How To Build Muscle And Endurance At The Same Time, Get Abs Like Magic Mike And Become A Faster Runner.

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, can QI Gong lower your cortisol? How to build muscle and endurance at the same time. The ALCAT test for food allergies, how to get abs like Magic Mike, how to use oil of oregano, and the best workouts for building speed and endurance at the same time.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation.

Nation.

So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Well, it is a beautiful morning once again to have a delightful discussion with you about fitness and whatnot. How are you?

You want a dog?

Do I want a dog?

What? I got a Rhodesian Ridgeback. His name is Blitzen and he needs to go.

Oh no, what's he done? He eat your favorite compression shorts?

No, he figured out how to open my bedroom door. So now he comes in there. That's pretty clever. Seriously, the past three mornings, 5am, comes in there and jumps up on the bed and he's just like, nose in your face. And you know, come on, come on, come on, let's go wake up.

It's cute though.

And I'm like, no, it's not cute. It's not. It's not cool. I get out of bed at seven, dude. And so this morning he, you know, he comes in. Come on, come on, come on. So, so I get up and I am already pissed at the dog. I'm like, dude, you know, I just lost two hours of sleep. So I get up and I'm just like wandering zombie mode into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee and I slip in like the biggest puddle of dog piss.

Oh no.

That I don't know what he drank last night, but it had to have been like a liter of coke or something because it was everywhere. And nice as I hit the floor, shove out my hand into a nice big steaming pile of his poo.

Dude.

And oh man, I was not a happy camper.

So you actually completely wiped out. Not only that, but into poo.

I yard sailed into dog excrement. So anyways, got my little. My cold thermogenesis shower came a little earlier than planned this morning. And yeah, so if any of our listeners would like a Rhodesian Ridgeback, come and get him. He's all yours.

News flashes.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 250 is the place to find these next few awesome, interesting and abundant studies.

It's a good vernacular. Good vernacular. You got it.

There you go. Doing my best to try to alliterate a little bit.

I was hoping you'd progress beyond the sixth grade vernacular with awesome and interesting.

Awesome. Interesting.

Nice. What was the last one you said?

Fun.

Abundant. Which actually. Abundant. It's not bad. Abundant is not bad.

Quintessential.

Quintessential. There you go. And by the way, you said 250. This is our 250th episode. Yeah, dude, I don't.

Is that. I don't know if that's.

You know what? We're actually giving out a crapload of stuff today in today's podcast, so we should. I didn't. I didn't plan on that. We knew that. Yeah. There we go. It's because it's the 250th episode. There you go. It's official. So, yeah, let's go over this week's cool news flashes. Abundant news flashes. Quintessential news flashes. So here was a cool study that came out about sports drinks. And as many of our listeners who've listened for a while know, I'm not a huge fan of commercial sports drinks. Number one, because they're mixed in a ratio that's greater than 4%, which means that they have this osmolality. There's a. There's a sixth grade buzzword for you. They have an osmolality that essentially drives water from your muscles into your gut. And so they decrease sports performance, ironically. And then of course also they. They shift your body out of a state of fatty acid utilization. So I'm not a huge fan of sports drinks. And I actually wrote an article on this@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I published it last night, actually, about everything that I feel about pre, post enduring race nutrition for something like an Ironman triathlon or a marathon. Published the exact protocol that I use for Ironman and just a. Just a bunch of stuff about fueling. It's good.

It's good. I'm only about halfway through it right now because it is a monster of a read.

I was gonna say really good stuff. If you read it already. I feel bad. I should have. Should have made it thicker. Anyways, though, this research study, what they did was they built on research that's been around for a while that's called the. The swish and spit research, which is the idea behind mouth rinsing with A sports drink and then spitting it out, not in a form of like miniature bulimia, but to actually stimulate sensors connected to your brain. So your brain senses the sweet taste in your mouth and it inhibits its normal neural shutdown of muscles. So it decreases your rating of perceived exertion and increases how long it would take you to be fatigued. Now, this research has been.

So you're not actually processing anything. Like your body's not absorbing anything. It's totally placebo.

I mean, you probably get a little bit of sublingual absorption. But interestingly, this most recent study showed that the people who rinsed and spit out the sports drink actually had better results than the people who actually swallowed of the drink during a 60 minute time trial, which was really interesting face Gatorade. And they suggested that this was because the carbohydrate spent more time in the mouth during the rinsing, so it had more opportunity to stimulate the sensors connected to the brain. I see.

Because usually you're just sort of pouring it right down your gullet. You're not really spending any time letting your taste receptors enjoy the shower. The deluge.

The deluge of we're just going to.

Try and do each other with big words.

You will win this morning, I guarantee. After my dog slipped in poo. But this was a 60 minute cycling time trial, which means that glycogen depletion or carbohydrate depletion wasn't an issue anyways. So swallowing the sports drink is obviously not going to give you some kind of an added advantage, per se. But what they were actually looking at in the study was if there was an effective time, like how long you actually kept a sports drink in your mouth prior to spitting it out, or how long you kept like a sugary solution in your mouth prior to spitting it out. And they did have a control group that was kind of like an artificially colored beverage that you kept in your mouth for a little bit of time.

So it's just water, no sugar, no maltodextrin.

I don't know if it was pure water that they used. I think it was a placebo where it looked like it could have been a sports drink, but it didn't have sugar in it. In any case, what they found was that the longer you kept it in your mouth, the better results that you got. Specifically, they did a 5 second versus a 10 second. They didn't actually have anybody keep the sports drink in their mouth for the entire hour long, for an entire marathon. Right. But yeah, you hold it in your mouth for about 10 seconds, you swish, and you spit it out, and it gives you this performance boost. And for people who maybe want to stay away from some of the deleterious effects of consuming sugar, like the formation of reactive oxygen species and advanced glycation end products and all these nasty things that happen when you consume a lot of sugar, well, you could still maybe like, you know, let's say you're doing a marathon or you're doing a triathlon or something like that, and you pass by the aid station where they've got the sports beverages. Just grab a cup or a bottle or whatever, swish, spit, and get on your merry way. And it appears it'll help you a little bit.

Cool. Yeah, I always avoid those. I just go straight for the water and drink that and pour it on my head and stuff. But, yeah, maybe I'll try rinsing my mouth out and just be to brush your teeth right after the race is over so they're not just coated in sugary goo.

Yeah, the good old oral carbohydrate rinse. Nice. So there were a couple of interesting things that hit the news this week on fish oil. And I don't know if you saw any of this, but there was a study that came out that actually looked into the effect of omega 3 fatty acid supplements, aka fish oil. And they actually found a bunch of supplements on the market that were highly oxidized. And we've talked about how fish oil can be oxidized, and what that means is it's been exposed to oxygen and a lot of times heat and some environmental variables that make that fish oil a damaged fat. And in this study, they took fish oil that had been oxidized, and they split women into three groups. Fish oil that was not oxidized, fish oil that was oxidized, and then no fish oil at all. And the fish oil that was oxidized actually resulted in an effect on cholesterol levels that increased bad cholesterol, increased circulating triglyceride, which is a bad thing, and basically damaged the body more than not taking any fish oil at all. Whereas the good fish oil that was not oxidized actually decreased these levels of circulating triglycerides and oxidized cholesterol.

Can I just do a little aside here? Why is the circulation circulating triglyceride not a good thing? Don't we want intermuscular triglyceride to use as fuel?

Yes, but high levels of intramuscular triglyceride is much different than cholesterol. Particles carrying large amounts of triglycerides through your bloodstream or having high levels of blood triglycerides, that's a pretty high cardiovascular risk factor.

So those are two very separate things then.

As a matter of fact, one of the best ways to find out if you are at high risk for heart disease is to look at your triglyceride to HDL ratio. And if your triglyceride to HDL ratio is greater than right around three, and the very numbers vary, some people say three, some people say four. But if that, that triglyceride to HDL ratio is high, that is a pretty significant risk factor for heart disease. And interestingly, when I do my consults via Wellness fx, where I look over the biomarkers of people, they send me a lot of athletes and, you know, crossfitters and triathletes and people like that, and I usually see HDL triglyceride ratios that are actually. Or triglyceride HDL ratios that are really nice. Like in most cases, 1 0.5. I mean, that is one thing that it seems an active population doesn't have to worry too much about is low HDL and high triglycerides. Unless you're using crappy fish oil.

Yeah.

So a few kind of, kind of takeaways from this study was, number one, make sure that if you get fish oil, if you buy fish oil, you know the source. You would ideally be getting fish oil that actually has been tested for what's called peroxide content by an independent lab. And you're usually going to pay more for a fish oil like that, but it's worth it. There are some brands out there that I like. Farmax is a good one. Barleens is a good one. Carlson's is a good one. The brand that I use is called Super Essentials. I've talked about that one before. And that's also a good one because it's also packaged with antioxidants like vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, the skin protectant astaxanthin, so I don't have to wear sunscreen. That's a good one. That's. That's kind of like my Cadillac of fish oil. But the other thing that I would recommend that you do is whatever fish oil that you get. You know, let's say you go out and you get a good fish oil, you want to make sure that it doesn't get exposed to a lot of oxygen. So keep it in a cool, dark, dry place. Make sure you get the lid on there. Keep the lid on There, the amount of oxygen it was exposed to in processing is more important than the amount of oxygen it was exposed to post processing. But it's still important once you get your fish oil to take care of it. And then when you first get your fish oil, chew it like literally see if it tastes rancid. So those first few fish oil capsules, if it tastes nasty rancid, it will basically almost take like taste a little bit acidic. That's a really bad sign. And throw it out because it's not only not doing you any good, but it's doing you harm and can harm your heart.

I've heard people talk about how if you're burping your fish oil up after a couple hours, like if it tastes like you've eaten a can of really bad fish or something a couple hours later, then that's a bad sign as well.

It is. I don't burp up. I don't even keep my super essentials fish oil in the freezer, which is a recommendation I've made in the past to avoid that burping up because it causes zero issues like that at all.

I know some of them are flavored like lemon and stuff to sort of COVID that up. I don't know. Does that make any difference?

You know, it might a little bit. But you know, there are some really, really good, nice, like cod liver oils out there. Fermented cod liver oil has some really good heart, health and joint health benefits and can really help with, you know, for example, the growing brains of children. And we give our kids cod liver oil. They actually like the lemon flavored version, but, but like a green pasture. Fermented cod liver oil, that's some really good stuff. And they're not putting mint or lemon in there to cover up the taste of rancidity. You know, that's a good quality brand. So just make sure you know where you're getting your fish oil. And this reminds me of another study that came out. I think you have may have sent me this one, Brock, about how they're now trying to mitigate the effects of overfishing in the ocean and the extraction of these omega 3 oils from fish by producing omega 3 fatty acids in what amounts to a beer factory. So the.

I didn't hear that.

That's. I thought it was you that sent me this article.

You just think anything that has to do. Anything to do with beer. It's true.

Kind of. The biochemical company DuPont has actually created a strain of yeast, a genetically modified strain of yeast that produces omega 3 fatty acid as a byproduct of fermentation. And these are the same. Well, kind of. If, if, if eating omega 3 fatty acids generated by genetically modified yeast is, is your thing.

Okay, so it's, this isn't a good thing.

I'm kind of waiting for the long term human studies to come out on this one just because of, of the, the unknowns, you know, when it comes to consuming genetically modified foods or oils that are produced by genetically modified foods. But these are, these are yeast borne lipids that are very similar to omega 3 fatty acids. The cool thing that this might be good for if it turns out to be safe are vegans because it's not a fish extracted oil and it did not hurt a fish in the process of its making. And it could also be something that comes in handy if we do end up completely overfishing and effing up the ocean, then perhaps the global overfishing crisis is something that could be mitigated by a beer factory for fish oil. So I'll link to that article in the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 250 and you can check it out. By the way, last week we mentioned that we were going to introduce a new drinking game. Oh yeah, there were a lot of drinking games proposed over at the Facebook page. But one of the drinking games was every time we say go check the show notes, you got to take a drink.

Oh, I like that one. I only saw the one that said every time we said poop, take a drink.

Yeah, between that and the show notes, people would already be getting their buzz on. So then the last thing I wanted to mention was barefoot running. And a study that came out that looked at what happens when you run barefoot versus what happens when you run with shoes. And in particular, what they looked at was the forces, what are called the patellofemoral forces, the joint stress and your patellofemoral joint, which is your knee joint.

Your knees.

And by the way, chalk me up a point for patellofemoral. Yeah, nice. Is that five syllables? It's close. And what they found was that there were significantly reduced forces in the knee when running barefoot versus running shod, which is my cool word for running with your shoes on. Yes, shod. So, which reminds me of, not to be confused, horse. Horses are shod. People wear shoes. Anyways, though, this was cool news and I, as you know, Brock, because I coach you, I'm a fan of sending you out there and having you run barefoot every now and again. And one of My go to workouts is to just put on, you know, my, I wear minimalist shoes, but I'll put on my minimalist shoes and I'll run to a park where I know there's not a lot of sprinkler heads and glass and where my dog hasn't been. Yeah, your dog in particular. I'll do some hundred hundred yard sprints, some stride out, stuff like that in the bare feet and then just run home. And then the other thing that I'll do is I'll. I'll put on my Vibram five fingers and I'll run down to the river and I can swim in the river with my Vibrams along the trail, get out, still wearing the Vibrams, run along the trail, jump back into the river, keep swimming. And, and that's one of my favorite workouts is I'll just run along the river and hop into the river and swim for a little while, then get back out and keep running. And you can do that just fine in a pair of Vibram five fingers because you can swim with them and they don't get soggy and kind of weighed down.

Don't pull you down to the bottom of the lake.

Yeah. At least not yet. So. And you're doing the minimalist footwear as well, right, Brock?

Yeah, I've been wearing the Skora for actually it's probably coming close to. No, I guess in the fall. It'll be about a year ago.

The.

I've got some forms and some base.

Yeah, that's the company out of Portland, Oregon, I think. Yeah, those are the ones I wear for, for triathlons. The. I believe it's the, the forms that I'm in. No, the phases that I'm in right now, which is their super duper barefoot style running shoe. So those ones with the laces are.

With the Velcro straps.

Laces.

Yeah, I like the Velcro ones for triathlon because you just like. I don't even have to undo them. I just like slip them on and away you go. In fact, there's a. I have a. In the video that came out on the Ben Greenfield fitness phone app, I did a video review this week of the pro compression compression socks and sleeves. And during that video I, I showed something and we probably already gave away the answer, but I showed a pair of shoes during that video. And if anybody can name what kind of shoes I show in the video and put it in the show notes or in the comments on the show notes for the show Pro Compression for this show for 250 episode 250. The Pro Compression folks have said that they will give somebody a pair of socks and sleeves for free.

Killer.

Were you wearing, wearing pants during the video?

Yeah.

No. No.

Okay.

Sweet.

Swing shorts, definitely. Go check out the video. It's on the phone app. The phone app is free. And by the way, leave a review of the phone app too, if you dig it. So, yeah, so there you go. And you'll win yourself some compression socks if you're the first person to watch Brock's video and leave a comment on. What are they supposed to comment?

What, just comment on. Yeah, what shoes I'm actually, I'm not wearing, but I actually show some shoes during the video. Just put a comment on episode 250 podcast250@bengreenfieldfitness.com and yeah, we'll get your contact info, send it to Pro Compression and they will send you some free stuff.

Sweet. So they're not the compression socks that you wore. They're fresh washed. They're fresh.

They, they have none of my stank.

Special announcements.

And because this is our 250th episode, we're giving away more stuff.

That's right. That's right, baby. What else are we giving away? We're going to give away some, some Timex watches. On the, on the Facebook page, we're giving away Timex watches. So if you go to facebook.com bgfitness all you have to do is. As many of our listeners know, I'm writing a book right now and I'm releasing all the chapters for free to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and if on your blog, your Facebook, your Twitter, or as a comment on, like, you know, some other big blog like Huffington Post or whatever you share link backs to any of the chapters in my book, we are giving away, actually we have some really cool Timex gear like GPS running watches. And we're talking like $250 watches. Cool. Handing them out like candy over@facebook.com bgfitness so check that out if you want to win a watch. And then also, how many Twitter people do we have following the show on Twitter right now? Brock? 9,000 and some 9,700 something. I think it's, I don't know, it's 9,733. So if 9,733. For our 10,000th follower on Twitter. 10,000th follower on Twitter, I am going to send you a luxurious bag of salts that basically are like Epsom salts. On steroids, ancient minerals. These are the magnesium bath flakes that I use. They're similar to like what you'd get if you were to like float in an isolation chamber and get all of these super duper muscle healing salts absorbed through your skin. And it also does a lot in terms of like detox and stress relief subcutaneous through your subcutaneous later. And what happens is it makes you feel like a million bucks when you have added usually about 1 to 3 cups of this to a bath and you soak for about 20 or 30 minutes. Anyways, I have a six and a half pound bag of this stuff that I'm going to stick in the mail along with my dog and mail to our 10,000th Twitter follower. So if you're not yet following the show@twitter.com BenGreenfield what are you waiting for? Go get yourself some magnesium.

You know what they're waiting for now is for somebody to be the 9999.

Well, yeah. What you could do if you really wanted to do this the right way is you follow, right? And then once you get up to 9,999, you unfollow and then you follow again. I don't know, you could probably game it. I didn't even really think about it. There's got to be a way to game it. Either way though, I'm keeping my eye open. And as soon as I see that 10,000, I will direct message you on Twitter and send you some cool shiz.

Bang a luxurious bag.

So some other special announcements before we jump into the Q and A. I'll roll through these pretty quick. Sound good?

I won't say anything.

Let's go through in chronological order. Boom. Chronological five symbols. August 14th through 17th, the ancestral health Symposium. Myself, Mark Sisson, Rob Wolf and Jamie Scott and Jimmy Moore are going to be on a panel about ketogenic diets for athlete performance. I don't even know if you can still register for the Ancestral Health Symposium, but I know that a lot of our listeners are attending it. So come say hi. I won't bite and I'd love to hang out. So ketogenic diets and exercise performance. Come to our panel and ask me some kind of funky question. Don't believe it.

He will bite you.

London for our London listeners. September 10th through 12th, I'll be speaking at the Global Business Triathlon Conference in London. It ends on the 12th, but I have decided to stay in London until the 15th. So that's a weekend that's like Friday Saturday, Sunday, something like that. And I have no plans, honestly. Like I'm just chilling in London. So I did it because I would love to do a meetup with all of our listeners and all the Ben Greenfield fitness peeps in London. So just go to the show notes, check it out. You can email me Ben greenfield fitness.com if you are a Londonite. I would love to get some boots on the ground to help me put together a meetup. So email me if you want to do that. We could even make it into a mini clinic if we wanted to. If you're, if you're listening in and you own a gym or a studio there, let's do it. Cool. So check that out. London again. My schedule's hella flexible over there. What else? The Perfect Health Diet retreat in Austin, Texas, specifically from February 6th through March 6th. If you want to detox your body, get away for one month, change your entire life in terms of the way that you view food, prep food, cook food and experience food, and especially if you're an active person and you want to kind of see how to apply the Perfect Health Diet to an active lifestyle, you're going to want to register for the Perfect Health Diet retreat, specifically the one that goes February 6th through March 6th. We'll put a link in the show notes. Or you could go to elbertoaks.com which is the place where the retreat is. Go back and listen a few episodes ago to episode number 248, where we really delved into this in detail. I interviewed the guy who's putting it on. But the Perfect Health Diet is the diet that I endorsed, the diet that I use. And I'll show you how to tweak it for an athletic lifestyle. If you want to get away and do like kind of a 30 day intensive, it's gonna be super cool.

You don't have to go for the whole 30 days. So do you, you can actually for.

Like a week or if you go for like a week, what they do is they just like teleconference a bunch of stuff over to you if you decide you just want to drop in for, for a week or whatever.

That'd be hard to get away for a whole month.

Yeah.

Especially to Austin.

You know what, some people do it though. I mean, like, I won't, I won't beat around the bush. I mean, like some people just like have high amounts of expendable income or whatever or, you know, or an intense desire. Or maybe you're just like you've got a spouse who works A bunch. And you just sit at home, you know, in your bare feet with your feet up on the couch watching Hulu and you can get away podcast a month. So then the last thing is the Thailand Triathlon Adventure. I don't know if anybody listened into the podcast episode that came out earlier this week with Dr. Tamsin Lewis. She's going to be speaking at our camp there in Thailand. She'll do a triathlon medical Q and A. We're going to do bike fits, run workouts, swim analysis and swim clinics, bunch of stuff. And then we're also going to be like island hopping all over the place in Thailand. Who knows, maybe we'll drink some snake blood and eat some scorpions. Of course, either way, you can still get in@pacificfit.net Thailand and we're gonna be over there. It's kind of flexible. You can go for two weeks, three weeks, one week, whatever. But it's approximately November 15th through December 4th in Thailand if you go for the full she bang. So we are still gonna give away one other big giveaway at the end of this podcast, a Ben Greenfield fitness care package straight from me. But let's save that for the end and jump into the Q and A.

Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on healthy living and revealed their entire system inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, where you'll get Instant access to 24. 7Forum interaction with Ben and Jessa, a live monthly webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben's Body Transformation Club archives, and much, much more. If you or your family want to learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the inner circle@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle that's BenGreenfieldFitness. We'll see you inside. Listener Q and A.

Hey Ben and Brock, this is Craig. And just something I wanted to mention, the folks over at Sweet Beat recommended that I try something called Qigong to help with a little bit of sympathetic dominance there. I think that's how you say that. In any event, it has really been helping my numbers on the app and really been helping just overall well being for me. So if I want to know your opinion on that and also to mention to your listeners, there's a great app available on the icon pad called Healthy with Simple Qigong. So thanks. Love the podcast. Take care. Bye. Kee Gong did You know, I have the, I have the Japanese kanji symbol for key tattooed on my shoulder inside of a tribal sun. So yeah, I got spiritual. I got that when I was in college. I thought it was pretty cool. I swear that got me laid a few times. The key symbol kanji, it's worth it just for that.

And that's what it's for.

What does that mean? It's Qi life force, baby. Anyways, though, anyway, just to clarify, I am now happily married and so the Tai chi or qigong, they are for all intents and purposes relatively similar. I would say that Tai Chi is a little bit more of a practice that involves postural and body movements and a flow of the breath, a stilling of the mind, and essentially specific movement protocols that are designed to de stress you, make you self aware and heal your body, and also be used to get yourself into a state of meditation kind of similar to yoga, but a little bit more slow and flowing and almost dance like it's beautiful.

Watching some people do Tai Chi properly, it's really mesmerizing.

Yeah. And I actually, when I'm working with folks who are in a state of adrenal fatigue or over training, one of the recommendations that I make to them when I'm writing out their program, and at this point, most of the programming that I do for those folks is on, on Training Peaks, my online training platform. I, I encourage a Tai Chi session each week and just recommend that they go get like Beginner's Guide to Tai Chi on Amazon, for example. That's a really good one. And you just watch the video and it walks you through it. That's the one that I own. And you can just do a few simple Tai Chi moves. For example, when you get up in the morning or once a week, like on a Sunday, for example, perhaps if you're not working out. And it actually is a really, really good way to reduce stress. And we'll jump in in a moment here in terms of looking at this from a more physiological biochemical, slightly less woo woo standpoint, and whether or not it actually works. But, but qigong is kind of similar to Tai Chi. Qi Gong is a little bit more of a lifestyle though, where you're also, you're also focusing on things like the introduction of Chinese herbal medicine, you're focusing on food, on lifestyle components. So qigong is almost more of kind of like your lifestyle and also incorporates many of the Tai Chi movements as well. Now any student of Chinese literature or qigong and Tai chi practitioners probably about to jump through the podcast and choke me out, because I'm sure I didn't do that justice. And I don't claim to be a Tai Chi or a qigong expert. It's essentially just something that I've personally experimented with. And the reason that I got into it was when I tested my blood cortisol levels several months ago and found them to be through the frigging roof. And so I looked into a lot of different stress reduction protocols and Tai Chi was indeed shown in studies to be one of the ways that you can effectively lower your cortisol levels. And similar studies have been done on Q Gong that show a similar hormonal response in terms of a reduction in blood cortisol values. The cool thing is that it doesn't stop there. For both practices. There have been studies that have shown improvements in a bunch of different immune related blood markers like your white blood cell count, your eosinophils and your monocytes and your leukocytes. And these are all cells associated with your immune system function. An increase in your ability to have an immune response in terms of the efficiency of your antibody response, a drop in inflammation, specifically a drop in cytokines, C reactive protein and interleukin, which are three pretty potent markers of inflammation. And then of course, what you would expect from like a psychological and a cardiovascular standpoint, decreased stress, improved markers of mood on mood performance ratings, decreased resting heart rate, and also, you know, if looked at in sedentary individuals, things like improved bone density, improved fitness. I don't think that most of our listeners, being relatively active people, are going to notice that, you know, doing Tai Chi and moving around a little bit in a grassy park is going to increase your VO2 max or anything like that. But from a stress control standpoint, and especially, you know, interestingly to me, from just like a physiological biomarker standpoint, we see some pretty cool stuff going on with both of these. I don't know if I'm convinced that it's the qigong and the Tai Chi per se as much as it is learning how to slow down when you incorporate these practices into your lifestyle. But either way, definitely worth looking into. The iPad app that Craig recommended is again, just for iPad, but like I said, there are other videos and DVDs and things of that nature out there as well as because this is popular for some reason among old folks. A lot of your local community centers, they offer senior classes classes in qigong and Tai chi. And so as long as you're cool with going and, you know, hanging out with. With Fred and. And Wilma and whatever at the nursing home and doing your tai chi there. You could also learn, you know, in more of kind of a hands on format. So. So, yeah, there you go. Qigong, tai chi. Try it out. I'm a fan.

Yeah, it's good stuff. For people who are specifically suffering from some sort of over training or adrenal fatigue that are having a lot of trouble letting go of doing some sort of activity, this would be a good way to sort of substitute that in and not have that just freaking out, feeling like I need to go and do something. Ride my bike, do it for a swim or something. This would be something to sort of placate that part of your brain without beating up your body more.

Yeah. Or use it as your stepping stone to Kung Fu. Kung Fu Panda.

I don't know what that was. What was that voice you were doing there? If you can snatch the pebble from my hand.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Chuck. I recently got hired as a personal trainer at a local gym and would like to put on some more muscle and strength to better look the part. Also because I want to get stronger, but I don't want to sacrifice the triathlon speed that I have as a pretty decent triathlete. I'm just trying to figure out how I can maintain my triathlon speed because I'm still doing the cardio while improving strength. My second question kind of leads into that. To help me do this, I was thinking about taking creatine and I wanted to see your thoughts on that. I also saw some different blends, including creatine monohydrate, beta alanine, and citrine malate. I was wondering if that was a more productive blend than just taking a creatine monohydrate. So if you guys have any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear and thank you for having an awesome podcast. Please keep it up. Thanks, guys.

I like that he wants to look more the part.

Look more the part. Yep. Yeah. Well, I've got four words for you, Chuck. Cut off jean shorts.

And of course that goes along with.

The handlebar mustache and a mullet. You can't go wrong if you want to get 80s swole or 70 swole. Whichever it is, that's the way to do it.

Cut the sleeves off of all your T shirts as well.

Yeah, but like how to build muscle and maintain endurance at the same time. Tough gig, but you can do it. I definitely have some strategies that I use. Did you write a book about that? I did write A book about it too. I wrote the. Well, it's not a book, it's a program. But try ripped@tryript.com that's part of what that is really, is how do you be a fast triathlete but also not look like the kind of person who's going to get sand kicked in their face at the beach. You know, I, I personally being ex bodybuilder, being in fitness, still having to, you know, take my shirt off in videos and stuff like that. Like I like to, you know, I like to maintain a decent body. Like I don't want to totally get super duper skinny and lean. Yeah, I'd probably be able to be a faster cyclist or a faster runner if I were to shed a little bit more muscle than I've already shed. But I mean, hell, I've lost 35 pounds of muscle since I started this sport and I really don't want to lose much more. As a matter of fact, I see.

Those guys in the Tour de France and their upper bodies look like 12 year olds. And you know, I, I respect the, the ability to get that way and to stay that way and why they do it and stuff, but that's just not how I want to look.

Yeah, and you have some, you know, downstream bone density and hormonal issues and all that jazz. But I mean all respect to those dudes too, they, they ride bikes very quickly, quite quickly, probably faster than my car.

Ridiculous.

Ridonkulous. But anyways, as far as what you can do, first of all, I mean, to be honest with you, like creatine and beta alanine and citrulline and all that stuff. I'll give you some of my recommendations for supplement strength stacks. But popping a bunch of pills is not what's going to really significantly help you out here. It's going to come down more to what you're doing from an activity level standpoint. So I'll give you some basic rules that you can follow, Chuck. And these are the same type of rules that I use in my program at Tri Ripped. First of all, when you can do strength before cardio, that means that if you're doing a two a day strength session comes first or if you're doing a one a day, you are not doing your cardio training prior to your strength training. So you're not going for a swim and then going up and hitting the weight or, you know, whatever, running to the weight room and lifting weights and running home or doing anything like that. What you want to do if you're trying to maximize muscle while still building endurance is not send a message to your muscles post strength workout that there is any type of caloric depletion or stress taking place. So you put the muscles in an anabolic resting state as soon as possible, after you've dropped the bar or the kettlebell or the dumbbell or whatever, you move on. And there's no heavy endurance training after that. And if there is any type of endurance training, you split it up. So that's taking part later on in the day after you've. Refueled. After you've refed. So for example, if you were going to do strength before cardio, what that would mean is you're going into the gym, you're doing your multi joint heavier weight training routine to put on some muscle or increase strength or increased muscle mass and then that's it. Now if you want to warm up with cardio, you can warm up with cardio or you can do your, you know, a short cardio session beforehand. But ultimately what you're trying to do. I know this is a little bit of a convoluted answer here. Should have had another cup of coffee. Separate the cardio and the strength. Does that make sense, what I'm getting at?

Yeah, like, yeah, no, I think you, I think you explained that really well. It's just, just make sure strength comes before cardio. If you're doing heavy endurance, separate it, make sure you're refueling and yeah, prioritize one or the other on any given day. Don't try and do both.

Yeah, but when I even like when I say strength comes before cardio, like even that kind of sounds like I don't want you to think that means that you go and do your weight training workout and then you hop on the treadmill or you hop on the bike or whatever. When I say strength before cardio, I mean like strength workout in the morning and then like cardio workout later on in the afternoon or the evening after you've refed. And you know, I guess this is.

One of those times where fueling within, like, what is it, 30 to 60 minutes after that workout is really important.

Yeah, I mean what research has shown is that there is no huge need for post workout fueling unless you're working out again within eight hours or unless you're trying to put on a lot of muscle, in which case post workout.

Fueling, both of those are what you're trying to do.

So you're trying to hit that 20 to 60 minute window. You know, in some cases that window isn't important at all in this case. It would be especially if you're doing two a days strength on separate days when you can. And that kind of, kind of is tied to what I just said about separating strength and cardio. But I realized that when you're training for triathlon, a lot of times you're training for so many sports, swimming, biking, running, and then in this case, strength building or muscle building, that you can't have a day that is only a muscle building day. Sometimes you're just like, like, I gotta swim or bike or run today. In a case like that. Do not do eccentric muscle tearing activities on the same day. So what that means is the two things that should not go together on the same day would be running and weights. So what you could do is weights early in the day and then swimming later on, or weights early in the day and then cycling later on if that doesn't kind of logistically jive with you. Yeah, you could kind of like combine all that into, into one workout. But just be careful again, not to present your body with, with energy depletion following your strength training workout. Meaning don't do like a long catabolic swim right after you finish pumping iron, but at least ensure that you're not combining the two most muscle tearing activities on the same day, which would be running and weight training. So that's another thing to be careful with. And when I say combined running and weight training, I'm not talking about, you know, for example, like Martin Rooney's got a really good book called Cardio for Warriors, which is kind of like an MMA style training book. And in that book, yeah, there's a workout called the Hurricane workout where you're doing like a 30 second sprint on the treadmill, then you're getting off and you're doing clean and jerks, push presses, recovering, going back to the treadmill for a sprint. That's not what I mean when I say don't combine running and strength. What I mean is don't combine like your 10 mile run day on the same day as a strength day. I'm talking about like the long, you know, chronic slow cardio type of stuff. So make sense?

All right. Yes.

Cool. Yes. I mentioned Cardio for Warriors by Martin Bruni as like a good kind of like high intensity protocol. And I like minimalist training programs like that for building muscle and maintaining endurance at the same time. Simply because you're taking advantage of kind of a horse that we've kicked to death before on this show. The fact that high Intensity interval training can build endurance just as well as the long slow distance stuff. And there's kind of more, you know, two different ways that you can skin that endurance cat. So in this case, if you're trying to build muscle, you definitely want to choose that minimalist approach. So you want to use a program like that cardio for warriors like my tri ripped program. Like any of the, you know, go and read the, the article that I wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com called the ancestral athlete approach. You could just do a search for ancestral athlete@bengreenfieldfitness.com where I talk about this concept of just staying relatively physically active throughout the day, whatever standing workstation, pull up bar installed in the door of your office, that kind of thing. And then you've got these short intense workouts that you're kind of interspersing throughout the day to really almost simulate that warrior, you know, hunter gatherer standpoint of, you know, I'm gonna gather, farm, walk around, etc and every now and again I'm gonna run from a lion or a bear or lift a heavy rock. And that's a good way to kind of naturally build both endurance and strength. So I'd use that approach for sure.

Nice.

For sets and reps. You know, I did mention that you want to, you know, lift heavy things and do multi joint activities and things of that nature. But don't go too heavy and too low rep because if you want to look the look you are going to need to build some hypertrophy. And I mean if you look at a power lifter, a lot of those guys are slight, they don't look all that strong. Some of them frankly are pretty wiry and small, but they move a lot of weight really quickly. However, if you're just looking to score aesthetic points in the gym, I wouldn't necessarily be doing, you know, like a, like a, you know, five by three clean and jerk with, with short reps and heavy weights. I would be looking more into kind of like the traditional, more bodybuilder esque, you know, three, four or five sets of 12 to 20 reps to muscular exhaustion. And you're basically just taking a muscle and making it so that that muscle is really sore the next day and, and that frankly builds muscle pretty quickly. I mean there's a reason that bodybuilders do what they do. So that's called a hypertrophy style set and rep range. And Chuck, being a personal trainer probably is yawning at this point because he knows what hypertrophy is, but that is the style of training that I recommend more than like mass strength or power training. And there is a trade off there. Hypertrophy training does not result in the same type of sports performance benefits. But if you're just wanting to be able to wear your welcome to the gun show T shirt, you know, hypertrophy training is definitely something that you want to mix in there. So 3, 4, 5 sets, 12 to 20 reps, you know, that's going to build muscle faster than lower sets with higher weights and low reps. So which, which you know, that latter approach is good for power and, and strength, but not so hot for just straight up building muscle. And then as far as supplements go, you know, I've got a few full on supplement stack that I recommend for building muscle. I'll give you the crow's eye overview of it. But really the gist of it, the most important thing is that you want to keep your blood levels of amino acids high because that's what's going to stave off muscle cannibalization, especially if you're doing endurance training. And so that means even if you can't stomach, let's say a protein shake or a nice piece of fish or steak or something like that before, say like a bike ride, you're doing 10 grams of essential amino acids before you head out and 5 grams of essential amino acids, you know, like a, like the master amino pattern amino acids or something like that every hour during that ride or during that run or during that swim. So you are never putting your body in a state where it has to dip into and cannibalize its own lean muscle. And of course the opposite strategy goes if you want to lose muscle and lighten up, you know, maybe you're whatever ex football player wanting to get into Ironman and you need to shed a little muscle. You know, that's a situation where you exercise in a state of low amino acid availability and you cannibalize muscle. But if you're trying to do the opposite, yeah, you keep the blood levels of amino acids up by dosing with amino acids. And again, that article that I just wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gives you options other than amino acids for this, like hydrolyzed whey protein that you can mix into your water bottle or like an organic collagen blend, like a Great Lakes gelatin or a Bernard Jensen gelatin. And these are like powders that again you can add to a water bottle or something like that, or even interestingly, bone broth, you know, Doing a few cups of bone broth during the day does a pretty good job keeping your levels of amino acids up. Whether you make it yourself or you order it from like, you know, TheBarrothery.com is a good one. So keeping the blood levels of amino acids up, that's the key, most important thing from like a supplementation nutrient standpoint. I have a muscle gain pack that I personally designed over@pacificfit.net it's comprised of the top three things I recommend for building muscle. Number one, a hydrolyzed whey protein isolate. And for you vegans out there, you can make a substitute for a vegan protein. But when it comes to muscle building, you can't beat hydrolyzed whey protein. If you really want to get every advantage possible and you're okay with eating animal derived products. Colostrum, which flies under the radar but is really potent at increasing growth hormone. And there's a reason that every baby mammal on the face of the planet that breastfeeds gets colostrum because it helps them grow fast. And then amino acids that that pack is hydrolyzed whey protein, colostrum and essential amino acids. And I've got some high school players that I've coached that I train online and we're able to get anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds of muscle a month by eating a lot of food and including packs like that. So that works really well as far as some of this other stuff, you know. Yeah, creatine works, carnitine works, citrulline works, beta alanine works. Usually when you're lifting as much as you're going to have to lift and doing as much endurance as you're going to need to do to build strength and endurance at the same time, you're going to want a greens supplement in there as well to balance ph. And so, you know, that's a lot of stuff to stack. But if you're kind of looking for like the ultimate supplement stack, I'll give you exact milligram and gram ratios and tell you exactly when to eat them. I'm just going to put them in the show notes. I won't go over them in the show because frankly, I think most people probably wouldn't remember the stuff anyway. So I'm just gonna put it in the show notes. But I'll tell you exactly what to take and when and just put that underneath your question over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com250 but yeah, I mean, creatine, carnitine, citrulline beta alanine, amino acids, greens, colostrum, hydrolyzed whey protein. Boom. If you really are going after everything that you could do. So there you go.

Hi, Ben and Brock, this is Jenny. I have a question for the podcast. I was wondering if I wanted to get your opinion on the ALCAT Food Sensitivity Test. A L, C A T. I had this test done, and after I had it done, I started to hear some controversial views of it and whether or not it's accurate. And I was going to apply the results of the test with various levels of food sensitivities to my diet and see if I had any changes or felt any different. So I just wanted to get your opinion on the test and whether or not you think it's worth trying to apply it. I don't feel bad. I just wanted to know what I had of food sensitivity to, if anything, and see if I would feel any different if I applied the results of the test. Thanks a lot. Bye.

I've never heard of this test before, the alcat. Is that something? Have you tried that one before?

Yeah, I get a lot of people that will come to me for a consult after getting their ALCAT test because suddenly they magically find out that they react deleteriously to 300 different foods and minerals and preservatives and environmental factors. And it's one of those tests that's like, you know, medical school syndrome, where a medical school student is studying a disease or sickness and all of a sudden they're like, yeah, I have that. I have that, too. Oh, crap, I have that. So ALCAT testing measures how your blood cells react to foods under conditions that are designed to mimic what happens when those foods are consumed in real life. So I mean, that in a nutshell is what it is. But it stands for antigen, leukocyte antibody test, and it measures adverse reactions to dietary substances not by having you eat all those substances and measuring your response, but instead simulating for each of those substances what would probably be going on from an antibody standpoint in your bloodstream, and then kind of extrapolating what you're probably going to be allergic to based off of that. And I'll put a link in the show notes where you could go over to directlabs.com and check out all of the different foods that this will test for. I mean, it tests for food additives and colorings. It tests for environmental chemicals like benzene, like chlorine, like fluoride. It tests for 20 different molds like spore molds, and just all penicillium and all that kind of stuff. And then every food on the face of the planet, like 200 different food groups. And then what you get is a printout that shows severe tolerance, moderate tolerance, mild tolerance, and then stuff that's just kind of like super cool to eat. And the printout that you get after an alcat is okay. I mean, it does include kind of like a little bit of a rotation diet where you can try out all the things that are recommended to you as being okay to eat and see which of those rotations you feel best on. And it gets pretty complicated, frankly. I mean like a lot of times this stuff stresses people out because there's just like so many things that you end up finding out that you have to avoid. And this is why it annoys me is people will come to me and they'll be like, can you write me out a healthy nutrition program? And oh, by the way, I can't eat pork, chicken, beef, eggs, pears, apples, fish, any beans, legumes, no peppers, and nothing from the squash family. And you're like, okay, so you're eating paper with ketchup. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to do some nice romaine lettuce with barbecue sauce. And you know, the issue is that when you look at ALCAT testing, or you look at ELISA testing, which is similar, or you look at sublingual testing in which you put these suspected foods underneath the tongue, or you even look at some of these igg, iga, ige, what are called immunoglobulin tests. I went over a lot of these tests in a recent article I wrote about detoxing your body and fixing your gut over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and we look at applied kinesiology and we look at some of the more alternative medicine stuff like the nae, cbt, natural allergy elimination technique, all of this stuff is going to test you. And none of it has really good peer reviewed research behind it showing that it's going to give you, give, give you true results and also showing that it's not going to result in a lot of false positives. A lot of false positives, which is the big issue. A lot of these things are going to identify things that you tend to have a reaction to, but they are really going to generate a lot of false positives. And frankly, many of the antibodies that they're going to indicate circulating in your bloodstream are not because you're allergic to the food, but just because you've got a natural, completely natural immune response to those foods because you are already including them as a large part in your diet. So I know that's kind of a bummer to a lot of people that, like, a lot of this stuff doesn't work all that well. But frankly, the best way to assess whether you've got a food allergy or a food intolerance is you have to do the work. You have to get one of these like an app. Get like the sweet beet food sensitivity app where you can input your food intake and measure your heart rate every time you eat certain foods and also record how you feel. Or get the Azumio Argus app is another one. Or the good old pen and paper and you essentially record your food intake.

I'm not familiar with the pen and paper one.

It's a. It's at penandpaper.com.org of course. Yeah. $2.99 on iTunes.

Oh, what a bargain.

Or kinkos. And you pay attention to your symptoms over a period of several weeks, usually up to four weeks. So if you're getting swollen lips and hives and skin rashes and diarrhea and constipation and high heart rate and dizziness and weakness and fatigue and you're like finding. Go to the hospital right now and you're getting what would be considered an allergic response or an immunosensitivity response or an intolerance response to a food. You put a big red X through that food and you don't eat it. Okay. It's not that. It's not that hard, but it takes work. And I think a lot of people don't like to work. They just want to go do a blood drop and get this magic result that tells them what not to eat. And there are a hell of a lot of false positives that you get from that versus paying attention to what you eat, assessing how you look, how you feel and you perform when you eat those foods, and then avoiding the foods that make you feel crappy. It's not rocket science. It really isn't. And I think that a lot of people over complexify. I'm going to take a point for that word, complexify and strategize too much when it comes to this stuff, when in fact, you know, there are some. So let's put it this way. If you feel crappy after you eat, let's say a pear, and then you get an alcat sensitivity test and you're just like off the charts for pear, I'll say, okay, so maybe we shouldn't eat pears. Anymore, but just the Alcatraz, that sensitivity chart alone with somebody who just feels fine on pears but now gets really nervous when they eat them is not enough for me personally. And so that's kind of where I feel about this stuff. I think that unless you combine it with actually paying attention to what you eat and how you feel after you eat it, that it's somewhat useless and very prone to error.

I think a lot of people just spend so much of their time walking through life just kind of feeling mildly crushed, crappy all the time. That, that's the appeal of these kind of tests is I just want to know what is triggering this crappy feeling because I generally don't feel like I, I want to feel all the time and, and I understand the, the desire to just want to have a list instead of having to, to break everything down. I mean I spend a lot of time in, in a lot of big offices and see the things that people eat on a regular basis. It's just, it's just awful and it's a really big change for them to make in their lives. So it's, it is hard and like you said, it's like you're being afraid of hard work is, is one of the biggest problems. But you got to do it.

Yeah. And I mean that's really like. I don't do a ton of food allergy testing. Like I've done some of it, but let's say oats. I've never tested food sensitive or food intolerance to oats. And I've done alcat and Elisa and amino, you name the test, I've done it because I dig into this stuff and I use myself as a guinea pig and you know, I use like a Bob's Red Mill gluten free oat and made oatmeal and soaked it overnight and did everything. But if I ate oatmeal at 8am, which I did for like three years, almost every morning by 10:30am I was on the toilet for 15 minutes or so and I like just kind of thought that was normal. I was like, yeah, it's my mid morning bowel movement or whatever. Lo and behold, once I switch from oats and eliminate them from my diet, gas, bloating, flatulence, all that stuff minimizes drastically. So there you go. I'm not going to do oatmeal much more anymore. And didn't. Frankly, no test told me that and I just had to figure it out for myself based off the way I felt.

Yeah, I just think it like for a lot of people, they've got to start at a higher level than that. Like you're already targeting oats because you've already got sort of narrowed down to there. But first of all, you've got to stop eating all the chocolate bars. You've got to stop eating the donuts every morning that people bring into the meat and drink.

Whoa, back it up. Chocolate bars. I'm not going to stop eating my chocolate bars.

Seriously. Like, they're just like plates of candies out and little bowls of little chocolate bars and stuff. And you've got to cut that out first and then start eliminating the things that are actually food. And I think that's, that's the big step.

Yeah. Everything that I just said. You're right, Brock. It makes the assumption that you're eating kind of a clean diet anyways.

Yeah.

And then we're talking about the real food that you might have issues with. So. Yeah, I mean, if you're starting from Big Mac and candy. Yeah. That's, that's a totally different perspective to start with. And you know, it's kind of a no brainer.

The Big Mac is making you feel bad. Yeah, like, like just we can make that assumption.

Those are the people that are listening to Jillian Michael's show, though not ours. Our listeners are much more refined. They're. And farther along their pathway to health than that. I think based off of, based off of our demographic assessment, the majority of our listeners are 40 to 60 year old, highly educated females. Actually.

Everybody, like pull down your pants a little bit. Smooch your bum.

That'll lead just great into our neck. Question.

Hi, Ben, this is Morgan from Colorado. I've been listening to your podcast over this past year and really enjoying it. I'm 43, six foot tall and kind of lean, and I'm trying to bulk up a little bit. And your ab exercises with planks have worked really well. Give me some abs. But I kind of plateaued. So my question is, after the planks get easier or I get really good at them, what is the next step to continue the progress of building some abs? Kind of like your Magic Mike abs podcast. I started the planks like it said and it did great. Just looking for the next step. Appreciate everything you're doing. Thanks. Bye.

You know, I want to get to the point where planking is so easy that I just need something else to do.

Magic.

Way to go, Morgan.

Yeah. Hey, what's, what's the guy who plays Magic Mike in? Magic Mike. What's his name?

He's got a crazy name.

Oh, it's like. It's gonna drive me nuts now. It's like Chase or Chatham or. Or see if you can.

Channing Tatum.

Yeah, Channing Tatum. Yeah, Channing Tatum. Do you know he actually used to. To be a stripper before he was an actor?

Well, he was a dancer.

I think he was a stripper. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that he did. He was like a male stripper. But, yeah, Magic Mike, he's got some good moves in that show. Some good stuff. Magic Mike, ab exercises. Yeah. I wrote a whole article on how to get abs like Magic Mike. I'll link to it in the show notes. But it just goes into everything that you would need to do. And one of the first rules is don't do crunches just because they don't burn a lot of calories, and they primarily just. Just burn or build your rectus abdominis. And they don't give you shell muscles, really. Or go muscles, for that matter. But one of the exercises that I.

Do recommend, we should clarify what go muscles are. Go muscles are ones that actually help you with your daily activities, like sitting up out of a chair, getting out of bed. Anything like that.

Or banging and thrusting. Imaginary poles. Anyways, though, I'm glad you said imaginary poles or real poles as. As planking gets easier and easier, because planking is something that I do recommend in that article. Yeah, you can. You can make planking harder. I've got some. Some definite tips for that. I don't know if anybody listened to my podcast with Ari Meisel where we talked about the Man Maker exercise. That's. That's kind of a variation of the plank because.

Yeah. With the renegade rows. And it's a burpee jump or. No, there's a shoulder press at the end of it.

Yeah, you jump down into a plank position, and then you do a dumbbell row on one side, a dumbbell row on the other side. You stand up, you do a squat, you press overhead. But you could just take the rowing portion of that movement where you're getting down, you're holding on to two dumbbells, and you're just doing renegade rows, one on one side, one on the other side while you keep your hips from rotating too much. And that's killer for the core and build your, you know, your upper body pushing and pulling mode muscles, too. A variation on that is you get into your front plank position in front of, like, a cable apparatus or an elastic band or a couple of elastic bands. That you have in front of you and you do elastic band rows, alternating arms while you're in that planking position. Again, trying to keep your, your hips from rotating side to side so that your, your core is completely stabilized as you do that variation. Front plank.

So you started doing like a, like a superman reach almost, because you're in the plank and you're lifting your arm up towards your head, but it's resistance on the way down.

Yep. And so you're pulling with the band. You can also do it with nothing at all. Just like get in a front plank position and you just lift your right arm off the ground, reach forward, thumbs up as far as you can. At about like 1pm if your head is at noon in that front plank position, come back and then reach out, thumbs up to 11 o', clock, come back and that's, that's tough to do if you're not letting your core rotate too much. I'm a fan of shoulder taps where you get in a front plank position, you pop up into a, into a push up position. Like you just press yourself up into a push up position. You touch your left hand to your right shoulder, then you touch your right hand to your left shoulder and then you go back down into a plank position and you just see how many of those you can do in two minutes or do like whatever, 10 reps for each side or whatever. Kudos to any of our listeners who can do 100 of those that will show that you're pretty, pretty damn good shape. You can do 100 shoulders.

That's a man maker.

50 per side. Side plank variations of the plank. Big fan of those. Probably my two favorite are, number one, to hold a dumbbell and rotate the dumbbell completely underneath your body and then all the way up to the sky while you're in that side plank position. If, if any of you are visual people and not audio people when it comes to this stuff, I've got all these exercises video recorded over on the YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitnessChannel if you go there and you use the YouTube search function and you just do a search for the word plank or the word planks, you'll see like a crapola of variations of the plank. But I like that one called side plank rotations where you're holding a dumbbell and rotating your body. That one's a good one for swimmers especially. And then also just getting into a side plank and doing abduction with your leg, lifting the leg that's closer to the ceiling, towards the sky and down that one works your abs and kind of your glute meds and a lot of those hip abductors at the same time. So that's a good one. And then the last one I'd recommend for a plank variation would be the rollout. And this is one that I've got a video for also on the YouTube channel, where you get into a front plank position, but you've got your shins on a foam roller or on a stability ball and you roll your butt up towards the sky until that foam roller, that stability ball is more over your toes. And then you just roll back and it's literally like you're like you're humping an imaginary whatever. It would be that you like to hump while using that foam roller or that stability ball is kind of resistance. If you really want to take this one like to the, to the umpteenth level, you literally put a weight plate underneath your toes. And in a front plank position, you walk that weight plate across the floor. You could do it in a push up position either way. So that's called a crocodile crawl and, or crocodile carry, or crocodile drag, whatever you want to call it.

So you're just, you're dragging the plate basically like with your feet towards your hands into like a pike position.

You actually are just walking the plate like, like you'd have to do this like a basketball gym or like whatever, the yoga studio. Yeah, you're just like walking the plate across the ground. But it's really hard. Like you gotta try that. A lot of, a lot of crossfit boxes will do. We'll throw that exercise into. So it's a, it's a goodie.

And what about dangling exercises? Like anything like in a, in, like on a chin up bar? Is that, is that worth doing what.

You call it, a dangling exercise?

Dangling, yeah, dangling there. Well, because I always do them. Pantless.

Yeah, like extra dangle, hanging leg raises, hanging straight leg raises, hanging bent leg raises. All that stuff helps. But I mean, we're specifically kind of focusing on plank variations. I mean, sky's the limit with all the other stuff you could do. But for plank variations, those are some of the better ones that Morgan can throw in there.

Magic Morgan.

Hi, Ben, this is Tanya Bevin. I have a question for you regarding the oregano oil. I just got over bronchitis last month. Unfortunately I now have an upper respiratory viral infection, so I am taking some flora. Since I was on antibiotics for the bronchitis, Brian told me to start taking the oregano oil this Morning. So I've been taking it twice a day. So my question is, how long do I need to take this and should I take more of this than twice a day? Looking forward to hearing your response. Thanks, Ben. Bye.

Yeah, how long can you take the oil of oregano before it sort of loses its efficacy? Efficacy plus one, as long as you want.

By the way, Tyna, shout out to Brian. Brian's actually one of our, I think he, Brian just joined up with our, our Superhuman Coach network this month, I believe. So he's in, he's in my mastermind program@superhumancoach.com now. And we've hung out. We hung out at like Paleo FX and he came to the Superhuman live event and all that jazz. So, yeah, cool stuff. Brian's a good guy. So oregano oil. If you want to really get access to the full meal deal on oregano oil, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com oregano and listen to like the hour long interview that I did with the guy who's kind of like the world's expert on oregano oil. But oregano oil has really good properties when it comes to breaking down bacterial cell walls. When it comes to boosting your immune system or killing like airborne pathogens, it's got some really good, free, radical crushing antioxidants in it. Good stuff. When it comes to strengthening your body, some of the things that you can use it for is it works really good with like candida and yeast. And for people who have like bacterial overgrowth, what it does is it selectively attacks bacterial cell walls of the type of bacteria that you don't want without destroying like probiotics and good bacteria in your digestive tract. So I mean, you could literally like take oregano oil and still be using whatever, you know, like a, like a raw yogurt or something like that. It wouldn't cause issues with the yogurt. So it's really good for that. If you've got like Candida albicans and similarly for mold, it can do pretty good with mold as well. And that would just be like used orally. It also works on like fungus and mold infections on the skin, like athlete's foot and stuff like that, it works well with parasites as well. You got to step up your consumption pretty high to really work against like tapeworms and parasites and a lot of nasty critters that people don't like to think that they have, but a lot of people actually do. And for something like that, we're talking about pretty advanced usage like 50 to 60 drops a day. So you got to go through a lot of it because it does take kind of some pretty big guns to take out a parasite, but it works well for that. It's actually got a lot of good nutrients in it. Oregano oil has a good amount of magnesium in it. It's got zinc in it, it's got vitamin C, vitamin E. So kind of beats the pants off, like one of those airborne effervescent tablets. It doesn't taste as good, but if you get it in mixed in a decent ratio, like, you can get it. Pacific Elite Fitness has oil of oregano, a Mediterranean oil of oregano that's harvested over in Turkey, I believe, and that's mixed in a really highly absorbable 7 to 1 almond oil to oregano oil ratio. So it actually doesn't taste that bad. And the almond oil really enhances the absorptability. And you use it, like, sublingually or in a glass of water.

I think that stuff's really tasty. I've actually considered cooking with it in the past. Like just, ooh, just a couple drops in the sauce would be delightful.

Yeah. What else? It's a bile stimulant. So it stimulates the flow of bile into your digestive organs. So you can use it during, like a cleanse or a detox protocol. And it really helps to step up your detox. Some women have found that it works pretty well with correct, like, like PMS symptoms or irregular menstruation. Just using it on like a, like a daily basis. What else? For allergies, it can improve, like, hypersensitivity of the immune system. Also, if you're congested or anything like that, if you use the real potent stuff, like 100 oil of oregano, a few drops of that in a glass of water and you toss a glass of that back, it literally clears out your sinuses, almost burns your face off. I actually use 100%.

Really?

I. I have the people who mix it for Pacific Elite Fitness just send me the 100% bottles. You can't. You can't buy it because it is dangerous. Like, if you get it on your skin, it's really potent. It'll burn your skin.

Yeah.

But I like it because I can mix it in a glass of water and literally, I mean, feel it going down. It's like taking a few shots of apple cider vinegar type of type of thing in the morning. So, yeah, it's really, really good for that. And then finally, like, colds, flus, things of that nature. Taking it whenever you start to come down with a cold or a flu can help quite a bit with that, especially with sore throats, because a lot of times that that is like a bacterial fungal growth in your, in your upper respiratory tract. It can help kill off a lot of that stuff. So as far as how you use it, advanced usage, if you've already come down with something, or if you have like yeast, fungus, parasites, that type of thing, advanced usage, we're talking about 40, 50, 60 drops a day. And you can split that into like 20 drop portions in the morning, in the mid afternoon and in the evening, preferably on an empty stomach for just daily use. Just getting some of the mineral benefits out of it, getting some of the cleansing properties out of it, just the natural detox properties. You would use right around five to ten drops a day. And I start off my day in the morning when I might. The very first thing I put into my body every morning is about five drops of that hundred percent oil of oregano. If you're using the diluted stuff, you can do more than that. You can do like 10 drops. But I just suck that down and, and it's just kind of a good way to jump start my day's cleanse. And you know, if you're the type of person who requires a, maybe like a cup of coffee to have your morning bowel movement, oil of oregano will definitely achieve the same thing within about 20 minutes or so. So you can use it for that as well anyways though. Yeah, there's a bunch of different staple essential oils out there, but the ones that I keep around always are astragalus for improving my white blood cell count. And I take that during like flu season or when I know I've been exposed to something or when I'm traveling. I keep oil of oregano. I've got phytoplankton drops which are kind of like. It's not really an essential oil, but it's like a drop. We've talked about that before in terms of helping out with the body's natural repair mechanisms through stem cell formation. And then echinacea. Again, if I know I've been exposed to a cold or flu or something like that. But the only ones I take, the only one I take every day is oil of oregano. The other ones are just kind of here and there as need be kind of in the medicine cabinet. Hey, Ben and Brock, it's Will from the Yukon. Do you guys have any tips for endurance training for natural sprinters? My lovely Fiance is a personal trainer and natural long distance runner. While I am on the opposite side of that coin. I've always been fast but struggled to run long distance. And by long distance I mean anything over 5km. I find maintaining my endurance extremely difficult as well. Any tips you could pass along would be fantastic. Cheers. And love the show. Well, what I would do if I were Will Brock is I would just like run really fast in the beginning and then like go around the corner, hop in a car, bicycle, take advantage of that speed and just get as far ahead as you can and then meet everybody else at the finish line.

I think you should just run like 4k at a time, as fast, fast as possible and then wait for everybody to catch up.

Yeah, do.

If he's really quick at recovering, he could actually still beat them.

Yeah, exactly.

Just doing it in like little chunks.

So building speed and endurance at the same time just comes down to, you know, the fact that as you build endurance, you're going to get conversion of your fast twitch muscle fiber into more oxidative fat, utilizing slow twitch muscle fiber, which has a longer time to fatigue but, but can't produce as much force over a short period of time, so you lose some power. So you've got two strategies you have to go over. One is to improve your endurance without losing fast twitch muscle, or while at least mitigating the loss of fast twitch muscle. But then also maintain what are called the number of motor units that you have in the muscle are being stimulated by your nerves so that as you kind of get that fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fiber conversion, you're still grabbing as many of those fast twitch muscle fibers as you can when you do want to use them. So a few strategies that you can use for this. The first would be to go back and listen to what I already said to Chuck about not like cannibalizing muscle mass. So you do maintain some of that fast twitch muscle fiber. But then I would also, for the endurance component, be going after things that are going to help you build endurance without necessary necessarily pounding the pavement. Probably the top two things I would recommend to you would be, number one, my enhanced breathing protocol that I have found people who are not very good with endurance be able to go out and run and bike for long periods of time just using this protocol. And essentially it is deep nasal breathing. It's teaching yourself how to do deep diaphragmatic breathing. But do it through your nose. And what that does is it keeps you from going anaerobic, lowers cortisol release and enhances your ability to tap into your aerobic system without exhaustion. And you know that if you are doing the deep nasal breathing, you're not tapping into the energy system that is going to fatigue you kind of prematurely. Now I have a full article that walks you step by step on how to breathe the right way when you're working out and especially how to breathe the right way and use this deep nasal breathing when you're exercising. And we'll link to that in the show notes. My enhanced breathing protocol. But that's one thing that I would recommend is the deep nasal breathing. And that's what I've personally been using like in my Ironman training.

I think something that isn't actually written up in your protocol. One little hint is make sure you blow your nose really good before you head out the door because you're breathing quite vigorous through your nose. And yeah, stuff tends to end up like on your shirt.

Breathe Right strips. Have you used breathe Right strips for that yet?

I haven't tried that.

No. Those work really well. Like you're just like cleared out within the first five minutes. And you can, even after, after you've warmed up, take the breathe Right strip off and you're good to go. Like, it helps to kind of clean you out in those first few minutes. The Compex EMS Electrical Muscle Stimulation training is another decent way to build endurance at the slow twitch muscle fiber level without actually going out and cannibalizing your fast twitch muscle. And so that, you know, this is kind of more of like a biohacking technique that some people might snicker at. But you know, it actually does work. It has specific protocols in it. The Compex Electrostim device, and I'll link to that one in the show notes. But you can choose the frequency and the frequency that you choose, the electrical frequency that you choose is going to dictate whether you are calling on slow twitch or fast twitch muscle fiber with those electrodes. And so you can train your slow twitch muscle fiber or your fast twitch muscle fiber or both throughout the week and ensure that you're getting both of those energy systems trained without going out and doing actual catabolic training. That's going to result in a loss of speed while still building endurance. So those are kind of two things that would kind of fly under the radar from a training standpoint. If you're doing endurance training and you want to maintain speed, number one, make sure that you include plyometrics. Plyometrics are going to ensure that that stretch contract phase of your muscle after your foot hits the ground is still pretty quick. So you're going to train yourself to decrease ground reaction time, which makes you better at endurance or speed either way. So we're talking about single leg, high hops, double leg hops, bounds, depth jumps, things of that nature. So even jump ropes can work in a pinch, Just like doing some short, fast jump rope type of sets. Another thing that can really help out if you're trying to maintain speed while you're doing endurance training is overspeed training. Specifically the downhill repeats, the treadmill repeats with the belt moving along at a pretty good, good clip or using deep water running. And deep water running allows you to run at a really, really high cadence without the same type of, of knee and ankle and hip impact as you'd get running at that same cadence on the ground. So plyometrics, overspeed training, those are two things that I would use. Another thing that I would look into is running stairs because, because stairs can really give you that fast feet, you know, if you do one stair at a time, and then you do the downhill stairs really fast, that also can build endurance while at the same time maintaining your speed, maintaining your turnover. So the whole lens through which you're looking at this is training your endurance, going out and doing whatever those long training runs that you're doing to build up your ability to run longer than a 5k, but also not neglecting speed. So you're still doing plyos, you're still doing fast feet repeats, still doing some high cadence, underwater running, treadmill or downhill running, still doing some stairs. And then the other thing that you should consider is when it comes to maintaining speed, I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I wanted to get into as far as that goes, I'm just racking my brain about speed training, quickness training, explosives training. I mean, like speed ladders and agility ladders. That's another thing that can help out a little bit. I've got a whole article@bengreenfieldfitness.com it's called the Five Essential Elements of a Training program that most Athletes neglect Power and speed. I mean, go read through that one and just make sure you're not neglecting that stuff as you're training for endurance. Those are the biggies. Those are the main things. And I'm just trying to think, anything you can bring to the table here, Brock, you want to throw?

No. You covered everything that I, I would think of.

Yeah.

Other than maybe some sort of blood transfusion or Something.

Yeah. Or dangling. Dangling would also dangle.

Lots.

Dangling would help dangle like Magic Mike, baby. So, yeah, I believe that. Does that wrap up the questions for today?

That does wrap up the questions.

Gosh.

But I think that was a.

That was a shiz bang ending, wasn't it?

Fizzle.

But let's.

Let's save it by reading an itunes review.

Ah, itunes. Okay, so I've got a good one. So if you listen to the show and you go and leave an itunes review and we read it on the show and you hear us read it on the show then. And you write in, tell us that you heard us read you on the show, we send you, you some cool stuff. Usually it's me sending out a bunch of random things I have lying around my house. And in this case, what do I have this week? I've got some TNT. I've got some life shots, I've got some X2 performance natural calm magnesium. I've got some phenocaine. Basically just a bunch of drugs. Here is what I, Chaos Eternal now has to say. Nice.

I like the name.

I kind of picture Chaos Eternal now as being like this guy who's like covered in tattoos with like a, like a long haircut and a goatee and he's.

Yeah, there's definitely some sort of a.

Dead bird in his beard and yeah, maybe an electrical guitar that he's strumming as he. Electrical guitar? Yeah, electric. Electric guitar. And his. His review says, how did I end up on this bike? And he gives us five stars. So here we go. He says, I am fascinated with nutrition, but as far as fitness goes, I mostly just listen to fitness podcasts while sitting on the couch, much like watching the Food Network while nuking a Lean Cuisine. However, the more I listened to Ben and Brock, the more I thought about getting off my butt. It started small. A pair of running shoes, a 15 minute goal. And here I am six months later biking with 50 pounds of kid trailer behind me. Hopefully he doesn't have like dead birds and stuff in the kid trailer. And there's a kid in there and training for a 25k this August. They busted too much knowledge on me to ignore. Oh, and all this knowledge put into action cost me 50 pounds of body fat.

Oh, that's what he's got in the kid trailer?

Yeah. His own body. Educate yourself. He says. This podcast will do that. That's a pretty cool killer review. I like it. So, so Chaos Eternal now, if you heard us read your review, then let us know and we'll send you some dead birds and body fat in the in the mail. So there you go. And you can be international. We would. We will ship stuff internationally. I don't care if you're in Dubai or Indonesia or wherever. We'll send you stuff. We'll figure it out.

Listener all over the place. I can't believe sometimes where we have.

A reach and Internet no matter where you live. Also go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and spread the love. There will be a nice treat waiting for you there. A nice special Secret surprise@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Love so visit that. If you're going to be at the Ancestor Health Symposium, come say hello. If you're going to be in London, come say hello. Think about Thailand.

Oh yeah. Think about Thailand. Yeah.

Go check out the phone app to win Brock's running shoes. Compression socks. Yes. Be our 10,000th listener and get magnesium salts. Get a brand new Timex watch over at Facebook. Yeah. Twitter follower.

You're confusing everything.

And oh, the last thing, I released a premium podcast episode and a premium video to our phone app this week. So if you're one of our $10 a year premium members that we're not going to get rich like that. That episode is everything you wanted to know about Ketogenesis and Ironman triathlon training. So check that out. If you're into that. And you actually don't even have to have the phone app to be a premium member, you can just sign up and access any of the premium content from your computer as well. If you are 80 years old and all you have is a computer without a phone or a phone.

And a dial up connection.

And a dial up connection. How do you work these? I found Marge. Let's go do some qigong.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sam.