Episode #214: How Fit Can You Get If You Start Training When You're Over 40?

In today's podcast, how fit can you get if you start training when you're over 40? Also, should hot and cold adaptation be seasonal? Which gelatin is the healthiest? ZMA effects and side effects Ski workouts that double as off season triathlon workouts can improved running form, lower your heart rate and is oxygen therapy while exercising beneficial?

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

Welcome everybody to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. I'm Brock, your sidekick here for the day. And of course Ben Greenfield is here as well.

Just for the day. You're fired after that.

Yeah, sorry everybody, I'm done.

We're gonna can Brock and replace him with a hot female.

That's my biggest worry in life in general. Just getting replaced by a hot female.

Or really any female. I'm just looking for someone with a fantastic voice, good listening voice. No, I'm just kidding. Brock's not going anywhere, folks. Yeah, it's getting cold out here, man.

Yeah, it's getting cold everywhere. I ran in a blizzard the other day. I hate it.

Nice. I went on a mountain bike ride in the hail, but I've actually been liking it. I have this giant mountain bike XTR that I picked up and I got this super duper bright light, like a 1200 lumen LED bike light that you normally, you know, it's got this battery pack set, totally portable. You normally pay like 200, 300 bucks for one of these things on a deal. Extreme. This website, I picked it up for like $40 and it just lights up the path and you know I can, I can mow down anything. So it's pretty sweet.

That's pretty awesome. I just, I. That sounds like fun. But I hate mostly am hating this time of year because, well, we're going to Thailand really soon and heat acclimation is hard to do when it's freezing cold outside.

Cry me frickin river, dude.

Hey, we have a question about that later. This is kind of timely.

Awesome. Well, let's jump in.

News flashes.

Okay.

To get these and other interesting news flashes every day and every week, make sure to follow Ben on twitter.com BenGreenfield and also at Google when you can find all those links@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so what have you got for us this week?

An awesome video by my friend who's been on this podcast before. He's a genius. Dr. Peter Adia.

Oh, Dr. Ketosis.

Yes, exactly.

Probably wouldn't like me calling him that.

The guy who goes on six hour bike rides after 24 hour fast.

It's crazy.

The most the most fat adapted dude I've ever run into. Anyways, he did a really good video on carb utilization during exercise and basically why we bonk what we can do about it. And he lays down comparisons of all these different fuels from the potato based starch to the general fructose glucose melted extra based gels and I think it's a fantastic video. I actually ended up listening to it more than watching it because I kind of had it playing as I was doing some other things. But I will embed the video in the show notes to this podcast. What episode Number is this?

214.

Cool. Episode 214 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com highly recommend you watch that video or else do do what I do with most videos and that is download them and then convert them to MP3 and listen to them while you're out on a bike ride or something. But highly recommend that video. So check that out. Another tweet that I put out was a stack that I'd recommend for anybody who's going vegetarian, vegan, and who's also pretty physically active and wants some of the power packed nutrients that you normally find in meat. I put out a tweet where I recommended four different supplements for folks who are vegetarian or vegan. And these are supplements that really you get in fairly high quantities from meat, but that are fairly difficult to get kind of in vegetable form. And then one of them, spirulina in particular, is not necessarily something you'd find in high quantity in meat, but it's still something that covers a lot of your bases that you tend to miss as a vegetarian or as a vegan. So the four nutrients that I recommend you add to basically a stack for vegetarian or vegan especially athletes are creatine, L carnitine, spirulina and beta alanine. And you know, I'll put a link to these in the show notes. But the idea behind this is that creatine is pretty much found exclusively in your skeletal muscle or in your organ tissue. Your body can only synthesize about half of your daily levels of what you need. But if you test creatine in vegetarians and vegans, Most of them are going to be in a pretty deficient state in terms of creatine. You don't have to load for it or anything, but generally 2 to 5 grams per day of creatine is a good way to go. The other one's carnitine. That's also a pretty meat exclusive nutrient. And it is something that you can be in a deficient state in. So around 400 to 500 milligrams of L carnitine a day is a good idea for a vegetarian as well. Beta alanine, that's pretty prominent in meat products. It's also fairly localized to your skeletal muscle tissue. So if you exclude meat, you generally exclude your dietary intake of beta alanine. It's not something that's crucial if you're just sitting around the house like laying on the couch. But it's a good idea if you're an athlete and you're a vegetarian vegan, to throw that into the mix. And then the last one is spirulina, which is just a totally complete protein source from microalgae. Really good source of a lot of your B vitamins. And the last one that I'd recommend for vegetarianvegan. So that was kind of the idea behind that tweet was I was trying to come up with a good stack that vegetarian or vegan athletes could use.

Cool. I'm not a vegetarian, but I have been fooling around with having a little more nori in my diet. And I've also been trying those energy bits. Now would that cover the sort of spirulina end of things and maybe a little bit more?

Yeah, I like energy bits as a source for chlorella or spirulina. And these are the little tiny energy spirulina based algae capsules that you can swallow or chew. They gave us a discount code for listeners. I don't remember what it is. It's Ben. It's Ben. Okay. Do you want to throw that in the show notes too?

I will, Sure.

I was going to put a link to some of my favorite sources of spirulina, but. But toss that one in there too so folks can try that one out. It's a good one. And then the last thing was that I came across an interesting study and I tweeted about how you could burn as many as 200 extra free calories in as little as 2 1/2 minutes of concentrated effort a day. And this was based off of a new study in which researchers. This was in Colorado State University. They had people do a Two and a half minute, very hard, like sprint effort. And just based off of that two and a half minute sprint effort, the post exercise metabolic rate kind of gave an uptick in the amount of calories burned during the rest of the day of about 200 calories, which is fairly significant. You know, we talk about post exercise metabolic rate as being elevated, you know, from what we would consider to be traditional 30 or 45 or even 60 minute workouts. But this was just, it was two and a half minutes, but it was split into five intense 30 second bouts in which folks were going at about 100% effort. Now don't think that this would just be a two and a half minute long workout session because each of those 30 second periods was separated by four minutes of recovery. But either way it's pretty significant. I mean, 200 calories is a lot of extra calories. That's a full extra cookie that you could eat for a can of Coke for five separate 30 second bouts of pain. I guess when we frame it like that, it doesn't sound as impressive, huh?

Well, it kind of does. I mean, if you were to skip the can of coke and do this workout, then you got 400 calories.

That's right. Or what's that come out to? About 1400 calories per week. So it adds up. So that's it for the news flashes.

Special announcements.

Okay, today's podcast is sponsored by Audible, Fine, purveyor of audiobooks for quite a number of years now. And to claim your own free copy of an audiobook, make sure you go to audiblepodcast.com Ben. That's audiblepodcast.com Ben. And I was taking a little look around there and I actually found Chrissie Wellington's book, A Life Without Limits, A World Champion's Journey in there. And it's actually read partially by her too, which is kind of cool because.

She was gonna ask you who read it.

Yeah, she has that awesome sort of northern UK accent, so it's even more fun.

Right? You wanna do that accent for us or.

No, I don't think I can. Oh, that's terrible. I sound like a Lucky Charms person.

Or like a skinny fat bastard little Scottish accent going on there. Yeah. Audiblepodcast.com Ben I read that book. I didn't listen to it, but I read it. Fantastic. Fantastic book.

Be good motivation while you're out on some sort of long run or long.

Absolutely. And this podcast is also brought to you by Pacific Elite fitness over@pacificfit.net you guys hear me talk about things like supplements and even gear and some books. On this show@pacificfit.net, you can get the highest quality nutrition supplements that are handpicked by me. I've pretty much tried out everything that's on that site. I'll vouch for it. If you're a podcast listener, I'm happy to offer you a 100 money back guarantee. If you try anything on that site and you don't like it, just ping me, let me know and I'll take care of you. And of course that site is all completely secure payment processing, very personal customer service many times by yours truly and a great place to go if you want to make sure that you're getting stuff that is not sitting in a bargain bin at Super Supplements and getting sprayed with ethylene oxide in China. So good spot for your supplements. And then another thing is that for those of you who live in the Spokane or Coeur d' alene area Thursday, November 1st at 6:30pm and I'll put a link to this in the show notes I'm going to be telling you how to maximize your workout for fat loss. What works and what kind of doesn't when it comes to exercise and fat loss. And that will be recorded and when the recording is ready, I'll be sure and put it up for free. To those of you who are not wanting to pick up a plane ticket to Spokane or Coeur d' Alene this.

Weekend, it's a little pricey, but make sure you go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com also and take a look at the the interview that you did with Kevin Moats about his getting banned from, from the World Championships a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. Even if you're not a triathlete. Super interesting. Listen about what goes on when you're, when you're older and you're wanting to replace testosterone but still wanting to compete in something like a, like a sanctioned event, you know, like a triathlon. There's a, there's a lot of stuff to take and this guy got popped. He got banned for his use of testosterone and kind of not having the proper documentation. And we had a really interesting chat so that's a good one to check out. And also while you're over there, I talked to my naturopathic physician. Lots of audio podcasts by the way, coming out. That's not intentional, it's just the way things happen to be. But I had a good chat with my personal physician about cell to cell communication and we talked about a test that you could get to find out whether or not you were kind of set up biologically for your cellular communication to be working as well as it should. I put a good video on that episode that kind of shows you how your cells talk to each other. There's also speaking of supplements, a supplement that he recommended that I guess he had a big hand in designing called Life Shots.

Oh, yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Have you been taking that stuff?

Yeah, he sent me a few boxes of it. You know, full disclosure, I got it for free, but I've kind of just been popping one of those in the afternoon. And yeah, it's kind of cool stuff. It's got like vitamin D and resveratrol. You know, I'm working on an article right now about good alternatives to energy drinks, and it certainly is kind of at the top of the list. So that's a good one as well. So listening to that podcast with my doctor, he's a super smart guy, Dr. Todd Schlapfer. And then, gosh, as soon as Brock and I finish up this call, I'm getting Chris McCormick Macca. Awesome. We're going to be chatting about his top workouts and stuff like that. And I may even release that workout probably this Saturday or potentially on Monday. So for you, not only for you endurance athletes out there, but he's got some cool workout ideas just for anybody in general. So listen to that podcast when it gets released. And I think that's about it.

Did you know you can get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield? No matter who you are, if you want to run a triathlon, lose a few pounds, reinvent your diet, or have Ben create a training program or nutrition plan that's customized to you, here's what you need to do. Visit tinyurl.com helpfromben that's tinyurl.com helpfromben Ben will personally contact you within 48 hours. What are you waiting for? Visit tinyurl.com helpfromBen today and get the body and results you can. Always wanted. Listener Q and A.

All right, so we've got a bunch of audio questions. Let's jump right into them. Hi, Ben and Brak, this is Bustian. My question is, can you gain speed if you start training at age 14? Before that, you weren't that active. I'm doing triathlons now and would like to gain some more speed in cycling and running especially. Thank you. Bye.

Yeah, you know, when I think about starting exercise when you're older, one of the first people that comes to mind is a guy named Joe Bowness. Have you heard of Joe Bowness? I haven't no before. So Joe Bowness, I think he was about. He was. I think he was 43, a little bit older than 40, but he was just this guy down in Florida. And he decided he needed to get serious about his health, and he started training for Ironman. And now I think he's in his mid-50s, and he's a total legend in Ironman. I mean, he's one of the top finishers in Ironman, Hawaii. He did ironman Florida in 9 hours and 12 minutes. And just a complete animal. And when you step back and look at what happens as you age, you know, especially if you're somebody who's just getting started as you're. As you're older, you know, you are fighting an uphill battle. So your heart stroke volume, the amount of blood that it pumps per beat, and also the ability of your muscles to extract that oxygen as it rushes past in the bloodstream, none of that changes too much with age. What changes is your maximum heart rate. You know, the amount of times that your heart can actually beat per minute. That's what tends to decre based off of basically a sympathetic nervous system stimulation. The neurons supplying your muscles just start to kind of die, and you begin to lose muscle mass and you begin to lose that ability to get into your maximum heart rate. And so you are fighting that uphill battle. When you think about losing muscle mass, the other thing, of course, is that you begin to lose a lot of your storage carbohydrate. And so for endurance performance, there are certainly implications there as well. We actually interviewed Joe bowness over@EndurancePlanet.com and he talked about a lot of the stuff that he did in his training to kind of get himself starting in his mid-40s to be literally an Ironman champion later on. I don't think he was speaking of the podcast with Kevin Moats. I don't think he was taking testosterone, but he talks about some of that stuff. And so I'll link to that podcast in the show notes. But if you look at what a lot of these folks who are doing, like the, you know, not only Ironman, but, for example, the New York City Marathon, they're getting faster. I mean, they did a study on this in the past 30 years, the average time it takes top runners to complete the New York City Marathon, and it hasn't really changed that significantly except among older competitors. And the average time for the top 10 male finishers between like 65 and 69 has dropped by 15, 20 minutes. And you see that similarly with female runners. And of course it's a good idea. Aerobic activity is going to strengthen your brain cells, it's going to make you smarter, it's going to stave off Alzheimer's. It's great for reversing a lot of the age related loss in the hippocampus, which is the area where you're going to have a lot of your memory and your learning. And even compared to something like strength or power, you do tend to be a little bit better with endurance as you age. Now, there haven't really been any studies that have looked at people who have started, you know, in their, in their mid-40s or whatever and kind of seen, you know, what happens in terms of how quickly they're able to gain fitness versus somebody who starts in their 20s. But there's enough case studies out there, like this guy Joe Bonass, that shows that you can get dang fast even if you start, you know, when you're, when you're quote unquote old. So I'd go after it. I can't throw any hard numbers at you, but I'll certainly link to that podcast with Joe Bonass and take heart in the fact that again, your VO2 max isn't going to go down. The ability of your muscles to grab oxygen isn't going to go down. Yeah, your maximum heart rate is going to be as high when you're older. And yes, you are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to loss of neurons in the muscle and loss of muscle mass. But with proper training, you can fight.

All that and proper nutrition. A lot of it comes down to just getting, fueling your body correctly and then doing the workouts in the right manner and you're, well, I'm 41 and I'm still getting faster.

That's right. Lots of applesauce and mashed potatoes. Yes.

Blend everything.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Craig from Birmingham and I was thinking this morning you've talked both about cold thermogenesis or cold adaptation and heat adaptation. And I was wondering if it might be beneficial to do one, to do cold during the winter and then maybe to do heat during the summer. Wanted to know your thoughts on that. Thanks.

Okay. I wish Craig had actually told us what his goal was, like, what he was looking for as far as, like the adaptation. Whether it was like if he was doing the cold thermogenesis for fat loss or if it was really Just to be more comfortable. But what do you, what do you think about this?

Well, I was thinking that too, because it's kind of the opposite actually, compared to what Craig was proposing. If you're, say, preparing for a race, like you and I, Brock, for example, we are living in cold environments and we're getting ready to go race in Thailand. And so for us, we're having to do lots of kind of heat acclimation, as you alluded to in the winter, and having to do riding indoors with a heater set up next to our bikes, or going and sitting and reading magazines in the sauna or the spa until our eyeballs are popping out. And so, you know, you tend to, you know, I tend because I almost always do a race somewhere like a triathlon in a, in a hot area in the winter. I tend to do more heat acclimation in the winter. And then because when I'm working out in the summer, my body temperature tends to run higher. I tend to do more cold thermogenesis and, you know, more attempts to shut down heat based inflammation in the summer. So, yeah, it does kind of depend on what your goals are. But when you step back and look at this, you're going to get benefits from something like cold thermogenesis, no matter what season that you're training in, because it enhances cardiovascular efficiency. And when I interviewed Jack Cruz on this podcast, this is something that he alluded to, and that is that when you're exposed to cold, what happens is you get a greater expression of something called vegf, which is vascular endothelial growth factor. And that's something that tends to be very, very high in your brown fat tissue. And when your brown fat tissue expresses this vascular endothelial growth factor, what happens is you get higher levels of vascularization in your tissue. And the reason that that occurs is so that your body can counterbalance the development of something like frostbite or be able to fight off cold, essentially improve your ability to deliver blood to your skin surface. So you combine that with the fact that you get a little bit more stimulation of a lot of your endorphins, a lot of your norepinephrine, a lot of your kind of pain fighting chemicals, and it can kind of turn you into a cardiovascular machine, whether you're doing it in the winter or in the summer. The other cool thing is that but in brown adipose tissue, which is again, the type of tissue that's going to get stimulated when you're covering yourself with cold water or even honestly doing what I'm doing right now, I'm sitting here and I've got my compression pants on, filled with ice and my legs felt a little heavy when I got up this morning. And so my body is literally in recovery mode as I'm sitting here recording this podcast. But you get activation of what's called endothelial nitric oxide synthase. And that's another very, very powerful cardiovascular stimulus responsible for essentially opening up your blood vessels, increasing the diameter of your blood vessels and improving your cardiovascular capacity. So whether you're in a cold or hot condition, it's something that can help. And then of course, you also get the ability to reduce the inflammatory process. You decrease what's called cytokine production. You decrease a lot of the pro inflammatory activity, increase a lot of the production of these anti inflammatory compounds, what are called anti inflammatory cytokines. And no matter what season you're in, it's got some cool effects. Ultimately, it doesn't matter that much. I would just be doing it year round if I were you.

Yeah, I find the tap water actually comes right out of the tap at a temperature that's a lot more beneficial for cold thermogenesis too, in the middle of winter. So it actually takes that whole step of making a crack of ice out of the process. If you're doing the ice bath.

Yeah. Have you heard of whole body cryotherapy?

Oh yeah. With the sleeves and the legs and the pumping.

Well, it's a cryo sauna. You literally go into a sauna and it's cooled with nitrogen gas. And a lot of especially like pro endurance athletes are using this thing, but it massively cools your skin surface temperature. And you go in there wearing a bathing suit or your underwear or whatever else, but you've got as much of your skin exposed as possible, except you wear socks to protect your feet because you're standing on the ground. You wear gloves because the hands tend to be the most sensitive. And then of course like mouth and ear protection to keep yourself from getting frostbite. But it's kind of the extreme level of this cold thermogenesis. And so you're going in there and you're literally freezing yourself to decrease your cellular metabolism, to decrease inflammation, to promote a lot of this vasoconstriction I was talking about. And then you get this huge release of endorphins when you step out of the sauna. And so can decrease muscle pain and decrease inflammation or is supposed to for literally like days and days after you step out of the thing. And I've never really used one, but pretty interesting stuff. The extent to which you can take this, that's crazy.

Why don't you just move to Canada?

That's another option. Canada is just a giant whole body.

Cryotherapy for eight months of the year.

I've been hearing a lot about the health benefits of gelatin and was wondering.

If commercially produced gelatin like Knox has.

The same benefits as something else. And what you would recommend for use of gelatin? Well, I'm a big fan of gelatin. Are you? As a matter of fact, I had a nice, nice couple of bowls of homemade chicken bone broth last night. And bone broth is a fantastic source of gelatin. My wife caught about a 12 pound steelhead and an 8 pound steelhead last week down, down in Lewiston, and she made a really nice little bit of bone broth, like fish bone broth out of that, which is another great source of gelatin. Then a couple days ago I begged a deer, and when I brought the deer into the butcher after I shot it, I mentioned to them that I wanted all the bones again so I could make bone broth out of that. And gelatin is what I'm getting when I eat that bone broth because it's literally like the bones and the cartilage that it's made. As you get this homemade, slow simmered bone broth and you heat this stuff up, you get a lot of the gelatin extracted from the bone. And gelatin is just a structural protein like collagen that makes up a ton of the protein in your body. It's this big fibrous molecule and it makes your skin and your bones and your tendon really strong and also gives them some of their elasticity. And when you get older, your body makes less collagen and a lot of your collagen fibers get cross linked and you get stiff joints or you get wrinkles. And gelatin actually fights a lot of this stuff. And one of the best sources of it is bone broth, which is really a traditional food in many cultures, but we don't eat as much of it now, especially in a typical western diet, just because it takes so freaking long to make.

So is it coming from the marrow of the bone?

Yeah, it's literally coming from inside of the bone. It's like leaching from the bone. And depending on the type of bone you're using, you're gonna boil it and heat those bones or slow simmer them for a certain period of time. Typically, bigger bones are a Little bit longer, but super easy to make stock out of any number of bones and get your gelatin from that source and you get a detoxification effect. You get a lot of the glycine and gelatin that helps to kind of normalize your liver. Funct. The thing that you have to be aware of though related to this question about Nox gelatin is that if you do decide that you're not going to make bone broth and that if you're just going to buy gelatin in powdered form, which you can do, you need to be aware that not all gelatin is created equal. And there's some quality sources and then there's some sources that are literally made up from the nasty parts of ground up chicken. The other issue is because it is a protein, you have to be careful if it's made from cows because there is that risk of the bovine spongiform stuff, the mad cow disease. That's another kind of issue you want to be careful of when you're consuming a concentrated powdered protein source like this. MSG is another issue that you want to be careful with depending on the type of gelatin that you buy. And there are two forms of gelatin that I will vouch for. If you're not going to make your own bone broth, which I think is the best way to do it because it's just tasty as hell, you can actually buy bone broth that's made from grass fed cows. So I'll put a link in the show notes, but there's two different manufacturers that I'm aware of that make a really good high quality bone broth if it's something that you want to use. Bernard Jensen is one of the vendors and then Great Lakes Gelatin is the other one. And they're made from grass fed cows, they're minimally processed, they don't have MSG or any other glutamic acids in them. They don't add sugars to it. And it's totally flavorless. I mean, you can stir this stuff into like coffee, you can stir it into tea, you can blend it with smoothies or shakes. And if you don't have the time to make a homemade slow simmered bone broth, it's a good alternative. The Nox stuff that the listener asks about, I don't know about that. I mean, it is similarly an unflavored gelatin. It doesn't have sugar in it. But I don't know the source of that stuff. I'm pretty sure it's from chickens. I know it's a larger company that kind of makes it in a little bit larger batches. So, you know, typically, you know, I don't want to say in every case, but in many cases, you know, when you're going with something like that, you're going to get lower quality, but I can vouch for this. Bernard Jensen gelatin or Great Lakes gelatin? I'm not in their pockets. They don't pay me to say that or anything. I just know that those are made from grass fed cows and minimally processed. So those are the forms I'd recommend if you are going to go with gelatin.

I remember watching my, my baba, my grandmother, when I was a kid, she used to, whenever we'd have a roast chicken, she'd actually break the bones in half and then suck out the marrow. Would that be a good source of that kind of thing as well?

You know, to my understanding, the glycine in the gelatin is more bioavailable if the stuff has been heated and slow simmered. So I think you're gonna get better absorption if you get it from like a bone broth or something like that. Gotcha. But I mean, if you want to go chase a chicken down the street and grab it and suck its bones, suck the marrow out of its bones, then you're pretty badass and more power to you.

That's my bubba.

Hi, Ben. I have a question about the use of zma. I ordered some and have taken it sporadically, but do notice that I sleep much better and feel much better the next day. I do take the 345015 blend, which I think was the original formulation and was curious if there was any adverse effects that can occur from taking this product. I probably should take it more often. I run 50 to 80 miles a week and occasionally do weight lifting, so would appreciate your feedback. Thanks.

Yeah, ZMA is something that's been around for a while. It stands for zinc, magnesium and aspartate. Aspartate. Aspartate is basically, it's not d aspartic acid, but it's a salt of magnesium. And I don't know who formulated it, but it's typically touted to increase testosterone levels. Interestingly, there's not really much evidence that it does necessarily increase testosterone levels, but the idea behind that comes from the fact that it's got zinc in it. And there is some evidence that zinc deficiencies are associated with kind of impairments of testicular function and thus a drop in testosterone levels. But again, there's no Evidence that ZMA actually is efficacious at increasing testosterone levels. However, for a lot of people, this stuff does seem to actually help with sleep levels. And I actually have, you know, I have some. What's called ZMK in my pantry. It's made by a company called Millennium Sports. And I've recommended some of the Millennium Sports stuff before. But ZMK is fairly similar to Z, same philosophy. It's zinc and magnesium and some aspartate. The unique part about that is they throw in some other, what are called Krebs cycle intermediates, which just assists with some of the bioavailability of the stuff. But I've used it before, before bed. I mean, you take four basically tablets of zmk, and I think it can help you sleep, similarly to taking something like Natural Calm magnesium, which I tend to use more just because, I mean, how many supplements can you take? That's something this comes down to as well. A lot of strength, a lot of power. Athletes swear by the anabolic nature of throwing this zinc into the mix along with the magnesium and the aspartate. But again, I really have seen no compelling evidence that taking a bunch of zinc is really going to help you too much from a testosterone level. The other thing you got to be aware of is if you're taking antibiotics, antibiotics, zinc can reduce the effectiveness of those. Not that I recommend that you be popping antibiotics every day, but if you do happen to be on them, you shouldn't necessarily be on this ZMA because it's going to inhibit the ability of those antibiotics to work. Too much zinc can also result in leaching of bone minerals, and that has to do with its interaction with copper. So you'll want to be careful if you're using other zinc supplements, if you're using a testosterone enhancing supplement or something else, anything else that has zinc in it, make sure you look at other supplements that you're taking to ensure that you're not getting too much zinc. I wouldn't take more than 100 milligrams of zinc per day just because of that bone leaching issue. And as a matter of fact, it has been suggested or shown by the National Institutes of Health that more than 100 milligrams of zinc a day may increase your risk for prostate cancer as well. So there is definitely a law of diminishing returns with this stuff. I just remember the guy who made this because I listened to an interview with him. Victor Conti, the dude who was busted by Belko Laboratories. That's how he made all his Money. He invented zma. I heard him on the Joe Rogan podcast and he was talking about that. So, yeah, he invented ZMA and a bunch of companies now formulate it or use his patented formulation. But again, I wouldn't, you know, put too much credence in it for testosterone levels. But it could definitely help you to sleep. And some people have even suggested that it may help you with like deep lucid dreaming, which I, you know, again, I've, I've messed around with it a little bit. I have noticed 30 to 60 minutes prior to bed it'll help you sleep. I don't know about the dreaming issue and definitely wouldn't recommend it for increasing testosterone, but it's, it's not going to hurt you just be careful, especially with too much zinc consumption.

Hi guys, it's Jim here, a big fan of the podcast. Just wondering, as the triathlon season is winding up, if you've got some ideas for good ski workouts to get us ready for the upcoming ski season and particularly stuff if it's useful for kind of triathlon off season training as well. Look forward to hearing the answer.

Thanks, bye.

I like this question. Way to double dip, Jim. I like this thought.

Are you a skier, Brock?

I am a skier. I snowboarder as well, but yeah, skier. Since I moved out east, there's not too many hills, so I've been a little deficient in my skiing. But I do love it.

I didn't know you snowboarder. That's what I do. I'm a boarder when I do get out there. Yeah. And you know, I guess you could just make swimming motions as you go down the slopes. That's one way to do a triathlon slash ski workout. Actually, I'm going to be spending a lot of time on the slopes myself this winter just because my kids literally are signed up for ski lessons, like junior ski lessons every weekend from January through March. So my wife and I plan on just dropping them off and either spending the day doing downhilling or else going out and doing skate skiing. And skate skiing is of course fantastic.

It is so fun.

The best cross training ever. You're seeing the highest VO2 max levels among any athlete on the planet in cross country skiers and skate skiers. And compared to spending time on an indoor bicycle trainer or a treadmill, it beats the heck out of that. So that's not a straight up ski workout per se as much as it is just skill skiing. And of course one of the things that you can do is as you're out there on the slopes making sure that you're staying active and you're taking as few beer breaks and lodge breaks as you can. But I assume that Jim is asking more about actual workouts that he can do.

I think so, yeah.

Yeah. So when you're looking at ski training that could have like a crossover to triathlon training, there's absolutely the ability to do that. Because when you're doing ski training, you're going to be including balance exercises, a ton of single leg stuff, single leg squats, T layout, lunges where we're laying out on one leg, hip hikes, even things like overhead presses on one leg, single leg hops onto a box, single leg hops off of a box, and tons of kind of unilateral motion type of exercises. Core stability, super important along with especially rotational core movement. So you want to train your rotational stability, you want to train your rotational power. And again, that stuff is going to help you with triathlon as well. Multi joint exercises, I'd definitely be going after those. You know, squatting, lunging, lifting, horizontal and vertical pushing, horizontal and vertical pulling versus doing like bicep curls and leg extensions. That stuff will help you in both skiing and in triathlon. With skiing especially, a lot of strength exercises that are performed explosively are going to help develop power in your legs along with high intensity interval training to get you used to that short burst of energy that you have followed by long recovery periods sitting on a chairlift. And of course, we've seen and talked about before in this podcast how high intensity interval training has a really good crossover effect for aerobic events like triathlon as well. As far as actual programs that are out there, I've got a couple I can recommend to you. One would be my book over at thestrongtriathlete.com Top 12 Resistance Training Routines for Triathletes. Any of those workouts are going to be fantastic for getting you ready for both skiing or triathlon. So those would be really good. There's also a program out there and I'll link to it in the show notes for you. It's called Total Skiing Fitness and that's just functional fitness training workouts for skiers. And it covers a lot of those bases that I talked about. It teaches you how to do a dynamic warmup. It gives you a balance core stability, rotational core exercises, multi joint exercises, power exercises mixed in with some high intensity interval training. So that's a good program as well. And it's just like a, like a book and a video that teaches you how to do all this stuff. And it's again more ski specific. But that would have good crossover to triathlon. And then my top 12 triathlete book would also have good crossover to skiing. So either one would work. But that's where I'd start. Of course, in addition to making your swimming motions with your hands as you're.

Skiing down the slopes, that'll keep you keep people away from you too, I guess if you're swinging your arms madly, which is always a good thing.

It will, it will. That's always a good thing when you're out there.

Now, do you ever find when you're boarding too much that you get kind of lopsided? Like do you ever feel like you're just watching like I'm goofy foot. So I end up My left leg always feels way more tired than my right.

Yeah, I board standard, but same thing for me. My, my right leg I'll finish the day and, and there's been a couple times where I've tried to throw down a triathlon workout like hop on the trainer or the treadmill after a day of snowboarding. And yeah, my right leg is just kind of, kind of dragging along behind me.

Yeah. Do you do anything to compensate for that? Like. Like switch to the other foot for a while? I grab a rental board or something?

No. My solution now is just I just don't do any triathlon training when I'm snowboarding.

That's fair enough.

Hi, I will appreciate if you could clarify this point to me. During the last days and after many years of running, including marathons, I realized that my running posture was awful. Completely inadequate. Several YouTube videos helped me learn that I had to lean forward with running running plus other refinements like higher than 180 strikes per minute, turnover, a deep weight, arm swing, etc. Now, when I started to run according to the new patterns, I realized that I was running much faster but at the same time the pulse rate seemed to went down. Then I wondered that I might have had a higher pulse rate in the past because of wrong foot landing, mostly heel striking. That probably makes you waste more energy, thus urging the heart to pump more frequently. Is that a silly theory? I would like to clarify it because during 25 years of running I always reached the 160165 heart rate pulse very easily with very few meters run. That always prevented me from trying to run faster. I always feared a collapse and hit the brakes all the time. Thanks for your support and guidance on this doubt. I will appreciate your insight.

Thanks well, to answer Jorge's question, absolutely, heel strike can completely break you and completely result in running inefficiency. And that's why you tend to see the more efficient, better runners on the planet doing a mid to a forefoot strike in many cases. Now, the drills that Jorge is alluding to are the drills that Graham Turner showed us when we interviewed him about why running drills are bad for each. I'll put a link to that audio interview and also his drills in the show notes. But they were simple. It was just the toe up drill where you practice on kind of picking your toe up off the ground after each strike, the leaning drill where you practice leaning forward before you're running and then while you're running, and then the dog poo drill where you practice kind of scraping the ground with the front of your foot as if you're scraping dog poo off the bottom of your foot. And those three drills, I believe, are the ones that Jorge is alluding to. Absolutely. If you get into that forward leaning, mid to forefoot strike kind of scraping the ground after your foot strikes the ground, you're going to vastly improve your economy and efficiency and that's going to have a direct effect on your heart rate. I don't know how to get into any more detail on that question. It's just. Yeah, I mean, it's simple physics. A heel strike is going to result in a ground reaction force that pushes you, you straight back in the opposite direction and it can put the brakes on you.

So, absolutely, Jorge's definitely achieved exactly what those exercises were meant to do.

Yeah. So we'll link to those in the show notes so you can go check them out. Hi, Ben, I'm curious about exercise with oxygen therapy. I've been reading about it. I don't remember you ever talking about that on a podcast. So I just thought I'd ask you what your opinion is of that. Exercising with oxygen therapy. Thanks. Exercise with oxygen therapy.

Now, I don't know. What is oxygen therapy? Is that when you go to one of those bars in California and they hook you up to an oxygen tank and you just sit there and breathe for a while?

Yeah. I mean, that's one form of oxygen therapy. It's oxidative medicine. I mean, the whole thing sparked from this idea that there are a number of different therapies that use what are called oxidants and it's called oxidation medicines and Chemistry 101. Oxidants are electron receptors. So oxygen, when you've got electrons circulating around in your body, is going to be the receptor of many of those electrons. And so when you're trying to combat free radicals or even in some cases, break down bacterial cell walls and stuff like that, you tend to see in oxidative medicine the use of ozone therapy. There's another type of therapy called ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy, intravenous hydrogen peroxide therapy. All of this stuff that kind of uses more natural methods to fight against disease. There's a guy I've had on this podcast named Dr. Mark Serkis, who's big time into this stuff and into oxidation therapy and not only stimulating circulation and better immune system through this kind of stuff, but trying to enhance mitochondrial production. And there's a bunch of websites that are devoted to this stuff. The International Colleges of Integrative Medicine is one big one. And then in addition to Dr. Serkis, who's been on this show, there's another guy called Dr. Rowan who's really into this stuff. I will put a link to a full on video because this is stuff that's kind of tough to explain. And I'll get into the exercise with oxygen therapy and what that is in a second, but I'll put a video in the show. Notes if you want to geek out on oxidative medicine and learn about what it is, there's a really good video interview about kind of how oxidative medicine and oxidation therapies are used for viral infections and fungal infections and stuff like that. But when it comes to sports performance, the idea here is that you literally have this little oxygen generator, and it's a tiny little portable device that plugs into the wall and it produces about 95% oxygen. And then you've got a cannula or an oxygen mask or a headset that connects to that machine, and it goes over your ears and it goes over your nose. And then you ride an exercise bike, or you ride an elliptical trainer, or you run on a treadmill, or in many cases, a lot of folks who do this use a whole body vibration trainer and just stand in the vibration trainer and you breathe levels of oxygen that are anywhere from 15 to 20% higher than what the oxygen levels would be at the normal. If you're breathing normal. So you're essentially doubling your oxygen intake. And the idea is that even though red blood cells are supposed to be saturated at no more than about 97% oxygen, the argument here is that you can somehow get additional oxygen absorbed by your plasma and then pushed into your deep tissues without the aid of your red blood cell cells. So that's how the people who are pushing exercise with oxygen therapy kind of circumvent the fact that you can only saturate your red blood cells to a certain extent before it doesn't matter how high the oxygen concentration in the air that you breathe is. Now, that's pretty soft science saying that you can somehow get more oxygen into the body by bypassing the red blood cells. And I'm not entirely convinced that you actually can. However, they do link to a study on their website. One study, and by the way, the website is ewot.com exercisewithoxygentherapy.com and in that study what they go over is how hyperoxia, or increasing the inspired oxygen concentration may actually help with things like exercise tolerance and buffering of lactic acid and the VO2 max or the maximum oxygen consumption, which you can exercise. But if you look at it carefully, it's not a study, it's a review of a bunch of investigations into hyperoxia. And basically they're kind of extrapolating that review to suggest that exercise with oxygen therapy would actually work. It's essentially just they ran a search Criteria on the PubMed website and then put together this paper based on it. So there haven't actually been any direct studies with this device per se, like hooking a cannula up and breathing extra oxygen. And I've had a company, and maybe it works for some people, but I've had a company, I think it's called Oxyshots, send me a bunch of their oxygen that you spray into your mouth as you're exercising. I didn't notice anything and there's no long term studies on the training effect. I mean, let's say that, yeah, you can achieve a higher intensity by breathing more oxygen during your workout. I haven't seen anything to show that that's going to help you whatever three months down the road when you're racing or when you're competing. The other thing of course is you got to wear a mask or a cannula or whatever and that could be super annoying. It also means that you would be limited to indoor training. And then of course, the other thing that you got to remember is that use of oxygen does result in free radical formation. So the more oxygen that you use, I mean, this is why exercise in and of itself tends to be inflammatory. Just because you're breathing more oxygen, you're using more oxygen, you're producing more free radicals. So you could potentially, by using even more oxygen during your workout, produce more inflammation or more free Radical formation than you normally would. You know, if somebody wants to. Wants to send Brock a cannula and an oxygen mask and an oxygen tank, I'm sure he. He would. He would stay indoors all winter and stand in a vibration machine.

I want the vibration machine. That's what I was going to say. That's the magic key for me.

Yeah. It's kind of funny because you see a lot of these therapies are done by people who want to get results without actually doing the extra work. And standing on a vibration trainer while wearing oxygen masks to make yourself a better athlete, to me is just classic kind of example of trying to get good results without actually going out and doing the hard work.

That's worse than our skiing while doing the swimming motion, for sure.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you know, if you listen in, you've tried this stuff, leave a comment on the show notes and let us know. But I personally have an eyebrow raised on this one, for sure.

I've got two eyebrows raised.

We'll put a link in the show notes for those of you who want to watch the video on oxidative medicine because. Because there's a few therapies for which it may come in handy or a few conditions for which it may come in handy, but I don't think turning yourself into a superhuman athlete is one of them.

Yeah, certainly if you've got a compromised cardiovascular system or you're somehow breathing compromised, then that would certainly help. But that's a very specific case.

Yeah, exactly. So, wow, man. Was all the questions.

That was all the questions. We are through.

Through. We're good. Well, I was actually going to be headed down tomorrow morning to do a triathlon down to the Bahamas. I got an email, though, like, right before I started this podcast. Apparently there's a hurricane rolling into the Caribbean, so. Yeah, so I'm going to stay up here in the Pacific Northwest and probably go to a cyclocross race over in Idaho instead.

That's almost as fun, I guess.

Yeah. A little bit different ball game.

It's better than getting smashed by a hurricane, I swear.

Exactly. So if you listen to this podcast, was it number 214, everything that we talked about, we'll be sure and put a link to over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and of course, as usual, there will be a my list for this episode. And my list is basically kind of like Pinterest for Facebook, but it lets you go in and, you know, like, I talked about, like, the vegetarian vegan supplement stack that I recommend. And we mentioned, you know, some of the gelatin supplements and the total Skiing fitness program. You know, what we try to do is make a list for you guys. So if you were listening into the podcast and you were out, whatever, biking or running or skiing while swimming or something like that, you don't have to stop and write down with a magic marker and try and remember everything we said. You can just go to facebook.com bgfitness and check out the My List for episode number 214. So I think that wraps it up. Brock, what do you think?

I believe it does.

All right. Well, this is Ben and Brock signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week.

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