Episode #56: A Swimming Super Special & Much More!

In this podcast episode, a double interview Swimming super special on swimming, nutrition and swim form whether heart rate monitors are actually accurate when predicting calories burnt Listener Q&As about yeast infections in the gut naturally fighting an age related decrease in metabolism, whey protein allergies, a high heart rate during exercise, salt cravings, gym sticks and low back pain.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield 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.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I'm actually in Toronto, Canada right now at CanFit Pro, which is this big conglomerate of fitness professionals and personal trainers, group fitness instructors gathered together up in Canada. I came up here to give a seminar and we'll be headed back tomorrow down to the States to race in the Portland Triathlon down there in Portland. So I hope to see some of you podcast listeners down there. Be sure to to come up and say hello. Got a lot of questions this week and also have some really interesting interviews on swimming. Got Pacific Elite Fitness coach and pro triathlete John Kenny back on the show as well as Paul from Perth, Western Australia to talk about swimming and primarily open water swimming. A lot of really interesting listener questions. So what we're going to do is just spend time on a couple of special announcements and then we'll move straight on to the listener. Q. And and one thing that I wanted to mention to you just real quickly is that if you have not figured out yet how to automatically subscribe to this podcast on itunes, so it automatically gets downloaded to your computer when it's released and it automatically syncs up to your MP3 player, then you're missing out on one of the finer things in life and you're spending a lot of time that you could spend doing more fun things like playing with your kids or drinking a nice glass of wine or spending time on Twitter. So make sure that you figure out how to do that in itunes. Subscribe if you have any questions, just email me ben greenfieldfitness.com I'd be happy to show you how to do it. Or you could Even go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and click the little link there in the right hand sidebar that says how to subscribe. And while you're there, check out all the other things that I put in that sidebar anytime a sponsor of the show gives us a discount or anytime I find a product that I like, I usually throw it in there. So check that out. Go ahead and move on to some announcements before we get to the Listener Q&As for this week. Special Announcements so just a few quick things this week in the way of special announcements. The first is that last week I announced that for those of you out there who are cyclists, who are triathletes, who want to get your hands on a bend Greenfield Fitness and Pacific Elite Fitness Cycling Jersey. We have tops and shorts available or at least we have the opportunity to order them. But we have to order a certain number. And folks, we only need three more orders to be able to get to capacity and send these things out to you. I'm getting them made at cost and sending them out free as far as the shipping is concerned. All I need is three more listeners to actually get their hands on one of these Cycle Jersey short combos. They are 130 and you can pretty easily just do that via PayPal. I'll get you set up and you'll get the jersey within about four to five weeks. But if you're interested in getting that, they're going to be pretty cool looking and we've got quite a few people signed up so far. But I need three more orders. So if you're interested in doing that, just go ahead and shoot me an email. Ben greenfield fitness.com One other thing, or two other things rather, is that I still am forming a fat loss group over in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Washington for anyone who is interested in trying out the HCG Diet for Fat Loss. And if you don't know what the HCG Diet for Fat Loss is, a you could google it and b you could go look at the success that a few of my clients have been having. One in particular has been posting some of or I've been posting some of her stories, some of her success up to the website. And if you go onto the right hand sidebar@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and scroll down, you'll see one section that says Training and Nutrition Secrets and has a picture of someone working out. Click on that and you'll get directed over to the page where I've been implementing some special dietary protocols. The last thing is that I am going to be competing in the Clearwater Half Ironman World Championships and in the Kona Ironman World Championships and specifically down in Kona which is coming up Here just in about five weeks. I do have a condo, rented, and I know that some people go down there to watch the race. I happen to have one other guy who is going to be staying down there in the condo and he is no longer going to be there. So if anyone wants to last minute head down to Kona to watch the Ironman, I now have an open space, my condo. First come, first serve. Alright, well let's go ahead and move on to this week's listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

My first question this week comes from listener Christine, who says I believe in podcast number 53 that Dr. Cohen mentioned something about him finding that most of his patients have too much yeast, even without symptoms. I don't have any outright symptoms, but it sounds like there's a good chance I could have too much. Should I be doing anything, taking anything to combat a possible overabundance of yeast? Now, before we address Christine's question, let's talk a little bit about what yeast actually is and why that would be a problem for someone. Now what I'm going to talk about today is not going to be a vaginal yeast infection, but instead more of a systemic gut yeast infection. That tends to be a bigger issue in terms of it affecting a lot of people in the general population. So the whole idea behind yeast is that over somebody's lifetime they're consuming about 25 tons worth of food. And of course that's providing the nutrients that you need to survive. But the food also also can contain bacteria, it can contain virus, it can contain toxins. One of the things that food can contain is something called Candida albicans, which is a form of yeast. And it is actually fed by things like sugars, carbohydrates in your gut. And the whole problem is that the symptoms from yeast and its breakdown products can be body wide. They're not just in small areas like the sinuses or the throat or the bladder. So a doctor will a lot of times if they find that you have a yeast infection, just prescribe antibiotics for the type of symptoms that you'd have. The problem is that overgrowth of yeast in your intestines can cause little micropunctures in the lining of your intestine. This is also called leaky gut syndrome. And what that allows is for incompletely digested food to actually spill into your bloodstream. So undigested food in your bloodstream is recognized by your body as a foreign body and your immune system reacts, it forms what are called antibodies to try to get rid of these undigested food particles in your bloodstream, you tend to get food allergies from that, you tend to get sensitivities. What happens is a general inflammation in your entire body and that can cause a lot of havoc. And food allergies especially, they're directly linked to leaky gut syndrome and to candida yeast infection overgrowth. So like I said, somebody who is found to have one of these yeast infections, you could easily find something like that from something like a stool test. You can get swelling, bloating, gas, cramps, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, irritability, lack of concentration. There's a lot of little things that can happen, and this is something that I'll have a lot of my clients do, is actually do a stool test that's just like a home kit stool test where we can find out whether or not they actually have one of these infections. And there are things that can actually cause the yeast infection to occur that a lot of people do. Prescription hormones, specifically birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy, those can allow for overgrowth of yeast in the gut. Prescription corticosteroids can offer it to happen like a hydrocortisone. Excessive use of any type of antibiotics that can kill off healthy bacteria, that can cause yeast overgrowth, yeast infection. A lot of processed foods or pretty much any packaged food is going to have a higher likelihood of it containing parasites, fungus, mold, all of those can promote the growth of a yeast infection. Sugar, because it feeds yeast. Candy bars, cookies, cakes, soft drinks, bread, just about any starch that can promote the growth of candida, as can alcohol and caffeine consumption, especially because alcohol, because that's a natural result of yeast overgrowth and sugar. So what do you do when you have it? Well, one of the kind of the typical western medicine fixes is to throw a bunch of antacids and non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs and over the counter antifungals as well as prescription antifungals. Unfortunately, these can do a lot more damage to, to your body while at the same time fighting the yeast, they can cause a lot of other problems. So one of the things that you can do though to help with the yeast infection, one would be a colon cleanse. Whether it be an all out week long colon cleanse or whether it be something just like basically a cocktail of nutrients designed to clean out your digestive tract. I take one specifically, it's called Ener prime. Another thing that's very, very powerful. A natural antifungal, natural antiseptic, and this is the one that I've been most impressed with and I'm going to put a link to in the show notes. It's concentrated oil of oregano, about three to five drops of that sublingually underneath your tongue every night before you go to bed that is incredibly effective at killing off yeast infections while at the same time allowing you to maintain a healthy digestive tract because it does pick the bad bacteria, not the good bacteria in terms of the bacteria that it kills. And there is a must read in my opinion and I'm going to let you read this yourself because it's a great explanation of how a magnesium deficiency can cause the yeast infection. But I just actually finished the book on the plane ride up here to Toronto. It's called the Magnesium Miracle. I'm going to put a link to it in the show notes. It's by Dr. Carolyn Dean. I don't recommend a lot of books. This one was incredibly powerful. It was so powerful that I'm going to be bringing it home to my wife and telling her that I would really, really, really like her to read it because it knocked my socks off. A, the studies that show how void our foods now are completely void of magnesium and B, why that's an issue and why some of the biggest healthcare problems in America today in terms of our chronic disease issues are directly related to a magnesium deficiency. I was just, I was floored. So a couple other things that you can do other than magnesium, other than oil of oregano. The live cultures in yogurt can help to destroy yeast, as could a probiotic supplement. And so I highly recommend those. And if you do happen to have to get on an antibiotic, you would definitely even more so want to take in probiotics. So great question, Christine. Remember, if you do have a question, you can just email Ben greenfieldfitness.com or call me 1-877-209-9439. So the next question is from listener Carol. And Carol asks. I'm a 69 year old female and having all kinds of trouble with weight since I stopped smoking six years ago. I eat a sensible diet and walk two minutes a day, four days a week. My metabolism is very poor according to my doc who ran blood tests. I don't know how he found that out from a blood test, but I'll keep going. But when I asked him if I could increase my metabolism, he said no and that the situation was due to the aging process. Somehow I find that answer unacceptable. So I'm asking you the same question as a trainer who Specializes in such matters. No, I cannot afford a trainer, but would really appreciate your opinion and a few tips. I feel helpless. Okay, so first of all, I'm not sure exactly what test your doctor ran that show that you had a low metabolism. I guess it could have been like a T1 or a T2, T3, reverse TSH, something looked at your thyroid activity, typically metabolism. You'd have to look at Virginia metabolic tests, which would be where you wear an oxygen mask and breathe in and out of it and it tells you how many calories, how much carbohydrate, how much fat you're burning. I'm not sure what that test that your doctor ran was, if it was just a blood test, but if he said that you couldn't increase your metabolism or that you were kind of stuck. And one way he was correct and one way he was incorrect. He was correct in that the body's metabolism naturally slows as you age. However, there are many, many things that you can do to maintain your metabolism or even if it's low due to nutrition or diet decisions that you've made, or exercise decisions, then you can implement things that could even increase it as you age. First of all, great job with the walking two miles a day. I think I said two minutes a day, two miles a day, four days a week. But in terms of nutrition choices that you can make, I would recommend that you implement natural spices and herbs in your routine. Things like turmeric, curries, cumin, cayenne or red pepper. Cinnamon fennel is a good one. Star anise is another good one. And you can put those into your diet to actually help bump up your metabolic rate. You can control your insulin sensitivity, which is also going to help with metabolism. You can take something like vanadium. You can take something like chromium. Either of those will help with insulin sensitivity. One supplement that I recommend for improving the metabolism is called lean factor. Another is called thermo factor. From an activity standpoint, you could actually be doing weight bearing activities such as light work with dumbbells. £10, £15. Anything that places some type of an axial or vertical load down your skeleton to not only improve bone density, but also improve the density of the lean muscle fibers, which is going to burn a few more calories than a droplet of fat will. You can make sure that when you are lifting weights that you're not just doing the same routine day after day, but you're actually throwing curve balls at your body, giving it new things to do. I do recommend my book where I Talk a lot about this because I could fill up this entire podcast. I've really skimmed the surface and answered this question kind of generally. But I know that you say you can't afford a trainer, but my books, like it's, I don't remember, it's $15 or $20, but if you go to 100waystoboostyourmetabolism.com pick that up. All it is is literally a laundry list with a detail of how to implement each one. And each thing tells you exactly what you should do to increase your metabolism. So I will put a link to that in the show. Notes Carol. Next question comes from listener George. And George says, Ben, love the podcast. You break health and fitness down to an understandable topic. Thanks, George. I love you too. I've been a listener for about 6 weeks and have started taking APC time release protein and whey protein and also training much harder. Lately I've had persistent itchy skin, especially around my armpits and scrotum. Little bit of a, little bit of an information overshare there. But actually, you know, it's good to know. It's a good question. Yes, I wash well, I know you're not a doc, but could this be diet or exercise related? George, it's possible that if you just started taking whey protein, that you could have an allergenic or an allergic reaction to it. Milk allergens are found in milk products, and the two main components of milk are whey and something else called casein. You put the two together, you have a complete protein. That's why the best type of protein to take at night if you aren't allergic to milk is a mix of whey and casein. But an individual could be allergic to one or they could be allergic to both. So casein is basically like the curd that forms when milk is left to sour. And the whey is the watery fraction that's left when you remove the curd. And you can dehydrate that and make whey protein powder. Now, the whey fraction makes up about 20% of what's isolated and it's got a lot of what are called antibodies in it. And those can cost the most. Those can cause the most clinical type of problems. You can test for a whey allergy with a blood test. You could test with a skin prick test. But essentially what you can find out is whether or not you're actually having an allergic reaction away. And when you describe your symptoms as being itchy type of symptoms, that's classic in terms of a food allergy reaction. Now the question is, what can you do about it? How can you still get protein in without experiencing the allergy to whey? There are many other forms of protein out there. My entire book, Shape 21 is written around avoiding common allergies. And some of the protein powders that I recommend as alternatives to whey in that book are a soy protein powder. A hemp protein powder is also good. Sometimes people who are allergic to cow's protein are not allergic to goat protein. So you could do a goat protein powder. I take one from a company called Mount Cap and it literally is just like regular whey protein that you would find at the supplement outlet, but it's made from goat protein rather than cow's milk. So there are lots of protein sources out there. Rice protein would be another one. You can find some of these in just the bulk food section of like a health food store. You can also find them at supplement outlets. You can find them online. I have a lot of, a lot of people that I'm working with who are now really getting into hemp protein. It does have a lot of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids in it, which is also nice. So I'd try to find a substitute for the protein, George, and see if those type of symptoms persist. And that would be a good way to answer your question if you didn't want to just go get a skin prick test or blood test for a whey food allergy. And then Catherine asks. I'm a fairly recent newsletter podcast subscriber and have become a fan. I am a triathlete and I have a question on salt cravings. I train daily for the olympic distance, averaging 10 to 12 hours per week. I have been training and racing for over 10 years. I eat a clean diet, especially since giving up gluten eight months ago, and in general feel great. I do crave salt, however, and my question is, what am I missing? I am a longtime Hammer nutrition user and use their Endura lights while training. And for recovery. And on a sweaty day, I could walk by a cookie without a problem. Salt is a different story. Long question. Have any tips? Should I give into it? For those of you who aren't familiar with that product she mentioned by Hammond Nutrition, that's an electrolyte pill that you can take while you're exercising to replenish things like sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. And most Americans are getting a large amount of sodium in their diets. They can store up to 8 grams or 8,000 milligrams of sodium and salt is typically not a problem for many of us, at least the way that we would think about salt in terms of it being sodium chloride or table salt. I just got done talking earlier about the magnesium miracle. I'm going to reference magnesium again because it's such a huge problem. The idea is that if you're eating clean, if you're eating healthy, if you're eating fruits, if you're eating vegetables, but you are getting those from the grocery store, it is likely that they were grown in a field that uses pesticides, that uses herbicides, that uses fertilizers, and that has since the 1930s, been exposed to an environment that leaches a lot of the minerals from the soil, including magnesium. So even if you're salting your food, yeah, you're getting your sodium, but you're not getting one of the most important minerals that your body craves. And you will crave salt because your body will just want a mineral, but you won't be able to actually know that it's really something like magnesium that you would be wanting again. Catherine, I would highly recommend that you read this book that I just finished reading. But the gist of it is that because you're not getting some of these things from your foods, even if you're eating a healthy diet, and they have traced a gradual decline in magnesium levels in food since the 1930s, interestingly, with a, with a simultaneous increase in the number of chronic diseases that we're experiencing, I would consider supplementing with magnesium. You can use a oral based magnesium. They do make some that are time released now, so you don't get some of the loose stool type of symptoms that you get with a traditional oral magnesium supplement. I personally use a topical magnesium supplement, but the stuff is literally amazing. You notice changes in your body that you, that you never thought of before. My wife's migraines that she gets occasionally has disappeared and she starts to see sleep a lot more sound when she's been just rubbing this magnesium into her back before she goes to bed at night. I personally get a lot less soreness in my muscles and zero muscle cramping when I use it. So that's my recommendation is if you're craving salt, try that out, see if that's an issue. It typically is a much bigger issue even for women than calcium. And I don't have a lot of time to get into it right now. I'd read the book, but calcium magnesium ratio tend to be way skewed in our diets towards too much calcium, not enough magnesium and that causes a lot of problems including kidney stones, blood clotting, strokes, things of that nature. So again, read the book. It was super easy to read and I was just, I was blown away by it. So I'll put a link to the magnesium chloride that I use in the show. Notes Eric has a fairly long question. Over the spring and summer I've been diligently following a training schedule. The schedule is based on the classic three week build, one week recovery, second face of build. That is a little more than the first week. This weekend I was coming in my final recovery week and heading onto my final build, giving it all in my workouts, especially on the bike. I did a ride this week with Kristen Armstrong which I monitored with my old Garmin. For those of you who don't know, Kristen is a she's a professional cyclist from the Coeur d' Alene area. I'm guessing heading out there was a decent hill where the group began to fracture. I was the only person on a triathlon bike. I pushed harder than ever to keep with the lead group which was being led by Kristen. I stuck with the group and had a great ride. I downloaded my heart rate info and noticed that I spiked my heart rate at 218 going up the hill. I've never managed to get my heart rate over 180 before, 180 ish before. I chalked it up to a glitch on the watch today. I rode my bike into work and did a few intervals on the way in and back and stopped at the football field to do sprints on the way home. I downloaded that info and noticed on one of my intervals I spiked my heart rate again at 212, this time on flat ground. I feel great and have been upping my magnesium baths and massaging my legs with magnesium oil every three days or so. So this is the same Eric that wrote in last week that apparently is using the magnesium that I recommended to him and he says I feel fantastic. I have not experienced any chest pains or anything like that. Even on my 1.2 mile swim I felt fantastic, relaxed and my heart rate did not even get past 120. So my question is this, in your opinion, are these high heart rates during training a breakthrough or something I need to see my doctor about? Well Eric, an acute bout of an extremely high heart rate, an abnormally high heart rate like the one that you describe could not be chalked up to a fitness breakthrough. And the reason for that is that as you become fitter, your heart becomes more efficient. The Stroke volume, or the amount of blood that your heart can pump per beat becomes greater. So your heart has to pump less every minute. And the amount of oxygen that your heart delivers to your tissue is greater because your tissue is able to extract more oxygen from the blood as it rushes past. However, there is something called tachycardia, which is when your heart rate exceeds the normal range for whether resting or exercise activity wherever you happen to be. A tachycardia is essentially abnormally high heart rate. A few of the things that could cause that. First would be a severe decrease in your blood pressure, which would cause the heart to beat faster in an attempt to raise the blood pressure. That's called a reflex tachycardia. And that can happen if you're severely dehydrated or if you're having a bleeding issue, which I'm guessing you would notice if you were bleeding enough to decrease your blood volume while you're out riding. But reflex tachycardia could be one issue. If you were severely dehydrated, you could also be getting that reflex tachycardia. I'm assuming that you're hydrating yourself properly. Of course, if you're taking something like an ephedra supplement, like Hydroxycut or anything like that, Ephedra, if you're smoking pot, marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine, any of those can cause an epinephrine release that could result in more of a nervous system stimulation form of tachycardia. Cardiac arrhythmias, which are problems with your natural pacemaker in your heart. Those can cause tachycardia or can arise from tachycardia, but again, we're talking about an electrical issue with the heart. You could also get a sinus tachycardia, which can come from being dehydrated, again, having a fever, and again, blood loss. That would be something that would be more likely to happen if you got hit by a car on your bike, not if you were just out riding your bike. And there's also been observed in several athletes, potentially life threatening cardiac arrhythmias that originates in the ventricles or the large parts of your heart where blood pools, but before it's pumped out to the rest of your body. And it's called exercise induced ventricular tachycardia. And it's a phenomenon related to sudden deaths. It happens in people with severe heart disease, but it can also happen in athletes who have what's called a left ventricular dysfunction. And it leads to what's called ventricular fibrillation. Which is just essentially almost like a spasm in your heart, and it causes the heart to beat really quickly. And ventricular tachycardia is something that could be diagnosed at any number of cardiovascular imaging facilities that might be in your area. That's something that you may want to look into. I tell you to look into magnesium supplementation because that's huge in terms of regulating the electrical activity of the heart. But it looks like you're doing a pretty good job with magnesium. I would get it checked out. It doesn't sound like a fitness breakthrough. I would also be open minded to the fact that your watch might not be working properly, that heart rate monitor might not be working properly, because those things can kind of spit out some weird numbers sometime. But I wouldn't ignore that heart rate that high. And then the final question is from Linda, and she says, I just ordered the light green gym stick to help build my core area. If you don't know what a gym stick is, I'll put a link in the show notes. It's something I use frequently and that a lot of my clients use. Linda isn't one of my clients, but she's running in with this question. I just sorted a light green gym stick to help build my core area. I have ddd. I'm assuming you mean degenerative disc disease, Linda, with a slight disc out of place, which causes me a lot of nerve pain daily. I have weak abdominal areas because it hurts to stand, to walk or stand a lot. I'm hoping the gym stick will help me. I wanted something light to start. I don't want to harm myself. Do you have any input on this? Do you think it will help? Well, first, let's talk just real briefly about degenerative disc disease. Basically, in a normal, healthy disc, you have a lot of water in the center portion of that disc. It's called the nucleus of the disc. And so that water content makes the disc kind of spongy. And unless the disc absorbs stress that's moving up and down your spine, if there's a lot of pressure to that disc, if there's an injury to the disc, essentially the outside part of the disc, which is called the annulus, tends to get injured or tends to get torn. And that can eventually lead to formation of scar tissue. And the annulus becomes weaker, more scar tissue forms, and eventually the nucleus, the part that holds all that water, that tends to get more pressure than it should put on it because it doesn't almost have that. Think of it like the protective lining outside of it. So it begins to get dehydrated, begins to lose its water content, begins to dry up. And that loss of water content means that it's not as much of a cushion. So that leads to even more stress on the outside part of the cushion. And it's kind of like this vicious cycle. And eventually it can collapse, the nucleus can collapse. And without that cushion effect, your vertebra basically can't absorb stresses. They can't bend or twist properly. And you have to be very careful whether you're exercising or just in your day to day activity, because all of a sudden the spine does not have the natural cushions that it should have. Now you can exercise, but one of the things that you're really going to have to avoid doing much of would be a direct axial spinal load, which would be a load directly down through the spine, as well as any number of twisting activities of the spine, or what are called lumbar flexion activities like sit ups, crunches, things like that. I know I'm not your doc and I don't want to dispel medical advice, but these are some suggestions that I would have. If you're going to use the Gym Stick, they do have a website and it's called gymstick.net and if you go to jimstick.net you'll get a DVD and an exercise poster and that type of thing with your Gymstick. But if you go to gymstick.net, you actually have access to a little bit more that comes with your Gymstick. Did you hear that? I'm actually at the Gymstick website right here, trying to find what I'm talking about. Okay. Click on Training Online when you go to the Gym Stick website. And there's a workout in there called Midsection Workout. If you click on Midsection Workout, you'll see that there are a bunch of different workouts or exercises that they prescribe for your midsection. Now, some of the other exercises with the Gym stick, you know, the curls, the presses, the rows, things of that nature, you're fine with those. But you'll notice that those midsection exercises involve movements of the spine. Okay. Some of those that are pictured there, specifically the ones that involve the individual twisting or performing some type of a crunch or a setup, would be exercises that you would want to avoid. You'll see that there are other workouts that, especially the upper body workout or the lower body workout, those don't involve those type of twisting and bending actions, but would still force you to stabilize your core and to actually draw your belly button in as you do the exercises. Those would be better for your back if you have degenerative disc disease and if you have that disc out of place, more so than a lot of those bending and twisting exercises. So it just goes to show you that even if you do get a cool exercise tool like the gym stick, don't do everything that it tells you to do in the little DVD that came along with it, because it might not be the best for you in your unique situation. But especially those exercises in the upper body, the lower body exercise routines that they have there on the website, for example, most of those are just fine. Just follow the rule of not bending or flexing or twisting your spine too much and you should be okay. So those are all the questions for this week and what we're going to do next is move on to the featured topic, which is a double interview super special on swimming. And by the way, if you did want to ask a question to me, I know I mentioned this earlier, but just email Ben greenfieldfitness.com or call the toll free line 877-20994.

Featured topic.

And we're going to go ahead and start recording. So podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and I'm back with John Kenny for our Swimming super special. And I know that a lot of people out there were emailing me and had questions about marathon swimming and distance swimming and how swimmers actually are able to support themselves nutritionally during an event like that. And later on in this interview, we'll be bringing on the guys from Swim Smooth to talk about their application for becoming a better swimmer.

But first, we want to talk a.

Little bit with John and John, just for the people who didn't really hear your interview back when we had you on the show a few months ago in June. What's your background in open water, marathon swimming?

Well, my background is all in open water swimming. I started doing open water swims when I was about 9 or 10 years old and when I was in high school I started doing longer stuff K's and then I worked my way up and started racing the 25k. I've been a member of seven national teams for the US and I've won five national championships in 10k, 15k and 25k.

So you've done pretty much every distance that there is for these open water swims as far as length of time. When you're looking at say a 10k, a 15k or 25k, how long are those events taking you?

Typically, a 10k is a little bit under two hours. A 25k, you're pushing five hours and sometimes longer, depending on the conditions. So typically 5k per hour is a pretty good pace for a longer swim.

For an event like that. John I've done Ironman and I've been out exercising for 10, 12, even 13 hours before. And I know that nutrition, as soon as you get past about 90 minutes, nutrition becomes a huge issue. But it just seems logistically that it would be very difficult when we're looking at something like the marathon swimming, you know, in Ironman, the way that you do it is the swim is going to take you anywhere from 45 to maybe an hour and 10 minutes. And so you can get away with eating a quick gel on the beach and then swimming for an hour, getting out of the water and having another couple of gels and maybe a couple.

Electrolyte pills before you get on the bike.

But you aren't afforded that opportunity of getting out of the water and eating during one of these events that you're in. So walk me through how you practically get your nutrition in during say a.

25K open water swim.

Well, there's actually two different ways that you can do it and depending on how long you followed the sport back. Two years ago, two years and longer ago. Actually, I think 2005, they started setting up feeding docks. When I did the world championship in Montreal, they actually had floating docks. And I think 2005 was the first year I recall that they ever did that. Prior to that it was always you'd have an escort craft and essentially you'd have a boat. And it depends, you know, sometimes you'd have a powerboat, other times a kayak. Other times. You know, sometimes in foreign countries you get real weird boats and essentially you get your coach to go on the floor and they feed you your drink or your gel or whatever you're taking, essentially handing it to you into the water.

How evenly are those spaced, those feeding docks?

Well, the ones in Montreal, and I believe FINA has kind of set a rule about them, but we had 10 stations throughout 2.5 kilometer course. So you figure there was one every 250 meters or so. Although they were not perfectly evenly spaced, some were a little bit easier to get to than others too. Some were out further on the course and others where you'd have to swim a little bit farther out of your way to get to 250 meters.

Seems really close, right?

Well, those, those were the ones where you'd have an option. Now the other thing you need to consider is. And I have, I have some interesting photos I'd have to send you too because there are some where if you have 30 guys swimming in the 25k and so essentially you might have 20 countries represented. And so imagine 20 coaches all going out trying to feed the same swimmer at the same feeding station. I've had some interesting photos where there's 20 creatures on the same space and they're all standing in knee deep water, but they're actually on a dock that sunk.

I ought to get you to send me those photos. And you should after our interview and I'll put them up on the blog up on the show.

Notes for this podcast.

Now, when you're actually getting the nutrition at these feeding stations, what form is it coming in? Are we talking like water bottles that they're literally just feeding down to you like in a football halftime, or are we talking about long straws or how's it work?

I've seen guys use like bike water bottles before, but what I had always done is just like a, like a plastic party cup, like a 20 ounce cup. And actually there's kind of a little bit of engineering that has gone into that and designing the mechanism to get you that drink. Because oftentimes you know, you're in a larger boat or you're on a dock and you're behind somebody, you need to reach to the swimmer. So they have kind of, a lot of people I know actually from the open water swimming world have set up different types of feeding sticks where essentially you'd have like, like imagine a skimmer that you'd use to clean a swimming pool with an extension arm on it and you know, like a big coffee mug or just a clamp or anything that's going to be able to hold a 20 ounce drink. And essentially, you know, they'd stick the pole out and you grab the cup out of the pole. That's just kind of like a tool that we've used to make it a little bit easier so that you didn't have to hand off the drink directly to the swimmer. Because a lot of times that's not an option.

Interesting. So are you going vertical and treading water when you're taking the drink? Are you doing the backstroke or how does that work?

Ideally you're not going vertical, obviously, and this is something I try to teach to open water swimmers when they're sighting as well, is you never want to go vertical because anytime your feet are down, you've lost a lot of time because now you got to get all that momentum built up. So typically I would take a drink on my right hand side and I would roll over kind of on my back, but kind of kicking on your back. Take the drink as fast as you can and then toss the cup and roll back over and continue. I think when you get good at that, it takes you maybe you'll lose about two to three seconds in the course of doing that. So it's a quick process. It's not like if you're riding your bike in an ironman, you can continue pedaling and you can kind of at leisure take your drink and undo the top and take a sip and you're still pedaling down the road. So you don't lose a whole lot of time. Whereas in open water swimming it's kind of crucial, especially in a packed swim, that you don't want to lose the pack. So you got to drink quick and go. And another thing along that same line is I've tried to whenever I was in a race anyway, so that you weren't struggling right after you've taken a full stomach full of fluid so that you weren't sprinting right there. A lot of times before I would take the feed, you try to get up towards the front of the pack and you know what that does? What that does is it gives you a few extra seconds so that when you take your drink now instead of being off the back, now you're right in the middle or towards the back of the pack and you're ready to go and stay with the group.

Is there any kind of etiquette like that the pack will kind of everybody agree to pull over towards one of the feed stops and grab something and keep going? Or is it pretty much free for all and you get a feeding in when you can?

Etiquette, that's a funny word. No, there's really in terms of the feeding itself, no. And actually I'll take that one step further and say that that could actually be part of a swimmer strategy. And I've seen swimmers intentionally. For example, there's a guy named David Davies from the UK who swam the last couple of open water races and he actually, he had a very interesting strategy which would never work for me, but he basically won an entire 10k and I didn't see him feed once in Spain last year and he, I don't whether it was purposefully or not, I don't know, but he would got everybody was drafting off him and he would take a right hand turn when it got near the feeding station. I've Seen him a couple times dart out to the side and, you know, just swim away from the feeding platform. And that way other swimmers would say, well, I'm either going to go draft off him or I'm going to go back and get my drink. So, you know, kind of an interesting dynamic. And I've also seen the Russian open water swimmers, where one of the swimmers from Russia would go and go to the feeding station and get a drink and the other one would swim way wide and would eventually take the pack off course. So that way you give the one guy a chance to get his feed and then you have the other guy kind of distract everyone and then the next time they switch and do it again. So it's kind of, it can be very tactical as well. So I would say in terms of etiquette, no, it's not like everybody's okay, everybody got their drinks in. Okay, let's go. No, it's not.

We're gonna stop and go to the bathroom now.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so million dollar question, John, what is in the plastic cup?

Well, you know, what I had used for years was Gatorade. Because it was so readily available, I pretty much would, I would aim for about 10 to 12 ounces every 12 to 15 minutes. Of course, you'd spill a lot of it, so you may only get 8 ounces in, but then if you go back down to every 12 minutes, I think you're getting enough fluid. I also used to use a product called Gatorade energy drink, which was pretty much kind of like a high carbohydrate load. And that was something I'd use maybe every hour.

That's very dense stuff. I know a lot of people listening in are probably used to the watered down Gatorade endurance. But gator load is dense.

Yeah, it's about 75 grams of carbohydrate in 12 ounces, I believe.

Okay, so you're getting like 300 calories in 12 ounces just right down the patch.

Yep.

Wow.

Along with the electrolytes. That's got the electrolytes and then the maltodextrin in it. Do you ever do solid food? Aside from like gels, which are some.

Well, yeah, gels. Gels is kind of what I've used. And in the 25ks, typically hunger isn't as big of an issue in a five hour swim. I've also done like the Atlantic City around the island swim, which was a 37K, which on some days took between seven and eight hours. I think at that point you get to five, six, seven hours, you start to get a little bit of hunger. And I've taken bananas and I've taken different foods like that that were kind of solid but relatively quick to eat.

So interesting, man. It's something that you just don't think about. You know, a lot of people will probably see these marathon open water swimmers in the Olympics because that is an Olympic sport right now, right?

It is, yeah. They just added the 10k for Beijing, so yeah.

And you don't think about those guys.

Actually trying to eat while they're out there.

Well, that's really interesting. It's fascinating what you do to actually get the calories down the hatch while you're out there. I wanted to, if it's okay by you John, keep you on the line for a discussion with these guys that we're bringing on to talk about this new swim technology that's online and kind of a cool website I discovered recently called Swimsmooth. And I know they're over there, they're up at about 3 or 3:30am over in the UK right now waiting for our call. So I'm going to bring them in and ask them a few questions about Swimsmooth. And, and for those of you listening in, John is also one of our coaches at Pacific Elite Fitness and he's an expert on not just open water swimming but swimming in general. And so I'd be interested to hear questions that he might have for these guys as well because everybody's got a different swim stroke and this swim smooth. Well, I'll let you listen to these guys talk about what exactly it is.

So we'll break a call here.

Ben, are you getting them on the line now?

They're coming on the line.

I had, I had one other thing to add real quick. Yeah, you had mentioned that an ironman swim, say 45 minutes to an hour 10 and that you don't really have the opportunity to say feed for example, something I wanted to add for I guess the middle of the pack to the back of the pack. Swimmers, particularly on your one loop courses, if you're going to be out there for an hour and a half and not really have any fluid. The other thing, little open water trick we used to use is we used to put a gel down your suit so in the event that your coach couldn't get to you, you'd be able to grab the gel and take it on your own. Actually something that I've been preaching to a couple of different swimmers who are in that range maybe an hour and 40 minutes, minutes to a two hour range. And you just don't have that opportunity to feed, just put a gel in so that you have the opportunity to feed during the swim portion.

Yeah, that makes sense. I've had a couple athletes ask me about that. You know, can you put a gel in your wetsuit? It's like. Well, yeah, absolutely. You can, you can carry quite a bit in your wetsuit, actually.

So.

Yeah, that's a, that's a good observation. Well, let's, let's bring these guys on. You heard me dialing them up a second ago and it sounded like they had some static, but I'm going to bring them on again and see if.

We can actually get them in.

Paul, what I'd like to know is what is Swim Smooth? What was the idea behind that? Can you just explain the concepts to the audience?

Absolutely, Ben. So back in 2004, I was coaching over here in Perth in Western Australia, and I had this idea of building a resource for the swimmers I was coaching, almost a resource to explain the how and why of the freestyle stroke. I was finding that a lot of the swimmers that I was coaching didn't really understand some of the concepts behind some of the drills and techniques that I was trying to explain to them. So I thought if we could build a visual tool to help explain that, then that would really help the swimmers that I was coaching. Luckily, we made contact with Olympic gold medalist Bill Kirby. And if you've visited the Swimsmooth website, you'll have seen, you'll have seen his stroke and how awesome that actually is. And we use Bill's stroke to actually contrast that with some of the common errors that a lot of swimmers make with their swim strokes.

For the people listening in, when you say the Swimsmooth website, is it swimsmooth.com if people are sitting in front of their computers and want to check that out?

That's absolutely correct. Yes, that's correct.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we actually packaged this whole idea into a DVD, which we released in 2004. And since that point, the website's been steadily growing over that time. But our latest incarnation of the website was released just four weeks ago with the release of Mr. Smooth, our animated freestyle swimmer, which visitors to our site can now download for free and take that visualization process just a step further.

And I have this Mr. Smooth that I've downloaded to my computer. It's basically this 3D model of a swimmer that you can look at from the front, from the side, you can alter the cadence of the stroke, you can Observe each of the different aspects of the stroke right there on your computer. And what are the other features that are on this application that someone can just sit on their desktop? Paul?

Okay, so obviously the download, which people can download to their computers and actually watch, like you say, will allow you to watch from various different angles. But really the whole thing with Mr. Smooth is obviously we've gone for one specific type of stroke, I suppose you could say, which is purely a model of the freestyle stroke that people can try and visualize. It features all the basic concepts of what you should be looking for in a good freestyle stroke, such as good horizontal body position, excellent body rotation, a good catch and pull through and feel for the water. Now, we fully recognize, obviously that there's going to be individual idiosyncrasies that other swimmers will display outside of this model. But as a simple visualization tool which people can use on their desktop or even download to their iPhones or ipods for free and watch just before they go for a swim, we're getting some really good feedback and results from people actually using it just in that manner, just as a simple visualization tool before they go for a swim.

Interesting. So you could throw it on your iPhone or your smartphone and actually look at it.

Absolutely. BlackBerry or what have you.

Now, you mentioned common errors. What are some of the common errors that you've addressed in the Mr. Smooth model?

Okay, so I suppose one of the big things I was actually coaching a session just yesterday and one of the many problems which a lot of swimmers tend to encounter is poor body position in the water. Oftentimes this is attributed to a weak or an efficient leg kick. A lot of the coaching that I do, or in fact all the one to one sessions that I take are actually filmed with video analysis. So I'm able to display these common areas back to the swimmer. So in this session yesterday, for example, I was filming the swimmer and showing the video from like a direct bird's eye view down to the swimmer's stroke and able to actually display this sort of leg kick which a lot of swimmers tend to encounter. A lot of coaches, or maybe other experienced swimmers might look at this leg kick and say that, you know, that swimmer needs a lot of work, they need to produce a more propulsive freestyle leg kick. Whereas, you know, especially for distance freestyle swimming and for triathlon swimming, we're not looking too much at the propulsive side of the freestyle leg kick, but certainly we need to get rid of some of that drag. So when I'm looking at that Stroke I'm looking for essentially the cause and effect behind what's actually causing this sizzle, a kick. And oftentimes it's a simple crossover at the front end of the stroke that's actually throwing the stroke off balance. So help to correct that hand entry into the water and that crossover, which you can clearly see from Mr. Smooth's swim stroke, directly from himself, you can see a great alignment into the water and work on that alignment, and it will actually help to improve the leg kick itself.

Interesting. Now, John. Oh, by the way, John, are you still there?

I am still here, yep.

John, you mentioned that you looked at Mr. Smooth and you said that he had a front quadrant style of swimming. What do you mean by that?

Well, actually, first of all, Paul, I wanted to say a really cool visualization tool. I really enjoy checking that out on swimsmith.com thanks very much, John. One of the things I had mentioned is that the swimmer tends to have a front quadrant stroke. And it tends to be. One of the questions I actually had had really was about the finish of the stroke. I know I've seen myself on video and when I pull my hand out of the water, I'm fully pulling past the hip. And I guess the question I had for you is it appears that Mr. Smooth, his hand comes out before it even gets to the hip. I was just curious about why you had the model going that direction.

Absolutely. I think there's a few aspects of Mr. Smooth Stroke which actually intrigue especially coaches, etc. One of those things is his catch and pull through and obviously the finish at the end of the stroke there. I think with anybody's stroke, one of the things that allows somebody to finish well at the back end of the stroke is a good body rotation. So a lot of people tend to swim with fairly flat hips. And having the hips actually flat in the water actually prevents the finish of the stroke at the back there, essentially making somebody exit early at the back end of the stroke. One of the things that we looked for with Mr. Smooth Stroke was to clearly show how to apply force on the water or a good feel for the water basically in the direction in which you want him to travel.

So.

So, as you'll see his hand entering into the water, you'll see his fingertips just tipping over, catching onto the water. And then we use this simple visualization of trying to show the palm of the hand back behind you. Now, if you actually watch in slow motion, if you actually watch Mr. Smooth's hand take that path underneath his body, you'll See the palm of the hand actually pressing all the way back towards his hip and then exiting just by the hip there. The fact that he doesn't fully, fully press back, as you might, as I'm understanding what you're saying there, Jonathan, a lot of people, when they actually forcefully push right back to the back end of the stroke, tend to actually affect the recovery phase of the freeze style stroke and actually throw this a little bit off balance and potentially make the recovery phase a little bit harder than it actually needs to be. We've actually seen this also set up for an incorrect recovery pathway which can cause shoulder pain or shoulder problems down the line.

Okay, now I noticed that you can, as I mentioned, change up the rhythm of the swimmer. And I was going to ask John this, I forget what it was, but he shared with us during a previous interview about kind of an ideal cadence. Now, if people had downloaded the Swim Smooth app to their computer and they have this pulled up on their desktop and they wanted to drag that cadence up to the ideal swim stroke rate. John, you were saying for open water that there was a certain stroke rate. What was that?

Well, I typically try to hit about 82 to 86 in that range. For shorter stuff, if I do a 1500 meter swim or a 2K open water swim, that's 82 to 86, I think it's pretty ideal for me.

So what you could do with the swimsmooth app is pull it open on your computer and just drag that little slider up to 84. You tried that out and I tried it at all different rhythms. It was pretty amazing. You don't realize how high your rhythm needs to be in the water to achieve that ideal cadence. Paul, you had some resources like some articles that come along with the swimsmooth app. Can you tell me about those?

Yeah. In direct context of that question about the stroke rate, it's a brilliant question. Is that one, John? And something which we've done quite a bit of research into. We're also very much in favour of identifying the optimal balance between stroke rate and stroke length with respect to swimmers stroke and also with respect to the distance they're swimming and the environment in which they're swimming as well. We typically find that the world's best open water swimmers, in particular especially elite female open water swimmers, do tend to stroke with a very high stroke rate in the region of upper 80 strokes per minute. Basically, if you go to swimsmooth.com strokerate, you'll see a whole article about that. And also included in there is Our stroke rate chart, which is a unique thing to Swimsmooth, which looks at the speed at which you're swimming and tries to identify an optimal stroke rate for you at that given speed. And we have basically three zones on that chart. One zone which is suggesting that you may be stroking a little bit too fast and losing some of the efficiency in your stroke through a shortened stroke length. There's a nice white zone in the middle where we're suggesting that you need to work on both stroke rate and stroke length to improve. And then there's a blue zone at the bottom where we're suggesting you've maybe taken that concept of really, really long, long, long freestyle stroke a little bit too far, implemented or inputted some dead spots into your freestyle stroke. And we're actually suggesting in order to improve, especially in the open water, you need to then concentrate on lifting your stroke rate a little bit to actually get into that, bring yourself back into that white zone.

And in addition to that stroke rate, you also have these other articles. I noticed that you can. Well, you've separated them into kind of beginner, intermediate and advanced sections that people can go through and read. I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important when you're talking with or communicating to your swimmers. It's important to, to communicate in a language which is readily understand by their level of experience. So rather than getting too much into the nitty gritty of things like stroke rate or training with what we call critical swim speed, which is some of the sessions that we do for our intermediate and advanced swimmers are focused a little bit more on actually attaining certain times and why that would be appropriate to your various swimming thresholds, etc. It's important that we speak at the language which is going to be understood by swimmers in which we're talking to. So yeah, that was the decision behind splitting the website up into beginner, intermediate, advanced and also the coaches section as well.

Now there's different modules available for download.

Is that correct of Mr. Smooth? Indeed, yes. There's the free download which anyone can download and see Mr. Smooth from all those different angles and use the stroke rate facility, etc. There's also an enthusiast and coaches license as well which will allow the swimmers to actually pull up different angles of the stroke together. So for example, if we have a special view of the breathing part of the freestyle stroke, we can bring up three different angles and see that there's also a great leg kick timing.

Special.

View which allows the swimmer to actually focus focusing on the timing of the arm stroke in relation to the leg kick. In those other additions as well, you can actually pause the frame, take a snapshot of that file. So if the coach, for example, wants to send out a JPEG of the particular aspect of the stroke that they're talking about, they can send a simple visual image of exactly what they're meaning and display that clearly to the swimmer. One of the other features that the coaches might like to use, and one which we essentially built for my own coaching, is links to our different articles on the website. The whole website, the swimsmooth.com website is a great resource for swimmers and for coaches alike. And we wanted a simple way for the coaches to be able to sort of reference different parts of the website and automate an email to their swimmers. So they can actually just go into that little module, click on the articles that they want send to their athletes, and it will automatically generate an email for them.

Yeah, I was pretty excited to have discovered this website, swimsmooth.com and kind of explore it for a little while last week. And I think it's really cool. So if you're listening in, go download the swimsmooth.com app and check that out. It's pretty interesting. You'll play with it for quite a while and definitely it'll make you think about your swim stroke the next time you're in the pool or in the open water. Well, John, Paul, I want to thank you guys for coming on today.

Thanks very much, Ben.

Thanks for having us, Ben.

And remember, if you want to, if you want to contact or go to their websites, I'll put a link where you can find out more about Paul on swimsmooth.com as well as John Kenny's swim coaching services. Over on the show, notes for this podcast. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out.

So before we wrap things up for today, I'd like to read you a response that I received from a listener who wanted to talk about my article, why do you do triathlons? For you triathlon. Triathletes out here. And I'd like to hear what you think about what she says. So I'm going to finish by reading this and I'd like you to log in and leave a comment and tell me if you would agree with her or not. And this was a response to a recent article that I had in Triathlete Magazine. So she says my gripe is about the obsessed triathlete. What really gets me is the tri obsessed don't understand that they're killing all their personal relationships with their obsessive, selfish need to train and compete in a sport that is not social, has no real spectator interest and produces very tired, skinny and gaunt people that are kind of scary to be with as they're truly boring and dull. And whilst people say they are impressed that you do triathlons, they're equally impressed with skiers, tennis players, sailors and other sports people. Those committed and good at sport are always impressive, especially when they are working with others and learning that teamwork is so much better than selfish sports such as triathlons. In fact, triathlons are only an endurance sport. Triathlon is only an endurance sport that tests the individual against himself or herself and has little social interaction. So no team building or mental tactics to winning better just a personal best which for partners of obsessive triathletes gets a little wearing. In fact, we just pretend to be interested after a while as we're keen for you to exercise and enjoy yourself. But obsessive triathletes become dull. So what? You have shaved off your personal best just a few seconds here and now you get depressed if your personal best is slower. It's difficult to live with someone so preoccupied and self indulgent that a slower personal best can affect their whole mood and alter their behavior. Families get fed up and begin to think the obsessive triathlete is sort of odd. I think it's a type of depression they're dealing with emotional need. The obsessive triathlete is pushing themselves to the limits. I've been told by experts from a fear of facing their inner problems wrapped up in a lack of self confidence and low self esteem. This is the only way that they can feel good about themselves and can pretend they are amazing instead of balancing their life to enjoy triathlons and other pursuits and be a normal person. They are kidding themselves and destroying their relationships. Their kid would rather they had quality time with their mom or dad, not just counting the T shirts or the medals. So what do you think of this comment? Do you agree that triathletes are obsessed? I'd like you to log in and leave a comment to this podcast. Tell me how you would respond to this comment. So we'll end on that. We got a great interview coming up on hypnosis for weight loss and another one on the Paleo diet. So tune into those coming up in the next couple weeks and remember to let me know if you're interested in the cycling jerseys. If you're interested in a condo down in Kona for the week of the race down there. And also, if you want to leave us a ranking in itunes or subscribe to the podcast in itunes, just go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I'll show you exactly how to do that in the show. Notes to this podcast episode number 46 have a healthy week.