How To Get Beautiful Skin, The 5 Worst Exercises, Does Cycling Make You A Faster Runner & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, how to get beautiful skin. The five worst exercises. Does cycling make you a faster runner? What food allergy testing 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 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.

Rachel, I am. I'm in pain right now.

You are?

How come I'm in pain? Well, not only am I jacked up on coffee because I just got back from the Spartan World Championships last night, so I'm practicing everything that we talked about in last week's episode.

Right, the sleep.

Yeah, exactly. The sleep deprivation. So I've got like, I've got the coffee. I did like the, the bright light in my ears. I did the aniracetam and the creatine. I pretty much did everything that we talked about in episode 332 this Morning because we got in super duper late last night from the race and the battery was dead on the car. So stood around freezing my ass off waiting for AAA to show up.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

And how are we feeling after doing all of the recommendations from last week?

I feel surprisingly good except for the. That the inside of both of my thighs, I think because of all of the barbed wire crawling and the upside down rope climbing the inside of both of my thighs, the adductors are. The skin is worn away. They're like one big long bloody scrape. So I actually thank you, Rachel. Thank you for being Australian because I used one of your down under animals to help me out with that.

Oh, you did?

I put emu oil on the, on the scrapes. Emu oil is actually. We're going to talk about beautiful skin today, but emu oil is actually very, very. I'm going to throw a nerdy term out there biocompatible with the human skin. It actually helps to heal wounds and heal scars. Emu oil.

And where does the oil come from in the emu?

Where?

I don't know.

I always thought they just sacrificed small cute baby emus and harvested oil from them.

Probably, I don't know.

But either way it work. I don't know if I want to know yeah, it does work. And also I think I aggravated it as well by going horseback riding the day after the race.

Yeah, that's definitely not doing yourself any favors.

Yeah, my little inner thighs are screaming. But regardless, we shall move forward and we shall deliver today's podcast.

News flashes.

As usual. Twitter.com BenGreenfield is where you're gonna find all of the most up to date information, all of his crazy cool things that are happening, and all of his news flashes. So make sure you're following him there.

Mate. I'm just gonna keep on saying mate until it gets really, really old. Just.

No, it's okay. I'll start saying it soon.

No, with Brock I had to say, eh, Hockey poutine. I don't know, are there other Australian phrases that I could use or overuse or rub in your face other than no?

I think mate's good, but I think you gotta be like, get a mate. Like that.

Mate. Alright, mate. Well, let's start here. Muscle building. Muscle building on a ketogenic diet. Have you ever experimented with one of these like high fat ketogenic diets, Rachel?

I haven't. We did cover it a little bit last week, but I haven't. No.

Okay. All right. So the idea here is of course that ketosis is the concept of consuming 80 to 90% fat based the portion of your macronutrient intake from fat, whether that be MCT oil or, or ungodly amounts of cheese or seeds and nuts or however you go about skinning that cat. But the other idea behind ketosis and ketogenesis is that of course you are restricting carbohydrates and there is quite a bit of head scratching out there about whether or not it's possible to build muscle while eating a ketogenic high fat diet. Like if you deprive a muscle of carbohydrate, does that completely shut down the anabolic response? So this week I tweeted on Twitter as you do a study that came out in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition recently. And in this study, what they did was they fed rats a ketogenic diet. Now, in a moment you'll learn about why they didn't use humans. But what they did was they fed these rats a ketogenic diet for six weeks. High fat, they used 20% protein, 10% carbs, 70% fat. So high enough for the rats to likely be in ketosis. And then they had another group of lucky rats that they fed a western diet which was 15% protein, 40% carbs, and about 40% fat. And then what they had them do after seven weeks was they did not have the rats exercise. Instead they use electrical muscle stimulation to exercise those rats for them. So little rats didn't have to run on a treadmill, they just got to sit around, watch TV and get the hell shocked out of their plantar flexor muscles.

Can I say that's my kind of exercise?

That's right. So then they sacrificed the rats. This is the nice term that they use in literature, meaning that they killed them and took apart their muscles and looked at their muscles. And this comes down to where they the reason why they didn't use humans.

Because they can't sacrifice humans.

Yeah. For some weird reason human sacrifice is still frowned upon in research. I don't know why. Some weird ethical thing anyways though what they found was that when they looked at the anabolic markers, so we're talking about there's a specific enzyme called Amp K that's responsible for the anabolic muscle building response to strength training or in this case electrical muscle stimulation. They found that there was absolutely no inhibition in terms of the biochemical markers of being able to build muscle on these rats fed a ketogenic diet. Now I noticed a few headlines saying that you can still build muscle on a ketogenic diet or a ketogenic diet doesn't restrict muscle gain. That's technically not true. All this study found out was that it doesn't shut down the anabolic response. But there has yet to be a study in humans showing that you can get swole eating an 80 to 90% fat based diet. Now that being said, I do have some athletes that I've worked with and I've also implemented this with myself. This whole idea of eating a high fat diet until the very, very end of the day and then eating carbs, doing this carb refeed. So you give your muscles a bunch of glycogen at the end of the day and then you jump back into ketosis. And that seems to work quite well for muscle building. As you know, by the size of my biceps, right? Uh huh. Which are just mass, they get in the way huge.

Oh my God.

Have trouble typing anyways though. So that's the deal. I'll link to that study in the show notes as well as everything else we talk about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 333 but rats sacrificed appear to still be able to build muscle after eating a high fat diet.

There you go, there you have it.

So speaking of fat, there was an interesting article that came out in the Los Angeles Angeles Times that talked about why Americans are fat. And I don't know if it's this way in Australia, Rachel, but what they did was they looked at the consumption patterns, the eating patterns of a whole bunch of people in San Diego in a study that they did in San Diego, which I would say is a relatively accurate subset of the American population. And they found that the participants in the study, despite their claim in a pre study questionnaire to be a they eat three square meals a day, like a breakfast, lunch, dinner pattern. What they found instead when they watched these people was that they pretty much ate and drank pretty much all day long. So they actually averaged. And this was quite shocking to me, but I personally used to be right up around this, they found that they averaged right around 15 noshes per day. So they were actually stuffing their face, whether it be like eating a peach or drinking a kombucha or having breakfast or eating lunch, and maybe after lunch, a little while later, having a handful of nuts and grabbing a piece of candy as you go by the desk. Basically they were eating the entire day. And even people who thought that they were fasting. I recently got someone tweeting me on Twitter when I tweeted, I feel like I'm using that word a lot.

Yeah, you are.

Anyways, though, I tweeted about the study that found that doing a 12 hour intermittent fast per day was quite helpful for fat loss. And someone wrote back to me and they said, well, doesn't everybody do that? Everybody who sleeps at night has a 12 hour fast. Well, just try some time and check and see, like finish eating dinner, set your stopwatch and see if you actually don't eat for 12 hours. You would be surprised. Most people maybe don't eat for seven or eight hours in many cases. So interestingly, despite people's feelings that they were just eating three square meals a day, they were actually snacking quite a bit more than that. And what they also found in another smaller pilot study was they did have people fast and they had them fast for 12 to 14 hours over a course of 16 weeks. And that means that they were doing more of this like restricted feeding window. They found that on the average, the study participants in that study lost an average of just over 7 pounds of fat over those 16 weeks.

Wow.

And their sleep satisfaction went up, their daily energy levels increased, and their level of nighttime hunger actually decreased. So ultimately what this comes down to is that if you are someone who's having trouble losing weight or losing fat, you May want to just step back and start to like, log your diet, photograph your food, or do something to see if you are indeed eating or snacking more often than you think. Or perhaps not fasting. As long as you think.

Yeah, it's very interesting. I'm surprised that something as fundamental as eating can happen so subconsciously, you know, like, so without our notice, we just graze all day.

And I don't know if this is true, but I heard that like French children, for example, are not allowed to go into the kitchen during the middle of the day and just like randomly grab food. Grab snacks.

Yep.

I don't know.

I've never heard that.

Perhaps if we have a French listener, perhaps you could pipe in and say we or nay, Depending on which it is. The last thing that I wanted to mention was how to biohack. You might find this interesting, Rachel, because this study was about vegetable based proteins like rice protein, pea protein, hemp protein. Right?

Yeah.

I know that you do a lot of vegetarian based proteins and I do too, actually. Whey protein isolate and whey casein blends do not agree with me, despite them being considered to be the optimal protein source to support muscle protein synthesis and rapid digestibility and bioavailability of amino acids and all that jazz. To be frank, I feel like I am out a straw after I much weigh protein.

It's not a Ben Greenfield fitness podcast without talking about poop.

That's right. So I'm a big fan. I use the Onit hemp protein. I use this protein that we sell at Greenfield Fitness Systems called a living protein, which is a blend of pea and rice. Even the bars that I consume are generally protein bars flavored with pea or hemp or rice protein. And it is true that you have a little less bioavailability and a little less amino acid absorption from a non animal based protein when you eat these. But what they found in a recent study was that when you take digestive enzymes prior to consuming a plant based protein, the digestive enzymes eliminate any differences in the quality of the protein. So what that means is that if you were to say, pop a couple of digestive enzymes prior to consuming like a pea or a hemp or a rice based protein powder or protein bar, it enhances the absorption and the speed of utilization up to the same amount as you would get from eating a whey protein. Isn't that interesting?

Wow, that is.

Yeah.

That's a good hack for me for sure.

I know, it's cool. So you combine digestive enzymes with a plant based Protein and it eliminates any significant differences between like whey, pea, rice, hemp, et cetera. So there you have it. And now you know how to how to biohack a vegan or vegetarian protein. You know, multiple ways to get swole.

Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben, it's Sonya here from Australia. I recently started eating a lot more eggs and the eczema on my skin flared up. Now I've dropped back on the eggs and it is dying back the eczema. However, a naturopath advised me to start supplementing with evening primrose oil and I would be inclined to avoid evening primrose oil because of the Omega 6 content. And she advises me that there is excellent research to show that it helps people with eczema and skin conditions in general. If you haven't covered this, would you mind giving me your thoughts? Love the show. Thanks.

So Rachel, do you know Sonia? She sounds like she comes from your neck of the woods.

She does sound like she comes from my neck of the woods. And I don't know her, but I strategically chose her question. Gotta get some more Aussie on the podcast.

That's right. If you're Australian and you leave a question, you now get priority because Rachel is handpicking the questions. Anyways, though, yes, this is very interesting about evening primrose oil because there's this claim that evening primrose oil can soothe eczema. And what evening primrose oil is, it's this bright yellow plant. You find it in Native America or Native America, North America. And it's. It's something that's actually quite common. I actually have out in my yard a lot of bright yellow flowering plants. I haven't yet found evening primrose, but I have found quite a bit of St. John's Wort.

I remember you telling me. That's incredible. You got a whole yard full of it.

Yeah, the antidepressant. My kids call it the happy plant. So anyways, evening primrose has these little seeds and the seeds have fatty acids in them and these fatty acids can be used to make an oil. And you'll find it in many supplements, you'll find it recommended in many, like, folk remedy books, and you'll also find it recommended for eczema. And the reason for this is that primrose oil has something called GLA in it or gamma linoleic acid, and that's supposed to help reduce skin inflammation. Now, they recently did a meta analysis, a review of all of the different studies that had done been done using evening Primrose oil or something very, very similar. Another oil that you'll find that's very rich in gamma linoleic acid. Borage oil. Borage oil. And so they looked at all these different studies that were using either evening primrose oil or borage oil specifically for the treatment of eczema. And what they found was that not only was there no significant effect in terms of the efficacy of evening primrose oil for skin conditions, but they found that the anticoagulant effects, like the blood thinning effects of a lot of use of evening primrose oil, especially orally, could cause some health issues in folks, especially people who are taking blood thinning drugs like warfarin. So ultimately it turns out that it may not be the ideal solution for something like eczema.

Interesting. So the naturopath was wrong.

The naturopath may not have been 100% correct. There are other things that I would recommend for healthy skin more than I'd recommend evening primrose oil. So I'll tell you some of the things. One is vitamin A, vitamin A or retinol. And vitamin A actually changes the physiology of the skin. It promotes what's called epidermal differentiation, basically cell turnover in the skin. So when you have cel turnover in the skin, what happens is your skin appears more beautiful, that you actually want cells to turn over more rapidly. And that can help with things like acne or eczema. So retinol or vitamin A is something that you're commonly going to find in a lot of things that you would consider to be like fatty or fat soluble, vitamin rich foods. Liver, cod liver oil, cream or butter, preferably from a pastured, organically fed cow. Egg yolks are quite good. Probably if you're going to use a supplement, I would say cod liver oil would be one of the top. You could use a vitamin A containing multivitamin, but ultimately nothing really beats like a cod liver oil or the fish oil that I use just has a bunch of extra retinol added to it. That one's called super essentials fish oil. But any vitamin A rich food is very, very good for the skin.

So she mentioned that she was eating a lot of eggs and it flared up. Is there a reason why that would happen?

Yeah, if she had some kind of an egg allergy and we're actually going to talk about food allergy testing later on in the show. But yes, it wouldn't be because of a specific compound in the eggs as much as it would be if she had an Actual immunoglobulin, what's called an IGA or an IGE reaction to the eggs. So it's more common actually for that type of reaction to occur in response to grains than it is to eggs. But for her, she would want to choose a vitamin a rich source that was not eggs, preferably. So zinc is another really, really good one for the skin. So zinc actually helps with protein synthesis and wound healing. I probably need to take some at this point for the barbed wire wounds. But zinc, in terms of dietary sour, you can get it from plant foods. Pumpkin seeds are very high in zinc, so those are pretty good. And then if you're looking for like a meat source, liver once again is very good. Red meat has a lot of zinc. And then a lot of your, like your shellfish or your oyster scallops, things like that. Those are very, very good animal sources of zinc. With the caveat that you need to pay attention to the source, you know, and for the same reason that anytime I eat sushi, I usually pop some activated charcoal to absorb any toxins from the sushi. Same thing with shellfish. If you're going to rely upon shellfish for zinc, make sure you're aware of the source. Another one is vitamin C. Vitamin C is one that I've recommended multiple times on the show for anyone going into surgery because of its ability to allow connective tissue to heal more quickly. And vitamin C can also help to treat sunburn damage. It's a very, very good antioxidant for the skin. You don't have to use a vitamin C supplement. It can be kind of tough on your gut if you're, you know, if you listen into last week's episode about eating the rainbow and kind of getting a wide variety of colorful foods, I know this is like, kind of like nutrition 101 for a lot of you listening in. That's something that you should definitely do if you want healthy skin. So vitamin A, vitamin C and zinc is where we're at so far. Now another One is omega 3 fatty acids. Now, the interesting thing about evening primrose oil and borage oil is they're very high in potentially the slightly more inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids. Omega 3 fatty acids can help to inhibit inflammation in the skin that's caused by UV radiation. They've been shown to help reduce the risk of skin cancer and they can reduce the type of inflammatory responses that cause things like dermatitis, psoriasis and eczema. So higher dose fish oil is something I recommend. But when I recommend Fish oil. And I recommend higher dose fish oil. I'm talking about 2 to 4 grams per day. And I'm really not wanting to recommend a lot more than that. And that's because the high omega 3 intakes that you often see recommended, a lot of times, like in the paleo community, they'll recommend like 1 gram per 10 pounds of body weight per day. I've seen that recommendation, I believe, and, and I like Rob Wolf, I like a lot of the stuff that he has to say. But he has this fish oil calculator on his website that's recommending in many cases for the average guy in excess of 5 grams of fish oil per day. More is not necessarily better with omega 3 fatty acids. And that's why I'm reticent to recommend much more than 4 grams a day. For example, in mice, high amounts of omega 3 fatty acid supplementation has been shown to induce fatty liver disease. It's also been shown to increase the rate of what's called pathological angiogenesis, which is basically like a blood vessel issue. And whereas normal, like sane amounts of omega 3 fatty acids are usually anti angiogenic, higher amounts can actually stimulate some issues with blood vessel inflammation. So you actually have to be careful with excess omega 3s. And even the DHA. DHA is like, it's docosahexaenoic acid. It's considered to be very, very good for your nervous system, very, very good for your brain. But there is some evidence that once you exceed a certain amount of dha, you can actually have a higher risk of cancer. You could say the same thing for growth hormone, for testosterone, et cetera. So when we talk about fish oil, I am not a fish fan of mega dosing with fish oil or taking too much fish oil. At the same time, those smaller amounts of fish oil have been shown to be beneficial for the skin. And interestingly, there was one study in Sweden where they looked at children, they looked at infant eczema, which is a common issue. My kids had a little bit of eczema when they were babies. And what they did was they studied these kids and they looked at what oils would do in terms of assisting with eczema. And what they found was that if fish was introduced into the child's diet by the nine month mark, the chance of developing eczema was slashed by 25%.

Wow.

And that of course would be due to the omega 3 fatty acids and the effect that that can have on skin health. So we used to, when our kids were young, we would rub Fish oil. And then we also used flax oil and extra virgin olive oil. And we would use that on their skin and also their feet to absorb it topically.

That sounds nice. I like the idea of oil on my skin.

Little fish oil massage.

That's super gross, actually. Extraversion is not so bad though.

Yeah. Okay, so fish oil. Thumbs up, but not too much of it. Another one is silica. Silica can help in wound healing, it can help in college inflammation, and it can help with skin elasticity. So it's got a lot of cool things in it. Interestingly, you can find silica in pretty high amounts in good mineral rich water. Like Fiji, for example. Fiji has four times the levels of silica than you would find in any other bottled water brand.

I love Fiji. It's like the most expensive water in Australia, though, so. Sorry, Sonia.

Yeah, it is pretty spendy. You can also get trace liquid mineral supplements. Trace liquid mineral supplements have silica in them as well. So. And you can literally just put like a shot, like a half ounce of trace liquid minerals into a morning glass of water. And that's fantastic for skin health and has a lot of other good benefits, too. Niacin. Niacin is another. And while high dose niacin can cause some annoying skin flush and like, kind of itchy skin, the same amounts of niacin that you'd get from just good whole food sources like meats, poultry, like the darker fishes, tuna and salmon, those are very rich in niacin. Green leafy vegetables, and then also most seeds have a lot of niacin in them as well. So niacin is also very, very good for the skin. So that would be another one. And then vitamin K2. Vitamin A is very important for the skin, incidentally. Vitamin D is too. Most of us know of vitamin D as a sunshine vitamin, and that one's fantastic for the skin. But vitamin K2 has been shown to be helpful for the treatment of acne, keratosis, and any other skin symptom that's related to vitamin A deficiency. Because vitamin K assists with vitamin A absorption. So vitamin K2, that would be eating plenty of fermented foods that the bacteria in your stomach can make their own vitamin K. So that would be like sauerkraut and kimchi and kefir and kombucha and stuff like that. But then also egg yolks, which obviously Sonia should probably avoid. But a lot of other folks who are looking for skin health might be able to use a natto, the fermented soybean that's very high in K2. And then again, a lot of multivitamins will also have a good blend of vitamin D, vitamin a and vitamin K2. So a couple other things. Probiotic or fermented rich foods, or for foods rich in fermented compounds, that's very, very good for the skin. And there's a lot of studies recently that have shown that when you combine prebiotics and probiotics, it reduces the rate of or the presence of inflammatory acne and other skin conditions.

So what are prebiotics? Where can I get prebiotics?

Prebiotics are simply the fiber that feed probiotics. So a lot of times you'll find things like inulin, for example, added to a probiotic compound. And that is because it allows the probiotics to feed on that fiber and to flourish. It's also just fine to eat a lot of plants like a plant rich diet and then just take a probiotic supplement supplement that doesn't have a prebiotic in it. And that can be helpful for a lot of people who get gas from these prebiotics that are added to probiotics. So if you look at your prebiotic or I'm sorry, if you look at your probiotic and it has a lot of fiber added to it, then you can, and it's giving you gas. You can switch to a probiotic that doesn't have all that fiber added and just eat plant rich foods. A lot of times that would be the case. If you have something like a small intestine, bacterial overgrowth or candida or yeast or fungus or something like that, you'd be better off getting your fiber from vegetables rather than like a prebiotic found in a probiotic compound. If that makes sense.

Yeah, that does.

Awesome. So those are some of the biggies that I would go after for skin health. Vitamin A, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin K, some type of fish oil or omega 3 fatty acid source silica, good probiotic. There are a couple of others that kind of fly under the radar. One is biotin. Biotin is a water soluble vitamin and you don't find a deficiency to be very common among folks. But you can get biotin from things like Swiss chard, romaine, lettuce, almonds and walnuts have plenty of biotin in them. And a lack of biotin can cause dry skin. And dry skin can oftentimes result in things like eczema. So if dry skin is an issue for you, biotin can be quite helpful. And then the other one is sulfur. Sulfur is a very abundant mineral in the human body, and it's necessary for collagen synthesis. And lack of sulfur can actually lead to premature wrinkles. Now, foods that are very high in sulfur are, as you would guess, foods that smell kind of farty.

That doesn't sound very fun.

Garlic, onions, Brussels sprouts. Oh, I like all of those, all those slightly stinky foods. Those are sulfur rich foods that can actually be quite good for the skin because they help you to produce glutathione, which can reduce a lot of these inflammatory skin conditions like acne or eczema. You could also take supplemental glutathione. Whey protein also helps you to produce glutathione. So if you tolerate whey protein, unlike me, you could use whey protein to form glutathione, or you could use like a sublingual glutathione. But the sulfur and biotin would be another two to add in. Now, I know that sounds like a lot of things to help out with beautiful skin, but those are some of the biggies. And I will put a lot of these resources in the show notes for Sonia. The last thing I would mention. And we'll talk about this perhaps a little more when we talk about the allergy issue, the egg issue. There is one diet out there. My wife used to have really bad acne and really bad eczema. And we used to just kind of eat what we thought was a typical healthy diet, right? Like, we had a lot of. We had a lot of whole wheat bread. We had just like, you know, dan and yogurt with fruit at the bottom. And, you know, we did like diet sodas. And that was like, for a couple of years when we first got married, that was kind of our diet. Like the shop healthy at the grocery store type of diet, right?

Yeah.

Which is, you know, kind of like the. You're not eating the. The typical western American diet of McDonald's, but you're still kind of sort of eating unhealthy, right? And she had bad acne, bad eczema. And my first foray into, like, looking into, I guess what you would call like an ancestral diet or like a paleo diet was my wife found this book on the Internet called. It was written by this guy named Loren Cordain, who's considered to be like the father of the, the paleo movement. And it was a book about healing your skin. It was like the acne cure, the dietary cure for acne or something like that. And all it was was limiting insulin production by eliminating grains and dairy from the Diet. So she did this and within like half a year, her skin literally was. It was like a new person.

Wow.

I mean, she was spending like half of the time in the bathroom each morning, like putting on the makeup and covering up everything. And it was pretty crazy. And I'm not necessarily saying that grains and dairy are the devil when it comes to acne and eczema, but limiting them or consuming them in their ancestral fermented, healthy form is actually quite prudent. And that was kind of like our foray into eating really, really healthy. Was my wife trying to manage her skin condition. And so now there's, there's this book that I think is the ultimate book when it comes to reducing any issues with food allergies causing health problems. And that's called the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol. And all that does is eliminate a ton of common allergy irritants like soy, eggs, grains, et cetera. It's got a four week version, it's got an eight week version. It's kind of like my go to for pushing the reboot button on food allergy issues.

I was gonna say that. I see you tell people to all the time.

Yeah, yeah. So it's called the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol. I didn't write it, but it's a fantastic resource. It's just kind of like a done for you way to get rid of any potential food allergy producing food in your diet. So hopefully now we will see Sonia on the COVID of Women's Health with perfect skin. Or maybe she'll be not a hand model. What do you call a skin model?

I don't know if there is a name for them.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know, maybe Sonia can be a cheek model. So there you go, Sonia. You can send us your royalties once you make it in the cheek modeling industry.

Hey, Ben, this is Tyler out of Phoenix, Arizona. I'm pretty new to the podcast, but I'm a huge fan. It's pretty much the only thing I listen to on my commute anymore. I recently watched a video from Jeff Cavalier on the athleanx YouTube channel where he listed off the quote, five worst exercises. According to him, they are chest flies, behind the neck, shoulder presses, upright rows, good mornings, and leg extensions. He was mostly speaking from a perspective of physiology and biomechanics. And I'm just wondering if y' all are on the same page or not. And if not, what Ben Greenfield's five worst exercises are. Thanks.

You know, this one is kind of tough, Rachel, because it Depends on what your definition of worst is. I think some people would argue the five worst exercises would be like burpees, pull ups, running up a hill, carrying a sandbag.

Those sound like my five worst exercises.

Biomechanical worst or biochemical worst? That's the question. So let's see. This video says that the five worst exercises are chest flies, behind the neck, shoulder presses, upright rows, good mornings and leg extensions. I don't know. Those are all kind of like go to exercises for getting swole at the gym.

They are, aren't they?

Yeah, those are the exercises that you see the guys doing. Like the high schoolers are cut off the sleeves of their T shirts and go to the gym with like the tribal tattoos, sit down, do the behind the neck shoulder presses.

You're pretty much just describing yourself. You know that, don't you?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I used to be a complete gym rat. These are some of my go to exercises. So. Chest flies. Chest flies. You know what Jeff says is that what happens when you do a chest fly is that you put the shoulders under a great deal of strain or stress and you also, you increase your potential for tearing your chest muscles when you do something like a chest fly. This one, I, I would say it depends. Like there's this one version of the chest fly that you do where you sit on a bench and you bring your hands together in like a flying motion and it's not functional at all. But man, when I was a bodybuilder, if you wanted to get a nice chest, that was kind of like the go to exercise. And I would even give that when I was a personal trainer to, to like women who wanted a better bust. Like that was one of our go to exercises because it stimulates like your, your lower chest fibers, upper chest fibers, the inner chest fibers. And it's an adjunct. It's a way to hit the chest fibers from a different angle than like push ups or bench press or dumbbell chest press or incline press or decline press would do. So I can't necessarily say that I'd completely throw chest flies under the bus. Go ahead.

Is it bad physiologically?

The version of chest flies that can be tough on your shoulders and tough on your chest and even increase your risk of tearing your pec, which is no fun, is the one where you lie down on your back on a bench and you bring dumbbells farther and farther apart and then closer together. That one can be tough on your shoulders, but actually the one where you're, where you're sitting and doing it with the machine or even the one where you're using the cables, it's not functional. It's not going to make you a better athlete. It's, you know, a waste of time from, like, a functional standpoint. But if. If you just want to get a popping chest, it's actually a pretty good exercise. So I'm going to have to say I would not necessarily include chest flies in unless they're the kind where you're lying on your back with the dumbbells, which can put a lot of stress on the shoulders. So next one that he says is behind the neck shoulder presses. Anytime you have something behind your neck, like when you bring your arms back apart in external rotation and then you put stress on the shoulder, that can lead to impingement. It can lead to pinching of soft tissue in some of that shoulder musculature and the bones around the shoulder, it can lead to increased risk of dislocating your shoulder. And this is what you see happens in basketball players a lot. They'll be in that defensive position with their arms up out in external rotation. The arm will get hit and it'll get dislocated. And so that's actually a common issue. But behind the neck, shoulder presses, taking a weight and pressing it overhead while trying to keep a barbell, like, back behind your neck. It also puts a lot of strain on your neck itself because you're having to kind of crane your head forward as you do it. So I would agree with this one, but I would also throw right in there along with it. Behind the neck pull downs, which is another common exercise that you see people doing at the gym, like doing the. You know what I'm talking about, like a lat pull down behind the neck. Anytime you have some, like, behind the neck with your head craned forward, just not a good move, especially when you consider you've got your head craned forward a lot of times when you're, like, working on the computer, driving.

Exactly.

Yeah. Not a good move. So I'm going to agree with that one. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Upright rows. Upright rows are the third one. And he says that's a bad shoulder exercise because when you pull in that rowing motion, you put your shoulders into a position where, once again, you could impinge soft tissue, like under your clavicles or in some of the bony musculature of the shoulder. And again, this one kind of sort of depends on how high your elbows go when you do an upright row. Because look at this. Functionally, a lot of times when you're doing yard chores and you're pulling things around or you're building or you're doing, you know, a lot of functional activities. You are kind of rowing and you are rowing in an upright position. And if you ever try and say, like, build a cinder block wall, which I've done in the backyard before, you're picking a cinder block up off the ground, you're rowing it up the ground, and a lot of times you're kind of putting it above your head. And so an upright row can be a pretty functional move. I would say that some people, though, bring their elbows up very, very high when they do it right. And there's no need that your elbows need to go much higher than about your chin level if you're going to do an upright row. So with the upright row, I would say it depends. It depends. But it's. It can actually be a pretty functional exercise. And it's a great exercise for building your shoulders, like building the width of your shoulders, if that's something that's important to you.

So it's not one you want to rule out.

That's right. That's right. Okay. Good mornings. Good mornings are another one. So good mornings are when you put a weight, you hold a weight to your chest, or you put a barbell on your back and you bend over while pushing your butt out behind you. And you kind of like bend down and then you stand up. And the way that the person who first taught me Good Mornings described to me as the reason that it's named Good Mornings is because you bend down and then you stand up and you say good morning. And that never made sense to me because I can't think of any situation where I've ever just like bent down at the waist and then stood up and said good morning to someone.

Yeah, not me either. Me either.

Maybe in Japan or something. It's something that they do like, where you kind of like, do like the bow. But I can't say that Good mornings, the name of Good Mornings, makes sense to me at all. So anyways, though, yeah, if you slip up during a good morning and you don't have the necessary, what's called thoracic mobility, the mobility in your mid spine to be able to pull off this move. You can potentially herniate a disc, compress a disc, or cause low back issues at the same time. It's a really, really good exercise for spinal extension and for strengthening your erector spinae and for also strengthening your glutes. And again, this one comes down to Form. My favorite way to do good morning is called a folded dollar bill exercise where you clasp both hands across your chest, no weight at all, or a very lightweight like 20 pound sandbag for example. And you bend forward at the waist while looking forward, keeping the back straight until you get a little tightening of the hamstrings and then you stand back up and you can do that with no weight. I'll throw it into a yoga routine. Sometimes I'll do sets of those like in the, in the sauna when I'm sweating, just as a way to strengthen my back and sweat at the same time. It's actually a very, very good way to lengthen your back. There's a really good book written by a guy who worked with a bunch of professional athletes like Lance Armstrong works with a bunch of Olympic athletes, cyclists especially, who are bent over a lot of times during the day to help them to restore extension to their spine. Dr. Eric Goodman, and he's written this book called Core and it's foundation exercises for your low back. And he has a version of the good morning in there. And I first started doing it a lot more when I read it in his book. And it is a fantastic way to maintain low back health. You just don't want to toss a 135 pound barbell on top of your.

Neck and do it right. So don't overdo it.

Yeah, don't overdo it. For crying out loud. Do not ever approach someone while they're eating breakfast at a hotel and bend forward at the waist and stand up and say good morning.

Good morning.

You will get funny looks so good mornings. Again, it depends. And the last one is leg extensions, the one where you sit down on the ground or not on the ground on a machine. Right. And you kick the legs forward into a full extension position and then back. It's used in research a lot of times because it's such an easy exercise to control for in research because you can quantify powers, you can quantify load, you can set things up in a very controlled environment and you can look into something like how much lactic acid builds up in the vastest medialis muscle of the quadriceps when you're doing repeated leg extensions for X number of sets and reps. Yeah, and it is very, very good for that. It's very good for controlled environment research based setting for something like strengthening your legs. Though it does have a big shearing stress on the knee. It's like a big transverse stress through the knee. It does put what's called Your ACL under a lot of tension. A ligament in the knee that if placed under a lot of tension, then you go out and sprint or something like that, it can cause it to tear. There's not a lot of co contraction of your hamstring when you do it, meaning that your hamstring is completely turned off because you're sitting down and then you're extending the leg. So you're not teaching yourself how to contract the leg functionally.

Right.

At the same time, though, let's say that you have a quadriceps to handle hamstring strength imbalance and you need to strengthen your quadriceps. Could come in handy for that. Let's say you are injured. You have an ankle injury, for example, and you can't squat and lunge. Could come in handy for that. Let's say you have a weakness in that internal quadriceps muscle, that VMO muscle doing leg extensions with your toes turned slightly outwards. It can help with that. So again, it's. You can probably guess what I'm gonna say. Depends.

It depends.

It depends. So I would say that again, you're not gonna find me in the gym anytime soon throwing down some sets on the leg extension to get my quads all big. But at the same time, it's not necessarily an exercise. It would completely. What's the word? Eschew or eschew?

I don't. I actually don't know that word.

E S C H E W. I've.

Seen it, but I don't know it either.

I believe it is a shoe. Yes.

So what are your top exercises to avoid?

My top exercises to avoid would fall somewhat into that same category. I have an entire article about the exercises that I would avoid. And while I'm not going to get into great detail on them, I'll link to this article in the show notes. But the top seven exercises that I've written an entire article about exercises you should avoid. And I'll put a link to this in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 333 Number one is machine side raises because of the impingement on the shoulders. Number two is. Well, number two and three are the thigh abductor and the thigh adductor machines. The ones that you see the women at the gym doing while they check emails on their cell phone. Behind the neck lat pulldowns, which I already mentioned. The seated rotation machine, which is the one where you sit down and you twist the torso from side to side. That one's really bad.

That doesn't sound good.

Crunches, as a matter of fact, are one that I listed. Just basically because high rep crunches really don't strengthen your abs much at all and can in fact put a lot of undue stress on your low back. And then finally the Smith machine, which is the barbell contraption in which the barbell is trapped inside a moving track and it doesn't, you know, it travels in a very, very linear pattern. So if you do squats or deadlifts or something like that on a Smith machine, you're forced into a movement pattern that's somewhat unnatural. So those are my top seven exercises to avoid, and I'll put a link to that article in the show notes. But in the meantime, if you as a Ben Greenfield fitness listener, see anyone at the gym using Smith machine, leg extension, adductors, abductors behind the neck, lat pull downs, seated rotation machines, etc. Just either slap that person in the face or put a heavy weight on your back, go and bow at them, stand up and say good morning.

Good morning.

Hi Ben, and welcome Rachel to the show. This is Michelle. I've been a longtime listener and I'm sure my friends are tired of hearing I heard I on a Ben Greenfield podcast, but really, I don't see any of them tagging along on any of my long rides or runs like you guys do. I've heard that on past episodes that you want more training questions, so here's one for you. I've heard that bike training does translate into run training and Ironman training, but wanted to hear the Ben in air quotes express explanation how this actually works. This past Ironman training season I really felt prepared for my run at Vineman and not sure if this is truly related to the increase of the long bike rides or just overall training. Good Ironman training. Thanks for taking my question.

Well, this one is interesting because actually I mentioned Lance Armstrong a few minutes ago, but he I remember when he first won. No, he didn't win the Tour de France. It was like his seventh win or something like that. Albeit we now know they weren't real necessarily real wins. He ran a marathon. It was like the New York Marathon or the Boston Marathon. And here comes this guy, one of the most elite endurance athletes on the face of the planet, with a VO2 max that's greater than probably most of the other people he was racing against. And he shows up in his basketball shorts and everything to run the marathon. And he was fast, but he wasn't as fast as you would have expected A cyclist to be, he ran like 3, 20 or something like that, which again is a fast marathon, but it's not as fast as you would expect. And ultimately it raised some questions. How much does cycling really help you with running? Running? Or on the flip side, how much does running help you with cycling? And it turns out that there actually have been some studies that were done on this, both studies with groups as well as studies with individuals. So for example, there was a team from the University of Texas that looked at the effects of the cross training, the cross training effect on VO2 max between cycling and running and swimming. So maximum oxygen utilization. And what they found in this study was that the cross training effects never exceeded the effects induced by the sports specific training mode. In other words, the best way to increase VO2 max for running is to run for swimming, to run cycling, cyclocyle. That's kind of what you would expect. So you can't increase your VO2 max in running, for example, by cycling really, really hard with lots of cycling intervals. And you can't necessarily increase your VO2 max in running by swimming.

Do they help at all?

They do, they do. So another study found that, and this is not cycling, I know, but they found that in swimmers, in swimmers who do restricted breath training, meaning go out swim, but breathe only every six strokes or every eight strokes, that actually improved efficiency and economy in running in those same individuals. So breath restricted swimming has good crossover to running. There was another study in which they took a group of track athletes and they reduced their running volume by about 50% and instead had them do cycling. So they had a run only training group and then they had a run, run and cycle training group. And they found that in the run only training group, they actually had a decrease in their performance by only about 1.5% on a 3000 meter race, meaning that running at half of the volume and substituting cycling instead of running actually resulted in almost no decrease in their ability to be able to run fast for a 3000 meter race time. So in that study they found that cycling actually could, it didn't increase speed. Right, but substituting cycling for running, potentially because it's lower impact, could decrease your risk of injury and at least help you to maintain or be close to maintaining speed. Now there's also some other conceptual theories that haven't actually been fleshed out in research, but that anecdotally, I've heard very good things about. So for example, I interviewed a guy whose son runs track and field, and this was a guy interviewed about electrical Muscle stimulation. Jay Schroeder, he trains a lot of NFL athletes and his son did a lot of single speed training on the bicycle. Very, very high rep. Like when you're riding downhill or on a flat on a single speed bike, you are cycling in excess of like 120 reps per minute or RPM. And when you are doing overspeed training like that on the bike, you get a level of neuromuscular fatigue and neuromuscular training that's called overspeed training. And this can help you with your turnover while running, because the most elite runners in the world run at a beat per minute or a stride per minute of about 90. And so by including cycling over speed sets, that can help you to develop leg speed and speed and responsiveness of fast twitch muscle fibers in your legs while you're running.

Wow, that is very cool.

Yeah. So overspeed cycling can increase turnover. There is another study in terms of like an N equals one type of look at an elite cyclist. So there was an elite cyclist that they covered in a recent Competitor magazine article. And this cyclist wanted to actually reduce his time on the bike and replace a portion of that lost cycling time with high intensity running. And so in this, they were looking into the effect of running on cycling. And so he got rid of some of his cycling, he dropped his cycling volume by about 20% and substituted some of that with high intensity sets while running. Okay, so just like high intensity interval training while running. And what he found was that his VO2 max actually increased by, and this is huge, 10.3%, and his time trial performance on the bike went up by 14.9%. And so these results were actually published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. And basically what they show is that running can be an effective form of cross training for cyclists, especially if the running is not done in addition to extra cycling, but it's simply replacing some of the cycling and it's done at a very, very high intensity. So his intervals in this case were done at 90 to 95% of his maximum heart rate for his running intervals. So pretty high intensity, but pretty big effect on his cycling performance. And then of course, there is the fact that you can use cycling for recovery. You can build strength in a lot of complimentary muscles that you aren't necessarily training, training when you're running, et cetera, et cetera. Ultimately, what most of the research is showing is that it is more likely that cycling will make you a better runner than running will make you a better cyclist. But both have a complimentary effect on each other. And swimming with restricted breath. Training actually has a complementary effect on cycling. So all of our triathlete listeners are probably doing fist pumps right now because of all the. The crossover here. But bike training, yes, it translates into run training. And this is why, for example, for Ironman training, you'll see a lot of very fast or relatively fast Ironman athletes running marathons, doing well in marathons, but only running two or three days a week. And that's because of the amount of cycling that they're doing.

Yeah. Wow.

The other thing, and this is just a quick note I wanted to throw in there, is that the elliptical trainer has actually been shown to have a ton of crossover to running. And I have a whole article about this, and it's quite shocking. The amount of VO2 max, leg turnover, speed, efficiency, economy, et cetera, that you can maintain for the run while training on an elliptical trainer, which a lot of people think is just a silly gym apparatus, but it actually has quite a bit of crossover for running. So crossover all over the place.

Right, Elliptical trainer.

Just stay away from the behind the neck lat pulldowns.

Hi, Ben. I have a question about a food sensitivity. I was using your Nature Beat app and the food sensitivity program and found out that I have a reaction to tomatoes. The tomatoes raise my pulse by about seven beats, sometimes more. And I'm trying to figure out if I should just not eat tomatoes or I should not eat tomatoes for a while and then retest. I'd been playing around with the app because I've been having headaches, but the headaches seem to be unrelated to the tomatoes. But it brought up the issue of what to do if you find out you do have a food sensitivity or a certain food raises your pulse. Thanks for the information. Bye.

Now we get to the moment of truth that we promised everyone. Food allergies.

This is the super juicy part.

The super juicy part. Do you have any food allergies, Rachel, that you are aware of?

I am, yeah. I am allergic to milk.

Cow's milk?

Yeah. Not any other dairy, just milk.

So not like goat's milk, for example.

I have never tried goat's milk, but.

A lot of people who are allergic to cow's milk can handle goat's milk just fine because. And we've talked about this on other podcasts, because the proteins are smaller, they're more biocompatible with the human body. So it's interesting.

We actually did go and buy some goat's milk from the market and left it in the car overnight. And it Got real stinky. Now we're both traumatized about actually trying goat's milk.

That's just a creative way to make goat yogurt, right? Accelerate fermenting the fermentation process. I'm actually, I'm not necessarily allergic to much. I've got a little bit of a lactose intolerance, a little bit of a gluten intolerance, but mostly I'm just allergic to crappy food and the Olive Garden and P F Changs. Those would be my primary food allergies. Fake Asian food and fake Italian food are not only two of my pet peeves, but also I do believe I am allergic to the Olive Garden.

I don't know why you'd bother faking when the real stuff is so good.

Unlimited breadsticks and salad, just like they do in Rome. Anyways, though, the food allergy testing. So Ali says she's using Nature Beat. So those of you who aren't familiar with Nature Beat, that is the heart rate variability app that I designed that will basically measure your nervous system's response to not just food, but to sleep, computers, relationships, you name it. It's just a measurement of your heart rate variability. It's a very simple five minute measurement that I personally do every morning, but that you could technically do all day long to see what your stress response is in response to everything from like coffee to barbell squats. So the idea here is that if your pulse or your heart rate goes up in response to a meal and you also see a drop in what would be called your high frequency score, which is a measurement of your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest nervous system, and a rise in your low frequency score, which is a measurement of your fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system. It is a clue that that food is more or less stressing you out. So that's what Ellie is doing with that app. It's a very qualitative way. I guess it is kind of quantitative, but it's not like you're taking a drop of blood or saliva or urine or something like that and measuring some kind of allergenic response from a biochemical standpoint, right? Like it's all kind of. It's all kind of technology based, but ultimately it can give you clues. Now, you would still probably want to take those clues and go out and do like a food intolerance or a food allergy test. Now, there are some problems, though, with a lot of the food allergy tests that are out there, and it can be kind of Confusing. So there's one test that is called an ALCAT test, and this is one that is pretty, pretty popular. It stands for antigen, leukocyte, cellular antibody Test, the ALCAT test. And it's considered to be a form of testing called cytotoxic testing. And so what this involves is you would go in and you would give blood. And what they'll do after you give blood for one of these ALCAT food allergy tests is they'll put that blood on a plate that's coated with a liquid or a dried food extract, and then after about 10 minutes, they'll take that same plate, they'll look at it under a microscope, and they'll do that at 30 minute intervals for up to about two hours. And they'll look for changes in the structure or the shape of your white blood cell. So if your white blood cells change, if they become very active, if they disintegrate completely, et cetera, that would indicate a positive result to that particular food extract. That would indicate that you have some kind of an, an immune response to that food. And that's what they're doing when you do a blood test, like an ALCAT test for food allergies. And that's what a lot of cytotoxic testing will do. The problem is it actually has never been shown in research that measuring the changes in the size of white blood cells and measuring the response of white blood cells to food chemicals is actually relevant related to your actual intolerance level for any given food. So if a food chemical, if a food protein, changes the size of a white blood cell, there has yet to be any research that shows that that's related to a food intolerance. And so that's one of the issues. And the problem is that in many cases you get false positives when you use this type of cytotoxic testing. A lot of times that can be caused by like non food ingredients in the food extracts that are being used. It can be highly dependent on the technician who's reading the white blood cell to the laboratory equipment being used to the sensitivity of the microscopes, et cetera. And so they've actually done some studies where they've taken blood and drawn different samples from the same patient on the same day, sent it to three different labs that do this kind of like ALCAT testing, it's called a IGG or IGA food intolerance testing, and found that the ranges as far as what that person was said to be allergic to, were enormous and each different lab came up with a different list of food proteins that that person would be allergic to.

That's super sucky.

Yeah. So there's a lot of discrepancies when it comes to these tests. Another issue here is antigen purity. So what that means is that there are foods like cabbage, for example, or ginger, and both of these foods have enzymes that can react with the reagents that are used in this IGG or IGA testing. And many labs will not purify a protein from cabbage or protein from ginger or any of these other foods that contain natural enzymes in them prior to testing. And if they don't purify the protein, you'll also get false positive results. And so this is why many people will go and they'll get an ALCAT test or an ELISA test and they will get this huge list of foods that they are supposedly allergic to, but that they are, in fact, not allergic to.

Yeah, that sucks. That happened to my sister, actually.

Yeah. The other problem is it depends on whether the food is cooked or whether the food is raw. So what I mean by that is that when you cook foods, it changes the structure of the protein. So something that you would be allergic to in its raw form. Right. Like pork or chicken, that they would be testing for the raw form of pork or chicken at a lab, like in a lease lab. But how many of us are actually eating our pork or our chicken raw and totally. Yeah. And when you cook them, the protein structure changes and the antigen response to that food can change dramatically as a result. So the one food allergy test that I personally recommend, and I know that I've had guests on the podcast who have recommended the ELISA test, they've recommended the Cyrex to the test. And I would have to respectfully disagree with those forms of testing because of some of the issues that I have that I've just talked about. There is a laboratory that does purify the antigens and it tests both raw and cooked antigens and it runs what are called side by side duplicates to get rid of any issues with like the laboratory equipment or technician error or anything like that. And that one is Cyrex Labs. Cyrex Labs, that's C, Y, R, E, X. They have three different, what are called arrays that I frequently recommend. They have one called a Cyrex array 3, and that's just a straight up gluten or wheat sensitivity test. That is the most accurate test for gluten sensitivity or wheat sensitivity that exists. They also have what's called an array 4 and that tests for things that might be likely to cross react with gluten or that you might also be intolerant to. That would be things like coffee, grains, yeast, dairy, et cetera. That's their array 4. And then they also have their array 10, which looks at kind of similar to like these ELISA or these ALCAT tests, a bunch of different food intolerances. But it's very, very unlikely to come up with this huge list of, of false positives because of their testing procedure. It is not covered by insurance. A doctor can order it for you, but in many cases you'll pay for it out of pocket. And it's just one of those things like doing a poop test or doing a longevity or an anti aging test for a bunch of different hormones and stuff like that. A lot of times insurance isn't going to cover it unless you have a preference proven disease that you're attempting to manage, like a diagnosed celiac disease or something like that. But ultimately, if you really want to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you go out, you put down the money and you get a Cyrex 3, a Cyrex 4 and a Cyrex 10. And if you run those three, that would tell you just about everything that you'd ever need to know in terms of food intolerances or food allergies.

And how reliable do you think using Nature Beat is?

It gives you clues, right? So if I test for dairy, maybe I don't like the taste of dairy, or maybe there's something in the dairy, like some kind of a protein or an enzyme that is not related to dairy, but perhaps something that it is mixed with, or perhaps you've eaten like a complex salad, a kale salad that has some nuts on it and you don't know whether it's like the nuts or the kale. Right. So Nature Beat would be something that gives you a clue. But ultimately nothing's going to beat putting a drop of blood under a microscope and seeing what's actually happening to the blood sample. So ultimately, and I'll put a link, I'm in no way financially affiliated with Cyrex Labs or anything like that. That's the one I recommend if you really truly want to identify a food allergy. So there you have it. Or you can just go with the good old elimination route, which is always a tough one, where you get rid of the food and you see if you feel better or if you crap better or if you sleep better or whatever. And that can be another big clue. It's like, if you get rid of garlic and onions and you feel like a million bucks, then maybe you have an issue with garlic and onions.

Right? Yeah. That's a long process, though.

Yeah, it is. It takes a long time, especially if you're doing two weeks of elimination then reintroduction for a bunch of different foods. It's just like, who has the time these days?

Right? Let's just go get it tested straight up.

Exactly. Just pull out your wallet and test. Anyways, that wraps up all of our questions. We also have a review, though. We have a review that someone left on itunes. And the fact is, if you leave a review for this show on itunes and we read your review on the show and you hear your review read, then you email gear reenfieldfitnesssystems.com when you email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com what do we do, Rachel?

You get a free gear pack.

Yeah, free. Well, not really free because you had to pay by sitting down writing a review on itunes, but close to free.

You don't have to pay to do that.

Well, I mean, it's time.

Financially free?

Yeah, it's financially free.

What's in the gear pack then?

Water bottle without any nasty plastics in it. A toque, as our dear Canadian friend Brock used to call it. A beanie, as we call it here in the US what do you guys call it in Australia?

Yeah, it's definitely called a beanie. I don't know what the hell a toque is.

Yeah, a beanie. And then what's the. Oh, a tech T shirt. A cool tech T shirt that you can exercise in or that you can wear when you're doing leg extensions and Smith Machine squats or whatever else. So there you go.

All right, are you ready?

I'm ready. Let's hear this week's review.

Review is if you're a trainer, you need to actively listen to this podcast by Fitnapreneur. Not sure if that's how you pronounce that, but let's go with that. Fitn A Preneur, by far the greatest podcast out there. To keep you informed on all the current topics and discussions in the fitness industry, Ben gives not only the average fitness enthusiast many things to consider and research for themselves, but also gives trainers and coaches a great amount of answers to questions that clients have on a daily basis. With the health and fitness industry being so corrupted with many different marketing schemes, Ben helps you weed out what you should really be looking into using for yourself and what you should stay away from. This podcast has helped me in my training career immensely, and I will continue to be an avid listener as long as the podcast exists.

Look at that. We're not just for regular people. It does. We're also for trainers, actually. We have a lot of physicians, chiropractic docs, nutritionists, personal trainers that listen in. So we are helping the world one by one to become a more ripped.

Place and healthy and.

Ripped and healthy. That's right.

And well.

And we love these positive reviews we've actually had. And I know you know, there's more than I do, Rachel, because I know it struck closer to home for you, but we've had some haters coming out on Facebook, people who frankly, were upset that Brock went on to become the Prime Minister of Canada or whatever other crazy high paid job that he's moving on to, and that Rachel stepped in graciously to take his place.

That's right.

We've had people who complain about everything from you not being a paleo muscle bound, weightlifting meathead and instead a peaceful vegan yogi, to people who don't like the fact that instead of a dude, we have a chick and all that. So what? Rachel, I'm giving you a platform right now. I'm shoving a soapbox under your feet right now. What do you have to say to all the haters on Facebook and the Internets?

Well, first of all, I love you. I don't hate you. I would say that I miss Brock as well. We all miss Brock. And Brock had a really incredible three years here, and he had a huge wealth of. Of knowledge by the time he'd finished here. But when he started, he didn't really have anything, you know, and so this is true and.

May I interrupt you and say that?

Sure, yeah.

Our first few episodes with Brock were relatively awkward until Brock and I really established a repertoire. It wasn't we. Within a few episodes, I would say probably by the time we got about eight to 10 episodes in, we really got into like the funny back and forth banter and stuff like that. And you, the listener, are getting to experience in real time the repertoire building between Rachel and I. And yeah, I mean, I'll totally admit, like, we've had awkward moments already. We've had like an editor, like, take out stuff where we've had these long silences. That, my friends, is life. It's not like a.

The reality of this is the third podcast Rachel has ever done and probably the tenth human conversation she's ever had with Ben. So, you know, I think we can all probably just go a little bit easier on ourselves and on each other. And then the other thing just to remember is that my role on the podcast is not actually to be someone credible. It's to help clarify what Ben's trying to say because he's super intelligent, he's got lots of brain power going on up there, and sometimes it gets really complex and I don't know what he's talking about. And you probably don't either. So that's, that's my role.

And I know that your listeners, and I'm not saying this to make you feel bad or anything, but I've had two physicians write personal emails to me and ask me why I did not have a physician on to become the new Ben Greenfield fitness sidekick. And the reason for that is I think we've got enough geekery going on to where it's nice and it's fun and it's cool and it's laid back to just have a real person on the call to keep it, keep us all grounded. And also, frankly, I think it's pretty cool to have a non American, non meat eating, non squatting, non crossfitting person on the show.

Right?

To keep, to keep me balanced. So, yeah, so yeah, we've got a freaking Australian vegan yogi as a sidekick. And we get used to it, people, because it's only going to get better.

And we have the yin and the yang and that's balance.

And I think that's a perfect way to roll out today's show. So check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com 333 if you have any responses to what we just said or anything else from today's show, leave a comment. We love conversations going on underneath the podcast in the show notes. So BenGreenfieldFitness.com333 where you can get links to everything from the brand new Beyond Training audio book, all of the things I recommend for getting beautiful skin, the Cyrex labs that I just talked about, all the research that we discussed, and oh, so much more. Did I get it all? Rachel?

You did. Excellent job.

All right, cool. Thanks for listening, folks. Have a healthy week. Stay tuned for a killer podcast this weekend. Later.

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

It.