Episode #208: How High Intensity Interval Training Can Fix All Your Problems And Turn You Into An Unstoppable, Superhuman Rockstar

In today's podcast, how high intensity interval training can fix all your problems and turn you into an unstoppable superhuman rock star. Also why you get diarrhea Tennis specific training how eliminating grains affects your energy level Returning from a partial rotator cuff tear Reasons for exercise induced migraines Light weight high rep versus heavy weight low rep what is block training? How and why to widen your Q factor and combating fatigue during your period.

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

Hey.

Hey, everybody. Welcome once again to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. I'm Brock. And on the line, of course, is Ben Greenfield himself. Ben, what's happening?

Not a whole lot. Just. Just rolled back in from Vegas last night.

That's right, you're drunk and hungover because that's what happens when you leave Vegas.

That's right. No, I went down there for the half Ironman World Championships and that turned out to be a real doozy. So it was a rough day for me. I had a bunch of bike mechanicals and ended up not actually even finishing the race. So the second DNF of my life.

I was just gonna ask if that was your first one. That's actually your second.

Yeah, yeah. The second time I've. I've started a race and, and not actually crossed the finish line. Not a fun feeling, but, you know, it was one of those deals where it was kind of out of my hands.

So, you know, if you're not getting paid to do it and you're not having fun, there's really. It. It does become a struggle whether or not you want to continue the race. And I've. I've definitely been at the point before where I haven't wanted to continue the race. I haven't missed one yet, but. But I'm sure that day will come.

Yeah. You get to a point where the pool and the spa at the hotel that you happen to be running by is a little bit more appealing than staying out there in 105 degrees running up a hill. Whoa.

It was that hot.

Yeah. Got a little warm. So I am going to do a redemption race, though. Actually. I put out a little report on what exactly happened in Vegas over on my racing website at BenGreenfieldTrading. Tri.blogspot.com and mention that I really don't want to end the season on a dnf. So I'm going to go do the lead man triathlon down in Bend, Oregon in a couple weeks.

Love that part of the world, but yeah.

So any listeners who are down in Bend, that's the next stop for the Ben Greenfield triathlon terrain.

Well, you're certainly not the only one who had a bad day in Vegas that day. I mean, Michael Railert got a penalty and ended up dropping out of the lead pack. And Brenda Carfrae had some tummy issues and Jesse Thomas just pooped out Meredith Kessler. What did. She broke her vertebrae. That's terrible. And Angela Nath had a big bike crash and was like, it started the run just covered in road rash. So it was a. It was a tough day for even for the pros.

Wow. Yeah, there were, there were people dropping like flies from. Sounds like a combination of heat and dnf. So congratulations to any of our listeners who did happen across the finish line. I saw a lot of you down there. It was great to meet folks. And yeah, it was definitely a rough day.

News flashes.

All right, if you're interested in getting any of these news flashes when they're hot off the presses, make sure you follow Ben on twitter@twitter.com BenGreenfield and also oogle. And you can find all that stuff by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can find all the links there or can follow you on Facebook as well. You're everywhere.

Well, I've got a question for you, Brock, based off of a news flash that came out this week.

All right.

What do you think is the worst for you when it comes to messing up your ability to stick to a diet? Of these three, sleep deprivation, boozing, or TV watching for me.

TV watching, really? Yeah.

Well, of a study or in a study that I. That I linked to on Twitter, it's actually of those three boozing that has the most pronounced effect in terms of causing you to not do a good job adhering to your diet. An alcohol or high alcohol intake has the greatest effect on total food intake and the highest correlation with obesity.

I guess that just means that TV is my booze.

Yeah, that could be. Or it could be that you're boozing while you're watching tv. Sleep deprivation and TV watching were far less harmful than boozing in this study. So I'll link to that one for folks who want to check that out. And then somebody sent me a few emails about yerba mate this week and about how yerba mate hit the headlines in terms of its ability to cause cancer. So this certainly raised my eyebrow and I checked it out and basically there is evidence that high intake of yerba mate, especially when it's prepared the way that it's traditionally prepared in South American cultures, actually can increase risk of cancer. There's been several studies that have done on it. Basically, the way that it's traditionally prepared and drank in South America is that they steep these yerba mate leaves in hot water and basically drink multiple cups of that water throughout the day, up to a liter of yerba mate on a daily basis. And the actual leaves contain chemical called pah, which stands for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. That's similar to like what you get if you were to barbecue meat for a long time and get that blackened covering on charred meat. Yeah, similar to that. We all know that that's mildly carcinogenic and you get the same thing in high amounts. Now, of course, the issue is that most Americans are not preparing their yerba mate tea by steeping whole leaves over and over again in hot for us, usually it's maybe a fresh yerba mate tea bag that you might have every now and again at a coffee shop or something like that. So this is not something I would be too worried about, unless you really are just totally geeking out on yerba mate and drinking a ton of it, which I do know some people do, like Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Body, for example. I know he talks about, about yerba mate in there and really tries to encourage people to drink a lot of that. And there are some people who hang out at a coffee shop drinking lots of yerba mate. And in a situation like that, you would want to be careful. There's some evidence that it can cause some significantly increased risk of cancer in like, the esophagus. Esophagus, the lungs. I can't talk today. The pharynx, the larynx, kind of like your. Your upper respiratory tract type area.

So you might be having trouble pronouncing things, but Skype's not really helping us out. Hopefully it'll clear up a little bit. Now.

Special announcements.

Okay, so we've already talked about struggling with your diet, and you guys, you and Chris Janzen have a bit of a survey going on where you're collecting information about problems adhering to a diet.

Yeah, Chris is. He's the mental performance coach over at Pacific Elite Fitness, and he put out an article, a guest post over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com this week about the three reasons that you tend to crash and burn on your diet. And believe it or not, it wasn't actually related to boozing and TV watching. Other reasons. And he put out a survey. Chris is going to, along with me, create a program that helps people adhere to a diet. Not coming at things from a, like, here's what to eat standpoint, but more from a here's the correct mental approach to sticking to a nutrition plan. So we wanted to really get a good grasp on some of the things that listeners struggle with when it comes to adhering to a healthy diet. So if you haven't yet gone over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and checked out that survey, I would definitely do it. And there's some good information in the article that Chris wrote over there as well.

Cool. Now, I've got a question for you. The superhuman performance encoder wristband thing that you've got going, could you wear that somewhere other than your wrist, like, say, an ankle?

I thought you were going to ask me about maybe using it as a garter belt or something like that.

That could work, too.

Yeah, it could be a nice look. Yeah, you could wear it on an ankle. You could wear it on like a, like a necklace type of, you know, like it, like around your neck. You know, the reason that I had it created as a wristband is because that's the, the area of your body that seems to be best for wearing something during, like a, like a sporting event or an athletic event. You know, like I, I tried to use this piezoelectric disc in a necklace, and it would, you know, when I was swimming, I had to take it off, and when I was biking, it would, you know, standing up on a hill, it would kind of come up and hit you in the face. So, yeah, I'm wearing it as a wristband. Actually. A lot of people have been picking this thing up, and basically it's the piezoelectric disc embedded in the wristband, and then it comes with these structured water drops as well. And there's an article over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about it. Or you can go over to superhumancoach.com forward/encoder and learn more about this new encoder wristband that I'm wearing. But yeah, it's cool stuff. And yes, you technically could, you could wear it on an ankle or something like that, but it's really designed for a wrist. And you'd ultimately have to have pretty skinny ankles to be able to put a bracelet on your lower leg instead of your arm.

Yeah, I'm looking at my ankles right now and they're not exactly delicate, so maybe they wouldn't fit.

Yeah, it would depend on the petiteness of your ankles, but yeah, I'd stick with the wrist, honestly.

All right, well, we'll put a link to the place where you can pick one of those wristbands up and also a link to the nutrition questions in the show.

Notes.

Listener Q and A.

Hey, Ben, this is Darren Mansworth from Toronto. I just wanted to give you a buzz and let you know that I actually used your Ironman Dominator program to finish my first Ironman at mont Tremblant in 9:55:07. Pretty stoked about that. Just wanted to say thanks. I enjoyed the program. I thought that it was an excellent guide to get you to the finish line. You know, it had a good balance of workouts. I thought the durations were good and I thought the sort of intensity guide was excellent. I used that really as my template and I modified it a bit depending on who I was training with, the weather, etc. But yeah, excellent. Thank you very much. And I was obviously pleased with my results. So take care. Bye for now.

That's quite an awesome testimonial. That's quite a feat.

Yeah, yeah, it was a great job. And he was using the program over at Triathlon Dominator. So, yeah, it's a program that definitely works. Unless you're like me and you have a bunch of bike mechanicals during the race and decide to poop out and go back to the hotel. But in any other situation, yes, that's a good program. It's a program that I wrote to kind of allow folks who want to train with minimal time and get maximum results to be able to do something like a half Ironman or an Ironman triathlon. So check that out@triathlon dominator.com all right.

Well, and let's move on now to our first audio question from aj.

Hey, Ben, how you doing? It's aj Just got a question for you about digestion. I am a competitive cyclist and ultra endurance mountain bike racer. I do 6 hour and 100 mile mountain bike races. Really good performance. But my. My Achilles heel is my stomach or my gut. I don't do well on solid food when I'm racing for long periods of time. So I'm trying to go to kind of all liquid calories. I can do food on shorter intensity rides. But the big thing is diarrhea. It's almost a common occurrence for me, especially when I travel. If I travel to a race, you know, sleeping in a hotel, eating out, no matter what I try to do, to kind of not do anything different than when I'm home, almost guaranteed diarrhea the next morning. I probably have diarrhea a few times a week. I do eat a lot of fiber, and I generally eat a healthy diet. I don't do any probiotics. I eat some Greek yogurt every day. I've gone to coconut milk. I've eliminated most dairy other than the Greek yogurt. I've always wondered if I eat too much fiber, if that's the diarrhea or if I'm just sensitive. I mean, for all I know, I've got a gluten intolerance. I just don't know. So where do I start? What do you think I do? I'm thinking about a probiotic, but I'm not opposed to doing the diet profile or the home test. Please let me know what you think I should do. I feel like I need that fixed. I can take my performance to the next level. Thanks, Ben.

So it sounds like AJ's got diarrhea. Yeah, sorry, I couldn't resist saying diarrhea one more time.

Are you gonna play the poom urgency alert again on this podcast?

Oh, here it is.

So, yeah, this is. Now that we've lost most of our listeners who aren't interested in pooping, I.

Thought I'd just start off the show with the pooping question.

I know who got tired of it last week. The first thing that I would say is you can definitely dig into what's going on in your digestive tract a little bit more by doing something like a parasitology test. This is a test that you pay anywhere from $100 to $300 for, depending on the one that you get. That involves multiple collections of your stool, typically over the course of one to three days. And then you send these off to a lab, and the lab evaluates your stool for the presence of parasites, for the balance of the flora in your gut, for any pathogenic bacteria, for yeast. And it's really an ideal test for anybody who is experiencing some kind of a sudden change in their bowel patterns or people who have been traveling abroad and suspect that they may have been exposed to something. It's a test that I've personally done a few times. Really, in my opinion, the best one out there at this point is by a company called Genova Diagnostics. And you can actually get your physician to write you what's called a requisition form to get this test, but it's called a comprehensive parasitology profile. I will link to it in the show notes so that you can go read about it. Or you could print it off and bring it into your doctor so that they can write you the appropriate form so that you can get that test. But that's something that would be prudent to get if you really are looking to find out if there's something basically inside your gut that could be causing this type of issue. Now, when it comes to nutrition, in terms of all of the diets out there, that I think could have the most profound effect in terms of kind of fixing stool issues and pooping issues really would be what's called the specific carbohydrate diet. I'm actually getting a couple of guys who literally run a website devoted to helping people out with a specific carbohydrate diet onto the show. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to interview them on a podcast. But the basic idea behind the specific carbohydrate diet, which is abbreviated scd, is that it limits the amounts of bacteria and yeast that could overgrow in the gut and cause something like bowel issues or like diarrhe or anything from ulcerative colitis to celiac disease to irritable bowel syndrome or any of these other issues that you can struggle with, especially like in the lower GI tract. So the whole idea behind the specific carbohydrate diet is that it requires you to eat foods that contain a certain type of carbohydrate called a monosaccharide, or foods that contain no carbohydrates at all. With the idea being that the more complex a carbohydrate is, the greater propensity it has to actually kind of ferment in your digestive tract. So you take something like lactose, for example, and lactose is what's called a disaccharide. So it's a couple of different sugar molecules that are connected so that can't be absorbed as well as a more simple carbohydrate, like a monosaccharide, and it can therefore serve as basically like a food for the microbial population in your gut. So if you were to eat too much lactose in your diet, that can result in an overgrowth of these bacteria that can ferment in your gut and lead to stomach discomfort or gas or diarrhea. And you could take this same concept that is applied to lactose, this disaccharide, and extend this scenario to other more complex carbohydrates, you know, grains and longer chain carbohydrates and maltodextrin and things like that. So this is, you know, the specific carbohydrate diet or the SCD diet is basically kind of a carbohydrate restricted diet that has certain foods that are allowed and certain foods that are not allowed. So basically the things that you're not supposed to eat on a specific carbohydrate diet. And again, we'll get into this in a lot more detail when I interview the guys who do this diet on the show. But you, for example, stay away from a lot of different sugars, like high fructose corn syrup, fructose processed sugar, molasses, sucrose, things of that nature. You cut out legumes like beans and soybeans and garbanzo beans and chickpeas and anything like that. Most grains are cut out, most starchy foods, you know, even foods that we may consider to be okay, you know, on something like say like a paleo diet or something like that, like potatoes and yams and parsnips, you cut those out as well because those are more complex carbohydrates. And then you cut out things like processed meats, most dairy. And in terms of vegetables, there are some vegetables that are a little bit more complex that you stay away from. And then basically the main sugar product that is allowed on a specific carbohydrate diet would be like a honey. Now there's actually an ebook, there's a free ebook that you can download and I'll link to it in the show notes. But basically it's kind of a detailed, step by step starter guide to this specific carbohydrate diet. And it has like a grocery store checklist to get you started, kind of shows you how to properly make all the food for about a two to five day introduction diet and just basically jumpstart you into this specific carbohydrate diet. I will link to that free book in the show notes for AJ if he wants to download that or for anybody else who has kind of kind of bowel issues, who may even just like for a week want to try something like a specific carbohydrate diet to see if that eliminates some of the issues. But especially for something like diarrhea, this particular diet is one that tends to be pretty efficacious and one that you could try out. So it's called the SCD diet or the specific carbohydrate diet.

There's one thing that I often think of, and just to say diarrhea at least one more time in this question, when people say that they have diarrhea, I think there's a really broad range, like a real broad spectrum of what people consider to be diarrhea. And maybe one end of that is not really as really serious or indicative of a real problem as the other end would be.

You mean in terms of like, the severity of it?

Yeah, like just loose stool versus actually like water and coffee grounds as they describe it.

Yeah, you know, it really does depend, you know, diarrhea technically is just, you know, frequent passing of loose or watery stools. But yeah, I mean, it can get to the point where you're literally just like on the toilet all the time and, you know, you always got to be within a couple minutes of a loo. And, you know, when it gets to that point, it's certainly indicative that there's something more serious going on then you may be just needing to drink a little less coffee. So.

All right, well, let's move along to the next question. Another audio question comes from Carlos.

Hey, Brock. Hey, Ben. My name is Carlos. I'm calling about a question on high intensity interval training. I know most programs say that you should run or go high intensity for like 30 seconds and then you do low intensity for 30, or it can vary from, you know, 10 seconds to fast, 10 seconds low. But is it better to measure the high intensity and low intensity intervals using a heart rate monitor? So, for example, I would go fast until I get to 180 beats per minute, and then I would go slow until it gets back down to like 140, 150. Is that better than just doing the 32nd, you know, high intensity and 32nd slow intensity? Thanks a lot, Ben.

Brock.

I love the podcast. Keep it up.

Now this, I find this to be a really interesting question. I like this one. I can hardly wait to hear what you have to say about it.

Yeah, I did an article on interval training that I'll link to for Carlos. But, you know, over the past several years, there have been studies that have looked in the most into the most effective type of interval training protocols, the ones that are going to get you the most bang for your buck. Now, in terms of interval training and stepping back for just a second to make sure that folks who aren't really familiar with it understand what it is, basically what interval training does is it involves quick bursts of very difficult efforts, sometimes using cardio, sometimes using weight, sometimes using a combination. But the idea behind it is that the harder your muscles work, the more oxygen they require. So when you work really, really close to your body's maximum oxygen utilization, what you trigger is kind of an afterburn effect where even after you've finished that hard effort, your body continues to consume oxygen and continues to burn extra calories for in some cases up to 48 hours after you finish that high intensity interval training workout with the idea that it takes you about to consume 1 liter of oxygen, takes about 5 calories or so. So if you're putting your body into a state where you're maximizing oxygen utilization and having to basically repay this oxygen debt for hours and hours after you finish the workout, then you can really take advantage of that calorie burning effect of consuming extra oxygen. So with interval training, what you're doing is as opposed to like a steady state training session where you're working out at perhaps like 75% of your maximum oxygen utilization. With interval training, you'll bump up to, you know, if you were to look at a number like vo2max or vo2max intensity, vo2max being the maximum rate at which you can use oxygen. You hit 100% of VO2 max multiple times during a high intensity interval training session, and then you back off and you allow yourself to recover, and then you hit it again, and you hit it again. So what happens is that you're not only maximizing oxygen utilization, but you're also inducing changes in the muscles themselves. Because anytime you put a muscle into a state where you're maximizing the use of all of the mitochondria, or all the little energy producing cellular powerhouses inside the muscle, you're inducing a change in that muscle where it's going to respond by increasing the density of those mitochondria or the number of those mitochondria. So there's a very, very effective cardiovascular training effect with high intensity interval training as well, meaning that by doing short, intense efforts, you can actually equip your body to do much better at longer aerobic efforts. And so we talked about Triathlon Dominator a little while ago, and that's one of the ways that I've tweaked that program when I created it, to allow for people to go for long periods of time in something like an Ironman, by doing minimal training using something like high intensity interval training protocols. And it's because of that response of the body to increase mitochondrial activity and aerobic efficiency. Efficiency in a response to an anaerobic or a very, very high intensity effort. So that's the whole idea behind this in terms of some of the better interval training protocols, the ones that really have shown significant effects as far as their ability to do things like bump up the metabolism for 48 hours after you finish the session, increase your mitochondrial density and things of that nature. One would be the Tabata Protocol. And the Tabata Protocol was developed back in the 90s by a doctor named Dr. Tabata. No surprises there. Who was this Japanese researcher. And what the Tabata Protocol is, is it's a workout that's only four minutes long and it's 20 seconds of high, high intensity followed by 10 seconds of rest eight times through, and that's it. So that's 20 and 10, 20 and 10. 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. It's something that is tough to do if you are, say like running, for example, a little bit easier to do on like a bicycle or an elliptical trainer. But the recommended frequency for a Tabata set would be two to four times a week. You do this Tabata protocol, you need to warm up very, very well beforehand, typically for 10 to 20 minutes beforehand. So you really are able to reach up into that high, high intensity range for a Tabata set. But you're literally working very, very hard. As a matter of fact, typically if you were to look at VO2 max, I alluded to the fact that VO2 max is technically maximum oxygen utilization. But for very short periods of time, you can massively exceed your VO2 max intensity. And in the Tabata protocol, you're going technically at 170% of VO2 max. And so we're talking about literally like your eyeballs popping out your head type of intensity. But it's very, very hard for 20 seconds and then very, very easy for 10 seconds eight times through. And that's an example of a Tabata protocol. So Tabata method is one method that works really, really well for high intensity interv. Another method that was developed more recently in the late 2000s, back in 2009 was developed by Dr. Jonathan Little, and it's called the Little Method. And what it involves is again a high, high intensity effort, but this time it's a 60 second high intensity effort followed by 75 seconds of low intensity repeated for a total of 12 cycles. Okay, so that's a 27 minute workout, if you do the math. And you would do this workout up to three times per week. Okay, so 60 seconds on, 75 seconds off or 60 seconds high intensity, 75 seconds low intensity. And you do that 12 times through. So doing something like that three times a week, again, you'd want to warm up pretty well beforehand. It's a little bit longer than a Tabata set. But if you've got a little bit more time to spare, the little method can be really, really good too. And this would be especially good for people who are doing longer efforts like marathons and triathlons and things of that nature. So that's another really good one as well. And then another one that has been shown to be pretty useful and one that I like to do, if we're talking about combining high intensity cardio with strength training is called turbulence training. And that was developed by a guy who's kind of big in the fitness scene called Craig Ballantyne. And what Craig developed was these weight training sets where you do a weight training set of eight repetitions followed by a one to two minute cardio burst. So it's basically a combination of strength training with cardio. And actually, if you look back to my post that I did after Labor Day weekend, this was last week, at some point I talked about five of my favorite high calorie burning workouts. And one of the workouts that I did included a video where I was going from set to set with these cardio bursts. And that's similar to a turbulence training type of protocol where you're essentially doing a weight training set and then a hard one to two minute cardio burst and then going back to a weight training set with a hard 1 to 2 minute cardio burst. And that's typically for 30 to 45 minute set in the weight room. So, you know, the Tabata method, the little method and the turbulence training method are just three examples of high intensity interval training. But, you know, that's the basics of how it works. Now, as far as this question from Carlos is concerned, you know, using a heart rate monitor and going hard and fast until you hit 180 beats per minute, you know, close to your maximum heart rate, and then going slow until your body is fully recovered at 140 beats per minute. Yeah, that method would work probably pretty well. What that would indicate if he's going up to 180 and then back down to 140, is that he's probably going to be falling somewhere close to some of those time ranges that I just mentioned in my description of high intensity interval training. And it's one of those things where there's More than one way to skin a cat when it comes to this stuff. But as far as the things that have actually been studied in research settings, you know, like that Tabata protocol and that, that little method, for example, those are the two that have, that have really, shown really, really good benefits. And again, we're looking at anything From A, from A2 to A1 work to rest ratio to a little bit less than that. You know, like with the little method, it was 60 seconds on, 75 seconds off.

So yeah, I think using the heart rate monitor there is sort of a lag. There's probably like a 45 second to 90 second leg in your heart actually catching up to represent the effort that you're, you're actually exerting at that time. So. So yeah, you would end up with more, probably not so much the Tabata, but more like the, the little ratios.

Yeah. And that's one of the things that you got to bear in mind too is that if you're going with something like a, like a short, short, hard effort, sometimes you're going for such a short period of time that that lag time with the heart rate means that using a heart rate monitor isn't the best way to do a high intensity interval training session as much as just using your rating of perceived exertion and just how hard you feel like you're working. So, you know, that's another really good point. Like I've got a workout that I do sometimes and it's literally 25 seconds of running as hard as possible on a treadmill followed by complete recovery. And I don't look at a heart rate monitor. I couldn't even look at it because I'm running so hard on the treadmill. So I'm just going as hard as I can and then stopping until I'm fully recovered and then going again. And so in a situation like that, yeah, you just go. And you don't worry about the heart rate monitor too much.

Yeah, when I'm doing my speed interval sets, I always have to set an alarm on my watch. So I don't actually have to ever try and look at it because when you're going that hard, like you said, you just can't and can't keep an eye out for it. So.

Yeah, one of the tricks that I'll use too is I'll do the first interval of say like a 25 second high intensity interval training session. If I'm doing it for running, I'll time my first interval and just see how many steps it took Me. So let's say I count that I could take 80 steps in 25 seconds. Well, for the other nine treadmill repeats, I do. I don't even look at my watch at all. I just count my steps up to 80. And you know, again, that's, that's one less thing I have to do is try to be looking at a watch or a clock while I'm also running as hard as I can.

Cool. That's very old school of you.

Yes, I'm old school.

All right, well, let's move on to our next audio question from Chris.

Hey, Ben.

This is Chris from Nevada. In the past on podcasts, you've mentioned playing some tennis and I guess I'm just curious. I know the, this is kind of outside of the regular triathlon training and things that you do. But as far as tennis goes, what are some exercises and training routines that you have found to be beneficial to maintaining knee health and joint health when it comes to tennis? So what training tips might you have that translate to playing, playing and playing tennis and other, other sports actually that have a lot of cutting and slashing and quick sprints and stuff like that. Love to hear your ideas and comments and feedback.

Thanks. Okay, so some specific workouts for, well, tennis like activities.

Yeah, you know, for, for helping with knee health and joint health. When it comes to tennis, a few things that I focus on is, first of all, I always begin with a dynamic warm up. So not a lot of static stretching, but I'll do a lot of leg swings, a lot of like lunges across the court, kind of reaching for the sky as I'm lunging, some skips, some hops, some bounds. All of that stuff is much, much better than, you know, doing, doing just some, some toe touches or some static stretching. So. So that's one thing, especially for your shoulders and knees, making sure you at least get some good arm swings and leg swings in. I also avoid playing tennis on any days on which I've got a run. Okay, so like a proper triathlon training style run, whatever, 20 minutes, up to 60 minutes of running. I just don't do tennis on the same day that I'm running because that's just laying joint impact on top of joint impact. So I would not be doing an impact based activity such as tennis on the same day that you're doing a training session that involves impact like running. I never let my muscles go cold during a match. Meaning that just like you see a boxer always moving, always kind of jumping side to side. What I find is that Your risk of injury and your risk of improper movement patterns during a sport like tennis are going to increase if you're just standing around in between sets or just kind of, kind of, you know, as, as your opponent is preparing to serve, you're just standing there. So you're always bouncing side to side, hopping from leg to leg, trying to keep the muscles warm, trying to keep your body prepped to be able to move quickly without actually starting cold or starting from, from complete, you know, static position. Maintaining good posture is really important. You know, in pretty much every sport. There's your athletic position, you know, butt down, knees bent, core tight, ready for action. And that's certainly something that you want to do as well, rather than just kind of, kind of standing around and not being in that good athletic posture waiting for the, the play to start or waiting for the, you know, waiting for the ball. And then the other thing that I really, really focus on is just basic brute strength. You know, I, when I'm lifting weights, make sure that I'm selecting weights that actually challenge me, that push me, that fatigue me, you know, whether it's doing this, you know, like I interviewed Dr. Doug McGuff a few weeks ago, you know, doing like the super slow strength training routines to complete fatigue in any given set, to making sure that when I'm grabbing dumbbells or barbells or anything else in the gym setting, that I'm choosing weights that really are challenging, that are throwing my body for a loop in terms of making me grip my teeth with the weight that I'm choosing. And that kind of brute strength can help out quite a bit with your joints as well. So those are some of the things that I do as far as knee health and joint health. And of course, anytime I've got something bugging me as far as a joint goes, I pop 9 to 12 cap reflex. On any given day that I've got something like that going on, that helps out quite a bit too. That's basically like a glucosamine chondroitin blend with a bunch of natural herbal anti inflammatories like cherry and turmeric and ginger root thrown in. We'll link to that in the show notes for Chris. But basically that stuff can help too, when you actually have kind of pushed yourself a little bit too far as far as the joints go.

That Caproflex stuff actually sounds really delicious. I'm assuming it comes in a capsule form so you don't actually taste it, but it sounds like it would be really tasty.

I Highly doubt that chewing chicken cartilage would be tasty. Brock, regardless of how much cherry and tumeric and ginger you mix in there, I wouldn't recommend it just taking a whiff of that bottle. Yeah, I would recommend swallowing with water, but perhaps Brock can do a taste test for us and maybe video record it. Throw it up on YouTube and we'll see if it has a pucker factor or not. I'd swallow the capsules as recommended on the bottle.

Fair enough. All right, our next audio question comes from Jennifer.

Hi, Ben and Brock. I have been listening to your podcast. I've dropped a lot of grains out of my diet. I'm pretty active. I bike, I run, I do strength training, half marathons, and I have stopped eating greens for the most part, except for quinoa. I still eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, so I do get those carbohydrates. However, I do notice that I'm a lot more tired now that I've been eating this diet. I'm not particularly interested in weight loss. I just want to maintain my weight. So I'm curious as to whether there are any foods you can suggest that I add to my diet to give me more energy and maintain and maintain the weight that I'm at.

Thank you.

Okay.

Like, the first two times I listened to this question, I thought she said greens instead of grains. And I thought, when Did Ben ever say not to eat greens?

Mm, yeah, no, I'd. Grains.

Grains, yes.

Pretty sure she's talking about grains.

Yeah. Makes a lot more sense.

You know, anytime you drop a lot of grains out of your diet and you're combining that with doing tons of exercise, you need to realize that no matter how many fruits and vegetables that you're eating, that cereals and grains are just far more calorically dense. So if you look at a cup. If we're just looking at plain old numbers and we're not talking about gluten and lectins and all this other stuff, we're just looking at pure numbers, pure calories. You look at a cup of grains or a cup of cereals, you know, rice, bread, oats, corn, whatever, it's going to come out to approximately 200 calories or so in a cup of grains or cereals. So you're also looking at a fairly high carb load and not a lot of fiber and not a ton of protein either, but a decent calorie intake from a cup of grains or cereals. You look at a cup of beans and legumes, similar thing. Cup of beans and legumes, you're going to be taking in right around 200 calories. We kind of step that down a little bit and look at like, like potatoes or yams and a cup of kind of cooked potatoes or yams, it's about half that. We're getting down to about 100 calories. Once we get down into the potato yam range, we look at vegetables and cut down to like a cup of vegetables. Now we're getting down to about 40 calories. Fruit is going to vary, but it's going to be just kind of in between the vegetables and the potatoes, usually somewhere in the range of like 50 to 80 calories for a cup of fruit. So either way, you're looking at a significant decrease in the total number of calories that you're taking in a lot of times when you switch from grains, rices, things of that nature, or even potatoes and yams down to more fruits and vegetables. So one of the things that Jennifer may be experiencing here is just that pure conversion of her body's energy sources from carbohydrate based calories to fat based calories. And as we've learned in the podcast that we've done previously, in terms of how long it takes the body to adapt to using ketones or using fatty acids as a fuel, usually there are about 10 to 14 days of kind of fatigue and feeling pretty tired. And you kind of have to get through that dark place, so to speak, before your body becomes fat adapted. And that's just one of those deals where you just realize that you're going to have a couple weeks there where it gets pretty tough and you're pretty fatigued as you start to cut some of that stuff out of your diet. There are, of course, if you're just cutting out grains for health reasons, to cut out things like celiac and gluten, there are alternatives that go above and beyond just quinoa. If you don't have a desire to go super duper low carb or be in a state of ketogenesis, there are other things that you can include. Amaranth seeds. Those are very, very similar from a nutritional standpoint to quinoa, high in protein and high in some of these amino acids. And you can prepare that somewhat similar to quinoa. You can rinse it, soak it, you can sprout it, and that'd be something that you could include. That if you're eating quinoa would be something similar. Millet is another one that you can use as a replacement for rice as a replacement for couscous and some other grains, and that also can be prepared similarly to quinoa, potato flour or tapioca flour or potato starch or tapioca starch. Those could also be carbohydrates that you could include if you wanted to, kind of, especially in the presence of higher exercise levels. Make sure that you do have some carbohydrates in the diet if you wanted to include some of those. And there are certainly lots of gluten free and wheat free blends out there. And I'm not saying that I'm condoning that you go high carbohydrate, but you may want to consider on your heavier exercise days working things other than quinoa in just from a pure making food interesting standpoint, you might get tired of just quinoa after a while. And those are some of the other things that you can include. Now if you have gone with this lower carbohydrate approach for a while and you've made it through those 10 to 14 days and you're still finding out that you're fatigued, that's where you would want to think about looking into your kind of like what's going on inside your body from a hormonal standpoint or from even a complete blood count or comprehensive metabolic profile standpoint. That's where I'd recommend you look into lab testing. I mean, you could do something like the lab testing with Wellness fx. I talked about that in a podcast or in a post a few weeks ago@bengreenfieldfitness.com and I'll certainly put a link to WellnessFX in the show notes for you. If you want to check that out, you could. In terms of the actual test that you may want to kind of look into, you would want to look at like a measurement of your inflammatory levels so you can check out fibrinogen. And fibrinogen levels typically increase in response to tissue inflammation, and that can certainly be something that goes up along with heavy amounts of exercise. C reactive protein and homocysteine would be the other two that you'd want to have checked out just to make sure that your body's not in a constant net inflammatory state, which can lead to a lot of fatigue. I would check out some basic hormones. Dhea, that's a hormone that's produced by your adrenal glands. It's a precursor to hormones like estrogen and testosterone. DHEA levels tend to kind of decline after about the late 20s, and declining DHEA levels can certainly be associated with lower adrenal function and more fatigue. The other ones you'd want to look at would be like testosterone, and another one would be estradiol. So I'd get your DHEA looked at, your testosterone looked at, your estradiol looked at, and your net inflammatory markers and then just your basic metabolic profile. So your lipids, like your cholesterols, complete blood count, thyroid levels, liver, kidney, and these are all things that I talked about in that post that I did on Wellness fx. So I'll link to that in the show notes for you. But you could get it done easily through an online company like that. And it's just a matter of you buy the test from them and you get the requisition form. You go to your local lab, you get tested, and you look at some of these numbers just to make sure that, that everything is dialed in internally, too, and it's not just an issue of, you know, carbohydrate depletion. So.

All right, sounds good. Okay, let's move to our next audio question that comes from Mike.

Hi, my name is Mike. I have a problem with my left shoulder. I'm working out about five to about three, five times a week.

Week.

Two days, intense intervals and three days in the gym lifting moderately heavy, not too heavy. So I had a partial rotator cuff tear like two years ago, and I rested it pretty much for about three weeks. It was with dislocated shoulder. I rested for about three weeks and basically healed. And now every day I lift, I have like a shoulder day. Really bothering me. I was wondering if there are any exercises or ideas as I can get from you. Thank you very much. Love the podcast. Amazing information. Keep it up.

So I guess a good place to start would be what is a rotator cuff tear?

Well, a partial rotator cuff tear. You know, there's basically different components of the rotator cuff. The rotator cuff is really made up of of four muscles that provide stability to the shoulder. And any of those can become torn or strained. And rotator cuff tear is kind of catch all term for any of these muscles kind of getting injured. But basically the shoulder has a great deal of mobility. And so the stability of the shoulder is provided more by muscles than by bony structure. And what these muscles do is they position and hold the head of the humerus, which is that long bone of your upper arm, into your shoulder joint. And so if the head of the humerus isn't kind of positioned correctly, it can hit the bone that overlies and kind of connects the collarbone to the rest of the shoulder structure, called your acromion. And it can pinch a lot of the tendons and, like your fat sac, your bursa. And that can cause pain and inflammation. And so a lot of times what can happen is if you get a rotator cuff tear and scar tissue formation and immobile tissue in there, a lot of that pain and inflammation can kind of stick with you and put you at a greater risk for more muscular sprains and strains in the future. When the muscles of your rotator cuff are imbalanced, usually the shoulder is going to be pain free. And when the muscles are out of balance, that's where you get a lot of the injury and the pain and the inflammation that increases. A really, really fantastic resource that anyone with rotator cuff pain, I think should check out is called the Seven Minute Rotator Cuff Solution. And that's just a. It's a book. You can get it, like, off Amazon. I'll link to it in the show Notes. That'd be one resource that I'd highly recommend that you check out. I own that book, and it's got some really good information in it. The basic idea behind that book is that rotator cuff injuries are caused by dysfunctional shoulder biomechanics. And that dysfunction is caused by a muscle imbalance between your internal rotators of your shoulder and your external rotators of the shoulder. And it can also be caused by what are called fibrotic rotator cuff muscles or rotator cuff muscles that have more of this scar tissue in them from something like a previous tear, like Mike had. So what you have to do is you have to treat the symptoms, like the pain and the inflammation. But then you have to combine that with the rehabilitation program that basically strengthens your external rotators, stretches your internal rotators, and then eliminates any type of training or positional errors that promoted that initial inflammation. And the book basically walks you through doing all of those things in a really nice, comprehensive format. Now, just to kind of get Mike or any other listeners who are dealing with rotator cuff issues, Kind of started down the right track when we're talking about stretching the internal rotators. There are certain stretches that you can do when you're stretching the internal rotators. But basically what you can do, for example, is you could line your right side with your right arm at your shoulder height and your elbow bent at about 90 degrees. And then you can use your other arm to literally rotate your shoulder inwards to stretch the internal rotators. And there's some pictures and a good resource that I'll link to in the show. Notes to this podcast that show you how to do what's called a posterior capsule stretch to stretch the internal rotators. You'd also want to stretch your chest. And you can do that just with like a door frame leaning type of stretch where you're literally like standing in the doorway with your arms in the doorway, leaning into the doorway to stretch the chest, strengthening the external rotators of the shoulders. That would involve just like holding onto a tube or an elastic band and doing repeated external rotation of the shoulder. So stretching internal rotators, stretching the chest, strengthening the external rotators, all that can help a bunch. Focusing on your posture and specifically avoiding any type of rounded shoulder posture when you're sitting at a desk or sitting down. That can help out quite a bit, especially when combined with like pull ups and seated rows, for example, to assist with eliminating those kind of rounded shoulders and forward head posture. And then just making sure that your ergonomics in your workplace are set up properly. If you're, you know, if you're somebody who types in a computer, sits at a computer, drives a car, things of that nature, you always want to make sure that you're in a, in a position where your shoulders are allowed to kind of retract back. But that seven minute rotator cuff solution would help you out quite a bit. Muscle imbalances revealed. The guy who designed that program, he's been on this podcast before. He gave me like a free 40 page book on muscle imbalances, like a special report. I'll link to that as well. It's something that he mentioned when I did the podcast interview with him. But basically while that program is designed more for the physical therapist or the health professional, it's something that I've had some people purchase who just are savvy enough to pick up some of the information themselves, understand biomechanics or anatomy a little bit and want to kind of go through some of his rehab programs. But I would at least do like this 7 minute rotator cuff solution. And I think I mentioned this on the show notes before, but I used to have a lot of shoulder problems. Playing tennis, swimming. Typically every couple months I'd have a shoulder issue come up. Ever since I've installed a pull up bar in my office and given myself a rule that I got to do anywhere from three to five pull ups every time I walk under that bar, I've completely eliminated just about any shoulder issue. Because what happens is when you do a pull up, as you pull yourself up you're strengthening your external rotators as you lower yourself. You're stretching your internal rotators in your chest. And you're also working on shoulder retraction if you're doing your pull up with good form. And so it kind of hits, hits all of those components that I just talked about. If you've got a previous rotator cuff tear and you combine something like that with a little bit of deep tissue massage therapy and maybe some trigger point therapy with a tennis ball or lacrosse ball to work out some of that scar tissue, we're talking about a scenario where you can really get rid of this stuff and stay on top of it. Those are some of the things that I would.

That's a lot of stuff for Mike.

There you go. And I'll link to all those resources that I just mentioned in the show notes. So perfect.

Okay, well, our next question comes from Aaron. And Aaron asks. Going for a run for about 20 minutes or more often causes me to develop an aura migraine. Initially I get the bright spots in my eyes and if I continue running, it will progress into a full blown migraine. It only ever happens when I run in the morning and is made to substantially worse when the weather is hot. Interestingly, I do a lot of other indoor sports and this doesn't happen during those training sessions, regardless of intensity. Can you suggest why this might be happening and what I can do to avoid it?

Well, an aura migraine is. I don't. Well, basically an aura is something you experience before you get the migraine. So what that means is that, that you get this sensation, usually it manifests as some kind of like a perception of a light or some kind of a smell or some kind of a thought that you experience before you get the migraine. And like in somebody who gets say like epileptic seizures, an aura is something that occurs. It's kind of like this warning sign that the body sends and that can help somebody who gets epileptic seizures to help prevent injury to themselves or other people around them. You know, they get this aura and they know that they're going to seize. An aura is something that can also kind of come before a migraine that basically is a warning sign that you're about to have a migraine. And sometimes you can get auras during the actual migraine itself as well. And again, it can be, you know, seeing light, seeing spots, smelling stuff, having some kind of a confusing thought. You know, your visual field can kind of vibrate a little bit. Things around you might start to kind of distort in terms of their size or in terms of their shape. You can even start to see things, you know, like a, you know, in kind of like a kaleidoscope type of effect. Auras can be auditory. You can hear voices, you can hear sound. You can just have heightened sensitivity to hearing. And again, you can smell strange stuff. You can get a feeling of like you're floating or lightheadedness. So all sorts of little warning signs or things that can occur during a migraine. And that's kind of the deal when he says, or a migraine, what he's referring to. But when we look into migraine triggers, we've talked about migraines before on the show and talked about how, like, acidic diets can trigger migraines. And so, so introducing more greens and alkaline foods while cutting out grains and sugars can help out. Another issue that can lead to migraines is just plain and simple iron deficiency. And I've talked to people before who have, by taking iron supplements or using a ferritin supplement like Floridex, for example, have gotten rid of migraines. There are certain chemicals, though, that can cause migraines as well. Glutamic acid, such as you would get in msg, that can be a big, big migraine trigger. So monosodium glutamate, which you can find in everything from soup at the grocery store to a lot of processed foods and especially any Chinese foods, can be a big, big issue. A couple components that I think I've mentioned on the show before called L tyrosine and tyramine, things that you would find in elements such as chocolate and nuts, those can certainly cause migraine headaches as well. And foods that contain tyrosine and tyramine would also be something that you may want to stay away from. Now, one of the other things that can cause migraines that we haven't talked about a lot on this show before, in terms of its link to migraines is nitrogen oxide and products that contain nitric oxide or things that can elevate nitric oxide in the body. Now, some of the things that can cause nitric oxide production are fermented products like products that are high in probiotics, yogurt, cheese, things of that nature. Of course, you know, Viagra or male libido enhancement supplements. A lot of times, nitric oxide is a main component of those. But a lot of people, if you get migraines, you may want to consider actually kind of stepping back on some of the advice that I've given about fermented foods and trying to cut some fermented foods out of the diet and see if that affects your propensity for migraines, especially dairy products high in probiotics, because there can be a link between those and migraines. And you may have to find some other ways to get probiotics in your diet if you find that happens when you're eating foods that are high in this acidophilus like dairy. Now, interestingly, the other thing that can cause nitric oxide release in very, very high amounts is a combination of sun, heat and exercise. And that's where I would suspect that this is occurring with Aaron in terms of this 20 minute run in the morning when the weather is hot. I mean, right there, right off the bat, we're talking about the three elements, sun, heat and exercise. That can be a big, big problem for people who are already predisposed to getting migraines. And that's just simple nitric oxide production. And so in a case like that, you basically, if you're going to be running in the morning, you got to keep your body as cool as possible so that you eliminate some of this nitric oxide release and preferably to do some kind of a slow warm up that is gradually getting you into the exercise program, because the quicker you jump into a program, the higher that nitric oxide release is going to be. Now, you know, this may be, or may mean that you know, at home in your living room, out of the sun, before you head out, you're doing some dynamic stretching, some yoga, some things that gradually increase vasodilation so that your body doesn't have to produce a bunch of nitric oxide as soon as you head out there into the exercise session. So that's what I would do. And it may be that you actually have to just find a different time to exercise that doesn't involve the heat and the sun and that nitric oxide production that can trigger the effect. And then the last thing I should mention is that a lot of times in somebody who's predisposed to migraines, who has something like the sun and exercise causing the migraine onset, it may be that by adjusting your diet to eliminate some of the migraine triggers in the diet, that your body's a little less sensitive to getting migraines in the first place. So if you do have a diet that doesn't include a lot of alkalinic foods, it may be an adjustment that you need to make. So I'll link to this the podcast that we did on how to get rid of migraine headaches based on changing to an alkalinic diet in the show notes for Aaron to check out. And by the way, what is this Brock episode number 2020-88208 so episode number 208, I'll link to that how to Get Rid of Migraine Headaches podcast, because I know that actually helped a lot of folks out. I had them write in afterwards explaining how just switching to an alkalinic diet actually got rid of their migraine headaches.

So all right, our next question comes from Longbow and Longbow asks. You mentioned in one of your earlier podcasts that recent research showed lifting lighter weights with more reps has the same result as the heavier weight with fewer reps. If the benefit is the same and the goal is to lift to failure, wouldn't it be better to lift lighter weight weights so the chance of getting injured is smaller?

You know, in terms of injury risk, lifting lighter is not necessarily going to decrease your risk of injury. I mean, look at, look at like bicyclists and runners. These are folks who get injured a lot and they're technically just lifting very, very small amounts like their body weight or the weight of a pedal many, many, many times and not doing any heavy training. And so, you know, lifting heavy weights without good form is a way to injure yourself. But lifting heavy weights with good form is going to decrease the risk of injury more than it's going to increase the risk of injury. And there's no correlation that lifting lighter loads means less injury, just because of the fact that lifting lighter loads a lot of times means that you're doing more reps, you're creating more friction, you've got more chronic repetitive motion, and it can cause more aggravation or more potential for injury. The other issue is that recent research certainly did show that lifting lighter weights with more reps has the same result as heavier weight with fewer reps when it comes to making muscle. But remember that making muscle is not the same as increasing strength, increasing power, increasing bone mass mass, or even causing a greater hormonal response to exercise when compared with lighter lifting. So for example, if you look at doing high rep, low resistance weightlifting, something like doing hundreds and hundreds of reps using your little 2 pound pink dumbbells or or jogging on a treadmill for an hour, what happens is you get a big release of cortisol, you get a big release of epinephrine, 2 of your body's stress hormones that can be catabolic or cause muscle Breakdown, but you don't get the complementary release of these fat burning hormones that tend to get really jacked up when you're doing heavy lifting. Hormones like growth hormone, like testosterone, even lactic acid is going to be produced in higher amounts when you're lifting heavy or going hard. And lactic acid can act as kind of a chemical messenger in the fat burning process. So what happens is that the hormonal response to high intensity training promotes more fat burning, similar amounts of muscle building, more strength and more bone density. And the low intensity hormonal response is still going to promote some muscle growth, but cause more of the propensity for storing fat and for getting injured. And so if you have to choose when you're looking at a weight training program between going high weight low rep or low weight, high rep, I would go with high weight, low rep in most cases, just because especially with age, there are simply more benefits in terms of bone mass, strength, hormonal balance, and a lot of the other benefits that you're looking for when you're lifting weights. So, I mean, if you go and listen and I'll link to these in the show notes, go and listen to the podcast I did with Dr. Art Devaney. Go and listen to the podcast I did with Kerry Nosler. Both of those were about how to stay fit as you age. And both of those people talk about lifting heavy, going harder, avoiding lots of low weight, high rep activity and chronic long cardio with no intensity. And really that's one of the ways that if you're trying to look great as you age and avoid injury as much as possible as you age, those are more the directions you should be going. So I would not go with lighter weight, more reps.

I think the traditional sort of school of thought around that and longbow also sort of of alluded to this in, in the question is that one way lifting the, the higher weight, lower rep was how you became like Arnold Schwarzenegger, where the lower weight, higher rep was more like the supermodel sort of body. But you're saying that's not, that's not necessarily true.

Well, that's the problem is that sure, Arnold Schwarzenegger would go high rep, low weight to build muscle and get strong. But we're still talking about doing 20 reps of squatting, 225 to 275 pounds. And that's an enormously difficult set that causes a huge surge in growth hormone and a huge burst of strength. And then you get the 50 year old woman hearing that and going out and grabbing a couple of two pound dumbbells and doing 50 curls barrels. And there's absolutely no correlation between what Arnold was doing with high rep, low weight versus doing something like that. So we're talking about two totally different interpretations of the high rep, low weight protocol as well. And if you ever watch a bodybuilder train, sure, they're doing high rep, low weight compared to an Olympic powerlift, but they're not doing the same type of high rep, low weight that, you know, friggin, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow is doing when she's, you know, doing 100 reps of an elastic tubing bicep curl.

So, hey, that's what I'm doing later today.

So you're going to spend your afternoon.

That's. Yeah, me and Gwyneth. Okay. Our next question comes from Craig. And Craig says, I've heard a couple of things about block training emphasizing one triathlon discipline at a time. What is your opinion on this?

Sure, yeah. I mean, if you read like Chris McCormick's book, he would go and do a big running block for a couple of weeks of just focusing on doing a lot of heavy running and then focus on a cycling block where going to a cycling camp for a couple of weeks and doing just tons of riding and then a swimming block where you're spending a lot of time, you know, like two or three day swim sessions and swimming a lot, you know, with a master swim session and then maybe a swim lesson in the afternoon and just basically taking a specific skill and beating the heck out of it before you move on to the next block of training. So you're, you know, you've got basic blocks where you're just focusing on one specific skill and really going after after that, that skill while dialing back the other skills.

You know, you're not excluding the other skills, you're just dialing them back.

In most cases, you're dialing them back. You're not completely, you know, stopping any running or stopping any swimming as you focus only on biking, but you're certainly doing, you know, majority of, you know, biking for a bike block or something like that. Now, just to clarify here, block training does not necessarily mean that you're focusing on a specific skill. Block training can also mean that you're focusing on a specific physiology. So you might have a block where you're just focusing on endurance and then a block where you're just focusing on intensity and a block where you're just focusing on power, but you're still training, you know, for something like triathlon, all three disciplines. So there's kind of, kind of a few different definitions here of block training, but I think that, that what, what Craig is asking about is specifically like emphasizing, for example, one triathlon discipline at a time, like just running or just biking or just swimming. Yeah, this is certainly a really good way, especially if you have a weakness of really focusing in and honing in on that weakness, training the heck out of it, getting really good at it, and then moving on to the next skill or the next discipline. There are certainly some drawbacks to block training. For example, risk of injury. You know, if you go from swimming three times a week to all of a sudden swimming nine to 12 times a week for a swimming block, there's a pretty big risk of injury to your shoulder. You know, the same goes for bicycling in your knees or running in your, maybe your feet or your hips or your low back. You know, anytime you take something and you jack yourself up, rather than maybe increasing the conservative 10% per week in that skill to all of a sudden doing 200% more than you normally would and just really focusing on that one skill, you are going to increase your risk of injury. So recovery becomes very, very important when you're doing block training and making sure that you're really doing your foam rolling, your ice, your post workout type of stretching. I mean, all the things that you can do to kind of decrease risk of injury and improve your ability to recover post exercise session. When you're doing block training, that's really important. There's also the risk of boredom. I mean, you know, that can sometimes just not be very fun. If you decide that, okay, I want to become a really good bicyclist, so all I'm going to do is focus on riding my bike for anywhere from whatever. If you're a serious triathlete, you know, two to five hours, you know, six days a week, just focus on cycling. So there's a big risk of boredom and just not enjoying the training when you're doing block training because you're just literally just hitting the same skill over and over and over again. But ultimately, block training can get you good results. And it's one of those deals where there's more than one way to skin a cat. I mean, you can get good results from not doing block training and just continuing to focus consistently on doing, you know, for something like a triathlon, swimming, biking and running every week. But you could also do something like, you know, in the, in the middle of the summer, a block where, you know, you're like, okay, I want to become a good swimmer, so I'm going to really dial back cycling, dial back running, and swim for an hour a day for, you know, these. These two weeks and, you know, or maybe, you know, an hour a day, twice a day for. For these two weeks and become a really good swimmer. So, yes, there are a lot of pro triathletes that employ this method. You're going to find it less commonly used among, like, age group or amateur athletes, just because it tends to be a little bit tougher to squeeze into a busy schedule and also tends to produce a little bit more of the boredom and a little bit increased risk of injury. So you got to be careful. But it is something that can work. And. And, yeah, I mean, block training is certainly something, especially at the professional level, when you have a little bit more time to spare, that can come in pretty handy. So.

Awesome. I think I'm going to take the winter off and just get super, super muscly. That's going to be training.

Just get jacked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Me and Vin Diesel.

Yeah, you and Vin Diesel in the Rock. There you go.

All right, next question comes from Dan. And Dan says, I was wondering what you thought about pedal spacers to widen the cue factor. Is there a way to figure out what is the right pedal width for your body besides getting a custom fit? And does hip width have some correlation to foot width?

Yeah, I mean, the basic idea behind the Q factor is it's kind of just like the distance from when you're riding a bike, for example, from one pedal to the other. When we're talking about bicycling, you could have a really, really wide Q factor or really narrow Q factor. And, yeah, a lot of times it can be related to your hips. You're going to see women especially with the wider hips having a wider Q factor, and guys with the narrow hips having a little bit narrower Q factor. But depending on what your Q factor is, it can affect the comfort of your stance width on a bike. And that's why you'll notice in some cases that pedal manufacturers such as Speedplay, for example, they make pedals for the bike. They'll offer several. I think they've got four different spindle lengths, and so the longer your spindle is coming off your pedal, the wider that you can make your Q factor, the wider that you can have your stance on the bike, and the more comfort that you can get on the bike. Depending on what your hip width is.

The spindle is the part between the crank and the pedal itself, right?

Yeah, it's just what you thread the pedal on with. You could also increase your Q factor by doing something as simple as taking your cleats and moving them more towards the inside of the shoe. So that would widen your Q factor and moving your cleats more towards the outside of your shoe would narrow your Q factor. And depending again on like, you know, how wide your hips are and how your knees tend to track as you're cycling, there can be a pretty significant change in your comfort or your level of discomfort based off of your stance width. You know, you don't have to necessarily use a pedal that has a different spindle length. Sometimes it's as simple, again, like I mentioned, as moving the cleats or maybe attaching just a couple of pedal spacers that basically make it so that when you, when you screw that pedal into the crank, it doesn't screw in quite as far. You got to be careful with that because you can get to the point where there's so little of the pedal spindle that is attached to the crank that you risk breaking the pedal or that that pedal under torque basically, you know, kind of snapping off or, or bending. And you know, that can increase your risk of injury when you're, when you're pedaling. So you wouldn't want to, to take a pedal and throw a bunch of pedal spacers between the pedal and the crank to the point where the pedal doesn't screw enough into the crank. So you want to be careful when you're messing around with stuff like this. But changing the stance width can often fix pedal stroke problems. So if your knees are tracking, say very much towards the inside of your, of your top tube on your bicycle as knock kneed. Yeah, like if you're pedaling kind of knock kneed sometimes it can help out quite a bit to increase your stance width. In some cases, rather than increasing the stance width, you simply put what's called a varus wedge in your shoe or a varus basically like kind of a shim underneath the pedal between the pedal and the shoe. And that basically kind of raises up the inside of the shoe. It cants the inside of the shoe. And so it's the same idea as like getting an overpronation orthotic in a running shoe. And it just changes the tracking of the knee and kind of effectively shifts your foot to the side a little bit and in a way kind of increases your stance width. But you can also just get longer pedal spindles and that's Certainly a way to increase the stance width as well. There's no calculation out there. There's no method out there for figuring out the right pedal width for your body. Even if you got like, a custom bicycle fit, let's say you did like a, like a retool analysis, which is a pretty cool bike fit. I've done a couple of these where it literally uses a 3D camera to capture every aspect of your pedal stroke. Even if you use something like that, it's not going to spit out an equation for how wide or how narrow your stance on the pedals would be. But what it can do is, for example, it can tell you how many millimeters your knee tracks to the inside or the outside as you're pedaling your bicycle. And then you can change your stance width, or you can put a shim on the shoe or, or on the pedal, and you can see how that changes your knee tracking. You know, for example, by simply making a few cleat adjustments on my bike for my stance width, I know that because I've done this before during a retool bike fit, that I can change by anywhere from 8 to 10 millimeters how much my knee tracks to the inside or the outside, which is a huge or has a huge effect on the actual comfort while I'm cycling. So, in terms of the meat of Dan's question, Dan says, what do I think about using pedal spacers to widen the cue factor? Absolutely. If you have discomfort as you're pedaling and feel like your stance width can be adjusted, then pedal spacers or using a pedal that has an option for a different, different spindle length can be a really, really good way to increase your comfort. The other thing that you really got to bear in mind is that bicycles are made with a varying degree of what are called bottom bracket widths or bottom bracket shells. And for example, I know that there are certain bike brands out there that are just like, too narrow a bike for me to ride with a standard crank and pedal setup. And I just have to have either a longer pedal spindle or a cant on the inside of my shoe in order for me to be comfortable on a bike with that specific bottom bracket. And so it may change depending on the type of bicycle that you're riding as well. And if you tend to kind of jump from brand to brand when it comes to the type of bicycles that you use, you may find that you actually have to, based off the bottom bracket shell width of that bike, adjusts your pedal spindle or your cleat position depending on which bike you choose. So it changes from bike to bike as well.

Now, do you think that a person can get used to a bike or a certain fit if they just ride it long enough, or is that something like the biomechanics will just always be bad?

Yeah, you can get used to a certain fit, a certain style of riding, and anytime that you change your bike fit, you generally want to give yourself a few weeks of kind of letting yourself become accustomed to that fit. But there are certain angles of your knee and angles of your elbow and angles of your back and angles of your hip that have ranges. And if you fall above or below those ranges, those ideal biomechanical ranges, you typically are not going to be very comfortable no matter what you do. So you generally want to be at least within the ranges, like I mentioned, the retool bike fit. And when you get a retool bike fit, there's a certain range that your fitter is trying to get you in. And once they've got you inside that range, then they begin to make adjustments inside that range based off of your comfort level, your speed, your aerodynamics, things of that nature.

Gotcha. That makes sense. All right, our final question comes from Jill. And Jill says my monthly cycle can bring on some some extreme fatigue with me unable to wake up to an alarmed exercise. It can be extremely frustrating and cuts down on the time I have to put into those long sessions on the bike. As my exercise time drops off during the week every month, I feel I lose fitness and it seems to take a week or two to get back into a good groove and then it happens again. Do you have any suggestions of herbs, supplements, etc that I could use to combat this fatigue or is going on birth control pills the best option?

Well, you know, anytime that you've got extreme fatigue with your monthly cycle and you are at the same time engaging in heavy exercise, you know, like red flags here are where Jill says long sessions on a bike or even the feeling that fitness is somehow correlated to the amount of time that you spend exercising, those are red flags in terms of exercise volume and the potential for that contributing to some adrenal fatigue issues. So you've got, as far as your adrenals go, what's called your ovarian adrenal thyroid axis or your oat axis. And all this refers to is the relationship between your ovarian system, your adrenal system and your thyroid system. And especially in women, these three organs or these three body systems are very co dependent on one another for them to be able to optimally function. So what that means is that when a medication or some type of activity alters one of these areas, functions, like ovarian function or adrenal function or thyroid function, it's going to lead to some changes, changes in the other systems. So if we look at adrenal fatigue, for example, excessive exercising causing a large cortisol release, a lot of times what happens is that high, high amounts of cortisol can create organ resistance in the thyroid or resistance in the ovary. So, for example, thyroid tissues cannot respond quite as efficiently to hormonal signals and produce less thyroid hormone. You might also basically get, with the ovarian system, a decrease in the amount of progesterone that's produced. And cortisol, especially high amounts of cortisol, can block progesterone receptors, making the cell receptors less responsive to progesterone. And that can actually cause a lot of fatigue, especially during and around the monthly cycle. That type of fatigue can be even more pronounced if you have a condition called estrogen dominance, which I've talked about in a previous show in which I discussed the reasons that women get tired or tend to gain weight as they get older. And we really went into estrogen dominance in great detail on that podcast. And if you were to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for estrogen dominance, you would hear about some of my suggestions for decreasing external or internal sources of estrogen in your system. But understand that that can be quite a big issue as well. Stress is primarily regulated by your adrenal glands, though, and that's what you need to remember, is that when you are exercising excessively and having this high amount of cortisol output, you're going to get that undesirable effect on both your thyroid responsiveness and also your progesterone sensitivity. And both of those can lead to those experiences of extreme fatigue that go hand in hand with your monthly cycle. So what you would want to do when it comes to adrenal normalization and making sure that you don't have this type of internal cortisol, having this effect on specifically progesterone and thyroid would be one to make sure that you're really controlling emotional stressors like marital relationships, family relationships, financial problems, anything else that might tend to be stressing you out, those can automatically have a big, big effect on your adrenals. Sleep is a big one. Making sure that whether or not you're around your monthly cycle or not, that you're giving yourself about seven to eight hours of sleep. You've probably heard me talk about this on the show, but I really like magnesium, I really like valerian roots, I really like basically any type of herbal teas, chamomile, stuff like that. Anything that can help you sleep before bed. Big, big fan of those. And getting your seven up to nine hours of sleep per night is super important, especially with the amount of exercise that you're probably doing, especially in women, even more so than men. Avoiding coffee or caffeinated beverages can really do good things in terms of stabilizing this axis, this adrenal ovarian, thyroid axis and making sure that you shut down any amounts of adrenal overstimulation as can avoiding TVs, computers, a lot of this electromagnetic kind of pollution. Especially closer to the evening. Biggest adrenal source of stress that you're going to experience is going to be aerobic exercise. So making sure that you really do focus on not exercising any more than you need to and using more of the high intensity interval training and some heavier strength training, training over and above any long, slow, depleting cortisol producing exercise is going to also be important. And then taking care of yourself. You asked about supplements and stuff. Popping pills certainly isn't going to fix an issue like this as much as the stress control can help. But there are things like adrenal stabilizers, adrenal glandulars or adrenal extracts or herbal that can help out quite a bit. I'm personally a big fan of Chinese herbal extracts. Ashwagandha, Eleuthero, ginseng, ginger, ginko, any of these type of things that you would find in something like the tnt. I've recommended that before as a good, good powder for adrenal stabilization and TNT herbal extract, it's a powder that you can mix with water. That stuff works pretty well. I personally use that every day. Big, big fan of that. Big fan of vitamin D. For you to be able to support hormonal synthesis, especially for progesterone formation, that's a big one as well. Making sure that you are taking care of your liver and its ability to turn over estrogen to eliminate any issues with estrogen dominance, that's important. And there's an entire page that I have have over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that goes into some of my recommendations especially for women and estrogen dominance. And I will link to that in the show notes for you for this episode. Episode number we said 208, right Brian?

208, yeah.

Okay, yeah. Cool. Those would be some of the main things that I would focus on would be the D, the estrogen clearance, the adrenal stabilization with something like Chinese adaptogenic. And if you get that stuff dialed in, you're going to find that a lot of this fatigue that occurs around your monthly cycle is going to really tend to be mitigated quite a bit as well. Of course, as I always need to say, I don't want you to consider this medical advice, but simply some of the things that I would certainly look into or recommend that you check out or talk to your physician about. But it's certainly concerning stuff, especially somebody emailed me, literally it was last night about this 12 year old girl that's running half marathons and marathons and putting out these awesome results. And there's an article linked to it in Outside magazine about this girl who's just a top notch half marathon and marathon run. Her. She's 12 years old and things like this really concern me when it comes to women and hormonal health. When it comes to just beating your body up with high amounts of endurance exercise, you just need to really be careful. And this girl's name was Caitlin Welsh and she ran or she won the XTERRA 21K Trail Run in Waco, Texas and has ran two marathons, the Houston Marathon where she did a 3 hour and 45 minute. So you know, running, running these things pretty fast. And you know, the article talks about how she uses the key running protocol so she has good posture and doesn't beat up her hips and knees and ankles so much. But you know, I'm still concerned about when I see stuff like this in terms of just the potential hormonal havoc that this kind of stuff can wreak if you're not careful. So make sure that you take care of some of these external stressors, make sure that you get adequate sleep, consider some of the supplementation that I talked about and then just take care of your body and don't focus too much on long exercise sessions and on associating somehow a certain amount of exercise time with your fitness as much as exercise quality with your fitness.

There's a bit of a theme going through today's show. It sounds like the High Intensity interval training or the Tabata stuff that we were talking about at the beginning of the show would be something Jill could focus on, especially during that time of the month.

Yeah. So let's title this show why High intensity interval training is going to fix all your financial issues, make you super rich, turn you into a superhuman rock star and make you completely unstoppable.

Will do.

So that I guess about wraps it up for episode number 208. Link to everything in the show notes for you guys. And that will be over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I have to admit that during today's podcast, based off of the lack of sleep coming back back from the race in Vegas and the time spent on the strip down in Las Vegas afterwards, that my brain was not working at full capacity today. So I apologize.

I will fix it in the post edit. No problem. I'll put the smart filter on your channel.

That's awesome. I don't know what I'd do without Brock increasing my brain cells or increasing the number of my brain. I can't even talk. All right, we better wrap it up. So this is Ben and Brock signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

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