Episode #221: Why You Should Eat More Chocolate, Coffee, Garlic...And Breast Milk? Also, Cardio Before Weights or Weights Before Cardio, and Much More!

In this podcast, does bee pollen or pine pollen work for enhancing hormones? Cardio before weights or weights before cardio. How to stop muscular fatigue, how to tell if amino acids are working for you, how to get ready for a hilly bike ride. And a promise from me that this is not going to be another two and a half hour episode.

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.

Well, here we go again.

Yes, I'm back.

We're back. We actually just got done getting our butts kicked.

Yeah, that was a hard workout. Actually.

That was really hard.

I'm actually surprised because a lot of times I go to the gym and the group workouts are not normally that hard.

Yeah, usually this one was hard catered to.

I was sucking wind weaklings.

Yeah, it was tough. Jess and I did a high intensity interval training workout at the gym and it was like, it was just like back to back to back exercises that you do as like a triple super set. And then we go on to the next exercise and the chick teaching that class was kind of a beast. Yeah, she was, she was pretty.

She was hardcore.

She was both ripped and like you could tell she had some lungs too. So yeah. Yeah. So we got beat up and then we came home, put the kids to bed. We just got done down in some, some beef and a little, little wine. And we're here again for a podcast episode. Yep, number 221. We got decent feedback from last week. Everybody loved listening to my vino filled wife.

I was. That's not true. That's not true.

Get all chatty.

So I'm chatty.

Normally we emptied the box of wine tonight though.

Yeah, those things are a bargain. We're classy over here.

Those things are a bargain. The bottom box of. Well, we had like a box of organic wine. Speaking of which, folks, the hangover post went live and I don't think it's.

It was not inspired by.

By what?

By our last podcast?

No, it wasn't inspired by podcast.

You made it sound like we were being lushes and that's not true.

But check out that hangover podcast over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I in no way condone drinking to excess. Oh crap. Well, I mean, yeah, there is sometimes.

Every now and then there are occasions. Yes, there are occasions.

But I don't encourage anyone out there to be a lush. But have some fun this holiday season. Just make sure you read that list for sure. All right, let's jump into this week's news flashes.

News flashes.

So first of all, let me announce this as an interesting news flash. I don't know if this should be in the special announcements or the news flashes, but my 31st birthday is coming up in.

That's a news. No, that's a special announcement.

I don't know, whatever. But either way, I always send out really cool special deals and discounts and cool gifts to all my listeners and followers on Twitter, Facebook and the newsletter.

That's very generous of you.

Make sure you pay attention on 12, 20, 2000.

And if you can guess what I'm getting Ben for his birthday, you get another special prize that I don't know what it is.

As Jessa pulls stuff out of thin air.

Come up with something good. Kay, honey?

Alright. Speaking of coming up with something good, here is the first news flash that came out this week. And by the way, if you want these fresh off the presses, hit twitter.com BenGreenfield I tweeted that if you wanna shut down inflammation, you should hit the dark chocolate. And this is the reason why there was a study and this study just came out and what they did was they gave rats a diet that was enriched with cocoa powder. They're actually giving the rats quite a bit of cocoa powder.

So that means eat lots of chocolate.

They were basically getting the equivalent of about 12% of their daily dietary intake from, from chocolate. Now, before you get scared away that you're gonna have to eat like three or four chocolate bars a day, why.

Would that scare anyone? I'm serious.

I don't know if you're calorie or fat phobic. Moderate levels of cacao consumption have been shown to do everything from improving your HDL to LDL cholesterol ratios, to improving your insulin sensitivity, to improving your antioxidants activity, to improving your mitochondrial density. I mean, there's a lot of STU studies that have been done on chocolate and many of the studies that have been done in the past on specifically dark chocolate and cacao extract have been done with lesser levels than were done in this study. But that being said, in this particular study, what are called the polyphenols in cacao did, and these are the same kind of polyphenols you're going to find in like Vegetables and dark skinned fruits and things of that nature is they downregulated the levels of some of the more common inflammatory markers and they did that by inhibiting some of the genetic markers that can cause inflammation as well as basically what's called phosphorylation of some of the compounds that can cause pretty big expression of pro inflammatory enzymes. Specifically pro inflammatory enzymes like cyclooxygenase 2, which is the same type of thing you'd take or the same type of thing you'd want it you'd be trying to shut down if you took like ibuprofen. So some really good evidence here that dark chocolate can help you out quite a bit. I was trying to figure out how to express, express this in terms of like how much you would need to take to get a decent amount of benefit. And in looking at the numbers, if we were to translate them to humans, it comes out to right around 100 grams of dark chocolate.

Okay.

And that's like 400 calories of dark chocolate.

That's a lot.

It is. You're still going to get some benefit if you go with less than that.

Okay.

But here's my idea for people for a Christmas present. Organic cacao nibs. That's what I got my aunt for Christmas. I don't know if anybody's ever had these things. You can buy them off Amazon.

I don't think I have.

I'll put a link in the show notes to exactly what I got my aunt. I don't think she listens to the podcast. So I'm not.

You're not giving away your Christmas present?

If I did. Hi Aunt Cindy. You know what you got for Christmas.

Now grandma doesn't even need to wrap it anymore.

Organic cacao nibs is something that is a pretty tasty treat to munch on if you want the anti inflammatory effects from this chocolate.

So that is one thing I'm kind of curious.

Yeah.

Why do people get migraines sometimes from chocolate?

Because they have basically like a, like a, like a reaction. Basically the nitric oxide in the chocolate causes a bunch of vasodilation and you get a dilation of blood flow to the head followed by constriction. And that's one of the reasons that migraines can occur is rapid dilation followed by constriction and because chalk.

So those who have migraines should not do this.

If you get migraines from chocolate. No, I would not recommend that you do that.

Just curious.

Although a lot of times that type of reaction can be indicative of basically an omega 3 to omega 6 imbalance. So you can get on a good fish oil protocol, cut vegetable oils and omega 6 fatty acids out of the diet and you may find that you don't get that kind of migraine reaction to chocolate after you kind of fix that component of your diet. So something to think about. Then I tweeted a link to another article that appeared in the Atlantic magazine website about a case for drinking more coffee. Yes. And the title of the article.

I'm liking all of your tweets.

I know the case for drinking as much coffee as you like. And what this article went into great detail on and I'll link to it in the show notes was a bunch of different meta analyses that have been done on coffee and its effect on health. So it not only was looking at the effect of coffee in terms of its effectiveness in fighting against a lot of markers of cancer, it looked into basically the effect that coffee can have on your potential for fatty liver disease, which is something you're at higher risk of if you have like a high fructose, high sugar, even just like a high calorie type of diet. Went into the ergogenic effect of caffeine in terms of its effect on enhancing performance. Even looked at the effect of caffeine. They did an interesting experiment this past February where they subjected a group of individuals to two hours of simulated monotonous highway driving. We've all been there and many of us will be there over the highway drivers.

Hopefully you don't have snow anybody who's.

On a road trip. So those given a cup of coffee during their short break during this monotonous highway driving simulation weaved less.

Who signed up for that showed reductions.

In driving speed, mental effort and subjective sleepiness. So coffee had good effect there. There is a link between coffee and some pretty cool anti inflammatory effects. But just remember folks, when you hear all of these things that coffee and the antioxidants in coffee and some of the tannins in coffee can do. And this is what I actually tweeted. We're not talking about orange mocha frappuccinos. What are we talking about from Zoolunder? We're talking about like a good coffee and if you can, like a good organic arabica coffee would be best. Those are gonna be lowest in mold. They're gonna be basically more environmentally friendly and better for your body. You know, if you're jacking your coffee up with sugar and cream, it's not.

You all should know that for you.

Come on now.

So yeah, But I mean, I knew coffee cured everything. I knew it.

So there was published finally this May in the New England Journal of Medicine that literally looked at hundreds and thousands of people and found the bottom line result was that people who drank coffee lived longer than those who didn't.

Yes. So obviously I eat chocolate and I drink coffee, so I am good.

A lot of confounding variables there, but ultimately quite a bit to be said for coffee. And I'll link to this in the show notes. And then another thing that you can eat, and this was interesting, was a study that just came out that showed that eating like high dose garlic or supplementing with garlic in your diet actually boosted testosterone and lowered your protein turnover, which is basically like how fast your body kind of dumps out protein or goes into a catabolic state and breaks down muscle. So there's a big time testosterone boosting effect.

Kind of a bummer. If you have a testosterone boost and you smell like it is, nobody wants to be with you.

It's like you'd be like a horny dude who turns off every chick who's around you. Kind of a catch 22 there.

Not too bad.

But basically a 400% increase in the testosterone to cortisol ratio with consumption of a fairly high amount of garlic. And this kind of returns to something similar to what we said with dark chocolate. When you look at a study that shows high amounts of something having a pretty decent effect, you can kind of extrapolate that even a more moderate, sane amount of that compound may at least have some benefits ward off women. And considering that garlic has been shown to have good effects on things like blood pressure and cholesterol and risk of cardiovascular disease, I never would have guessed that it would have been kind of like a scientifically proven herb based testosterone booster. But it turns out that for guys, including garlic in your diet could actually be a good idea. And later on in this show we'll get into something else. There was a question about bee pollen and pine pollen and its effect on testosterone. But basically the way that garlic works is that it can increase your output of what's called luteinizing hormone. And luteinizing hormone is what's released from your pituitary gland, acts on your testes and causes your testes to up regulate their production of testosterone. So there's a bunch of different things that can happen downline. When you're producing more testosterone, you might be in a metabolic state that would cause more of it to get converted into estrogens, more of it to get Converted into another compound called dht, you may have an impairment in the actual cells in your testes that are responsible for boosting testosterone. So this all assumes that you're actually in a metabolic state that allows you to produce your own testosterone. But if so, garlic. Garlic has a pretty good effect on that.

Garlic is amazing all around, actually.

There you go. Have your coffee, have your garlic and have your chocolate.

All things I love. So that's great.

Have your breast milk.

Yeah.

No, last week we talked about.

I know, that's disgusting.

Last week we talked about Colostrum.

Mm.

And how colostrum has a pretty cool effect on your gut permeability. Basically decreasing your gut permeability. And listening to last week's episode, episode number 220. But basically colostrum is only produced in.

The first, like three days of life.

Yeah. Another thing to be said for Colostrum, and this was another study that came out that looked at Colostrum supplementation. They showed that it did basically it blunted the exercise induced reduction in endogenous antioxidant production. In a nutshell, all that means is that colostrum, when you exercise, what happens is your body will downregulate to a certain extent the activity of antioxidant enzymes. And also a very potent antioxidant called superoxide dismutase, which is also abbreviated SOD and is one of the more powerful antioxidants that is able to fight against free radical production. Is that found in Colostrum, potentially damaging cell compounds? No, it isn't found in Colostrum, but Colostrum mitigates the downregulation of these antioxidant enzymes and the downregulation of superoxide dismutase. So basically you give yourself better anti inflammatory potential when you've got this colostrum in your diet. One of the interesting things about Colostrum is that most commercially available Colostrum supplements, they're treated with very, very high amounts of heat. So the effectiveness.

That would lose a lot of the.

Yeah, the effectiveness of any food supplement, especially ones that have been treated with high amounts of heat, can be. Is that just because of the dryer significantly reduced? Basically it's just heat damage to the actual. Yeah, I know.

That's because they're drying out the colostrum or something.

Yeah, that's basically how they powder it. So I started to look into this and I actually talked to Mount Capra this week because that's the colostrum that I take. And I was curious whether or not there's is actually heat treated, and if so, to what extent they use what's called a refractance window dryer.

What does that mean?

It takes a lot, lot longer time to dry it, but it's a very gentle, low heat way of drying your colostrum to get it into powder form. So it's actually palatable for supplementation. So that was pretty cool to hear that. That particular brand of colostrum actually not only is going to have that antioxidant activity, but is also going to actually retain its integrity, its potency. So that's something to be said for that. And apparently the way that the entire dairy industry post processes their colostrum before they actually feed it to calves reduces the effectiveness of the colostrum to the extent to where it's rendered almost completely inadequate. And there was actually a study that was done on this that showed that a huge number of calves are at risk of basically bacterial infection because of the way that they process the colostrum in most chromosomes.

Well, a lot of them are removed from their mother early on just so they can get the milk from the cows, and they aren't even getting anything.

So they're still trying to get these calves their colostrum, but the way that they're processing it is the same way they process it.

My dad's in the farming industry.

Colostrum supplements.

You've milked your fair share of sheep. I'm a farm girl.

All right, cool. So one other thing I wanted to mention was this recent study on aspartame. And basically whether or not the consumption of artificial sweeteners and sugar containing sodas could increase risk of lymphoma or leukemia in men and women. And this study specifically looked at aspartame, which is going to be the active component in, like, NutraSweet. And it was. It was a fairly big study. It was done by Harvard Medical School. And it actually did find that when you compare diet soda with regular soda consumption, that consumption of diet soda specifically in men actually increased the risk of cancer. And there was basically a chemical reason behind this. Essentially, the consumption of aspartame produces huge, huge amounts of a component called formaldehyde. And formaldehyde tends to leak directly into circulation at the level of the gut. And for some reason in men, it tends to do so to a higher extent than in women. And so researchers hypothesize that the reaction of formaldehyde with blood cells after consumption of aspartame was likely the reason that you saw the increased risk of cancer in Males due to their high consumption of diet soda or in males who consumed high amounts of diet soda.

Kind of a girl question here.

No.

Do you think that perhaps.

Not if it's going to be gross.

Well, it's a girl question. I'm like, do you think it's because women bleed every month?

I knew you were going to. You had to bring this up last.

I'm just saying, I'm kind of.

Guys don't like to talk about.

Yeah, but you know what? We build new blood every month.

No, trust me, I'm aware of that.

You guys store it, so that would kind of make sense if it leeches directly into your blood.

You know what? That is a great question, and I don't know the answer to it. I do not know if the reason that women have a. Have a more stable gut barrier in terms of.

Well, no, I'm talking about like, you guys. You store your blood.

Oh, you mean you're getting rid of blood cells that get rid of our blood. I see what you're saying. That. Yeah, there's. I mean, that's a reasonable hypothesis.

Thank you. I'm very scientific. I'm very scientific.

You're very smart. And you haven't let 100% of the shows that we've done together go by without talking about periods.

Yeah, I'm a girl, you know. Kudos, all that we talk about that kind of thing.

Let's jump into this week's special announcements.

This is a boy girl thing. Special announcements.

So there's not a huge number of special announcements that are going to be much different than last week's special announcements, especially considering that I already talked about my birthday. But we should mention that this podcast episode, like last week's podcast episode, is brought to you by audiblepodcast.com Ben, last week we told you that you should go and check out the book the Hobbit, which is based on the popular upcoming movie the Hobbit. Or maybe it's the other way around.

I'm sure the book is better.

I'm sure that.

And I'm sure the audiobook is way better than I could come up with my imagination. I don't know what Gollum Reading it on my own.

I don't know what Gollum sounds like in the book.

Sorry.

So there are, believe it or not, other books on audible podcasts.com Ben, you can go get a free one. Let's see what the Audible bestseller is. Can you guess what the Audible bestseller is? Top two Audible bestsellers, Top two Hunger Games Part one and Hunger Games Part two.

I heard Hunger Games Part two was not as good as the first one.

It's called Catching Fire.

I've heard it's kind of slow, but I loved the first one. Loved, loved, loved it. Hated the movie.

If you are a Hunger Games geek and you're going.

That's why you should listen to it.

On audiblebooks.com on audible podcast.

Podcast. Excuse me.

Go on a road trip, get a bunch of coffee in your system, and listen to hunger games part one of part two.

Chocolate bar, 11 hours.

You get 11 hours for seven bucks. $7.50.

That's not good.

That's some cheap entertainment.

That is good. If you're on a road trip. Yeah, that's great entertainment. We've done that before with the. What was that book?

Frank Peretti. We did a Frank Peretti book.

That was good.

I remember that. That was good.

Yeah, that was good.

We drove to Portland with that one.

Yeah, that was a good one.

I don't know if they have that on Audible. Let's see the Monster. Monster.

It's about Sasquatches.

Is that what it was about? I don't know if it's on here. I'm sure it is, though.

It was good.

By Frank Peretti. All right, cool. So audiblepodcast.com Ben, check that. I've still got links to all of the triathlon winter camps that are coming out, and I just.

People just don't stop.

Just talked to Tri California today. Anybody out there who has signed up for the Wildflower Triathlon, which Jessa and I always go to, which is awesome. You go camp down at Lake San Antonio.

That's a hard way. You better be ready for it.

They gave the green light today. We're doing a camp down there March 22 through March 24, down at Lake San Antonio.

It's gonna be a super busy month for us.

Train on the course, and we're gonna camp down there in the lake and everything.

We? Are you saying me and you or we as in you? The athletes in you.

You can go if you want.

Okay. I know. I didn't know. I was just trying to.

So if you're a triathlete, visit the show notes for this episode, episode number 221. I'll put a link to that, as well as all the other camps that we're running and the Vietnam Triathlon, which is gonna rock. I'll put all that in the show notes. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that my list is up and running hardcore over@facebook.com bgfitness and I.

Wanted this is so convenient.

On Facebook, Jessa is now using my lists and so she's got her top 10 kitchen tools out there. Cause I love to cook my list. So you can check out Jess top 10 kitchen tools. And I don't know if we publish those over@facebook.com bgfitness or not, but you.

Should have if you didn't.

I think we did link to them over there, but either way, go over there, create your own my list and share them with us and you could get featured on this podcast. And we're gonna be bringing our first My List user on very, very soon for a special podcast episode. You can make a list of anything you want, like your favorite fitness tools, your favorite diet things, like things that you eat. That's what I meant by diet things, not dieting, whatever. Your favorite wines, your favorite clothes, favorite clothes, anything.

Snuggies, anything.

It's pretty, pretty cool stuff. So one more special announcement that we're gonna play for you here and then we'll move on to this week's Q and A.

Want to get personal access to all of Ben Greenfield's secrets Live this march in Spokane, Washington, Ben is bringing the world's best speakers straight to you. You're going to get step by step blueprints for performance, fat loss recovery, digestion, brain sleep and hormone optimization. And get insider access to private parties, special sessions for podcast listeners only, and of course, delicious locally grown organic meals. The conference is called Become Superhuman and it's already filling up fast. But you can get in now@BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman. You'll come away from this live two day event completely separate life to achieve everything you want for your body, mind and performance. Whether you want to maximize, maximize fat loss, achieve an Ironman triathlon, or push your body and mind to the absolute limits of human performance. So visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman and we'll see you live and in person March 8th and 9th, 2013. Listener Q&A.

Hey Ben, this is Mike in New York. I was just wondering what your thoughts are on pine pollen powder for making sure testosterone levels stay up and also its effect on endurance training and just health in general. And while we're at it, same question about bee pollen. How does it work with general health and how does it affect my endurance? Thank you very much. I hope to hear this on the podcast sometime soon. Take care. All right, cool. So bee pollen and Pine pollen.

I am of no help on this question.

You know, I suspect that the reason that you're going to see pine pollen asked about more and more over the next few months is because Tim Ferriss talks about it in his book the Four Hour Chef. And all it is is it's the seeds of testosterone that's derived from basically like the male sperm of pine trees. And in traditional herbal medicine, it's designed to like or used to increase low testosterone in men and women. So basically the way that it works is it is a direct androgen in and of itself. So whereas, you know, something that we talked about before, the garlic acting on the pituitary gland to increase production of luteinizing hormone to then cause the testes to churn out more testosterone compared to that something like pine pollen. The idea behind that is you're literally consuming the testosterone of the plant itself.

So is it like taking testosterone?

It is similar to taking free testosterone. And there is some concern out there.

Yeah, I was gonna say, is there some ill effects?

The same concern is that of taking like a synthetic hormone replacement, such as free testosterone. And that is that. Do you actually shut down testicular production of testosterone? Do you actually shut down your body's own endocrine production when you use pine pollen? You know, something like that. The thing with pine pollen is when you compare it to something like basic testosterone that you'd say like inject, that an endocrinologist might give you if you were using like compounded hormone replacement therapy, is that the molecular structure of pine pollen, because it's coming from a plant, it's different enough from the actual testosterone that is produced by your own testes.

So it won't be totally replaced.

You wouldn't necessarily shut down your body's own endocrine production of testosterone. However, no long term studies have been done on this stuff.

Come on. Chinese medicine is like ancient.

Yes. But they also don't do control stem.

They don't die documents.

You get pine pollen in powder form, you can get it in tincture form. And basically if you used it in powdered form, you'd use the equivalent of right around like a level teaspoon a day.

Okay.

I actually have.

So do you think it's.

Go ahead.

What's the word I'm thinking of? Do you think it's risky to take it?

I don't know if you.

Because there's not much research on it or.

Yeah, I have been trying it a little bit. I've been trying like a teaspoon of it mixed in with my Chinese herbs.

I know this on an empty stomach.

In the mid morning, I was like, didn't I tell you this the other day?

Yes, you did. I'm just teasing.

And you know, I guess since this is one of those those too much information style podcasts where we share everything. Hey you guys.

You boys talk about your thing, I talk about the girl thing.

So pretty much all I've experienced in terms of changes is I have noticed that I basically if I wake up during the night at all that I have an erection. Basically, that is what I have noticed. That does not necessarily mean, as you're going to learn, an article that I'll be producing soon@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that does not necessarily mean that my testosterone is increased per se. However, I have noticed that it's had that effect. So there you go.

I already knew that.

Cause she just lays there awake and watches me.

I'm messing with you all.

Watches my crotch to see what's happening.

Okay.

Okay. So that's the deal with pine pollen powder. So you can try it out. I'm using this stuff made by raw forest foods and it's. I'll link to the stuff I'm using in the show notes. It's just basically an organic pine pollen extract. The stuff isn't super cheap, but I mean you.

And if you come to the northwest in the spring, you can just sweep it off the floor.

You could just get pine cones and get it straight out of the pine cones. Beware too, that there may be a little bit of aromatization that goes on here. Meaning anytime that you put testosterone in your body, you may get some conversion into estrogens. So you may have to be on an aromatase inhibitor like chrysan or myomin or nettle root. The active compound in. In nettle root can stop the aromatization process as well. And then also know that anytime you're messing around with any of this stuff, you always increase your risk of potentially ingesting compounds that could cause you to test positive on a doping test or something like that.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I was just gonna say. Didn't somebody just get busted for increasing their testosterone?

No. So. Well, yes, by taking a synthetic testosterone replacement.

So is it different if you're taking a b pollen extract?

I mean, any, anything that bumps your testosterone to epitestosterone ratio up above a 4 to 1 ratio is going to flag you on like a World Anti Doping association doping test. So, you know, all this stuff is kind of proceed at your own risk. Okay. If it wasn't this curious, this like literally like this pine pollen extract, I really wouldn't try it. If it were like in the middle of like triathlon season or something like that. Just because I never play around with anything.

Can you just stop at cold turkey? Yeah, you can and you're fine.

Cold turkey and you're okay.

Okay. All right.

You want to give it yourself.

There's no weaning period.

Good couple of months to make sure.

That it's out of the system.

Out of your system, sure. So yeah.

Okay.

Okay. So as far as the bee pollen extract goes, you know, bee pollen is something that you want to be a little bit more careful with. Now, pollen, when we're talking about bee pollen or pine pollen, it's the male seed of the flower and it's required for the fertilization of the plant. And bee pollen itself has a ton of protein in it. It's got a lot of free form amino acids in it. And it's again, one of those things that's, that's used in alternative medicine and has been used as what's called a tonic or an energy.

I see it often in the store.

Chinese medicine for a long period of time. And lots of cultures throughout the world rely on bee pollen as a tonic for improving like endurance, vitality, extending longevity, helping with recovery. Some people say it helps you to build new blood and kind of similar to like a, like a spirulina or like an algae extract. It's really high, not only in your free amino acids, but also in most of the vitamin B complex.

So it sounds like it's a good thing.

Well, the issue is that a lot of people who have tried bee pollen have had an allergic reaction to it and a pretty significant allergic reaction.

Well, I guess if you're allergic to.

Bees, you don't see a lot of the same reports from something like pine pollen as you do from bee pollen products. And you know, there are certainly some studies that have shown that bee pollen can have, for example, a pretty potent anti inflammatory effect or that it may help to boost immunity to a certain extent. But you want to be careful with this because there have been several reports of people who begin to use bee pollen as like a superfood extract or start to use it in high enough amounts that they can have anaphylactic reactions or allergic reactions the same way as you would if you got stung by a bee.

Where does bee pollen come from? I've always been curious.

You just pick a, you grab a male Bee.

And you just shake it, whatever.

Just threaten it and make it give up its.

I am curious. What part of the bee culture does it come from?

I'm assuming that you would actually extract it from male bees. Like you would actually keep male bees in captivity somehow and extract the bee pollen from them, But I'm not exactly sure.

I think you're wrong.

You know, you get. Well, the bees carry around pollen on their legs, too.

Yeah, I know.

So they have like pollen baskets. So have you ever seen it?

It's like granules, it looks like.

Well, I know that their honeycombs actually get filled with pollen.

See, that's what I think. Maybe they're getting it from the honeycomb.

Honeycomb itself.

I think it's a byproduct of honey.

Yeah, it could be something they're gathering from the honeycomb or maybe from captured bees. I'm actually not sure.

I'm. I've always been curious because I just better Google it.

Yeah, go catch yourself some male bees.

And I'm not catching male bees.

Shake. Shake.

Extracting. I don't think that's how it's done.

Shake them till they give up their precious pollen. Hi, Ben and Brock and. Or Jessa. My name is Chris and I have two questions for you. The first would be about how to when to combine weight lifting with cycle training. I'll cycle four hard days a week. Tuesday and Thursday being interval days, Saturday being longer, even steady pace, and Sunday being a group ride. I'd like to do three days of weightlifting, though, to optimize some to testosterone benefit from that. But I'm not sure what days to do that on. The workout days, the heavy workout days, or the easier days. So any insight you have would be greatly appreciated. My second question is about optimizing my sleep. I sleep in a very dark room. I have the white noise apps and the things that you have recommended as far as being affordable go. And that's awesome, by the way. But my problem is that if I have to get up in the middle of the night to go pee, I tend to stay up for a little bit, just have a hard time going back to bed. That might happen one or two times a night. So I try not to drink fluids in the later part of the day. But I found when I do that, I have a lot more hunger at night, which I think is just thirst. So I find myself much more tempted to overeat, which I also don't want to do. So I'm not really sure what to do, how I can get good night of sleep without having that thirst that I think is being confused as hunger at night. So thank you very much. I appreciate all you do. So this has actually happened to me before, like, waking up in the night and having, you know, like, after you wake up in the night, you start to think about stuff and you kind of have a hard time getting back to sleep.

Yeah. Honestly, like, for me, I know what happens when my creative juices are flowing.

Yeah, it happens to me too, when I've had, like, a hard day of work. So.

Yeah.

So let's talk about that real quick, and then we'll get to this whole, like, which. When do you do wake up in conjunction with cardio? You know, do you do your weights on your easier cardio days or on your hard cardio days? And how do you kind of stack.

That up as your easier cardio days? But I don't really know.

Yeah, sometimes you can't listen to your gut.

I know, but I really like to listen to my gut a lot.

In reference to Chris's question, though, about waking up in the night, I've found that keeping one of, well, three different things can. I've honestly found that all three of these things can help. I don't take them all at once, but if I happen to have any of these three things around, these are the three things that I do. One would be just natural, called magnesium.

I've got a bunch of, say, magnesium.

I've got a.

That's what I was gonna say.

A bunch of little sample packs of that that I've thrown into our cupboard. Like I. Or none to our cupboard into my. My nightstand. It's like about 250 milligrams worth of just basic natural calm magnesium citrate. And I just. Just grab that and down it. Because sometimes I do wake up at midnight or one or two to pee. Sometimes getting up in the middle of the night to pee can mean that you're hypercortisolic, meaning that you've got. Your body's producing a lot of cortisol and overtraining. A lot of times when you're overtrained, you get up in the night to pee. We talked about this a little bit when we talked about adrenal fatigue last week. But sometimes it's just you just get up in the night to pee, and it doesn't mean anything other than that your bladder's full.

Yeah.

And. And I've been in a state where I've been completely relaxed and restored and recovered from training and just get up in the night. To pee, you know, because maybe it's night like this where It's. It's almost 10pm now and we're recording this podcast and we're drinking wine and it's like a guarantee, you know, at midnight or one tonight, I'll be getting up in the night to pee.

Yeah.

So.

But magnesium's great.

Getting back to sleep. Magnesium works really well.

Magnesium puts me into a very way to do it. I always feel very like I'm in a very deep, deep sleep.

Yeah. Somnidren GH from Millennium Sports. It's basically like L dopa mixed with gamma aminobutyric acid kind of spins the brain dials a little bit more. But the basic idea behind this stuff is that the somnidrin or the gamma aminobutyric acid in the somnidrin. GH is kind of a mild sedative. It's also got what's called a somatostatin inhibiting compound in there. You inhibit somatostatin, which is one of the things that competes with gamma aminobutyric acid in your brain. And then there's some other stuff thrown in there. Like there's some muscle relaxants in there and there's some. Sounds like quite a cocktail, some L dopa in there. If you take the stuff and it's on an empty stomach, like you haven't eaten within a couple hours, which is why it actually tends to be a little more effective if you take it when you. When you've woken up in the night because your stomach is empty and you don't have a lot of insulin circulating in your bloodstream, the stuff is super effective and it knocks you out. I've even found that if I take it and if I take it at like 1 or 2am versus when I take it at like 10pm I'm almost a little bit groggy in the morning because I'm still in sleep mode. So that stuff. Not quite as inexpensive as magnesium, but that stuff works pretty well too. Then the last thing would be.

Is it that stuff that gives you that really horrible vitamin in breath?

Yeah. You don't like to kiss me?

No. It's disgusting.

I think it tastes good.

Oh, it smells so bad.

You just dissolve it sublingually. The same as this other thing I'm about to mention, rem.

But I'm sure it's effective.

Hammer Nutrition's REM caps, they're a mix of natural relaxants like valerian root combined with melatonin. The issue with these is that they're time release. You're supposed to take them 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed. What I will do is open up the capsule and dissolve it underneath my tongue. And then it has a lot faster acting properties. And you don't have to wait under.

Your tongue works faster.

You don't have to wait for the melatonin to get released. So any of those three you can try magnesium is probably gonna do it for you. It works for 99% of the folks out there. If you want to experiment with the Somnidra and GH or the, or the hammer REM caps, go for it. And I'll also put a link to that recent podcast that I wrote about natural remedies for insomnia, because I wrote a monster podcast on insomnia and getting deep sleep. And you can go geek out on that if you really want to. As far as when you do your weight training before your or on your easy biking days or on your hard biking days, there was actually a fairly recent study that looked into what happened when you actually did about 30 minutes or so of easy cardio before you lift weights. And what this study found was that when participants completed 30 minutes of stationary bicycling at about 65% intensity prior to going through their weight training protocol, what they saw was an increased expression of some of the components that basically have an effect on a potent muscle growth factor called myostatin. And what happened was there was an increase in the expression of specifically the factor for you geeks out there was called PGC1alpha4. So PGC1alpha4 is a specific protein that can actually enhance the the production of what's called myostatin, which is basically a muscle growth regulator. And in people who have myostatin, I believe it's myostatin knockout. They tend to get huge. But basically that wouldn't be me. You get this big, big effect in the PGC1alpha4. And what happens then is you get a better effect from the weight training session that occurs subsequent to the easy cardio or after the easy cardio compared to if you didn't do any cardio at all before you lifted weights. And you can actually get a similar effect if you lift weights in a relatively glycogen depleted or carbohydrate depleted state.

So mean working hard.

But the difference between the two is that when you work out in a glycogen depleted state, you can also suppress your immune system function and limit your ability to reach high intensities. Whereas if you lift weights after you've done just, like, 30 minutes of moderate sleeping.

So my gut was kind of right.

Your gut was kind of right, yes. So what I would do, best case scenario, is you do an easy bike ride, and right after your easy bike ride, on those easy cycling days, you lift weights. And there was another study that they did that looked at cardio before weights, and they actually found that even when you do cardio before weights and you do that easy cardio session, like, earlier in the day, you still get a more beneficial effect on the weight training versus if you hadn't done that cardio at all earlier in the day. So you could even split up the two workouts if you wanted to. And I would definitely be doing the hard cycling workouts just from a neuro recovery standpoint and an overall, like, you know, energy intake standpoint, meaning that the hard cycling training sessions are going to deplete your body's carbohydrate stores. I'd be doing all that on a different day than when you. When you lift weights. So.

So just listen to me.

Cardio before weights. Listen to Jessa.

I know what I'm talking about.

She knows what she's talking about.

Listen to the body. Hi, Ben. My name is Kathy from Oregon, and I have a question about tendonitis. I'm guessing you've probably had a question like this before, but I could not find it on your website. So my issue is that in the last couple of weeks, I've been having pretty bad tennis elbow, I guess you would say. Both of my elbows are kind of on fire. When I work. I do construction work, though it's not heavy construction. I mostly sweeping and cleaning up. I dig a ditch every once in a while and maybe swing a hammer here and there, but it's not anything that the average person couldn't handle. I feel like there's really no reason this should be happening. Although I am on the GAPS diet, as I've been on the GAPS diet for two months, and I'm experiencing pretty good fatigue with that and muscle weakness, as I've had muscle weakness for a couple years, actually. So I'm wondering if this. I'm just compensating in some way. I'm just too exhausted. I know I shouldn't be doing this work, but it is what it is, and I don't really have much of a choice. So do you have any advice for what I can do in the meantime? I'm gonna continue with my job. Is there any. Anything I can do to minimize the pain or the Risks or doing further damage. Yep. So I guess that's my question. Thanks.

All right, so to answer this question from Kathy, it's important to understand about how neuromuscular fatigue actually works, because it can get kind of confusing to understand the various reasons that your muscles might be getting tired and you might be getting hurt more or getting, like, this tennis elbow or this tendonitis that you're getting due to being tired. Is it because of dietary factors? Is there something else going on? And really, I mean, we can look at people who are exercising in extreme conditions to see what happens when you get fatigued, if you want to kind of like amplify the effects of fatigue. But it is true that when you have basic, what's called neuromuscular fatigue going on, that there is a significant effect on things like coordination, on literally motor impulses to motor nerves in skeletal muscles. And when that happens, your coordination is affected and you increase your risk of injury because your movement patterns change. So the question is, how does fatigue actually occur? Now, there are two different mechanisms via which your muscles can get fatigue. One is called central fatigue, and one is called peripheral fatigue. So basically, central fatigue would be when your muscles get fatigued because of something that's going on next to the actual motor unit at the muscle level. Peripheral fatigue would be something that happens when there's something occurring within the actual muscle unit itself. So an example of central fatigue would be literally your brain and your spinal cord are the source of you becoming fatigued. Peripheral fatigue would mean that there's something going on in terms of the actual action potential at the muscle level itself. And this is just stuff for you geeks out there who are interested in the two different types of fatigue. But there's two kind of hypothesis as to why central fatigue or peripheral fatigue could actually occur. One's called the accumulation hypothesis, and one is called the depletion hypothesis. So the accumulation hypothesis of fatigue is basically the reason that you get fatigued is because there's a buildup of metabolic byproducts in your muscle fiber. So basically, when you exercise at a high intensity or for long periods of time, you produce a lot of lactic acid. That lactic acid produces or results in, in the production of hydrogen ions. You get a lot of ammonia produced from protein breakdown, and you also get a lot of what are called phosphate bodies produced when you engage in overdoing it work. So all of this stuff accumulates, which is why this is called the accumulation hypothesis. And when we look at what happens when it accumulates for Example, hydrogen ions produced when lactic acid is made in your muscles. Those interfere with the ability of the muscles to bind to one another and also with the ability of the muscles to release from one another. So you get basically a slower muscle contraction. The other thing that hydrogen ions can interfere with is your actual ATP production. ATP being the actual chemical component that allows you to produce a muscle contraction. So that's one of the issues with the accumulation hypothesis and lactic acid actually causing that effect.

So is that just basically not recovering?

Well, no, that's essentially having acid buildup. I mean, really, diet can affect this. And this is something I wanted to get at in just a second was, yeah, an alkaline versus an acid diet. If you are doing exercise sessions that result in a large amount of metabolic byproduct, in most cases, lactic acid is kind of buffered from your body within 30 to 60 minutes after you've finished exercising. But having a net acidic state within your body from, for example, eating a high sugar or high starch type of diet, which it doesn't sound like Kathy is on, if she's on the GAPS diet, which is relatively low in carbohydrates.

What is the GAPS diet?

It's called gut and psychology syndrome. It's like a kind of. It's a really clean diet. It's not a bad diet. But basically, if you are exercising too much, too hard, not recovering properly, and combining that with kind of an acidic diet, there could be some of this accumulation that's actually occurring even apart from your exercise session that could be affecting your muscular fatigue. The other part of the accumulation hypothesis, as I alluded to, is ammonia, which we talked about last week, how ammonia buildup from protein breakdown can cause your brain to eventually become too fatigued. So that's the accumulation hypothesis, the depletion hypothesis. This is something that I think is probably a little bit more likely in Kathy's case. And the depletion hypothesis of muscular fatigue is basically that there's two things that can get depleted. Phosphagen and glycogen. And phosphagen depletion is something that occurs when you get a reduction in ATP, which again is what provides your muscles with the ability to be able to contract along with a depletion in what's called phosphocreatine, which we also know in the supplement world as creatine, which also provides you with the ability to contract your muscles. Now, a state of phosphagen depletion can result from something as simple as not eating enough meat. Not getting enough creatine in your diet, not getting enough phosphates in your diet. And it certainly could be caused by dietary factors. We're not going to go in and like, break down the entire GAPS diet and whether or not it has adequate creatine or fast phosphates in it. But what Kathy could consider doing, for example, is supplementing with creatine phosphate and seeing if neuromuscular fatigue is affected by that. Literally, you know, doing anywhere.

So just getting like a creatine.

Yeah, 2 to 4 grams of like a creatine monohydrate on a daily basis. Something of that nature.

You can just get that at any store?

Yeah, most just basic creatine monohydrate, not any special man in a can type of stuff.

The other thing you're not gonna be.

Doing Shakespeare is glycogen depletion. And this is really simple, but basically you store about 2,000 calories of chained up carbohydrate in your muscle tissue. And if that is depleted to a certain extent, that is also a situation in which muscular fatigue can occur. This is something that happens more often in people who are exercising for long periods of time. With the advent of the low carbohydrate diet. It's something that a lot of folks, especially who are making the transition to a low carbohydrate diet, experience the neuromuscular fatiguing effects of glycogen depletion. And that's something as simple as just adjusting the ratio of carbohydrates in your diet. Trying to eat a little bit more carbohydrate. You can still eat it from healthy sources.

Yeah. You don't have to go eat bread.

Yeah. You don't have to punish a baguette or something like that. But I mean, just toss a sweet potato or yam or some carrots or parsnip or some. Some healthy carbohydrates in here and there. And those would be a couple of things to look at when it comes to muscular fatigue. So that's how muscular fatigue happens from an accumulation standpoint or a depletion standpoint. And a few different things for you to think about, Kathy, when it comes to looking at your diet or some of the reasons that you might be experiencing neuromuscular fatigue, which can then lead to a loss in neuromuscular coordination, which can then increase risk of injury. I know we kind of scratched the surface.

I mean, like, basically you're just like. Your body's just. Your mind is not connecting with your body, so it's just getting.

Yeah. And anybody who's gone in and tried to do like a hard workout that involved any type of coordination, you know, like single leg squats or Turkish get ups.

That was me yesterday. My lunges were ridiculous.

Yeah.

I mean, even for me, I was tipping over.

Yeah. I mean my movement patterns were very poor in that high intensity interval class that we did today. And it was because I didn't really know what we were going to be doing in that class and I did kind of like a plank type workout yesterday. So. Excuse you.

I'm sorry, I have a tickle.

That is not good radio.

Honey, I'm sorry, I have a tickle in my throat.

So anyways, that's muscular fatigue and hopefully that gives you a better idea. Kathy and I hope that you recover quickly from the tendonitis.

Tennis is a great game. Just picked it up.

She actually got tennis elbow from construction.

Oh, I thought you said tennis.

Well, tennis elbow. But you can get that from swing.

You should try tennis.

You can get that from swinging.

Great.

I know you should not try tennis if you have tennis elbow. You should wait until you.

That's true.

Don't give out bad advice in the podcast, Jessa.

Sorry.

All right, let's move on. Hi Ben, this is Jim. I'm hoping you can help me find some independent research on master amino acid pattern. I'm 46 years old and run three times a week with a weekly mileage of anywhere between 20 and 25 miles. I strength train on my non run days three times a week and cross train on the elliptical as well. I typically take a branched chain amino acid supplement before runs of 8 to 15 miles. I'm thinking of trying map but I can't seem to find any independent research on it. What I found on Google Scholar all seem to come from the same group of scientists that seem to be affiliated with the product. I know it's popular in the endurance community, but that all seems to be based on the the claims of Dr. Minkoff. Frankly, his claims about protein absorption and utilization don't seem to gel with what I've read. I currently supplement post workout with a whey protein or whey casein mix, but the FAQs on the MAP website suggest not supplementing with protein while using MAP. I'd like to see some independent data before I make such a change to my current regimen. Love the podcast. Thanks. So this is a great question. Good question.

Something you should question almost everything with.

Yeah. And you know the. The guy that that kind of was the discoverer or the formulator of this master amino pattern supplement, which is those. Are those white capsules? Yeah, they're not capsules, they're. They're tablets.

Oh, I've seen the bottle. I don't take them myself.

They're what I chomp on or swallow during a workout. And they basically keep your blood levels of amino acids really high. But the basic idea is that this guy, over about a 21 year period of time, did a bunch of studies with amino acids until he found a formulation or a balance that maximized what's called net nitrogen utilization. And basically, the way that you measure net nitrogen utilization is you do what's called a nitrogen balance study, where you measure the number of grams of nitrogen that you take in from a supplement or from a protein powder or anything like that versus the grams of nitrogen that you actually excrete, like in the urine or in the sweat. So when amino acids come into your body, whether they're in a supplement or whether they're in meat or eggs or powder or capsules or whatever, the amino acids are either utilized, meaning that they're made into body proteins, or they're what's called deaminated, meaning that a nitrogen is kind of lopped off of.

That doesn't sound good.

And what you have left over is a carbon and hydrogen and an oxygen that is burned or is stored as a carbohydrate. There's a term out there in physiology called gluconeogenesis, meaning that you could technically take an amino acid and turn it into glucose if you didn't use it. So anyways, the nitrogen that gets lopped off or the nitrogen that gets removed, that's a waste product. And for the most part, it comes out in the urine as urea. So that's the nitrogen out part of the net nitrogen utilization equation. So if an amino acid is utilized in some type of protein synthesis in your body, such as muscle repair or recovery, it doesn't come out in the urine because it becomes part of the body structure, basically. So the net nitrogen utilization is the ratio of amino acids that come out to the amino acids that come in, and it's expressed as a percentage. So to do a nitrogen balance study on, say like whey protein, you could eat like 60 grams of whey protein and you could basically collect urine for 24 hours and see how much nitrogen actually comes out, assuming that you weren't eating any other proteins, like you were just eating fruit and vegetables with very, very negligible amounts of protein coming in anywhere else in your diet. And if you have the ability to actually measure urinary nitrogen output, you could do a case study, like a single case study on yourself in a situation like this. There was a double blind, triple crossover study done on map and they compared eggs and dairy to this map, this master amino pattern. And they found that eggs had a net nitrogen utilization of 48%, dairy had a net nitrogen utilization of 16%, and the master amino pattern had a net nitrogen utilization of 99%. Now, of course, the issue with this is that the formulators of master amino pattern were part of the study. Dr. Minkoff is involved in a lot of the research and a lot of the studies that's done on master amino pattern. And I mean, my basic answer to Jim is that that is simply the way that it is right now. There's not that. I know of many independent research studies that have been done on this stuff. What I do know is that Dr. Minkoff runs a big wellness center, a wellness facility down in Florida. And they give it to patients with pretty severe renal disease and liver disease who literally can't handle nitrogen at all. And they can't eat meat or fish or eggs because they become nitrogen toxic. But they can take literally 30 of these master immunopattern tablets every day without any nitrogen buildup. And they had one published study that came out of that clinic where dialysis patients took MAPS and avoided proteins, and they were able to significantly reduce the number of dialysis treatments that they needed. They also treat a lot of cancer patients down there who are in pretty bad shape nutritionally. And they put them on 30 map a day, and they gained and maintained significant amounts of lean body mass, which is a pretty big issue in cancer patients, is their loss of lean body mass, their catabolic state. And there's not really any other protein or amino acid supplement that's able to accomplish this. In that case, you can check out the Physician's Desk Reference, which is abbreviated the pdr that includes all FDA approved drugs. And master amino pattern is not a drug, but it does appear in the Physician's Desk Reference with all of those details. And that gives it a lot of credibility in and of itself for a lot of physicians and health professionals. So that's basically what I would say. I mean, I use this stuff, I notice a difference. I haven't ever talked to anybody who hasn't noticed a significant, significant difference when they take the stuff. And I mean, I, I realized that this could really sound like kind of a fox guarding the hen house type of, type of offer to you, Jim, But I'm sure that if you were to call LifeWorks Wellness center or you were to email Dr. Minkoff and express to him your concerns and whatnot, that he would, he would, he would be willing to talk to you and he'd be willing to, to kind of correspond with you on your concern about MAP not having independent research studies behind it, so.

Interesting. So if you're not working out, like hardcore, was this stuff not that great for you because you won't be using it?

Well, I mean, like I mentioned, there are a couple unique situations, like in these renal failure patients or in the cancer patients, where they benefited from this stuff from a medical.

Yeah, but what about the average Joe? I mean, I mean, I work out pretty hard, but I know I don't work out in like insane intensity. But I don't know that I would benefit from something like that.

It depends. For example, if you're neurotransmitter depleted, then amino acids can help out because they are the basis of neurotransmitter formation. If you generally aren't beating your body up that much, if you're pretty stable from a neurotransmitter standpoint. No, I mean, this stuff is expensive. It's like 60 bucks a bottle. I mean, it wouldn't go out of your way to buy it unless you're actually beating your body up.

Sure.

Your neurotransmitter depleted or you have some kind of like a medical condition like I was just talking about to where it might come in handy for you. But. Okay, so that's, that's the deal with map and. It's a great question, Jim.

Yeah, it is. Hey, Ben and brock. I'm a 42 year old avid cyclist and wanted some advice on training for a bike race next April. It's called the Tour of batonkill. It's a 62 mile rolling course of dirt and pavement. And from what I understand, it's quite hilly. Currently, I weight train into Tabata sets at the gym three days a week and I also take spin classes two days a week. Right now it's pretty cold. I live in New England, so the road biking is minimal, if any. I plan to do some cross country skiing when and if we get some snow this winter as well. Can you give me some ideas on the best way to train for an event like this? My road racing experience consists of a hill climb event and a time trial. Last year I more or less put this one on the calendar to challenge myself and get into better shape. Thanks for any help. You can give love your podcasts and all of your help online. I started listening to you almost a year ago, became inspired and I've never felt better. Thanks.

All right, so I looked into this tour of Bat and kill thing that Stephanie is asking about.

Sounds intense. Holy cow.

It is billed as like one of the toughest, like 62 mile bike race or just one of the toughest bike races that you can do, period.

Is it a road or is it a.

Well, the way they describe it is that it has climbing of nearly 4,000ft with a maximum gradient of 18%. And anybody who rides bikes knows that 18% is a pretty tough climb.

Yeah.

So. And 62 miles of that, you know, going on 10 miles of some 18% grades is one thing, but 62 miles is tough, especially when it has, I think there's like 10 different sections where there's like dirt parts in this. So.

Okay, so this is what kind of bike should be. Should be riding. I'm just curious, this is not in.

The question, but I definitely have a 39 tooth chainring on your front or like a compact crank. I'd have a 25 available on the rear cassette. So I basically have a gearing that's favorable for climbing. There's 18 grade. So make sure that your bike is set up properly from a gearing standpoint with the amount of climbing you're going to be doing because 4,000ft of climbing over 62 miles is.

Otherwise your lower back is going to be screaming at you.

Yeah, it's pretty significant. Or you're going to be walking your bike.

Yeah.

I've got three things that I'd recommend for getting better on the hills that go above and beyond just doing like spin classes. One would be what I call hill to tempo intervals. And this is something that I prescribe to my athletes a lot of the time. Basically you choose about a 2 to 4 minute hill and you attack that hill like you climb it hard and you kind of attack the hills like an always be pushing type of approach on the hill. But then when you get to the top of the hill, you don't back off. You continue to time trial for about one to two minutes.

Oh, that sounds mentally horrible.

So you build up a bunch of lactic acid and muscle fatigue on the hill and then you get your body used to pedaling in a fatigued state at the top of the hill. So it's a hill to tempo repeat, meaning you climb the hill, you do a tempo effort for 60 seconds to two minutes. Once you've reached the top of the hill and then you turn around and you descend and you do a it again.

See I, I like the reward system where you get to the top of the hill and you just stop.

And that's traditional hill climbing. This is better. This will get you way faster results.

I believe you. I'm just saying. Sounds mentally horrible.

Next, you mentioned that you're doing weight training and you're doing Tabata sets. Do you know what a Tabata set is?

I have no idea.

That's where you basically do a four minute set in the weight room. That's 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. So you do.

It's actually how many seconds on?

20 seconds on 10. Like in that circuit class that we did tonight, we were doing three 40 second sets and then 30 seconds off. So Tabata set is four minutes of like, you know, 20 seconds of as many push ups as you can do and then 10 seconds.

Okay, okay.

But it's a fairly muscular endurance based style of working out. And I would encourage you, if you want to maximize what's called motor unit recruitment and actually get a lot of the benefits that strength training has been shown to have on cycling power and wattage production. I'd be basically spending your time in the weight room just focusing on power and focusing on strength, doing lower rep, higher weights type of exercises like squats and lunges and step ups.

Especially if you're doing hills.

Save any metabolic work or cardiovascular work for riding your bike, for doing these hill repeats that I'm talking about or doing some of your spin classes and your cardiovascular endurance. Work on the bike, but don't use the gym for muscular endurance. Use your bike for muscular endurance and then go high weight, low rep, lift for power, lift for strength, and focus on that with your gym sessions. And then the last thing I would mention is something that I Talked with Chris McCormick about when I interviewed him a few weeks ago. And Those are his MACA workouts over at getmacca x12.com or getmacax12.com because he's got 12 of these workouts and three of them are really cycling intensive. He's got one workout on there that's called a power up where basically you go out and you climb a hill and you start at the bottom of the hill in basically a fairly easy gear. But then as you climb the hill every two minutes you shift to a harder gear that would not work. These are long hills, you use a 10 to 12 minute hill. So by the time you get to the top of the hill, you're literally mashing gear and then you go down to the bottom and you do it again. So it's like a hill climb, except you're literally making the hill climb steeper as you go. Now, for a hill climb like this, you want to use not a super duper steep hill climb. If you're able to look at the grade percentages, about 3 to 5%.

I know when I'm getting ready for, like Wildflower, I go hit our arbor crust hill, which is just like a switchback insane grade all the way up.

Into behind our house and at the top of it is a winery. So you're kind of getting teased as you climb.

Don't do that, Macca smash. Whatever he said. But anyways, something like that.

It's called the power up workout, and basically every two minutes, you climb a 10 to 12 minute hill. Every two minutes, you gear down and make your make your gearing more difficult.

I don't think I could do that on that hill.

No, I don't think.

Yeah, I'd fall over.

That hill is like 12%.

Yeah.

Yeah. So those are some of my recommendations for you, Stephanie. And. And hopefully that helps you out a little bit. And yeah, that actually wraps up our questions for today. It's like a third as long as last week's podcast.

Seriously.

We'll point to everything we talked about over at my list. You can check that out@facebook.com BG Fitness. We'll put the my list for this episode. Episode number 221. It's like gonna be 11:00pm soon, so we should.

Yeah, we should wrap this up. I'm getting a little sleepy.

Listen to our own.

I mean, my cozy jammies and go to bed.

But we wanted to get a podcast out to you guys. And again, remember, my birthday's coming up, so stay tuned to my email newsletter list. If you're not on that, you can subscribe over@bengreenfulfitness.com because I always send out some nice little gifts to my email newsletter list. And if you haven't yet signed up for the superhuman event that's coming to Spokane, Washington, gotta get in. Seats are filling up quickly and you do not want to miss out on this. So say goodbye to Jessa.

Goodbye.

It's gonna be Brock next week.

It's my last time. Miss you.

She's fired. She's officially fired.

You're Donald Trump or something.

You gotta join the inner circle if you want more of Jessa. There you go.

You don't let me talk as much.

All right, cool. Well, we'll catch you later, folks.

Later.