodes, or maybe you've listened to all 140, 46 previous episodes here at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, you know that I've talked about this and I try not to kind of kick a horse to death, so to speak, and talk about stuff that I've really covered comprehensively in the past. So if you're listening in and you want kind of like the comprehensive fat loss lecture, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you go to the upper right corner where the little search tab is. I've got a very good search engine on the site. You do a search for this term fat loss video. Do a search for fat loss video@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the top three results are going to be pretty much everything you'd ever need to know to spark fat loss quickly. Just access the top three results there. They're all free. It's kind of a collection of videos and lectures and talks that I've given, seminars that I've given free to download, to listen to, to watch. That is where I would start if you were just going after that kind of like, give me the Fat Loss 101 talk. And it'll go into how to train as well and get in shape and still burn fat and lose fat. So just go to BenGroupleFitness.com, do a search for fat loss video. Alright, next question is from Mike Burns, who says, I get pain on the inside of my forearm just above the elbow when I use the preacher curl at the gym. It feels more like stop doing what you're doing pain rather than muscles being worked pain. The machine has stationary handles so I can adjust the way my wrists are turned. I can do concentration curls with dumbbells and curls with the cable machine with no problem. Should I just avoid the preacher curl machine from now on? Alright, well, first of all, in terms of the preacher curl machine, it's one of the issues that I have with machines in general is that they're basically designed to be slightly adjustable for a range of body parts, body lengths and joint lengths, but not fully adjustable. And they don't work for a lot of people. And specifically the preacher curl machine, what it does is it locks the center of rotation your elbow, and ideally locks it so that it is in the same line of rotation as the actual machine. However, a lot of times the actual elbow joint, in terms of how it lines up with the axis of the actual machine itself, the rotational axis of the machine itself is it can be below or above that axis and that can create a great deal of shearing in the elbow. And specifically, it can cause overuse of the tendons and the ligaments that cross over what's called your medial epicondyle, which is that bump on the inside of your elbow. And so you can come out with medial epicondylitis or just kind of like some acute immediate medial epicondyle pain that's also known as golfer's elbow, incidentally, because golfers tend to get that as well. A medial epicondylitis is something that is simply going to happen every time you use a preacher curl machine. If your elbow joint is not directly in line with the axis of the machine. And even in that case, because you're pulling back against the pad of the preacher machine with your elbow as you're performing the curl, you can get those straining and shearing forces in the elbow, even if it's lined up properly. So I don't recommend that you use a preacher curl machine. You may, if you really have your heart set on doing preacher curls, may have less of an issue if you just use like a preacher curl bench and use a barbell with that bench. I personally, when I was bodybuilding did very, very few curls at all. I did a lot of deadlifts, I did a lot of pull ups, I did a lot of bench pressing. And all of those tend to allow you to really work your biceps using a lot heavier weight and get a lot more mass on your biceps than doing isolated curls. I used curls as I got closer to bodybuilding show so that I could kind of develop the peak in my biceps and kind of develop that last little bit of differentiation between the heads of the biceps themselves. But for the most part, if you just want big arms, and that's why you're doing curls, you're going to be better served by doing deadlifts, by doing pull ups, by doing bench press, and a lot of those are going to give you just as much bicep stimulation. So I hope that helps. And I would stay away from the pretracrome machine and also the tricep extension machine. Both of those really aren't all that hot for your elbow. Tricep extension machine being kind of the same issue, except usually you get lateral epicondylitis rather than medial epicondylitis. Okay. Etana asks, I'm a vegan. Some vegetarian vegan products such as cheese, have casein in them. Am I cheating on my vegan diet by consuming dairy substitute products such as dairy free cheese and coffee creamer that have casein in them? Well, casein is this milk protein you find in a lot of processed foods. You'll find a lot of non dairy, quote unquote, non dairy creamers, soy cheeses, stuff like that. It is derived from milk, so it's not vegan. It would be considered vegetarian again because it's not a meat containing product, but it's not vegan. And a lot of vegans really don't mind that much casein in like a soy cheese. But if you're really trying to go like strict vegan, you would want to avoid casein. You'd want to avoid casein 8 like calcium casein 8, potassium casein 8, sodium casein 8. And you'll find those in a lot of stuff. I mean, even if you're getting like a hamburger bun that a lot of times has like calcium casein 8 in it. And yeah, I mean, if you want to avoid casein and be a true strict vegan, then that would be the way that you'd have to go. Casein really is kind of more like a slow release protein compared to whey. That's like why a lot of protein powders have a whey casein blend in them. It does have a really good high amount of amino acids in it. It's used as a food additive. It's used as a binder as well, which is why you find it in a lot of processed foods. You also find it in like paint and glue and plastics and fiber. It's found in a lot of like medical and dental products as well. But for the most part, if you wanted to go casein free, then you'll need to avoid just about any energy bar or drink or packaged good or processed food that says casein on it. And as a matter of fact, I do have some clients that I start off with on a total allergy free diet just so we can kind of reboot their system. And we do eliminate casein. And when we do that, I send a whole list of all the foods that contain casein in them. And it's pretty comprehensive. There are a ton of foods that have casein. If you're trying to avoid casein, it can be an issue. And casein is an allergy that some people have too. It's a little bit more common in terms of one of the allergies that can cause some reaction, some protein reactions. So if you're going vegan though, give up casein if you really wanna practice what you preach. Not that I endorse being vegan. I have done it myself. There are some ways that it could work, but I'd be careful going down that road. So Craig says, what do you think of Dr. Romanov's pose method of triathlon? I'd love to hear your take on it. Well, this pose method of triathlon is actually something that Brian MacKenzie brings up during our interview today because he does teach the pose running technique. I've read the book, I've seen The program, you know, I could go on for hours about what exactly goes into the pose running technique. But you're trying to run almost with, like, this S, like, body position. So you run with slightly bent knees, so you're keeping a lot of stress off your knees. You lean forward from your ankles, so you're trying to let gravity do some work to move you forward. And you think about pulling or lifting your foot up underneath your hip rather than, like, kicking your heel back up to your butt. And that's what you hear a lot of times, like running coaches. So you kick your heel or your butt. That's something that I actually used to do. And it really should be more kind of lifting your feet underneath your hip. And then you try and land with the ball of your feet under your body, so your center of mass is kind of staying directly underneath your body. And what they've found is that this pose method of running can definitely reduce knee impact, and it can help you enjoy running a little bit. If you do have knee pain, it can assist with economy, it can assist with efficiency. Efficiency. There are some issues with it. For example, there was a study that they did on a bunch of triathletes. They had them do pose running, and then they studied their stride length. They studied their vertical oscillation, or the amount that they moved up and down during the stride. They looked at the oxygen cost of running, or basically the running economy. And what they found was that the pose method kind of decreased the stride length, which you would expect, and it decreased the amount that the runners kind of bounced up and down. But the runners had a significantly higher running economy. They were trying to use a lot more oxygen while running with the pose running method. And so anytime you increase running economy, that's kind of a bad thing. It's not something that you really want to happen when you're running. Now, it could be that these people, even though they went through 12 weeks of learning the pose method, still hadn't really gotten it down properly. So they're running economy was still a little bit inefficient. I'm not going to pretend that you can totally learn a new movement pattern in 12 weeks, but that study did. It is a little bit of a red flag with the pose diet. The other issue is they have done studies and found that while the loading in the knees is reduced with the pose running method, the loading on the ankle is significantly increased. So if you have ankle issues, you may want to be aware that the pose method could actually cause some pain in your ankles. Or in your feet or in your Achilles tendon or in your calves compared to your knees. So just something to think about. Overall, I think it's a very, very good idea to always be analyzing your running, looking into things like the pose running method or the key running method. And I personally have read the books, I've studied the methods a little bit, and I implement them in my running pattern. But you need to realize that when you implement something, even if it is taught method, even if somebody is making a lot of money selling books and DVDs teaching the method, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's for you. And I do think that people, some people are built differently and they simply can't run with like a pose or a key running method. My wife, for example, she is a fast, fast runner, but she can only run fast. And she has a very difficult time using this relaxed forward lean, bend in the knees type of running method. She gets ton of pain in her legs when she does it. And that's simply because her running style is more suited to sprint running. And that's the way that she was trained. That's the way her body moves. And I'm not saying that it would be totally impossible to teach her how to run with a pose style running method, but she's an example of somebody for whom that has created more problems than it has solved. So I hope that helps you out. And we have a listener called in. And I wanted to play this for you if any of you are triathletes out there. And I imagine that if you're listening to this show with Brian McKenzie from Cross CrossFit Endurance, you probably are a triathlete. I want to play you something that somebody called in about about the Triathlon Dominator program, because this program actually does use a lot of the components that Brian is talking about in our interview. So here you go. And then we'll move straight into the featured topic with Brian.

Hey, Ben, Luke Powell from Louisville. Been doing your triathlon Dominator program since December. I'm training for the Louisville Ironman in August. I wanted to let you know I did a half Ironman, a local race, here last weekend. I'm only on week 21 of the program, so it's a little early for a half. But it's a race I did last year. I wanted to do it again. It's a very hilly bike and run course, and I did it in five hours and 19 minutes this year, which doesn't sound super speedy, but considering same course last year took me five hours and 57 minutes. That's quite an improvement. So I wanted to let you know I'm very happy with the way things are going so far on the triathlon Dominator program. Can't wait to see how things progress. We've got another half Ironman coming up beginning of July and then of course the full Ironman at the end of August. So I will call and give you update, another updates later on as things are going. But want to tell you I'm excited about the way things are going so far and can't wait to see what happens.

Featured Topic.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I've got Brian McKenzie on the call. Brian is a name that you may be familiar with if you are familiar with CrossFit, because Brian is the creator of CrossFit, CrossFit Endurance. He's really an expert in strength and conditioning, specifically for endurance athletes and specifically using CrossFit style protocols. He himself is an ultra runner. He's trained clients from all over the globe using the type of strategies that we're going to talk about today. And he himself has done ironman. He's done 30 ultra marathons, 50k all the way up to 100 miles. He's done wet Western states, he's done the Angeles Crest 100. So the guy is practicing what he's preaching. And Brian, I'd like to thank you for coming on the call today.

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Awesome. So I guess to get started right off the bat I'd like to talk a little bit about what exactly CrossFit endurance is. You had a little bit of a feature in a magazine, Triathlete magazine. I remember, I remember seeing you a few months ago in that magazine. And a little bit of an explanation of CrossFit endurance came across you in Tim Ferriss book Four Hour Body. I believe you were in that as well. So you're obviously out there and you've got this CrossFit endurance protocol. So what is it and how is it different than like a regular say CrossFit workout?

Well, CrossFit is pretty much defined as, I'll just start with CrossFit. CrossFit is Greg Glassman's baby and he created that. And basically more or less it is constantly very high intensity functional movement in a nutshell. And that is a loaded, loaded thing. But what we've done is taken that model and introduced it kind of in a way to what it is we do with endurance training. I originally was brought in the endurance community and met Dr. Romanoff, who is the creator of the pose method and more or less got my education from him for roughly about seven years. I learned mechanics from an early, early standpoint and having somewhat of a background in strength and conditioning, I was learning mechanics all the way around. It wasn't just with like pose running, which Dr. Romanoff is synonymous with. He actually teaches movement for everything. And that's basically where my education came from. I was contemplating becoming a physical therapist, although I quickly after being a physical therapist assistant realized it was not what I wanted to do. I was a little more aggressive in my approach with people, which kind of. I don't know that aggressive is the right word for our program. Although that is probably the biggest thing that people see our program as is this aggressive approach or just high intensity approach to endurance training that has got this is. I don't want to say it's a fallacy, but it's not entirely true. Our program starts from a technical, a highly skilled format, which is why we run seminars for it. We show people our seminars and we'll have three, probably by mid summer now that deal with run or swim or incoming cycling where we deal with the mechanics of these, these three sports. Because mainly these are the sports we're dealing with with endurance training. And you being a multi sport athlete, you understand that what we do is we attack everything from a very basic standpoint of mechanics and construct a program based off of somebody's mechanical skill with something. If I to take you through a general synopsis of what the how the program was developed, just take your runabout endurance athlete. If they came to me, the first thing I would do is I'd watch them walk in as they came to see me, then I'd watch them run. If they were a runner, I'd probably watch them ride a bike and even swim. And then I would actually watch them squat and I would watch them actually do things that I considered highly functional. And you use the greatest capacity of what the body's capable of doing. The reason we use CrossFit and the reason CrossFit came into this is because it's probably the greatest expression for understanding an athlete's weakness. I don't think that everybody should be going out and doing thrusters and pull ups all day long. But what I do think is they need a serious strength and conditioning program that allows them to develop things they couldn't actually develop on another end. So CrossFit endurance starts as a highly technical thing and I want to get an athlete Moving correctly first and in that. That's probably going to require a lot of technical skill, skill and drill type stuff. It's also going to probably require a lot of mobility and getting somebody to get on. Incorporate a mobility program like Kelly Starrett has created, if anybody's familiar with that, with the mobility wad, which is online and posted every day now, I believe.

For the people that aren't listening, when you say something like the mobility wad, are you talking about a workout? That WAD is workout of the day, right?

Yeah, yeah, work out of the day. And my friend Kelly, who's one of my closest friends, he's a DPT by trade, and he's created this dynamic way of getting people to deal with their issues for themselves and empowering people to deal with these things for themselves. Because most of the issues we have are something that we could probably deal with on our own if we had the tools to do that. And he gives those out, basically puts out a video every single day and shows you how to deal with your junk. And, you know, they're usually pretty easy fixes if it's not something structural or needs to be taken a look at by a doctor. With that said, you know, I dealt with this same type of stuff for years. Kelly and I speak the same language and which is why we get along so well. You know, it's. So our program's highly technical. We deal with the fundamental issues that athletes have from there. Yes, we get into intensity. And the reason we get into intensity is there's a greater adaptation from the central nervous system with intensity. If I were to correct the way you moved in something and we can use running as an example, I could use squatting. We could use anything you want. I would never want you to go out and apply that on something that's of long and slow duration. It is an ineffective tool to use. Now, that does not mean we're going to use long duration. I want to develop capacity first before I do that. And through intensity, we know we can do that. And through research, we also know we can still develop that aerobic capacity down the line, in fact, far greater than we can with the long, slow efforts. So from there, that's when we start dealing with the kind of the endurance side of stuff and where we start applying that, the longer duration or longer efforts for the athlete. And, you know, our website offers a general, kind of a general program for the general public. We have plenty of athletes who can handle much higher volume than that and still handle the strength and conditioning that we're dealing with and still handle the skill work. You know, a lot of people think that it's just we're out there cutting volume and that is not what we're doing. In fact, our program is probably a much tougher road than just going and lacing up your shoes, putting on your cycling cleats and getting on your bike or going out and running for a longer period of time and getting something done. Our program is going to require a hell of a lot of skill work, a hell of a lot of mobility work. It's going to require you to actually go out and work your ass off while maintaining the skill of these things. And it's going to require you to hold those things for durations at which you're probably not used to holding 85% of VO2 max for two hours. In a nutshell, I guess that's kind of what we've done.

That's really helpful in describing the philosophy behind CrossFit endurance as far as nuts and bolts. Can you walk me through a sample week of workouts? If somebody were going to say, okay, I want to train using this CrossFit endurance philosophy that Brian just described, what would I be doing like a Sunday through a Monday?

Sunday through Monday.

Typical week.

A typical week. Let's just say we cleaned somebody up, got them back together. Starting off a runner, probably we'd have them crossfitting anywhere from four to six times a week. A lot of that stuff would be strength would have some sort of strength bias to it. My main focus is to have somebody strength getting as strong as possible. Building strength does not mean that we're putting on mass in any way, shape or form. So, you know, a lot of people get scared from that. So I just want to throw that out there. I'm not out. We're not developing a program to turn people into bodybuilders or putting on moss and mass. We're developing a program to make the athlete able to handle what it is they're going to do. And the stronger we can have an endurance athlete, the better. So we usually havei usually have people doing some form of strength training anywhere from one to three times a week.

Do you get concerned about muscle mass at all? In terms of people getting for myself.

Or for my athletes?

In terms of athletes that you're training putting on muscle or putting on too.

Much muscle, I'm usually not very concerned with that because from the get go, we address nutrition and if somebody's not eating outside of their I'm not going to use calories. But they're not eating outside of their levels of energy that they need to support. If they're eating clean, I'm not really worried about it. If they're following the program, I'm not really worried about it. Because the program that's designed for putting on mass will have repetitions or sets and repetitions indicative of that. Sure, I might have an athlete that's going to put on, depending on how deficient they are, anywhere from 5 to 10, maybe even 15 pounds in extreme cases. But 5 to 10 pounds is something that people will accept if they're faster at a distance. So. Just to get back to the program for the week, it would entail probably three strength training workouts. One to three strength training workouts followed by a short, intense or Even just basic CrossFit. Your fundamental or traditional CrossFit workouts. Following a traditional format of CrossFit where it's a constant variance of what it is we're doing. We're not allowing the body to kind of physically adapt to any one thing, but. But we are exposing weakness. And if I can see that an athlete has major problems with, let's just say, putting a bar over their head and stabilizing while having that bar over their head, then that's something I'm going to focus on until they're actually really good at it. And then I'm going to start mixing things back up again.

So for people who are listening, who haven't maybe even done a CrossFit workout, you're talking about like rowing and squats and deadlifts and pull ups and stuff like that, right?

You got it? Yeah.

Okay.

There's just, there's an array of things and there's actually free information on the CrossFit journal that people can get on how all this works through CrossFit. I mean, it's a wealth of information that comes from the CrossFit.

Over@CrossFit.com youm got it?

Yeah. CrossFit Journal, which is off of. You can get it out. You can find it off CrossFit.com or you just cross it. Google CrossFit Journal. It's free information. I mean, they line out the entire program on how it's supposed to work, how it should work. There's great, great information, great resource there.

Okay.

But more importantly, the idea is for people to do this stuff correctly. Because CrossFit isn't just about going out and doing thrusters and pull ups and setting yourself up in your gym or in your garage and just going after it and deciding to do high intensity work. CrossFit's about. It's just like our program where we're teaching people how to move correctly first and then increasing the intensity because that's where we see the greatest adaptation occur. With that, we want people to actually go learn how to do this stuff, which they've also got videos. But the other great resource is the fact that there's probably an affiliate that's pretty close to them where they could go for relatively cheap to learn all this stuff and train with people. So with that you've got all these great resources. We probably have somebody, a multi sport athlete. We're seeing more so towards the four CrossFit strength training workouts a week. Just because of the amount of stuff that we're going to have them be doing. It's just overload. With more of a single sport athlete we're seeing upwards of five to six, but it could be anywhere from four to six strength and or CrossFit workouts in a week. On top of that we're seeing anywhere from two to maybe three or even four sports specific workouts a week. The fourth, we don't really see the fourth too much. Most of the stuff we do that you would consider the fourth would be workouts that are actually under four minutes that are just super, super intense. We're talking probably 105% of VO2 max type effort work. It's just really short duration stuff. But we're looking for quick cause and effect with stuff like that. And that's only introduced once the program's kind of evolved a whole lot more.

Okay, all right, cool. So as far as like, you know, say for something like a swim, what would be a sample swim workout using.

CrossFit endurance philosophies varies all over the board.

Ten 1- hundreds on 2 minutes, you know, but that, that could change into, you know, hey, I find we find out exactly what these people can hold their 1/ hundreds on and let's play with the recovery interval or let's play with. Now let's just apply that to a time domain and give them, you know, let's just say they can come in on 1:30 and they've got 30 seconds of recovery and they can hit this fairly well. You know, I would, I may change that up into okay, you've got a minute 30 to go as far as you possibly can and you know, change it up with an interval cycle and then you've got seconds recovery or 15 seconds recovery now as opposed to 30 and repeat that effort no matter where you're at in the pool. And that's, I mean it could vary very much differently. I mean it could go 15, 100 depending on their ability. Let's just drop it by 10 seconds or 5 seconds and see how well they can hold these hunters. It could be 2000 and 50s, it could be your typical main set workouts you see in masters type programs, they're pretty much the same. It's just we're getting and we're expecting people to still apply a lot of the technical skill that swimming has done over the years because American swimming has done a beautiful job. Granted, swimming 10,000 meters for a guy who's going to do, you know, a sub two minute race in my estimation and quite a few other people's is a bit overboard, but you know, that's just my opinion.

Okay, cool. So how about like cycling and running? What type of workouts would somebody expect?

So what we usually do is, we usually have, what we usually do is we have at least what we have a short interval day and we have a longer interval day. And with the three sport method we usually just keep swimming to two intervals in the week. And what we do is we flip flop the running the bike each week on short and long and then we add a tempo or time trial for the bike. Usually on a typical week we would add a tempo or time trial on the bike and everything is usually above 80% effort. We don't use heart rate very often. I've been there and done that and I'm kind of in line with Glaston a lot on this one, is that it's just a correlate of what intensity is. And that correlate changes very, very frequently depending upon how much is going on with the athlete, how much sleep, everything else we usually use effort or even power output or things like that. With that said, the athlete should develop a pretty good understanding of what effort means. You know, and using an RPD scale or rate perceived Exertion scale is a pretty good thing because your perceived effort of 80% on a day that you're probably fairly over trained is going to be much different from a day you're fresh. So that's why we do it and why heart rate can falter. But you would see typically, let's just lay out, we've got the CrossFit workouts, the strength kind of laid out there. Let's just say we had a swimming workout that was 20 50s and then another swim workout that was, let's just say four two hundreds or five two hundreds, you know, and holding that on the athlete's ability. But these are pretty hard efforts. These aren't slow efforts. None of this is ever slow, you know, with the assumption that the athlete is maintaining, you know, pretty good technique. Okay. And then we had, for running that week we're going to have a, let's say six four hundreds and you know, we've got those, and we've got those on two minutes recovery or even 90 seconds recovery. And then we've got on Saturday a longer 10k run that's a tempo at 85% or even 90%. And let's just take, it's real simple, take 90% of your best time in that time and go with that. The bike, we may go out with longer intervals. Let's just say we're going 4,5k repeats on the bike. So 3.1 mile repeats on the bike and we're spinning in between that maybe one or two miles focusing on technique that's one day or even hill repeats that are even longer effort. And then we've got a bike tempo or time trial. Let's just say we did a bike time trial that week and I'm going to, you know, based on what we've already got, we got a run that's a 10k. I'd probably throw the athlete doing probably a 15 to 20 mile time trial. And you know, this is where people kind of misunderstood. I think people, they take a look at this and they don't understand this, how much technical skill is actually involved in all this stuff. And where they don't understand like okay, I'm just going to go get on my bike and throw down a 20 mile time trial. Yeah, we're asking you to do that. We're asking you to do that while not falling to pieces. And that's a pretty hard thing to do. And we usually can have people do 300 watt tests or even 250 watt tests and watch where they just break down within a 90 seconds, things like that. And you know, going out of the gate and people not understanding how to hold wattage like that where they should be for a time trial and maintaining form. It's just, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what we do. So.

Okay, gotcha.

So do you guys ever go out.

And do like, you know say like for an Ironman triathlete ever go out and do like a hundred mile ride or anything like that?

No, not really. It's not nothing that I've found. I mean I've been there, done that and I've done it with the athletes. And we've done it with our athletes, I've done it. Unfortunately, unless you are at the highest level or ability of an endurance athlete's capacity, you're just not going to have the ability to recover to continue with training the following week. You're just going to not recover enough from something like that.

Why?

And you know, you just don't, people just don't have, you don't have the ability to go out and ride for five or six hours and then be fresh the next day to train at 90% or more and the ability to maintain that stuff. And the fact is, you know, and.

What we mean like if you're going out and riding like a hundred miles hard or I mean look, what, what if you're going out and riding aerobically like say like, like your Ironman pace, Are you saying that that's not something that you would encourage?

Not a whole lot, no, no, it's not something I encourage at all. I mean that's exactly the only thing that could be used for is really recovery. It's not doing anything other than okay, if you really have the mental side of this where you're not grasping it and understanding that you can be on the bike for 100 miles, by all means go out and ride that hundred miles, knock your socks off but you know, you're not going to be doing anything for yourself fitness wise or even to develop your ability to go harder and hold up under that ironman. It's really just recovery type stuff and it has no place really in training for what somebody wants to do. Now granted there's a major, major difference between somebody who wants to go finish an ironman to somebody who wants to do, you know, let's just say an 11 hour, 10 hour, 9 hour Ironman. Okay, there's major differences in those and we just don't. Applying that high, high, high volume stuff where it's just sub 70 VO2 where you're not working. There's no real relationship to what we found in doing everything I've done and where we've been and the plateaus we've seen and just the stale training and people not being healthy, getting colds all the time, being sick, it is proven to be ineffective.

The reason that I ask is I personally use quite a bit of high intensity training and high intensity intervals because of the reasons that you've explained that neuromuscular development and the ability to build speed without wasting a lot of time with myself and with the athletes that I coach. But I do find that especially for the Ironman triathletes, throwing in a couple of long sessions leading up to the race kind of allows for that practice of things like pacing and fueling and some of the stuff that you just don't think about until you've been on a bike saddle for four hours or five hours or until you've been pounding on pavement for 100 minutes or 120 minutes. It seems like there's a. A few things logistically, maybe not from a fitness standpoint even, but just logistically that happen at that point that I think really can equip athletes to be able to handle themselves.

Certainly. And how many Ironmans have you done?

I've personally done seven.

Okay, so you pretty much have an understanding of how you fuel, right?

Of how I fuel, yeah.

How you fuel what's going to happen. I mean, you've done seven of these things, so you've got a considerable experience. Experience of, you know, how you would feel. But for the more novice athlete. Absolutely. Which is why we. I usually encourage them to be race to race and get up to that. You know, I can't tell you how many people, like, have hit me up about wanting to just go run 100 miles because they either they've read the story or heard about what we do, and, oh, my God, you mean I don't have to go slug out all these hours and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Pump the brakes. That's not what this is about. You know, and if you just want to go out and just run a hundred miles or just do an Ironman, skip the process of development through that, you've missed the point of the program. Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not saying that people can't go. And I sent plenty of people out on these long rides or these long runs because they were like, man, I just don't think I can do this and that. And I said, hey, fine, let's go out and do it. And I want you to go out, I want you to pace this thing correctly, I want you to feel correctly, and then I want you to get back to me and let me know exactly what happened as soon as you're done, without fail, that they come back. They're like, holy crap, I had no idea I could do that. And I get it, and I get where that mental side of it, and I get where you want to understand the feeling. But, you know, all that stuff is practiced through training and racing.

Mm.

You know, and if you're signing up for these events, people. I mean, you take let's just take marathon times, man ease versus now. I mean the average time of marathons in the 80s, like 330. It's now like over 430. People are just signing up for marathons that have never run a 5K. They've never run a 10K. I mean, how did, how did Gabriel Selassie get to where he's at? Real easy. Was a world record holder in quite a few distances that were much shorter than the marathon prior to doing the marathon. And you're never going to see it go the opposite way. Why is that? You'll never see Jurek Scott Jurek going back and running 5Ks and being a world champion 5K. That's not to take anything away from him. God damn, he's a phenomenal ultra runner. But it's just, it's not going to. They don't have that ability and developing the athlete for sure. But man, I just. There's a lot of stuff out there that I've seen and I've experienced and trust me, I've banged on the door. I've tried it all. We've tried the longer effort stuff, you know, running really long on the weekends or riding really long on the weekends and still trying to do this stuff the next week and still trying to maintain what we were doing. And. And you just lose too much. And so much is lost in that ability not to beat about 90%, which is kind of that number, is the ability to be able to train at about 90% all the time. And you're just an earshot away from being away from 100. And that's where that kind of tweak comes in towards the end. Right before we might taper you.

Yeah, it's interesting. As far as weight training goes, there's a lot of people that say, obviously the weight training frequency that you described earlier, going out and including CrossFit three.

Or four or five times a week.

In your program, some people would say that weight training doesn't make you faster or that weight training has no benefit for something like triathlon. Why is it that you weight train? What would be your response to that?

Every single study that I've ever seen with weight training involved in endurance training has shown nothing but a positive. So if somebody's questioning us adding this stuff, they haven't done their research.

Why is it that weight training would help?

The fundamental problem in endurance sports is not an aerobic issue. It is a strength and conditioning issue. Solely here. Let me explain with you. So in your Ironman, when you get to the run, that dull achy feeling that starts to set in. It's not a breathing issue, is it? You don't feel like you're labored with your breathing much. You get that, you know, that dull achy feeling we get where your tissue is starting to break down, that can be dealt with two ways. You can go out and you can run, ride or swim for insanely long distances and use muscular endurance to kind of try and build that up. Or you could actually take strength and a serious strength and conditioning program and develop the tissue correctly so that it does not break down like that. And it actually, here's the kicker. Rebounds or you recover much quicker. The biggest difference we see within our athletes and the people who aren't following what we do is the ability to recover. And they're back at things much quicker. They're walking around after Ironman's like nothing happened or marathons. You know, it's just something we see. That's much the biggest fundamental difference we see.

So for you, the weight training is.

Primarily from a recovery standpoint.

You got that and the ability not to break down. Yeah.

Interesting. See, most of the information that I've seen in terms of like the research on weight training suggests that it's more like thethe ability to recruit, like more motor neurons or a greater number of muscles.

That is what strength training is, right? I mean, that is what strength training is, right? It's your body's ability to recruit more muscle.

Yeah.

So it sounds to me like what you're saying could be happening is that by being able to use more muscle because you've been strength training, you are kind of like spreading the damage out over a greater number of muscles. Because fewer single muscles are being like isolated or weakened during the endurance activity.

Absolutely. Well, when you break down an endurance activity, you're going systematically just going to start recruiting smaller muscle groups to make up for what the larger one should be.

Interesting.

And if the tissues weak, then it's not going to be working well. So you're gonna be. You're gonna be breaking down quicker. You're gonna be picking up these shitty imbalances and not being able. I'm getting this weird feedback right now.

Yeah, I can hear a little bit of feedback too.

Just.

Just a second.

Yeah. So I, you know, I mean, as we break down, we start to do. We start to pick up these, you know, wicked imbalances and start recruiting smaller muscle groups to do what larger should. We're not stabilizing ourselves the way that, you know, our body was intended to work, you know, it just, it's, it's, it's a rapacious cycle that we get into with these longer efforts that we do. Granted, dude, I'm an endurance junkie. I mean, I like to go out and beat the tar out of myself and see how hard I can suffer. And that literally is what endurance training is. It's your ability to suffer. And you know, but, but I do know that it's going to come at a cost and it's going to break me down. And I've wound up in more trouble by going out and running long and I become weak and I became weaker in doing that versus staying strong, following a program like this and coupling it with a program that is looking, that has enough sports specificity in it that makes sense and allows me to progress.

Okay, cool.

What we found is we just got, basically we got rid of what junk and we've gotten somebody stronger. And what we're seeing even like, so with like our elite guys is it's just the bottom line is that they're able to bounce, they're able to recover so much quicker and they're, they're able to go so much faster and not have to go put on massive amounts of miles. I'm not saying that we're not going to be putting on miles, but dude, we can take a look at where long slow distance thing came from. And you just take a look back, take a look back to, you know, linear and where it came from. And here's this cobbler who is 27 and was, you know, gonna have a heart attack. He was in fear of having a heart attack. And he basically launched himself into this program of experimenting with running. He got up to like 240 miles a week. And that's where it started, dude. And he started training these kids. Then you take a look, you get towards persecarity. And Here's a guy, 43, lost his job, civil servant, blah blah, blah, it goes on. And he was experimenting with running and diet. If you haven't taken a look at this guy, he was basically doing gymnastics type stuff and doing short distance running, very high intensity. He was doing weight training, they were running around barefoot. Then you've got a guy like Peter Koh, who coached Sebastian Koh, and here's his son and this kid, he is a world champion, right? And Lydiard was quoted in Runner's World as saying that KO was a liar in saying that his son was doing 40 miles per week and was a world champion because he just didn't Believe that a human being could exist by doing low mileage and doing this. And so all these things are out there and it just. Dude, there are many ways a Top of the Mountain.

Is there a book or website that goes into that story that you just told in a little bit more detail? I'd like to look into that.

Well, you'd have to look at Arthur Lydiard's. You know, I think Lydiard's got like three or four books out. They're all pretty much the same. How do you spell L, Y, D, I, A, R, D. Okay, cool. Arthur Lydiard. And then I'd look at Percy Carrity, which is, you know, C E, R, U, T, T, Y. And then you can look at Peter Coe.

Okay.

And co is Coe. And just have a look at this stuff. But I mean, dude, look at Bannister. Look. What did he do? Guy was in med school, man, and he didn't have time to go out and you know, do all this high volume stuff. Never had time to do it. Most of his stuff was interval training. His go to workout was when he knew he could do 10, 4 hundreds under 60 seconds, that he knew he was ready for that four minute mile. I get it. People are much faster than that now. And they're doing it on high volume. But at what cost? If you're a genetic freak, of course you can recover, but what cost? Last time I looked, dude, Hallie Gabriel selassie looked about 55, not 35. There's just an energy cost that comes with these things. And us as athletes, we need to take a look at this. And there's many other ways up the mountains. You might want to take a look at a lot of Norwegian stuff too. There's a guy by the name of Ulrich Weisloff who is right up the same alley we are. And he challenges the entire Norwegian Olympic Committee all the time, you know, and he's got athletes and world champions that he's been using this high intensity stuff and strength training with, you know, it's, it's out there, it exists. And there are people doing this stuff at higher levels and across all levels. It's just we got caught. I think a lot of people got caught in what a lot of misinformation was out there. And you know, we just have another route that goes up that mountain and it's a pretty effective one. In fact, it's the most effective one I found. And I've been. And I've been playing with all this stuff for years.

Cool, cool. Well, I'm sure that people will have some questions after hearing some of your thoughts on CrossFit endurance. And so if you're listening in right now and you have a question or a comment about what you've heard, then feel free to leave it as a comment on the show notes to this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and Brian, as far as competition, ultras or otherwise, what's next for you?

I am working my tail off. I'm actually kind of getting back into mountain biking. So we'll see if that takes that materializes at all.

Cool. Cool. Well, good luck man. Thanks for your time.

Thanks. All right, thanks Ben.

Alright folks, till next time. This is Brian Mackenzie or Ben Greenfield with Brian Mackenzie signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Well folks, over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com in the show notes what I'm going to do is for podcast number 147, I'm going to put a link to some of the folks that Brian mentioned, in particular the Arthur Lydiard, Percy Ceruti and Peter Coe as some of the additional references of information for the reason why, you know, this high intensity training can actually get you good endurance for endurance sports, good speed for endurance sports. And of course I'm also going to put a link to the ability to donate a dollar to this podcast to keep it going. Now remember to send me a picture of you wearing the new BenGreenfieldFitness.com T shirt which you can get right at BenGreenfieldFitness.com at the bottom of the show notes. If you send me that picture, you will get a complimentary phone consultation with me. And then finally for you triathletes out there, remember our new sponsor TheTryShop.com go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com scroll down the right side of the page and there you will see thetry shop.com you'll get a big fat discount on one of the coolest new online triathlon stores that I have found. So check that out and remember, leave your comments, your questions as controversial as they may be over at the show notes for this episode, episode number 147 at BenGreenfieldFitness.com and have a great week.