Episode #99: How To Stay Fit When You’re Stuck At Home

In this how to stay fit when you're stuck at home when is the best time to stretch? What to do about hypoglycemia Is juice okay after a workout? How many calories are in a pound of fat? How to stay fit on a road trip? Shin splint tips, what to do about stress fractures, keeping track of laps while you're swimming, and how to recover from an Ironman Triathlon. Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. 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, this is Ben Greenfield. I'm gonna start off by saying something that many of you probably already realize, but some of you may not, and that is that you can listen to this in your portable MP3 player. You can actually download it automatically via itunes if you want to, and put it on your on your audio player. Listen to it while you run, while you bike, if you have one of those cool underwater MP3 players, while you swim, while you lift, while you drive, in your car, if you're careful, and during all sorts of other activities including cleaning, doing laundry, cooking. All sorts of ways that you can get smarter about fitness and nutrition. We've got some quick special announcements today, including one really great one about web cooking classes and a free webcast that's coming up. And then we'll move on to this week's listener Q and A. You guys sent me tons of great questions this week. We actually don't have a featured topic or a special interview this week. I have some really great ones lined up, but wanted to focus on the Q and A today, including a really good question about how to stay fit at home. So with that being said, we're going to move on to this week's special announcements after a brief special message, get the Inside Edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive, exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free. Special announcements. All right folks, let's start with that announcement I mentioned about the free webcast cooking class webc. Coming up, some of you may remember Chef Todd who did a whole series of videos a couple of months ago, a series of seven free videos that taught you how to saute, how to make a pizza, how to cook at home, how to do all sorts of cool things. Chef Todd is a really great teacher. He's a great educator when it comes to showing you how to cook. And he's actually doing a webcast now, which is a free video webcast. You don't have to be technologically savvy to figure out how to attend a webcast. It's just a simple link that you click on and it opens up Chef Todd tooling around his kitchen on your computer live. And you can sit there and ask him questions and interact with him as he shows you how to cook. And the actual topic of this webcast he's doing is how to use fresh, seasonal ingredients to create fast, nutritious meals in five simple steps. I am going to put a link to that in the Show Notes as well as a special video from Chef Todd so you do not want to miss out on that webcast and just go to the Show Notes for podcast number 99 and you'll be able to see that link from Chef Todd. In addition, some other links that are up there that you'll see will be a link to the brand new Marathon Dominator package. If you're interested in getting ready for a fall marathon, this is the time to grab that 16 week prep program that takes you from your couch to a marathon or already being a marathoner to being a very fast marathoner. If you haven't yet tuned into the Quick and Dirty Tips Network, that's another really, really cool podcast I do. It's only five maximum 10 minutes long. The last episode was on how to make your muscles bigger. And each week it's essentially just a very short, quick and dirty podcast on how to do certain things in fitness, how to slim down and shape up. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. If you like either of those podcasts, that one that I just talked about or this one you're listening to now, go to itunes and leave a ranking. Finally, there are BenGreenfieldFitness.comT shirts now available and all you have to do is donate to the show and I will send you a T shirt free shipping. I usually throw a bunch of goodies in there as well. You may be interested in a group trip to Thailand that I am doing this winter if you're a triathlete. If you are interested in that again, go to the show notes for this episode, episode number 99, and you'll be able to see the link to that. So those are all the special announcements and we're going to go ahead and move into this week's Q and A. Remember, you don't have to actually write down any of the announcements or anything that I talk about in the Q and A because I've done it all for you over on the show notes. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, click on the show notes for episode number 99 and everything I talk about will come up right there in front of you so you can go explore on your own at your convenience. Listener q and a. We are one episode away from the hundredth episode and that means that for that hundredth episode I will only be responding to audio call in questions. So that means that the only way you can ask a question this week is to call toll free to 877-209-9439 or you can Skype to username Pacific Fit using the free software from Skype.com you can also reach me via email at BenGreenfieldFitness.com but I won't be answering any email questions next week, just the call in Listener questions Something a little fun, a little new for that podcast episode number 100. So we're going to start off with a question from listener Rod. And listener Rod says, I'm nearly 40 and have never had to work hard at my fitness to stay in reasonable shape. I've never been overly concerned with how much muscle I have, but I can't afford to get a gym membership, so I'm thinking some anaerobic fat burning exercises would be good. I'm often in with my kids, so I want something cheap I can do around the house. Would you recommend body weight circuits combined with skipping and perhaps a run once a week? Well, it's a great question, Rod, and one of the issues is that bodyweight exercises work fine for a home workout circuit. Anybody who's listening to this podcast for, for any extended period of time or who's visited the website know that, you know, I'll recommend things like, you know, push ups, squats, lunges, crunches, all sorts of different bodyweight exercises. There are a ton of other bodyweight exercises that you can view on the free exercise photo and video database I have over@pacificfit.net but the thing with the bodyweight exercises is they can get a little bit boring. And so having some extra activities that you can do can be pretty helpful when you're trying to motivate yourself to stay fit. So some of the things that I keep around my house include the following. I have elastic band tubing, the kind with handles on it, so I can attach that to a doorknob and I can do rows. I can do shoulder rotation type of exercises. I can attach it to a bedpost, tie one into my feet and do leg kick outs, leg kick backs, leg kick in, leg kick out. And I can also stand on it and do curls, kneel on it, and do tricep extensions. All sorts of exercises you can do with a simple elastic band and tubing. In addition to that, there's another type of band called a mini band that you can use to attach one leg to the other leg via the ankles. And you can walk around with the mini band. You can do front walks, back walks, sidewalks, even when you're, when you're cleaning your house, your kitchen, just tooling around. If you have that band attached to your feet, great hip and butt workout. And gives you a little bit of cardio too. Having to walk around with the elastic band basically giving you resistance against your legs. Another thing that I have around the house is a stability ball. So you can do push ups with the stability ball, squats, you can do crunches, pikes, all sorts of exercises. I just put up a video a few weeks ago at my YouTube channel@YouTube.com BenGreenfield Fitness, where I demonstrate a more advanced exercise called a corkscrew that you can do on a stability ball. But in addition to your elastic band and your mini band, I would definitely have a stability ball. Many of you have seen me exercise with something called a gym stick. You can do curls, upright rows you can do. Man, there's literally hundreds of exercises you can do with a gym stick. Again, over at the YouTube channel, you can see me demonstrating a bunch of different gym stick workouts. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for gym stick, you can read more about it. But basically it's like an aluminum tube with elastic resistance bands attached that you can get at varying levels of resistance. And tons of at home workouts you could do with a resistance band if you really wanted to do pull ups or push ups. The perfect pull up or the perfect push up apparatus are both really good for giving you some equipment that you can use to give yourself a little bit more or a little bit higher range of exercises and a little bit more rotation for your hands. When it comes to doing Pull ups and push ups. I don't have those because I actually live nearby a park where if I want to do pull ups, I'll run down to the park and do a workout that has some pull ups in it. But if you want to install a pull up bar at your home, the perfect pull ups work really well for that. Other pieces of equipment that can be of use at home would be a Bosu ball. Bosu ball is like half of a stability ball that you can stand on and balance. You can do push ups with it, you can do squats, you can stand on it and do normal exercises that you would do with a dumbbell. Like you can stand on the Bosu ball and do dumbbell curls or dumbbell presses. And then the last piece of equipment that I have around is a yoga mat. Just so your carpet and your floor doesn't get sweaty, so your, your back doesn't get scarred. But essentially yoga mat is something you can use not just for yoga, but abdominal exercises, anything where you have to lie down on your stomach or on your back. So a lot of different types of equipment. One of the least expensive places to get all this stuff would be a website called Perform Better and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've mentioned this before on the website, but I do have a page@BenGreenfieldFitness.com it's @BenGreenfieldFitness.com BenRecommended and it's just a list of a lot of the little things like I just discussed that I recommend to people for fitness. So I'll put a link to the Ben recommends page after your question. Rod. And Rod, you did have a follow up question asking about the effect that beer has on training. How much difference would a few beers once a week make? Unless you're really trying, you know, if you're trying to shed your body fat from 6% down to 3%, something like beer would make a difference. But if you're having a couple of beers a week, or maybe three or four beers a week, yes, it's empty calories, extra carbohydrates, there's some gluten in there. If you're gluten intolerant, slight dip in testosterone from the alcohol consumption. But again, we're talking about very, very small effects from a minimal amount of beer per week. It kind of goes along the same lines as having a glass of wine every now and again with dinner. You're not holding yourself back tremendously. The little tip I would give you is to understand that if you're going to drink a beer, then cut whatever meal that you're consuming that beer with by about 150 calories or so to account for the calories that you're consuming from the beer. But unless you're, you're having multiple drinks, then it's really not going to have that much of an effect on your hormonal levels or your fat loss. So the next question comes from listener Chuck. And Chuck says, I was wondering about the best time to do static stretching. I know to warm up for a workout with dynamic stretches. So is static stretching best after workouts? And if I exercise in the afternoon or the evening, would it be a good idea to stretch again later that night? Well, what Chuck is referring to when he says dynamic stretching would be stretches that take a joint through a range of motion. Like instead of doing a stretch for your hamstring by reaching down and touching your toes, you'd do a stretch for your hamstring by swinging your leg back and forth rapidly 10 times. That's a dynamic stretch. And what research has shown is that static stretching, the type that you stretch and hold, can actually reduce the force capacity of a muscle. So if you do it before you weight lift or before you go for a run, technically it could reduce your exercise capacity or your speed or the amount of weight you can lift. And if you do a dynamic stretch, it doesn't really have that effect, a series of rapid arm swings or leg swings. So what you would do is you would do the dynamic stretches prior to your workout and you would do the static stretches to assist with removing inflammation, to assist with your cool down, to help you be a little bit less sore afterwards because there won't be as much blood pooling, calcium leakage right after your workout. Now, if you were going to stretch again later in the day, for example, if you exercise in the afternoon or evening, then you would stretch after that workout as well if you wanted to. Again, a cool down walk with a few more arm swings is really going to give you the same thing as a static stretch would. But if you have poor flexibility, if you've been experiencing things like pain on the outside of your knee from inflexible IT bands, or you've been experiencing pain in the front of your shoulder from an inflexible posterior shoulder, then static stretches can definitely make sense in that situation. What I personally do is I get up in the morning and I stretch. And before a workout I'll Do a little bit of dynamic stretching. And then before bed I'll try and hit the foam roller for a few minutes. But because the foam roller can really kind of relax the muscles, it's kind of like giving yourself a massage right before you go to bed. So that's the way that I do it. But you're on the right track there, Chuck. So great question. Now listener Robert had a very interesting question. As a matter of fact, because it's such an interesting question, Robert, I'm going to give you a free membership for one month to my body transformation club, where I'll send you a postcard every week with fitness tips, nutrition tips, and a link to a secret video page that I put up with even more recipes and exercises and things that I don't release to the public at Ben Greenfield Fitness. So email me, Robert, if you want a free code to join that club. And here is your question. I have been diagnosed with hypoglycemia. The query is whether it's been caused by my faulty eating habits over the course of the years while doing endurance sports. I don't know. Would you elaborate on the difference between reactive and exercise induced hypoglycemia? At the end of March, I experience an unprecedented status, being constantly down, devastating fatigue and lethargy on a daily basis, dizziness, sluggishness, despite having changed my eating habits. For what it's worth, I'm about to turn 36 this June. Is this middle age something related to. I have been able to handle the hypoglycemia fairly well, but I am wondering what is causing my body to react differently. So when your body is hypoglycemic, basically that is low blood sugar. And if you take somebody who has insulin insensitivity, which is something that we've talked about on this show before, somebody who, whose body isn't very responsive to the hormone insulin. And so rather than storing blood sugar the way that they're supposed to, they have very, very high circulating levels of blood sugar and high circulating levels of insulin because their body just doesn't do what it's supposed to with sugar. Well, hypoglycemia is kind of the opposite problem. It's almost like you're too sensitive to insulin. Your body just takes all the, all the sugar and stores it right away and your blood sugar levels drop too rapidly. It can happen after a meal. That would be what's called postprandrial or reactive hypoglycemia. And typically what happens is you eat, your body produces a ton of insulin. You're super sensitive to it, your blood sugar drops, you become hypoglycemic, and you experience a lot of the dizziness, the slugginess, the lethargy that Robert is complaining of. With exercise induced hypoglycemia, it's a little bit different in that what you're doing is you're burning through your blood sugar stores and essentially your body isn't releasing sugar the way that it's supposed to. It's usually related to the production of a hormone called glucagon, which kind of does the opposite thing that insulin does. It makes your body able to break down muscle glycogen and liver glycogen and get it out into the bloodstream. So it's kind of glucagon, glucagon issue and an insulin oversensitivity issue. So as far as it being related to some of, some of the issues that you're experiencing, there have been interesting studies done on exercise induced hypoglycemia. And interestingly, the glucagon hormone that I just talked about is something that can be affected negatively, can be decreased by overtraining or high levels of endurance training, which you've been doing. Now the idea behind that is that when it's done normally, it's supposed to spare your use of carbohydrate and increase your use of fat. But you know, if you're, if you're hypoglycemic, in your case, you're essentially really not freeing up enough blood sugars to actually give you energy, it sounds like during rest or exercise. So the other thing that can happen when you're exercising, when you're engaging in a lot of endurance training, is your body produces a large amount of something called insulin like growth factor, which again is something that can serve to prevent the hypoglycemic effect of your free insulin growth factors. But what happens when you're over trained and you're doing lots of endurance exercise, is that the insulin growth factors, which again are going to really influence your sensitivity to insulin and again cause that drop in blood sugar, your sensitivity to those is going to increase and your insulin like growth factor is actually going to decrease a little bit. So if you have that over training, heavy, heavy amounts of endurance training going on, then essentially you're setting yourself up hormonally to experience more of that hypoglycemia, especially if you are over trained. Now, a couple of other things are that your age is that which a lot of people actually begin at 27 or 28, a lot of people are going to experience a decrease in testosterone levels in men. That's called andropause. And decreased testosterone can affect both blood sugar regulation as well as thyroid activity. And so that would be another consideration for you is not only to think about whether or not you're over training from an endurance standpoint, but whether your testosterone levels are going down as well. And then the other thing that I would look at in your case would be your actual dietary intake. Are you at a level of dietary intake that is too low, especially from a carbohydrate perspective? Are you constantly glycogen depleted? I don't know how many carbohydrates you're taking in, but if you're being very, very careful in terms of how many calories you're giving yourself, that could be another issue. You I'm not a doctor. If I were in your shoes, what I would do myself is I would rest and eat. Basically, I would kind of give my body a few weeks of just relative recovery, light amounts of physical activity and refueling, eating, maybe even bumping up the body fat levels a little bit and getting yourself reset, reboot, so to speak. Now, there may be deeper medical issues at play here. One of the people I would really recommend you get in touch with would be the person whose opinion I respect the most on matters of everything from thyroid to hormones, Testosterone, and that's Dr. Roby Mitchell. He's a triathlete himself, one of the nation's top natural physicians, and he's been on the show three or four times. You can hear his podcast by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and doing a search for Roby Mitchell. That's R O B Y M I T C H E L L. You can visit his website@drphyt.com that'S-R-F I T T.com I would absolutely look into talking to Dr. Roby Mitchell if you want to investigate this more from a medical standpoint. So great question, Robert. Now the next question is from listener Kim. And Kim says, I am running 60 to 90 minutes for 60 to 10 miles. Is the homemade green juice a good recovery food? And she says her homemade green juice is romaine, lettuce, spinach, lemons and grapefruit. I run in the morning and prefer to drink this after a run and then not eat until about two hours after I'm done running. The green juice would not be good for post workout. Kim, the stuff that you're making, at least because you're getting your antioxidants in and you're getting your carbohydrates with the grapefruit. But there's really not much protein in that drink, at least not enough to replenish a longer endurance training session, especially a run muscle damaging run like the one that you're doing. I would include if you could maybe some nuts with that. You could include a little bit of protein, like you could put a couple scoops of like a hemp protein or a pea protein if you want to stick to that vegetable profile in the juice. But I would definitely up the protein intake because although you're getting some of the things your body needs after exercise, there's not enough amino acids in a little bit of spinach, romaine, lemons and grapefruit to give you everything that you need post exercise. So get a little bit more protein in there in that homemade green juice that you're making. Listener Chris asks, I'm curious about how many calories are in a pound of body fat. Most of what I've heard says a pound of body fat is equal to about 3,500 calories. But if 1 pound is 450 grams, and 450 grams times 9 calories is 4,050 calories, how does that make sense? Well, here's the deal Chris. Nutritional fat is different than body fat. So fat Nutritionally does have 9 calories, but fat in your body actually has closer to about a little over seven calories, actually about seven and a half calories. And the reason for that is that adipose tissue or storage fat in your body has things in it other than fat. It contains some protein, it contains a little bit of connective tissue and it contains some water. And so that's why when you're talking about weight loss in the body, for every pound of fat that you want to burn, you actually only need to burn 3,500 calories, not 4,000 calories because the fat, fat is mixed with the water, the connective tissue and the protein. So kind of a little bit of a math issue there, but that's, that's how that works. So, and then Chris has another question. He says, do you have any recommendations for how to take on a multi day road trip and stay fit? I'm thinking about stopping every 90 minutes or so to walk around and maybe to go for a short bike ride. But beyond that I'm not sure how to keep my legs from getting stale from sitting on my butt for so long. Absolutely, Chris. You know walking can help. Stopping and Walking, generally some type of movement every 60 to 90 minutes is going to help tremendously. When you're on an airplane and you're trapped on the airplane, say in a window aisle, and you're sitting next to, you know, maybe a 350 pound individual who's fast asleep and you just are stuck there, then that's a case where you can do neck circles and butt squeezes and arm flexes and foot lifts and all the little things to help increase blood flow a little bit. But when you're driving and you have control of when you stop and when you go, in addition to walking, you can do jumping jacks. That's one of my favorite things to do is every time I stop and pump gas or stop at a grocery store or convenience station, I'll do 100 jumping jacks. And it's just like the rule that I follow when I'm on the road. Body weight squats would be fine too. If you have trouble jumping around, walking, of course is great. Usually it's a little less intensive than doing like jumping jacks or squats. So sometimes you got to walk a little bit longer to get the same calorie burning, metabolism boosting effect. But that can help quite a bit as well. In addition to that, for staying fit, fit on a road trip, making sure that you're not eating things that are going to leave you feeling sluggish and tired, staying away from any of the carbohydrates that come in packages, going after more of like the fresh vegetables. Bring in some carrots, some celery, cauliflower, sugar, snap peas, crunchy vegetables that aren't going to spike your blood sugar levels so much and leave you kind of sluggish. Proteins can do well also as long as you limit your intake because you're sedentary or driving. So don't do a ton of trail mix. It's high calorie, but you really have to limit consumption. That's one of the issues with trail mix is it's so easy to go through. I mean, easily. Small can of trail mix or small bag of trail mix is over a thousand calories. So you have to be really careful with the trail mix and know how much of it you're taking in. Limit your consumption of that and other fitness tips for staying fit. This is something that you may want to think about if you're a little bit more of kind of like a CrossFit style person. If you're really going after getting incredibly fit. This is something that I've done as well is you can stop at rest stops and push your car. I'm totally not kidding here. You can. Literally, if it's a more empty rest stop, you can put your car in neutral and from the from the driver's side, not from the back because you don't want to lose control of your car. You can push your car around and you would be pretty dang surprised at how hard it can be to push your car for two minutes. And again, this would be if you're a little bit more fit individual. But that can work as well. The car pushes, so that'll give you a little bit of ammo to work with. Now listener Lee asks I am a relatively active person. I go to the gym four or five times a week doing both cardio and weight training. Recently when running on the treadmill, the left and right side of my shin bone became so sore and tight, particularly on my left leg. Even when starting the cardio with a casual walking pace to warm up my legs. Once I run for 10 minutes, the muscle tissue on each side of my shin bone becomes sore and tight. Do you have any advice as to what is causing this or how to prevent this? Sounds like classic shin splints to me. Again, I'm not a doctor, but everything you're saying suggest shin splints. The fact that you're getting them more on your left side suggests that your left leg may be longer. A leg length discrepancy can be an issue with shin splints. Technique is one thing that you can look at whether you walk or you run. If you're really doing a heavy heel strike, that can cause the shin splints quite a bit because you get that stopping motion of the ground against your foot. That braking motion requires more absorption of shock from your shins. If you land on more of your mid to front foot, then you'll decrease the shock absorption requirements of your shins a little bit. Calf flexibility is a huge issue, so many people focus on strengthening their shins, strengthening their legs, running correctly, but don't address tight Achilles or tight calves. Doing standing and yoga type of stretches for your calves can help out quite a bit. A standing stretch would be for example, putting your toe against the wall, leaning into that toe and then pushing the knee in towards the wall. So both a bent and a straight standing calf stretch can help. A yoga stretch great example would be the Down Dog, a great stretch for stretching the lower leg and improving flexibility there. Warming up you're already doing, but make sure that you're not just warming up by Walking, you're also warming up by stretching your ankles, doing ankle circles. Foot circles can help quite a bit if you're an overpronator that can really aggravate shin splints, especially if you're not wearing shoes that would actually assist with stabilizing your body from go or your foot from going into overpronation. So an overpronation shoe or an overpronation orthotic can help out quite a bit. And then one of the things you can do to strengthen those muscles in the front of your leg is you can literally lean with your back against the wall and lift one toe up towards your head while keeping your heel on the ground. And then return it down and then lift the other toe up and return it to the ground and do that in rapid succession back and forth from foot to foot. That marathon Dominator program that I talked about, there's actually a video that comes along with that for controlling shin splints. But and that's one trick that I recommend to my clients is that shin strengthening exercise I just described. So hope that helps Chris, or I'm sorry, Lee, and best of luck with those. So listener Mike says, I have a question about chronic stress fractures. I'm 44 and was training for Coeur d' Alene Ironman. Things were going well, but two weeks ago my left foot thigh started to hurt. I have a history of stress fractures, so I had a bone scan. Sure enough, my left femur has a stretch fracture midway between the knee and the hip. I've completed two other Ironman races. Both were done on stress fractures. I've had four stress fractures in the past three years. I'm out for this year. But I guess the question is, do I have to give up long distance running events? Really depends, Mike. There are people who are certainly more prone to stress fractures based on their biomechanics. If you're naturally heavy, very muscle bound person, and you're carrying a lot of weight, doing a lot of impact based activity that you know you weren't really designed to do, from a genetic standpoint, then that can definitely have an effect on increasing your risk of stress of stress fractures. If you have low bone mineral density, if you're losing a lot of minerals, there is a test, Bioletics does a test called the NTX test where they'll look at what your mineral loss is. That can be another issue. If you're losing a lot of minerals or if you have low levels of bone building nutrients or minerals like magnesium and calcium, that could definitely be an issue as could an acidic diet, meaning high caffeine, high alcohol, high carbohydrate levels, all of which require your body to leach calcium from the bones to stabilize those acids that you're consuming, because calcium is very non acidic. So a lot of different underlying factors behind stress fractures. If your diet is perfectly sound and you have all the minerals in your body that you actually need, then we start to look at your genetics and your biomechanics. By genetics, is there a way that we can actually maybe cannibalize some of your extra, extra lean muscle, decrease your body fat, get you light to the point where you're not actually causing so much stress to your bones while you're running? And then from a biomechanic standpoint, are there things that we can do? For example, we just mentioned the heel striking when running. Are there ways that we can change your biomechanics so that you're placing less stress on the joints that or the bones that are susceptible to stress fracture. And then you can also increase bone density through weightlifting. But then it's the paradox, is that extra muscle that you're carrying while you're running going to actually increase the amount of shock that your bones are having to absorb rather than actually help you build bone density. So a few different things to consider. I wouldn't necessarily, until you've taken into consideration and gone after some of the things that I've talked about, completely give up on long distance running. You know, if it comes down to the point where your skeletal system just isn't built to support distance running, you know, I've heard some sports medicine physicians suggest that it's usually with females, but I'm not convinced that that's the case. It's usually more of a training and nutrition or a biomechanics issue than it is a genetics issue. So listener Jeff asks, please give me some tips to help me not lose my swim lap count in the pool. Jeff, there are a few different techniques that you can use. One that I've had people use before is you keep an object next to the poolside, so, for example, like a swimming paddle or a buoy or kickboard. And every time you complete a lap, you stop briefly, move it over just slightly, like over to another tile beside the pool or somewhere where you can keep track of where it's been moved. And then you do another lap and you move it again. And when you get through with five laps, you move it back to where it's started. So each time you're, you're basically using that as almost an abacus to keep track of where you're at. Another thing that you can do is you can make sure that, that you go up to a certain number and then go back and start counting over again. So for example, if you're going to swim 40 laps, don't count from one to 40. Count from one up to five and then do that eight times and just keep track of the number of times you've counted from one to five. That can work really well rather than having to keep track of every number from 1 up through 40. And then the other thing that you can do is there's actually a swim lap counter. It's a watch that you wear that senses when you turn when you change direction. And I'll put a link to that swim lap counter. I wrote an entire article on it some time ago@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'll put a link after your question so you can check out that article that I wrote and look at the swim lap counter counter which is again just like a watch that you wear while you're swimming. Listener TM asks I'm participating in the Ironman Coeur d' Alene in two weeks. My question is how much time do I take off afterwards and how intense do I train when I start back to training? Well, this is an interesting question because it's so highly variable from person to person. You do get some athletes who will do back to back Ironman weekends. I know of one guy who does close to a dozen Ironman events per year and does just fine. Granted that's, that's basically his training is doing Ironman so he doesn't do a lot of high volume training from Ironman to Ironman event. But still that's a lot of Ironman events for someone to do and that's something that you'd have to build into over a long period of time. So if you're a more experienced athlete, you can get away with with doing more races and more Ironman events. But as far as typical recovery time for the average person for Ironman, you're usually looking at about one to two weeks before you're really able to exercise again without experiencing stiffness and soreness or without increasing your susceptibility to injury. And you're usually looking at anywhere from four to six weeks before you can really go fast and go hard again and do something like a race. Now there was an interesting study of 42 male athletes who did Ironman and in that study they actually looked at some of the blood Samples and some of the markers of muscle damage and systemic inflammation. So there are certain things that show up in your blood that can indicate that you still have inflammation going on. Creatine kinase is one really popular one that's looked at. Cortisol is another one that's looked at. And in this study they looked at those values one day, five days, and then 19 days after Ironman. And within a day cortisol levels had already started to drop from where they were right after the race. Within about five days, most of the systemic inflammation had started to subside. But still, even 19 days after the race, there were a couple of markers still left. Creatine kinase and myoglobin were still around in the bloodstream 19 days after the workout had finished. So what this means is that five days after you're okay from a biochemical standpoint to go out and start exercising again and maybe subjecting your body to some low grade inflammation. Easy run, easy bike ride, easy swim, easy lifting, that type of thing. But you know, 19 days is a little over two weeks. You're looking at two and a half, three weeks before your body really has completely cleared all the inflammation out from having completed the Ironman event. And usually the harder that you go, the longer it's going to take to recover because the more stress you're able to put on your body. It's interesting because you'll see some people especially, you know, like pros will completely collapse at the finish line because they have literally given it everything that they've got. Technically they may take a little bit longer to recover from that. Whereas some people you'll see cross the finish line and you know, because they, they did the race in 16 or 17 hours, a little less damage to the body. And if the nutrition is attended to after an event like that, then they can bounce back fairly quickly. So question here from Brett. Kind of related to that also. He says, I completed an Ironman St. George about a month and a half ago. Me and my buddies are really, really struggling to get motivated again. Training sessions seem boring, races seem lame in comparison to Ironman. Any suggestions of how to rebound from what I heard is called the post Ironman blues? Absolutely. One of the best things that you can do is to give yourself a mental and a physical break from any type of triathlon training. And that's why it's important to be familiar or have fallback ways for you to stay physically active because you don't want to let yourself get fat and unhealthy after a race. But you Definitely don't want to get into this mental ho hum kind of slug fest with your body of putting it right back into swim, bike and run routine. For me, and this is something that I'm actually in the midst of right now. After I do an event that was kind of a big event for me, crossed the threshold, felt great. Now it's time to take some time off. I usually turn to to a sport. For me it's a couple sports. For example, I've taken up noon ball again, so I'm playing basketball and I'm back in tennis league. So I'm playing tennis. And those are kind of the two primary ways I'm staying fit for the next several weeks rather than returning back to a pure focus on triathlon training. So understand that being completely sedentary after you finish a triathlon is going to give you the blues just because you're not getting all those endorphins and dopamine associated with physical activity. But going back into swimming, biking and running to get the dopamine and the endorphins can also do some mental damage to you. And so the best thing to do is find some ways to stay physically active that have absolutely nothing to do with triathlon and then try a few months down the road to schedule something that kind of gets you back into triathlon. So, you know, you finish Ironman and maybe three months later down the road you have another event planned. Like, you know, whether it be a 10k or Olympic distance triathlon, some people schedule their races even closer than that. For a real tough race that you've prepared for for a year, I wouldn't recommend planning a bunch of racing right afterwards because you're not going to want to get back into training and you will get pretty sick of triathlon if you do that over and over again. So great question. And then we've got one more kind of call in triathlon related comment. Hey Ben, this is Chuck Furich. I just wanted to give you a quick update on the triathlon Dominator program I'm doing. I did the international distance triathlon here in Hampton, Virginia today and set new PRs on my bike time. And had the race been the full international distance, the bike was actually three miles short but my pace was faster. I would have pr' ed for my best time in an international race but finally made it to the podium today, got third in age group. So I'm looking forward to future improvements. Thanks again man. Well Chuck, congratulations. Good job on getting to the podium. And for those of you who also want to get to the podium or have a great way to train for Ironman, you can check out that Triathlon Dominator package at Triathlon Dom and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well as everything else that I've talked about today. So remember to check out Chef Todd's free webcast coming up. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It's June 30th, but there is limited space in that, so make sure you get signed up. And he's giving away a free bonus gift as well along with that webcast. And be sure to leave this podcast or the new Get Fit Guy podcast, a ranking in itunes and leave a comment in itunes to let me know how you like the shows. Be sure to check out all the details on that special trip to Thailand that I'm organizing this winter. For any of you triathletes out there, you're prepping for a marathon, check out the marathon dominator@marathondominator.com and until next week when we will return to some great interviews that I have lined up, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.