How Long Does It Take Muscles To Recover, Should You Stretch During Weight Training, Which Form Of Creatine Is Best & Much More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. How long does it take muscles to recover? Should you stretch during weight training? The ultimate guide to getting rid of a back hunch. Which form of creatine is best? And much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental. Mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Well, Rachel, since It seems like 95% of the time, we introduce this podcast by talking about coffee, because we always record in the morning, we might as well start there. Have you had your coffee?

Yeah, I'm on my second cup. What do you got?

I. I had my cup, and the reason I wanted to bring up coffee is because I am infatuated with my coffee mug.

I love how you love coffee mugs.

I love coffee mugs. I've officially switched up my lucky coffee mug to a new mug that inspires me every morning because I can sit there and sip my coffee and read the mug.

All right, what does the mug say?

But be careful when you read mugs, because it's really easy to spill coffee on yourself if you're, like, twisting your mug up and down to read it.

What does this one say?

Okay, so this is the man in the arena mug. I made it. I actually made my own mug. There is a. There's a website that allows you to customize and make your own mug. So I made this mug on Zazzle. And by the way, if you dig this mug that I'm about to describe, you can actually go get the same mug, because I put it, like, on Zazzle as a mug that you can get. Aren't I the little entrepreneur?

I just love that this is the thing that you do for fun.

So here it is. This mug has my favorite quote on it, and it's kind of, like, laid out in this really badass graphic with really cool lettering and font, but it is the part of a speech called the Citizenship in a Republic that was given by Theodore Roosevelt called the man in the Arena. Now, I'm going to read this to you, Rachel, and you just tell me if this would not freaking just, like, get your ass moving in the morning. If you Read it. You don't even need to drink coffee.

I'm ready.

You need to drink coffee. You just read that.

I don't know about that.

There we go. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or. Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds. Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who. Who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Wow.

Yeah, see? You don't even need to drink the coffee.

That was intense. That was incredible. I haven't heard that.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com ArenaMug BenGreenfieldFitness.com ArenAmug if you want to get this mug for yourself, I made it available on Zazzle. How cool is that?

Super cool.

It's way better than just drinking out of your old grandma's china or whatever it is.

Or your coffee makes me poop mug.

Yeah.

News flashes.

Well, Rachel, shall we begin today's news flashes with something?

Woo.

Woo.

Well, I'm all jazzed up now, so, yeah, let's do it.

You're all inspired by Theodore Roosevelt.

All right, let's be the man in the arena.

All right, well, let's. Let's dash your inspiration to the ground by talking about sticking light up your nose. No, actually, in seriousness, we had a podcast a few months ago about this low level laser that one can stick into one's nose should one desire to do that. And it's actually, since I recorded that podcast, I've been doing this every morning. So the idea is that when you look at low level laser treatments, the photons emitted by lasers. And this, by the way, is not woo woo. This is actually called photobiomodulation. And if you go back and listen to the podcast episode, and I'll link to it, by the way, in the show notes for this episode, which you can grab@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 356. The physician that I interview on that show goes over a host of research on how photons can enter tissue and be absorbed in the cell's mitochondria and at the cell membrane by these tiny little guys on your cell membranes called chromophores. Chromophores are what are called photosensitizers. So when they get hit by laser or when they get, that generates what are called reactive oxygen species. And those travel along your mitochondrial respiratory chain and they produce ATP. So when you expose tissue, when you more or less irradiate tissue with some form of photon, with some form of light, you produce energy. That's why for those of you who just want the simple explanation, when you walk out in the sunlight and the photons of sunlight, the UVA and UVB rays, hit your skin, you feel a little bit of wakefulness.

You feel good energized.

Yeah, exactly. And that is because you actually produce ATP in response to photobiomodulation. Now, what they looked into in this recent study that just appeared in the Journal of Medicine and Science in July of 2016 was whether phototherapy would actually increase strength when incorporated as part of a strength training program. So this was in, and like I mentioned, this was in a journal of medicine and science. They also reported on this in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. And in this case, I looked into what they used and they used one of these handheld laser treatment devices. They didn't use like an intranasal device like I use, but what they did was they bombarded a muscle group with laser and, or with these laser diodes.

What does bombarded mean?

Well, basically they, they held up, these are like a handheld device and you can, you can find these type of devices on Amazon, the one that they used. I looked at the methodology of the study. They use something made by Multi Radiance Medical that produces these, these lasers. They're, they're essentially diodes. And you hold this unit in your hand and you would, you would move it back and forth right across a muscle group prior to training. What they found was a significant improvement in strength and also muscle fibers during a 12 week protocol compared to a control group that did not receive laser therapy on the muscle group or in the tissue that was being worked during this strength training program over the course of the study. So basically what this means is that when they use what they call in this study phototherapy irradiation prior to strength training, it actually enhances the effects of strength training.

So does the kind of light matter and how long would you need to have the muscle group exposed to it for?

Yes, the wavelength of the light matters. And in this case, in this study, they used a mix of wavelengths. They used 875. It's measured in nanometers, 905 nanometers and 640 nanometers. They're using a mix. What I stick up my nose every morning. And it's not cheap. I will warn you guys like it cost me. I believe I spent $650 on this intranasal light device. It's called a VI Lite V I E Light. And this is from that. That guy who I did the podcast with. After I recorded with him, I was so impressed by the research, I purchased one. So I put it into my nose when I wake up in the morning and sipping my coffee, reading from my man in the arena mug. And it's a 25 minute protocol. And it's like a second cup of coffee. I mean, and you can do it prior to strength training. It is at 810 nanometers, this one that I stick up my nose. But it's really, really interesting, this idea of using light to enhance performance. And there's more and more research coming out on the use of phototherapy and what's called photobo biomodulation. And I'll link to this one in the show notes for those of you who are interested in that particular news flash.

Very cool. Quick little hack.

Yeah, you can get something to stick up your nose, Rachel.

I would love something to stick up my nose, Ben.

Okay, so for those of you who just want to go into beast mode and not stick things up your nose to enhance performance, I also came across a really interesting article on one of my favorite websites, the Art of Manliness. And this article goes into the training protocol of Herschel Walker. You know who Herschel Walker is?

I'd never heard about him until I read this, but he sounds like a pretty cool dude.

He was a. He was a beast. That was a football player for the Dallas Cowboys, primarily. There is this urban legend that he did thousands and thousands and thousands of pushups and sit ups every day, that he didn't actually lift weights at all, which is quite uncommon for a football player, right, to just do bodyweight exercises. But the word on the street was that all he did was bodyweight exercises. So this guy who wrote this article on the art of manliness actually went and began to research what it was that Herschel Walker actually did. And it turns out that he did a massive number of body weight exercises to stay fit. Now, granted, two things to bear in mind here. First of all, he has what's called a mesomorph body type or like very athletic, very naturally muscular body type. And people with that body type can build muscle quite readily in response to just about any form of training versus say, you know, an ectomorph. Right. Like a skinny guy, for example. But when you, when you look at his program, it's also something that's been researched quite a bit lately is this idea that one can build not only size but also strength by bringing a muscle to the brink of or to fatigue. And it doesn't matter whether that's with body weight, right, doing 300 pushups or with external weight, like doing three sets of 10 bench press exercises. So what Herschel Walker did was what's almost like a prison style workout. And he actually has this workout that's called a prisoner workout. So for example, he would have one workout that was just like 1000 pushups with six different push up variations. He started at 50 pushups a night and then he worked up to 100 and he slowly increased his reps until he was doing 2,000 pushups a day. And he was actually a chubby adolescent, as this article reports, in high school. But he got to the point where now in this current day and age, and he's doing some MMA training Now, he's doing 3500 push ups every day.

Wow, that is a solid effort. That's got to take like an hour.

3000 sit ups a day. And he breaks these up throughout the day. Right. And this is kind of similar to me. Like I probably, I would say throughout any typical day, I'm close to a thousand jumping jacks. I amass about 100 burpees each day. I do. You know, walking into the pull up bar in the door of my office, I probably get close to 50, 75 pull ups each day. I don't do a great deal of formal exercise, as we've reported on the podcast before. You know, I'm, I'm kind of a minimalist exerciser, but just like Herschel Walker. And by the way, I'm sure that I will play in the NFL someday based on this. I do a lot of body weight exercises every day and it turns out, worked for him, so it's going to work for you.

I have a question because I'm super confused. We talk all the time about the benefits of lifting heavy things, and recently we've been talking a lot about the benefits of doing bodyweight exercises. And I'm wondering if there is extra benefits to lifting heavy things or whether it's actually just okay to do bodyweight exercises.

There is a hormonal response to heavy training, particularly with respect to growth hormone and testosterone, that you do not get with body weight training or at least you don't get the same extent. So I'm a fan of a couple times a week for men and women lifting something heavy. But at the same time, there's a great deal of evidence out there that high rep bodyweight exercise does some good too. By the way, this reminds me for those of you who may follow Snapchat or What is it? BenGreenfieldFitness.com Snapchat My buddy Matt and I went over and we won the Montana Train to Hunt competition.

Congratulations.

Thank you. We decided that on our drive back we were going to do the 50 50, 50 workout and we recorded the entire thing. We actually uploaded this to Facebook as well. But here's the workout for those of you who want to try it. Every 50 miles you stop and you do 50 burpees and 50 kettlebell swings. Should you be one of those strange people who keeps a kettlebell in your car like Matt does and like I know many of our listeners do, but 50 kettlebell swings and 50 burpees. And so we would stop every 50 miles. I was pretty destroyed actually by the end of our 330 mile trip. But it was, it was a great way to kind of, kind of keep the body fit and get a good workout in during a road trip. So try 50.

How much extra time did it add onto your trip, do you think?

Every time you stop and do 50 burpees and 50 kettlebell swings, it adds about five minutes. Oh, wow.

No excuse.

We added a good, good half hour. And then finally, speaking of exercise motorized versus non motorized treadmills, I get questions quite a bit about why the heck I have decided at my own personal workstation to forego the nice little tight and tidy, say, Woodway manual or I'm sorry, motorized treadmill. Right. Like, like there's a lot of companies that make these kind of small, portable motorized treadmills that one could use at a standing workstation or a walking workstation. Instead I have this behemoth, I have this giant steel, what's called a true form treadmill. The belt on this treadmill won't even go unless you lean forward and use like a proper mid to front forefoot strike. It was designed for like, you know, crossfitting competitions and for really teaching the body how to run with proper biomechanics. I got it for those reasons. I got it also because a treadmill, believe it or not, is One of the biggest creators of dirty electricity of a high amount of what are called positive ions, meaning that it's just like a WI fi router or, you know, standing in front of your microwave like, like a treadmill. Is that form of electricity when you're spending a long time on a treadmill. So I wanted a non motorized treadmill. And the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research this month actually compared things like biomechanics and the ability to stimulate VO2 max and the ability for one to have like a forward lean and lactate threshold and all these sorts of variables when it comes to non motorized or what are called manual versus motorized treadmills. What they found in this study was that for every variable, VO2 max, peak, biomechanics, lactate threshold, respiratory gases, rating of perceived exertion, everything manual treadmill, hands down, beat. A motorized treadmill.

Wow.

And how much extra is it? Is it, is it more costly?

It depends. Like I will admit, similar to the light that I stick up my nose because I like to own nice things, or if I'm going to get something, I want it to be nice. I want to last for a long time. This treadmill is big. It's hardy. I think it is. I have an article on it. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you do a search for treadmill workstation, you'll find the article. But let me look real quick. It's called a true form treadmill. I modified it. I actually worked with trueform. We'll just try and put the link in the show notes. But I had them create a treadmill that they now sell on their website as the Ben Greenfield Treadmill Desk treadmill that they've removed the dashboard from the front of it. Right. So you can, you can work on a computer while you're on this manual treadmill. And what I like about it is it goes as fast as you want to go. So if I want to run 15 miles an hour in between a phone call, I can do that. It is. Drumroll, please. And you get a 10% discount on it, by the way. But its retail price is $5,695, so it's definitely a spendy little addition to it.

You think it's worth it?

I think it is worth it. If you are an athlete or an active person who wants to be a better runner, who wants to run and walk with good biomechanics based on this most recent research study, for example, or if you're somebody who just really eschews you Know this idea of having like a lot of electricity floating around your house or if you fall into both categories. So I understand it's expensive. I understand that we probably lost half of our listeners. Now talking about $650 lights you stick up your nose, 3,000 push ups, stopping every mile or 50 miles while you're driving to do 50 swings and buying a $5,695 treadmill. But for those of you still with us, trust me, this stuff makes your life so much better.

Listener q and a.

Hi, Ben, my name is Jack and I've got a question for you about weight training. What I'd like to know is how long does it take your muscles to fully recover after a weight training session? I currently do hard weight training sessions about two to three times a week. And I want to know I'm not over training. I only give my body about two or three days rest before the next weight training session. And yeah, is this enough to allow my muscles and body to fully recover? I really appreciate your advice. Thanks, Ben.

Well, Rachel, you might know the answer to this question because I know you're a big, you're a big bench presser, right?

I do so much bench pressing, bench.

Pressing all the time.

I always have to worry about how long it takes my muscles to recover.

Right? That, that used to be my worry when I would bodybuild. Because when you bodybuild, you bomb a specific muscle group like your chest, right. So, so I would do bench press, incline, bench press, chest flies, pec deck, you name it. And you get to the point where you want to punch somebody in the face if they so much as poke you in the chest the next day. And yeah, you pay attention to soreness to know if you're recovered. But always at the back of the mind, you wonder, you know, am I really recovered? You know, am I in a state where I should be hitting this muscle group again or any muscle group?

So does is soreness any sort of valid way of measuring that soreness is.

What is one way that you can, you can measure recovery, but what we tend to know generally is if you look at muscle recovery, it's for musculoskeletal recovery, the actual recovery of the muscle fibers themselves. That's about a 48 hour period of time. And there's several factors that contribute to how quickly that muscle is going to bounce back. And there are some other variables here that you definitely want to, you're going to want to bear in mind because it goes way beyond musculoskeletal recovery. But when you exercise, you get depletion of ATP and cp. So adenosine triphosphate and creatine phosphate, these energy rich phosphate compounds that are stored within muscle cells. When you lift weights, you exhaust those, you deplete them and those take some time to become replenished. In many cases, you replenish much of them within just three to five minutes. But as far as the actual, what are called nucleotide pools that contribute to complete replenishment of ATP and CP, that can be around a 24 hour period of time, assuming that you are, you're, you're eating. There was a recent study that came out, I plan on talking about it in a future podcast, by the way, in which they actually fed people. I believe it was right around the range of, and don't quote me on this because I don't have the study in front of me, but it was around 400 milligrams or so of an actual ATP supplement. You can actually just buy ATP rather than say, using sunlight or lasers or things like that to get your body to make its own ATP. You can purchase ATP in supplement form and in some cases it may actually accelerate recovery from strength training or at least your ability to be able to hit the weights again by replenishing some of your ATP stores. So that's one factor is depletion of ATP and creatine phosphate and how quickly you can replenish those. And that's also a reason why in many cases, if you are strength training and you want your muscles to recover faster, the use of creatine can also be prudent. And there was another study, and I actually have a guy coming on the podcast episode to talk about this. How fast we lose muscle, how long it takes us to basically lose fitness if we stop detraining, like with bed rest or something like that. And one of the compounds that they found to keep muscles from shrinking when you can't train was creatine. And in this case they were giving folks 10 grams of creatine per day. But for enhancing how quickly your muscles can bounce back, about 5 grams of creatine per day is enough. And I think we're going to talk a little bit more about creatine later. I think we have a question about which form of creatine is best. So we'll get to that. But another thing that can vastly affect how fast a muscle will recover is glycogen. So depletion of glycogen, depletion of the muscles, carbohydrate Stores is another thing that can keep musculoskeletal system from recovering adequately. Now here's the deal. If you eat ad libitum according to appetite after a strength training session, this doesn't necessarily mean you're setting down the barbell and rushing off to suck down your maltodextrin and whey protein isolate within that 20 minute magic window. But you're just eating too appetite. It generally takes about eight hours to replace all of your glycogen stores. Now technically, if you feed within about a 20 minute to 2 hour window after a strength training session, you accelerate the rate at which muscles recover because you supply them with glycogen. But at the same time, if your goal is weight loss, or if your goal is even to maximize say like growth hormone or testosterone, or your ability to be able to tap into fatty acids as a fuel, there is a little bit of a catch 22 there. Because if you wait for a little while after strength training to eat, you actually train your body's ability to burn fat and you get an increase in growth hormone and testosterone. So for that it kind of depends. If someone is trying to get big and add as much muscle as possible, I tell them to eat within that 20 minutes to two hour window. If someone's lifting more for like the longevity and anti aging benefits, I tell them to wait a little while after the workout to eat.

What's a little while?

A little while would be anywhere from, from two to two plus hours. You know, I, I generally wait an hour and a half, two hours, sometimes longer than that after a strength training session to eat because I'm not necessarily trying to get swole, I am, I am just training for anti aging and longevity more. Some other things that of course can affect, and this is a big one, would just be micro trauma to the muscle. You tear a muscle fiber and you get the accompanying swelling or edema and inflammation. The inflammatory response that occurs when you weight train, that takes about 24 to 48 hours. And if you do like, if you're doing like a bodybuilding split like I described earlier, like working one body part over and over and over again, we're talking about as long as three to five days for that muscle to recover, for the inflammation to subside to the point where you aren't just damaging a muscle or piling damage on top of damage by training again within that window. So micro traumas are kind of the longest, right? So ATP and creatine, we replenish a lot of that within three to five minutes. And then most of it over the course of a day. Glycogen, we replenish that within about eight hours. Micro traumas take 24 to 48 hours plus and up to five days. But then finally, there's a thing that a lot of people don't pay attention to, and that's central fatigue. Central nervous system fatigue. Now, central nervous system fatigue from a hard strength training session like a CrossFit workout that just throws you under the bus or let's say, you know, a two hour long strength training workout or something that we might call epic. If you look at neuromuscular recovery, central nervous system recovery, sometimes it can take seven to 10 days for a nerve cell to repair. A nerve cell can take up to seven times longer than a muscle cell to repair. And this is why I am a fan of. To return to that question you kind of asked me a little bit about Rachel soreness paying attention, not just a soreness. And is a muscle not sore anymore, indicating that a lot of the micro trauma has repaired. But I pay attention to heart rate variability and a morning heart rate variability test to see if the central nervous system has repaired. Now, if you're doing that, if you're paying attention to your heart rate variability, what you would actually want to look for would be what is called your low frequency score. So if you're using, for example, the Nature Beat app that I developed to measure your heart rate variability in the morning, you would want to look at that low frequency score because that is an indicator of sympathetic nervous system recovery, the type of nervous system you would be using during weight training, during muscle training. And you would want that to bounce back up to where it normally is. Right when you first get the app, you want to do a baseline measurement when you're nice and recovered. And you would want, ideally, if you're wanting to be as fully recovered as possible. Not that there aren't some days where you want to kind of train when you're tired to teach your body how to work through over training and over stimulus that you bounce back even stronger. But in most cases, if you want to be fully recovered, you want that low frequency score, that LF score to be back up where it normally is, whether that's 1,000 or 2,000 or for me, I know if it's about 4,000 or more, I'm really, truly fully recovered. So that's what I'll pay attention to is that element of recovery. It's going to vary a lot from person to person.

Simple as just a few days.

Yeah, and the reason for that is related to a study that we talked about, I believe it was last week. There are a variety of genetic factors responsible for what's called endogenous antioxidant production and also fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fiber capacity. So what I mean by that is, for example, if you look at what is one antioxidant, there's a whole list of antioxidant factors. IL6, Interleukin 6 would be a good example. So Interleukin 6 is like an inflammatory cytokine that gets expressed in muscle cells in response to hard training. It regulates proliferation of new muscle cells or the enhancement of muscle recovery post workout. It's like a, an inflammatory cytokine that if expressed can actually cause muscles to repair more quickly. And if people possess what is called the power related allele for that gene, for the IL6 gene, they recover more quickly, they produce higher levels of this IL6 in response to strength training and they bounce back more quickly from strength training versus someone who is more of what we would call an endurance responder. There's another gene and this one's a mouthful. It's called the peroxisome proliferator activated receptor Y coactivator gene, also known as the PPARGC1alpha gene. That one is responsible for angiogenesis and the formation of new muscle fibers. That gene, if you carry the particular allele responsible for expressing that particular gene, you can again recover more quickly than someone who does not express that gene. So I'm also a fan of doing something like genetic testing. So you can see whether you're like a high rep, low load responder like Herschel Walker or whether you're a low rep, high weight type of responder. And we talked about this quite a bit when we discussed a little bit about training in line with your genetic potential. I wrote over@quickanddirtytips.com I write for them every week. I recently just wrote an article about how to train, train in line with your genetics. And I linked to the study in which they looked at all the different genetic factors that can influence how quickly you respond or recover from musculoskeletal training. But that's another thing to think about is your genetics. And then, oh, go ahead, I was.

Just going to say, so are there ways to enhance or quicken this recovery?

You read my mind. Because that's the other thing is that if you look at for example Ironman triathlons, they did a study on how for example, fast it takes the body to Recover from an IRONMAN and it's 19 days. But when I used to do Ironman, I'd be ready to rumble within about a week after completing a race. And I think a big part of that was due to a lot of these little things that I would pull out for recovery. Like for example, the use of high dose curcumin and some of these natural anti inflammatory enzymes like proteolytic enzymes like papain and amylase and lipase and things like that. The use of transdermal or topical magnesium, the use of cold thermogenesis and heat therapy. Probably the most recent article that I wrote that if you're listening in and you just want to look at some of my biggest recovery tips from grounding and earthing like the Tour de France cyclists do, to eating sulfur rich foods. Two months ago I published an article in which I talked about how I recovered as quickly as possible from the 12 hour hurricane heat over in Seattle. The spartan hurricane heat. I will link to that particular article in the Shownotes because it's probably the most recent article I've written on my top workout recovery tactics. And in addition to that, I mentioned creatine as one potential strategy. There are a few others. Electrostimulation is quite good and I'm a fan of that. The use of something like the Mark Pro electrical muscle stimulation device for enhancing recovery. Right. Taking musculoskeletal or nervous system recovery from let's say like 72 hours down to 24 hours. Some other things that have been looked at in research that I am releasing a podcast on in the next two weeks of research that's been done on how to keep muscles from shrinking or how to get muscles to recover more quickly. One would be leucine, which is a branch chain amino acids. About 2 to 3 grams of leucine per day in research has been shown to enhance musculoskeletal recovery. Amino acids, particularly essential amino acids in the range of 10 to 20 grams per day. And by the way, for something like that, even something like bone broth would suffice, right? Like a Coke or two of bone broth.

Speaking of bone broth, we actually have a Facebook giveaway going and an Instagram giveaway and I think even a Twitter giveaway of two. So many giveaways we're giving away two boxes of bone broth from Kettle and Fire. So currently I think there's only like 15 people that have entered such a great opportunity to try some bone broth if you haven't already. So go and Check them out and.

Comment and enter so people can just win. Win the bone broth on we just.

Give away so much stuff and sometimes my mind is blown because there's a lot of giveaways.

I'm surprised at how generous folks are. I've had that Kettle and Fire bone broth, by the way. That's the one that they and don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of just using your own chicken carcass and making your own bone broth. But I know some people don't have that time. Kettle and Fire is one of the companies I know that's out there that they ship it to your house, but it doesn't. They have some kind of a special process where it doesn't have to have preservatives added to it and it's very shelf stable and you could even like take it when you're say, traveling. Even though it couldn't be in your it'd have to be in your check on luggage because it's still more than 4 ounces or whatever ungodly amount TSA prohibits you from carrying through their X ray machines. But bone broth, yeah, absolutely. That are essential amino acids. A few other interesting ones would be hmb. HMB is something that's been studied quite a bit recently in literature that combined with ATP. I mentioned that study in which they looked at how someone could accelerate recovery from a hard workout by instead of just relying upon food sources of ATP, actually just buying ATP in supplement form. There's one called HMB as well. After reading the research study that came out last week on combining HMB and ATP to enhance post workout recovery, I believe I actually have both of those added to my shopping cart in Amazon. I haven't pushed the checkout button yet because frankly, sometimes I get a dizzying array of supplements and I need to keep track of everything that I'm doing so that I guinea pig properly. And I don't have too many variables getting thrown in. But HMB is another. I'll link to that study in the show notes for those of you who want to read it. Vitamin D Vitamin D is highly anabolic when it comes to musculoskeletal repair and recovery. And then two others. One would be fish oil. About 3 to 4 grams of fish oil per day has been shown to help out quite a bit with speeding up the rate at which your muscles recover. And then the last one, and I've got a list of all these if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 356. The last one would actually be infrared. The specific wavelength of infrared light from like an infrared sauna or an infrared light that actually heats muscle to the extent where you can remove a lot of these inflammatory byproducts and enhance the muscle fiber repair and recovery. And they've looked at this. You also get an increase in growth hormone with the use of something like infrared. So that would be another strategy to take that 24 to 48 hourish musculoskeletal recovery, that two to five day ish central nervous system recovery and speed that up as much as possible because let's face it, the more you can bench press per week, the better a person you will be.

Hi Ben and Rachel. Am I wrong to be stretching each muscle group after I work them out with weights? I just feel compelled to do this naturally and it feels amazing. But I noticed that at my gym there's no stretching area and none of the giant guys working out around me stretch ever.

Rachel, I'm hearing some noise on your end. Are you, are you drinking?

Yes, I'm drinking some beautifully infused water, except it does come straight from the tap and every time I take a sip all I can think about now is drinking birth control pills. So thanks, Ben.

I'm actually. Well, I'm saving you money. Well actually, I don't know if you are attempting to conceive, perhaps this is inconvenient for you, but.

Yeah, no, it's actually very convenient.

Buy your birth control pills from Walgreens or cvs or you could just drink them from the local municipal water supply. Well, what do you infuse your water with?

I have a massive obsession right now with cucumber and basil. And then every few days I might add a strawberry. But the cucumber comes from my garden and I've got some beautiful lemon basil growing in the garden and it's just, it makes it incredible. Like I just can't. I'm drinking like three and a half liters of water a day right now.

Yeah, lemon and cucumber infused water is the way to go.

All right.

Good way to drink, Larissa. Stretching your muscle group after you work mouth weights. Well, I, I won't, I won't insult our listeners intelligence by pointing out the fact that static stretching has been shown for many years to reduce muscle strength and reduce muscle force. I think most people know that, that, that you're not supposed to stretch right before you try and get a muscle to produce force or power because you reduce the rate of force development and you reduce the strength of a contraction when you do a static holding stretch to strength training.

Okay, you totally abusing my intelligence right now. No, you know, just kidding. I'm actually dumb enough to not know this, but here's a question. Static stretching, is that literally just sitting in a stretch and not moving, as in you're not kind of stretching further or breathing into it or any kind of. Any sort of movement or even contracting the muscle to stretch? Is it literally, or can you go into detail?

I'll quantify it for you. Six seconds.

Thank you.

Six seconds is how long it takes for what's called the Golgi tendon organ, which is located in. In the muscle tissue in the tendon, to be overcome and to basically produce an inhibitory reflex that keeps that muscle from contracting very hard. That's how long it takes. If you look at. Have you ever noticed how, like, chimps and apes and animals in general seem to have, like, superhuman strength? It's because they don't have as sensitive a golgoy tendon organ. They don't have that reflex that keeps a muscle in response to a stretch from protecting itself and from inhibiting a contraction. So that's why, you know, like, a chimp could overturn a car and sure, it's going to, like, tear its biceps and stuff like that as it does so. Whereas a human has an inhibitory reflex that keeps them from damaging themselves. But that's the actual tendon organ that is inhibiting our ability to hurt ourselves, especially in response to a muscle being stretched. It's also, by the way, you can take a human. You can take, like, a mom who sees her child, whatever, trapped in a burning car and goes. And whatever, flips the car over. I'm completely pulling this out my ass. I don't think this is an actual news story, but you see, people occasionally perform feats of superhuman strength.

Yeah.

And in some cases, it's because they're overriding that Golgi tendon organ. They are hurting themselves. Right. They're taking joints out of alignment and they're tearing muscle fibers. But you can override that organ in states of extreme stress. States of incredible Hulk like stress. But anyways, we. We digress. So, first of all, yes. Been shown for many years. We've talked about it on previous podcasts. I've written articles about it. How you do not want to static stretch before or during an exercise routine due to the. The lack of response that you get from the subsequent strength training set that you do.

Okay.

So as far as ways that you can work mobility and stretching into your workouts. I actually am a fan of doing that. So here is how I do things. I stretch in the morning when I first wake up, because I'm not lifting weights in the morning when I first wake up. If I am going to be lifting weights in the morning when I first wake up, I don't stretch. I'm going to be doing sprints or any type of high intensity interval training when I wake up, which is pretty rare because I like to save anything hard like that for the afternoon. I don't do static stretching, but most morning, I do all my static stretching in the morning because I'm not going to be exercising until later on in the day, right? Until like in many cases, 4 or 5 or 6pm So I like static stretching because it reduces blood pressure. It is almost a form of moving meditation. It allows for, for, for focus, it allows for blood flow. There are many benefits we see from different forms of yoga, et cetera. I won't deny those benefits. But when it comes to doing it prior to a strength training routine or during a strength training routine, you want to keep them separate. Okay. So you stretch in the morning or you stretch, say like later on in the evening, but never during or immediately before the strength training session.

And so when you say you can include some mobility into the strength training session, what have you got?

Yeah, so the mobility that you can include, number one, would be any form of rolling or foam rolling. So this allows you to increase your range of motion without actually putting a stretch on the muscle. Right. When I am foam rolling my calf, I am not stretching my calf. I am increasing blood flow. I'm reducing any knots or adhesions in the tissue, right. Like making the tissue a little less fibrous, but I am not stretching it. So foam rolling and including foam rolling exercises that hit the specific muscle group that you're working, those are fine. So if I'm going to do a set of deadlifts, right, I'm gonna do five by five deadlifts. I want to recover in between those deadlifts. So in between each set of deadlifts, I'm going to do foam rolling for the back, the hamstrings and the hip flexors. Three muscle groups that I would be working during that deadlift. Okay, so that'll be one. Another form of mobility that you can use during a strength training session would be moving through range of motion. Okay. So examples of that would be if I am doing a set of five sets of squats as another example, rather Than say, sitting down, reading Men's Health or watching the TV at the gym or whatever. You know, in between the sets of squats, I will get down in the quadruped position, right, like a crawl position, and do 10 reps, opposite arm, opposite leg extension, you know, reaching the left arm forward and the right leg forward, coming back to the crawl position, reaching the right leg forward and the left arm forward, or doing bear crawls, or doing some form of mobility that also kind of, kind of allows you to increase your range of motion again without actually stretching or pulling the muscles apart. Okay, so that would be, number two would just be mobility based exercises in addition to foam rolling, then the final way that you can stretch. You know, if you're looking for things to do in between your strength training sets and you don't want to say do cardio because it's going to fatigue you and you don't want to work a different muscle group, say that you go from a squat to a deadlift to a squat to a deadlift, because again, that could fatigue you and decrease your force production in each of those exercises. So decrease the quality of each of those exercises. You could do dynamic swings, dynamic arm swings, you know, front to side, back to back, arm circles, leg circles, right leg swings, front to back, side to side, torso twist, anything that's moving the body through a range of motion. Frankenstein walks, lunge walks, walking, knee pulls, things like that. So we're talking about mobility exercises that again, don't stretch and hold the muscle tissue, but that instead just move it through a range of motion. So I'm a fan of foam rolling, I'm a fan of those type of dynamic stretches, I'm a fan of mobility work, but not that actual static stretch and hold type of protocol.

So is, is there a time like amount of time that you should wait before doing weight training or after weight training before you stretch?

Yeah. What most research has shown is that that loss of rate of force production lasts for a good 30 to 60 minutes following that, static stretching. So that means that if you're going to stretch at some point in the day, make sure that you're allowing at least about an hour before you're going to do strength training.

Mm, yep.

Hey, Ben and Rachel, huge fan of the podcast. I've submitted a couple questions in the past and you guys have answered them and I'm very appreciative of that. I just have one more for kyphosis or kyphosis hunchback rounding of the back. What are some really good exercises or treatment I have a tendency to hunch over my shoulders and I try to catch myself. I do some things as putting my arms at my side and putting my thumbs outward. That's a little trick I've learned. Just always trying to correct my posture and keeping my head back. And I know there's the sitting solution. But Ben, I was wondering if there's any exercises or in home treatments that you do. I've also heard of things such as laying on a hardwood floor for minutes at a time. Once again, love the show. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it. Thanks.

Do you know what kyphosis is, Rachel?

Is it when you have a rolled over back? You ever heard of like the hunchback?

Yeah, Hunchback of Notre Dame. I have the malformed Frenchman who lives in a cathedral who rings bells. That guy. Heard of him?

I have.

So if you look like him or anything like him, or if you say do anything modern such as play Pokemon Go or hunch over a laptop or anything else that causes you to be looking down with rolled forward shoulders, you probably have some form of slump shoulders or some form of hunchback. And you see this all the time these days with people who work on computers, who drive, who have tight chest, tight anterior shoulders, weak muscles that pull the shoulders back. And a lot of times it is combined with what's called lordosis, right. Which is an abnormal inward curve in the lumbar spine that happens when you sit. It's not a very attractive look in my opinion because you get somebody who not only can't produce force properly, but who has a posture that's just like, you know, hunched rolled over shoulders and the hips are sticking out a little bit kind of forward. So you get a little bit of that potbelly look. You do not see those kind of people looking on the COVID of magazines in bikinis.

I would love to know how many of our listeners are sitting up super straight right now.

Yeah, exactly. So a few things that you can start with. Again, at the risk of overusing this term term, I don't want to insult people's intelligence by telling them to do more pull ups and more rows because you hear that all the time. You know, strengthen your scapular retractors and your kyphotic posture processes will just go away. And that's not true because there are other areas of your body that you need to work if you have a hunched over back. So for example, one big issue that you tend to see as a problem and people who have hunchback is what's called anterior pelvic tilt, anterior pelvic tilt. Think about it this way. Your spine is basically like an S that should be approximately equal at both the top and the bottom as far as the curve in that S. And if the bottom part of the S is very wide, the top part of the S has to be very wide as well to compensate and to balance out the bottom. Right. So if my bottom is sticking way out behind me from an anterior pelvic tilt, because I am sitting with poor posture, the front of my body has to basically hunch forward to throw off and balance out the fact that I have that anterior pelvic tilt. So in terms of anterior pelvic tilt, what is one of the main things that causes that? Well, it's tight psoas and tight iliacus. Tight hip flexors. Okay. So the hip flexors, when you sit for long periods of time, get into a tight and an overactive state. In most cases, the psoas is the big culprit and people will say, oh, well, what I should do then is I should stand up from my chair and I should get in a lunging position to stretch out the hip flexors. I haven't found that to be very successful for a lot of folks who I've worked with who have back pain. A lot of the triathletes who I work with especially who get back pain when they're biking or running because they have sitting desk jobs and tight psoas, just standing up every once in a while and do a lunging hip flexor stretch. Doesn't work as much as actual soft tissue work on the psoas and the iliacus. What I mean by that is you get like a nice hard foam roller and some hard, like, balls, and you actually dig into the tissue on the front upper part of the quads and the front upper part of the pelvis muscle. Yeah, or the pelvic bone. So that would be one thing is anterior pelvic tilt. You have to get rid of that sounds dumb that you'd work on your pelvis and your hip flexors and your psoas to get rid of a curve in the upper back, but it actually works really well. A few other things that work quite well, scapular wall slides. So people talk all the time about doing, like, seated rows. They talk about doing pull ups to make sure that you pull the upper back back into alignment. But in many cases, you actually have to be able to move through a proper range of motion. And the problem is that a lot of people do seated rows or pulps, but they can't actually move through the right range of motion to be able to get the scapula to retract. So a wall slide is very simple and straightforward. And you can do it like in your office. You just stand with your upper back and your butt against a wall and your feet about shoulder width apart. And then you bring your arms up parallel to the wall so you're almost in like a, you know, like a cross position almost with your arms at 90 degrees. And you just slide your hands so the back of your hands are touching the wall. Your shoulder blades are touching the wall. You slide your hands up the wall as high as they can go while keeping everything in contact with the wall. Right? Your heels, your butt, your back. Deceptively difficult. You could look this up. It's called a scapular wall slide. That's a really, really good one. Another one that I like is a tracing exercise where you start with your thumbs at your hips and you trace all the way up the side of your body and then all the way up overhead while trying to keep your shoulder blades squeezed slightly back. The program that I now do most mornings in which I'm doing shoulder tracers just about every morning is the Core foundation program. I recently wrote an article on it on why I changed my entire routine, and it's based off this book called True to form by Dr. Eric Goodman. I will link to that in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 356. But the cool thing about that is it also works the psoas. It kind of lengthens the psoas and the hip flexors a little bit, too. But it's called Core foundation and the book is called True to Form, a link to it, as well as the article about how I personally implement it into my morning routine in the show notes. But that's another really good one, one for. For anything kyphotic related. So.

So is there like, strengthening required though, does it?

Oh, yeah. I mean, you still want to do like, you know, one rule I tell people who have upper back problems is pull twice as much as you push at the gym. People who type a lot, people who do have have tight pecs, tight chest, pull twice as much as you push for your strength training routines. So if you're gonna do whatever set of bench press or a set of some type of a chest exercise, you would also do seated rows and pull ups or single arm rows. Related to that, though, is this idea that the pecs and the shoulders can get quite tight. Very similar to the idea with the hip flexors getting tight. You can't just do like a pec stretch or a chest stretch to lengthen and mobilize those tissues. You need to take like a lacrosse ball and just go to town on your pecs or roll your pecs on a foam roller, right? Like belly down on the floor. It's a quite sensitive area to roll. But hitting the pecs, not just with stretches, but with actual rolling and deep tissue work, that's incredibly effective as well. And in many cases, a good 1:2 combo is to do the deep tissue work, right? Like foam rolling or lacrosse ball work for the hip flexors and foam rolling or lacrosse ball work for the pecs and then to stretch it after you've done. You've done the deep tissue work. So, and again, kind of similar to our previous question, don't do it right before strength training session because you don't want to elongate that tissue right before you require it to produce a force. Like do it at a different time of day. But yeah, if I were kyphotic and I weren't trying to get cast as the hunchback in the local production of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I would actually be doing everything that I just described. And I will link in the show notes to my top three resources. One would be that true to form book. Another would be the book Desk Bound by Kelly Starrett. And then finally the book that Kyle already referred to in his question, that is the sitting solution, which is like, almost like a. It's more of a program, like an online program than a book. But it's just chock full of resources for anybody who sits or is desk bound or any personal trainers or docs out there who work with people who are sitting or desk bound. I think those three are all really good resources for you.

Hey, Ben Paul from New Haven, Connecticut, here with a question about creatine. I've been taking my five grams a day for a couple years now for the cognitive and hormonal benefits you've talked about on the podcast many times. The form I've been taking has been the kind you recommend, micronized creatine monohydrate. However, I recently heard that creatine monohydrate needs to be cycled out of the body periodically due to the buildup of the waste products creatinine in your bloodstream. Is this something I should be concerned with? And would you recommend switching to a creatine HCl, which supposedly does not cause a creatinine buildup and also is more bioavailable, requiring about half the normal dosage.

So basically Paul doesn't want his kidneys to fall out from creatine.

Is that. Is that what he's going for here? Yeah, I don't really want my kidneys to fall out.

People get worried about creatinine, right? Like this byproduct of creatine breakdown, they get concerned that creatine is going to cause kidney damage or liver damage. There's actually a lot of myths floating around out there about creatine. So for example, that you know, when you consume creatine, it does get broken down into this metabolite called called creatinine. But hundreds of studies have looked into any adverse effects of creatine supplementation on how well the kidneys filter blood or on the potential for liver psoriasis or fatty liver or elevation of liver enzymes. To date. Do you know the number of studies that have found significant changes in renal function or hepatic function or cardiac function in terms of deleterious effect in response to creatine supplements? Supplementation?

I'm gonna guess zero.

Zero, zero. And so we know that there is no issue with creatine causing something like that. There's another concern that creatine can cause rhabdo. You know what rhabdo is?

Nope.

So rhabdomyolysis is severe breakdown of skeletal muscle due to injury. And it typically presents with these elevated levels of what are called creatine kinase, creatine kinase. And people think, oh well, if rhabdo causes me to have elevated levels of creatine kinase, which is a marker of muscle breakdown, maybe I could just eat myself into a state of rhabdomyolysis by taking a bunch of creatine. That is also not true. Two completely different biological mechanisms, the formation of creatine kinase versus the oral intake of creatine, far, far different. You would have to work out really hard for a really long period of time to get rhabdo in this buildup of creatine kinase to cause rhabdo, not creatine supplementation.

Does it ever need to be something that you cycle off creatine? Yeah, no.

And I'll get to that in a second about why I say that. But it is research based, so you don't have to cycle on and off of creatine, assuming you're taking the dosages that I recommend. People also talk a little bit about creatine and gastrointestinal distress, stomach distress in response to creatine and they have looked at this in literature and found about 5 to 10% of the population does get some minor GI distress in response to creatine. And we'll get into that when we talk about what the different forms of creatine do. But there are what are called micronized forms of creatine that could potentially reduce GI distress. So part of that is due to the form of creatine that you take. And then the final myth about creatine that I see floating around there a lot is that it causes cramping and dehydration. And there's actually zero studies that show that creatine has damaging effects on hydration or that there's any influence of creatine on core temperature. And as a matter of fact, there was one research study that they did at San Diego State where they found that creatine supplementation actually blunted the rise in core temperature during exercise and in the heat, did not actually cause dehydration, but actually limited dehydration and core temperature increase.

So basically, Paul's got nothing to worry about.

Most of the stuff that's floating around there on bodybuilding.com or whatever regarding creatine is incorrect. So when we look at the forms of creatine, though, there are different forms that can have different effects. So if we look at, for example, this micronized creatine that Paul asks about, which is the very, very small form of creatine, you'll see it marketed as creatine citrate. You'll see it marketed as the form that I personally take, creapure. They are just as potent as creatine monohydrate in terms of the ability to enhance strength, enhance power. There is definite evidence to show that in aging individuals, creatine supplementation reduces muscle loss. And there's ample evidence showing that creatine supplementation is a nootropic, meaning that it enhances neural and cognitive function. And by the way, that is especially true in vegans and vegetarians who are notoriously creatine deficient. What they found, though, is that these micronized forms of creatine are more water soluble, and so they avoid the actual clumping that can occur in water. And when you use those forms of creatine, you tend to get not only less stomach cramping, but you also get better absorption with less potential for, like, water retention when you take creatine. Because one thing that can happen is a little bit of bloating, a little bit of water retention. You don't get that as much with like a micronized form of creatine or what's called creapure. And that's not a brand name. That is the form of creatine that brands will use. They will purchase this creapure and put it into their brand. So it's basically micronized creatine. It's essentially creatine monohydrate, but the molecules have been divided or cut up, and that increases their surface area, you know, anywhere from 10 to 20 times over, and that increases absorption, and it reduces any stomach discomfort that someone might get by taking just a regular form of creatine monohydrate. That's probably my preferred form of creatine would be this micronized creatine or this creapure. There's another form of creatine that is marketed as a creatine ethyl ester, a cee, and that's just a creatine molecule that has an ester attached to it. The idea is that a normal creatine monohydrate molecule has one positively charged end and one negatively charged end, and that could potentially cause for less absorption. And by adding an ester to it, you essentially get rid of that positive and negative end and it actually gets absorbed a little bit better. The problem is that that form of creatine is very expensive, and it's never been shown to cause any enhanced amount of absorption compared to, say, like a micronized creatine. So you're going to respond to it. It's just you're also going to pay for it. That creatine ethyl ester form. And there's not a lot of evidence that kind of like krill oil versus fish oil. Like krill oil, you get a little bit added absorption, you get a little bit more EPA and DHA out of it, but you also have to take almost 10 times more of it than fish oil to get that. And so it's worth it to just stick to fish oil and take that instead, because you're spending more money on the krill oil. So that's another thing. Creatine citrate is another form of creatine that they bond with other molecules to increase absorption. And that's another one that, like the ethyl ester has not been shown to have any increased absorption over something like a micronized form of creatine. But that does cost more. Okay, so at this point, you know, those special forms of creatine, when you look at the absorption versus the cost, they're not that useful. Kre alkaline, that's spelled K R E A L K A L Y N is a form of creatine that's also marketed pretty heavily as like more special than creatine monohydrate. It's very special. It's a special form of creatine that does not convert into creatinine as readily. So you don't see a steep rise in creatinine from using a creatine Kre alkalyne. But again, there is no evidence that that creatinine is going to cause any amount of kidney or liver damage unless it is extremely elevated, such as would be the case if you have like rhabdomyolysis after an extremely difficult workout. You can't get creatinine high enough to cause damage to your kidney and your liver by using creatine in the dosages that, that I personally recommend. Which brings me to my next point.

How much do you take the dosage? Yeah.

So based on the studies that have been done on the use of creatine to increase strength, increase power, have a nootropic effect, and it's one of the most researched molecules known to man. It's kind of like fish oil. Ton of research behind creatine.5 grams per day, no loading phase, no need to have a washout phase, no need to take 20 grams a day for two weeks and then gradually phase that down to 5 grams a day. Just 5 grams a day, year round. I personally use creapure. You could also just use a basic creatine monohydrate, even though you do get quite as good absorption as you do with a crea pure. But that's basically it. And so I stand by that 5 grams for now. But I want to throw one other caveat in there because I actually had a, I was on a phone meeting about this just this morning. The, the nano medicine concept. The concept that we can take something like a micronized form of a supplement or molecule and we can make it even smaller. We can turn it into a nanoparticle that is a patented process and it is what I pay a company to do with, with, with marijuana, with, with or industrial hemp, really, to make the cannabidiol that we sell at Greenfield Fitness Systems. So you can take like 10 times less Cannabidiol and get the same effect because it is a nanoparticle, extremely water soluble, extremely small. I am in discussion with that company right now about taking this testosterone formula that I'm developing and Adding creatine, which has been shown to increase testosterone, to that particular product. But we're going to be able to get closer to about a gram per day by turning the creatine into a nanoparticle. That has never been done. It's something that I'm trialing in myself and a small number of other individuals in combination with some of these other testosterone enhancing compounds like vitamin K, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, et cetera. But at this point, until that compound is completely done and right in, probably it's going to be closer to September of this year before I actually have that available and completely developed. I'm standing by my recommendation of just taking 5 grams of preferably a crea pure, a micronized creatine per day. No need to worry about your kidneys falling out. So there you go. And. Oh, and by the way, I should mention that creapure, that's made by a company called, well, I should put it this way, a company that was called Exos. You know how in the past we've recommend, like, the Exos multivitamin and the Exos fish oil and all these different things from Exos. Exos is no longer okay. Oh, no, Exos has now. It was owned by Thorne. This company, Exos, they were working with the Mayo Clinic as the only supplement to be endorsed by the Mayo Clinic, the only supplement to be picked up by the Olympic Committee to be used with their Olympians, the only supplement that is used by multiple national governing bodies of sport around the world as the safest, purest supplements to use. However, what they've done now is to avoid customer confusion. They've gotten rid of this whole Exos, the Exos branding, and it's all just Thorn now. Right? So. So for those of you out there who are taking, like, the same multivitamin that I personally take, the Exos multivitamin or the Exos creatine or anything like that, just know that it's still the same thing, but now it's called Thorn. So for those of you laying awake at night completely concerned about Thorn versus Exos, that is. That's now taken care of. Thank you. Well, I know everyone's brain is probably hurting by talking about everything from supplementation to stretching, but should we want to throw in just a little bit more human guinea piggedness, I thought we should finish up by giving something away.

What do you think, Rachel?

All right, so this is the part of the show I always feel like we should have some lulling piano music when I say this is the part of the show. But this is the part of the show where we give creators crap away. And what we're going to give away is a cool Ben Greenfield Fitness Tech T shirt, a BPA free water bottle and a toque, a beanie. To the person who left the coolest, most badass review in itunes this week, 5 stars is what we're looking for. Please, good karma, leave the show review on itunes. It helps with the rankings, helps to spread the word. And we're going to give something away to the reviewer named Wall Street Victim. Interesting handle, Wall Street Victim. You're hearing your review read on the show, which means all you need to do is email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com with your t shirt size. That's gearedreenfieldfitnesssystems.Com we'll get a gift pack out to you and Rachel, you want to take this one away?

Yeah. The title is Ben Is My Human Guinea Pig. Ben Greenfield.

That sounds wrong.

Ben Greenfield's show is the only podcast that I listen to on a regular basis and usually within a day or two of release. The mix of interviews with fitness, nutrition, health experts, combined with Q and A in which he and regular co host Rachel Brown makes for a very fresh and up to date roundup of the bleeding edge of what's happening in those fields. Bleeding Edge here's the best bit. Ben lives and breathes the techniques and products he discusses on the show, often at some risk to himself, whether it's injecting unapproved peptides to speed torn tissue repair or strapping on electric sleep aids. He discusses his personal experience with the experts who advocate or sometimes criticize the techniques. In particular, Ben often dives deep into all sorts of testing, whether it's DNA, cortisol, stool, and what he and the expert guess recommend based on results is a revelation. There's barely a dull moment, not even in the sponsored messages. Highly recommend.

And sometimes that stool is explosive as a result. Just saying.

Yeah.

And that is why we are going to rename this show in the future the Explosive Stool Show. But until then, for those of you listening in, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com356 Remember, I'm looking for a personal assistant and a massage therapist or both rolled into one. That would be convenient. You could help me check my email and massage me simultaneously. And also everything else we talked about, from creatine to how long it takes muscles to recover, to my recommendations for getting rid of a back hunch should you not want to be the hunchback of Notre Dame. And oh, so much more is over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 356 so, that being said, Rachel, I know you are. You are drooling and chomping at the bits to go get yourself a man in the arena mug. So I'm gonna let you go. And we've got a great show coming out this weekend. A ton of really good guests. I'm gonna keep them a surprise, but trust me, you're gonna want to stay tuned to the show if you aren't already. Rachel Ben, talk to you later.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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