Part 1 With Tom Digan: The Biggest Fitness Mistakes, The Perfect Exercise Plan For Healthspan & Lifespan, How Ben Greenfield Exercises (& His Workout Philosophy), Ben's New Workout App & Much More.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, I feel like I'm getting a chance to talk now during my own podcast about stuff I never get to because I'm always interviewing somebody. I encourage people to just reframe the idea of needing to go to a gym to work out. You don't have to go to a gym to work out, period. We can track a lot more than just body fat and muscle gain or bmi. So understand that that's just one thing to look at. Biggest mistakes would be.

Performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the show. All right, this is an interesting podcast. It's part one of a two part series with a guy named Tom Deegon, a new friend of mine from Austin, Texas. We got deep into the weeds on everything from minimalist exercise programs to nutrition to fitness technology. It was a fascinating discussion. It was kind of like him interviewing me, really more than me interviewing him. But I think you'll really enjoy this episode. It got so long and so fun and so detailed that I split it into two parts. So the part that you're listening to right now, you can get the show notes for if you go to Ben greenfield fitness.com ladderpodcast and then part two is basically gonna come out well at the time that you're listening this in just a few days, so you won't have to wait around too long for part two. All right, folks, so I just got back a couple of weeks ago from Austin, and I was super sore. And I'm gonna blame my podcast guest today for making me hella sore because he had me film, like, 700 exercises over the course of, I guess, gosh, like 48. It was fun. And we did a bunch of, you know, photos and shots and videos and me demonstrating pretty much every exercise I've ever learned or taught or made up in my entire life. And this was because he had this crazy idea based on an app that he helped to develop, a fitness technology app. His name is Tom. Tom De Gont. Tom. Am I even pronouncing your last name right? D I G A N. Tom De Gone.

You gave it a little sound, like, made it sound French, like Dijon Tom.

Dijon Mustard. Anyways, Tom is a new friend of mine, and the reason we connected was because he had, a few months ago, filled me in on this new fitness app that he had developed called Ladder. And I went and checked it out. Super slick. I mean, like, the best way I could describe it is if you. If you were to go, like, be on that old. What was the old NBC TV show, Strong or even the Biggest Loser, where you could, like, have your own trainer and join their team kind of like that. Am I thinking of the right show, Tom? Was it Strong?

Yeah, the Biggest Loser. I know the show.

Yeah, yeah, well, everybody knows the Biggest Loser. But anyways, so the, the, the, the general premise here was like, I could actually be a trainer on the platform and have all my exercises, all my workouts, all my knowledge, all my videos, you know, pretty much all the programming that I do for my one on one clients, who, honestly, they pay me a lot of money every month to do this. But what if we could scale a lot of these programs and bring them to the, to the general fitness audience using an app that doesn't look like it got thrown together in 48 hours in Cosmekic Stan or something like that? So anyways, I flew down to Austin, met with Tom, I filmed all these exercises and actually put together this entire program. It's called Boundless. With this goal of like, basically training how I train, right? Minimal effective dose of exercise, trying to trigger both lifespan and health span. Not necessarily training like a pro triathlete or an exercise addict or a crazy, crazy hit. Crossfitter. Crossfitters always hate me when I say that. But basically, what would a real good program that just keeps you fit for life and living a really good life look like? And could that be delivered on a really slick app? And by connecting with Tom and his whole technology team, I'm pretty sure we figured it all out based on how sore I was after filming all of those exercises. I hope we figured it out because, Tom, I know you were up in your office. Are you at your gym, by the way, down in Austin?

I am. We got some athletes banging some weights around downstairs. If there's anything in the background.

I was going to say I thought I heard some athletes banging around some weights, but, like, that's what I was doing. And so Tom's up in his office. I'm down there working hard, sweating my butt off. I don't know, you're probably being a keyboard warrior or something, Tom. But anyways, so I filmed all these exercises, and then Tom and his team have been working behind the scenes with this whole new app, which I'm super excited about. But we thought it'd be cool to do a podcast where we just talk about fitness technology and the future of fitness and workout programming. And also, I want to fill all of you in. And Tom, I know might put me in the hot seat a little bit about why I do what I do, why I approach exercise the way I approach it, why my workouts are structured the way that they are structured. And my goal is for you to leave this podcast just knowing a ton more. Whether or not you use the Ladders app or the Ladder team or join my Ladder team or whatever, whether you go off and do your own thing, I really, really want you to wrap your head around how I program and what my workouts actually feel like and look like. And I actually want to pick Tom's brain too, about fitness technology, and especially in the era of post Covid, or I guess amidst Covid, what it's looking like in terms of ways that people can work out at home. So, Tom, I would love to introduce you with a compreh comprehensive bio, but, you know, my knowledge of you is you're a badass dude who works at a gym. That makes me sore. I know you spent like 10 years working in the hedge fund industry for a long time before you got into fitness technology. And now you are. Are you the actual founder of Ladder?

Yeah, I'm a co founder of the business. I was originally the. The money behind it at the beginning because I was obviously, you know, came from an investing background and then moved to the business here to Austin, Texas in 2019, and that's when I became full time on it. So I'm our president and co founder.

All right, gotcha. Basically, in terms of how you got interested in putting together an actual fitness app, was this one of those deals where you were scrolling through the app store and not seeing what you wanted or how did you actually get connected with Ladder?

It was more of an evolution than that. Originally we started out in, what was more one to one, online training, online coaching. So worked with thousands of coaches all over the country, and the thought was, you know, really making personal training more accessible. We built software that allowed trainers to work with their clients remotely, build programs, communicate with them, run a payment solution. What we got, we had. There was a whole bunch of insights and learning that came out of that, which ultimately led to Ladder teams. You know, much longer story for another podcast, but at the beginning of 2020, we brought in a new team, new leadership, some really talented folks who now had all of these insights and learnings. And we got really excited about building a product that was more social. So this was right on the eve of COVID And what we had seen was that we felt that personalization, if you will, was a bit overhyped, at least by way of our experience watching thousands of trainers giving most of their clients virtually the same program. And we also were excited about working with star trainers, but in a way where we could give people access in a way that really scales. So that was really a couple of the insights that led to Ladder Teams, which we launched in the middle of the pandemic. So we launched this new product called Ladder Teams in July of 2020.

Okay, so the name of the app is not Ladder, it's Ladder Teams.

Yeah, the name of the name of the company, Ladder Ladder Teams is the product. And then for those, you know, wondering, with Ladder Teams, you know, you're getting fresh workouts that are delivered each week. So it's, it's strength training focused or that's definitely, you know, where our programming skews to. It's, you know, these programs are designed by experts like yourself, like Ben Greenfield, which we'll get to that later. The workouts are delivered in a. It's a beautiful press and play experience where you have audio coaching that makes you feel like your coach is right there, whether it's in your home or back at your local gym. Your music's all synced up and then you have motivation coming from your coach, but perhaps more so from the new friends that you're meeting who is just as passionate about fitness as you. So the social piece is huge. That's definitely not only our biggest differentiator, but it's core to our strategy and it's, it's what's leading to fitness outcomes for our members.

Yeah, that's what I think is cool. Like you call it Team Ladder and My Team. It's like if you download the app and you join my team, my team is called Team Boundless. And that's how you have me as your coach. And you got all the videos from me, the check ins with me, being able to talk with me, send one on one messages to me, get nutrition tips, keep me updated on your progress. That's what it means to be part of my team on the store. And by the way, I'll link to the app. I'll link to everything Tom and I talk about. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com ladder podcast. Or if you get the app, you could just go on there and find me under Team Boundless. So, Tom, when it comes to the actual app itself, is this one of those apps that people pay for? Is it like within app payments? Is it all ad driven? What's it actually look like in terms of the cost for somebody who joins and could. This is actually something I was wondering about. Could somebody download the app and join one person's team than pay to join another person's team? Or how does it actually work?

Y. Yeah. So it's a premium fitness subscription that costs as low as $39 a month. We have a few different pricing plans. You can pay monthly, or you can term it out and get it. Get a discount. So, you know, average price around $50 a month. So it's a. You know, it's. It's a premium experience. You are locking in with. With one coach, with one program to the extent that, you know, you plateau or looking for something different or, you know, life changes and you have. You have new goals, which often happens, then we most likely have another program that's a good fit for you. But most people don't. Don't switch programs. They lock in with their coach, they find their people, and that's how they're having the most success.

Okay. All right. Got it. So you get in. You, like, pay a monthly. What'd you say it was, like, 59 bucks? Something like that?

50 bucks is the average.

Yeah. So 50 bucks to basically join my team and get all my workouts and everything.

Thing. Yep.

And so in terms of, like, other trainers on the platform, not that I wouldn't love for everybody just go and join my team, but who. Who are some other trainers on the platform who have some interesting programs?

Yeah, we. So we have a pretty good mix. And that was the vision was really kind of putting together, like, the Avengers of Fitness, if you will, meaning people with. From different backgrounds, different, you know, fitness.

Call it the Avengers of Fitness.

There was an internal concept that we had. We were kind of, you know, looking at the whiteboard and drafting coaches, if you will, and trying to really find, you know, these different coaches with different superpowers.

I like that.

But.

But that begs the question, which Avenger am I, man?

I mean, you're Doctor. You know, what's. What's Doctor?

Doctor Strange?

Is that his name?

I think. I don't know.

I mean, yeah, you're the. You're the. You got to be the doctor or the professor.

All right, I'll go for Dr. Strange. Since. Since we worked in, like, well, my program, we worked in a lot of the science. A lot of the biohacks, a lot of the. A lot of the stuff you kind of have to do when you're trying to cut out exercise time, because we did it for like the busy person who's got a, got a life, not necessarily pro athlete. All right, I'll take Dr. Strange. So anyway, sorry, sorry to interrupt. Do continue.

Of course. So we have. Yeah, I'll give you a taste of a few. So Training Day is one of my favorite programs. There's two coaches in this program, so it's called Training Day. The two coaches are a guy named Rain Nell, who he goes by Rain Train on Instagram. He's a African Viking. And we have his former client is a guy named Neen Williams who's one of the top professional street skateboarders. Very interesting pair that program. It's a lot of bands, a lot of kettlebells. It's prioritizing explosive power and stuff. Speed, Body and Bell is another amazing program. The coach is Lauren Kansky. This is going to be functional high intensity kettlebell workouts. There's an insanely strong sense of community among this group of mostly women in that group. Maximus. This is led by former Jim Jones trainer and UFC fighter Bobby Maximus. So this is going to be, you know, what you'd expect and no nonsense.

Yeah, I've talked with Bobby before, he's nuts.

Yeah, Bobby's awesome. So that's like your garage style, you know, just doing a ton of burpees and pull ups. Really cool program. The last one I'll mention right now, Project Alpha. So this is a guy named Coach Sam Tooley. He comes from more the endurance background, kind of like yourself, you know, he's done some Ironmans and is a, is a big, big time runner. So this is going to be a combination of endurance and strength. Strength and definitely gets you look at in a certain way. If you're willing to put up with the pain, the pounds will come off quick. Some of my favorite workouts in his are actually track workouts, which is we didn't know what that experience was going to be like on the app and that we built this beautiful UI UX interface and when you go to the track, you're just pressing play and putting your phone in your pocket like it's right there. Whatever type of athletic shorts you wear. And then you know, everything is, you know, your music's playing, coaches in your ear, the warm up, you know the rest, everything's timed out. Those are some of my favorite workouts though. So we, you know, that's fine, right.

Because you don't, you don't have to be like hovered over your phone.

Exactly. And you know, all the experiences are like that. I mean it's, you Press play and we're trying to simulate this great coach being right there beside you. So everything taken care of. But that gives you a little flavor. So quite a bit of variety. But it skews to, it skews to strength training. You know, today Ladder is not for everyone, it's for people who are serious about fitness. We felt like that was the gap in the market, that from a digital offering standpoint there were a ton of good solutions for cardio, but really less so for strength. And so our customers today who are seeing the most value in our product, they value quality workout programming. They're working out three plus days a week whether our product exists or not. But many of them were also kind of unsure if they were going to return to the gym. Gym post Covid. About a third of them have now gone back to the gym and they've just brought Ladder with them. You know, we think it's a arguably better experience the more equipment you have. So this certainly isn't just like an at home experience. This flex is with you, which we think is important in this kind of post Covid Fitness.

Yeah, that's always been the tricky part with apps for strength training is it's really hard to see what's going on with the app and that, you know, it's a classic. You go to the gym and you see the person with like their phone on the mat and they're like hovered over their phone, you know, sometimes in a push up position or a plank because half the workouts are just in a push up position or plank because that allows you to stare at your phone and, and they can't go off and do like, you know, deadlifts and kettlebell work and squats and things like that with their phone in their pocket, with the trainer actually walking them through in the right set and rep schemes and, and rest periods. So I was, I mean I was blown away when I played around with your app. I have to admit. Obviously I'm biased because I have a program on there now. But anyways, I think that, that it actually is something that there is a huge need for. Is a huge need for. So, so kudos for building it and again, for those of you listening, it's called Ladder. But I don't want this to be some big, huge commercial for Ladder. I want to get into some fitness BS too. And I know you want to turn the tables on me. So one more time I'll give everybody the show notes and then I'm just going to sit back because I know you put Together a list of questions you want to ask me, Tom, and I'm prepared. Slightly nervous, but the shownotes for all you listening in are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ladder podcast. All right, I'm ready, Tom. Fire away. You get to put me in the hot seat now.

Excited to turn the tables. I like interviewing better perhaps. So I guess to start right, there's, there's clearly a dizzying array of fitness programs out there, and anyone listening knows that you've tinkered with them all. So maybe help us cut through the bs. What should people do if they want to feel good, look good naked and.

And live for a long time, sun their perenniums? It's the, it's the asshole sunning, right? I think that's the key. That's what was, that's what was popular last year and appears to still be working. But it, but if you've been sunning your perennium, so to speak, and you're still not getting results, you know, I, I have a background in biomechanics and exercise physiology, right? That's, that's what I did my master's degree in at University of Idaho. And so I like to chunk the programs that I create. And so if you're listening in, this is what you need to step back and ask yourself about your fitness program. I like to include certain components that specifically focus on core buckets of fitness. So the first would be strength. Like every fitness program needs a lifting heavy shit type of component. Now that can include lighter weights to failure, that can include blood flow restriction training. Right. Which we actually included in the ladders program as an option to simulate or to trick the muscle into thinking that it's under heavy load. That can include super slow strength training with a slightly lighter load, like a 10 to 30 second up, 10 to 30 second down, which is fantastic for, for, for bringing a muscle to failure at a low risk of injury with a minimal effective dose of exercise. Like a super slow full body strength training workout. It's like a 15 to 20 minute workout. And it can also include traditional strength, right? Like squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, preferably for all of those I like to use. Unless someone's going through rehab or physical therapy or they're really kind of aesthetically going after a certain body part. You know, it's like bicep curls or calf raises or whatever. I like everything to be multi joint as much as possible on my programs. You don't have leg day, you don't have stomach day, you don't have triceps and biceps day. That works for a bodybuilder who's got like two to four hours a day to spend in the gym and completely crush each of those individual body parts. And I used to be a bodybuilder, I used to experiment with that stuff. And I've realized that if you want the minimal effective dose of exercise, every workout is full body. Right? When was the last time that you used your body and it was just lower body or just upper body, or you were trying to play a game of tennis and it was just triceps? Right. So there's a functional component and also a time saving component when you're not doing body part splits and you're doing full body instead, you know, and people are like, what about walking? What about cycling? But I mean, as a cyclist, I use my core, I use my triceps, I use my biceps as a walker. Using your core, you're rotating. Using your neck muscles, your shoulder muscles. So all my workouts are full body. They are also inclusive of some type of strength training component as a part of the entire fitness program. So strength is one, and typically that's anywhere from two to five times a week that you're doing some element of strength training. The next kind of like bucket to think about. And you want checklist off each of these in any exercise program that you're doing. But the next one would be some element of moving a muscle more quickly, like the power and speed component. And they've done research and shown that, you know, with, with big massive bodybuilders, you actually see a kind of like a shorter lifespan or less metabolically healthy muscle because it's just big old muscle that you have to carry that you have to cool. They have to produce a bunch of extra endogenous antioxidants to quell inflammation in the type of muscle that's associated with longevity. And in studies from rodent models all the way up to humans, shorter telomere, or I'm sorry, a shorter rate of telomere lengthening, right? So increased cellular lifespan, arguably it is the wiry, quick, explosive, fast twitch muscles that you develop during power and speed. And so if you don't have some component of your exercise program that's like light body weight exercises where you're moving super fast, or some type of power training or plyometric training component, or some type of quick sport like soccer or tennis, you know, versus say like just marathoning or hiking or something like that, you're missing out on what would arguably be like the muscle that's best associated with longevity. So you have strength where you're getting the muscle stronger and sometimes like thicker with more mass. But then you balance that out with power and speed, which is typically moving faster weights or body weight under lighter load. And that could also include like some type of sporting component. Like, like a sport again like soccer or tennis or basketball or what have.

You to stop there for a second on like the hardwired muscle. Is that in contrast to like what Tom brady and the TB12 method is putting out there? Right. Like why am I thinking with them of like soft and long, like long, lean, pliable muscles? Is that, is that a different, different.

School of thought that that would probably fall more into the strength component, but it'd fall more into like kind of like the weak strength. It's almost like nothing is Tom Brady. But that's kind of like no man's land training to a certain extent, especially when you work in some of the other stuff I'm going to get into regarding mobility. So yeah, the power and speed, typically you want to train that kind of similar to the strength anywhere from two to five times a week. Like some element of moving a muscle quickly. Right. And I mean sometimes it's very simple. Like I have a kettlebell. It could be sprints, it could be kettlebell swings, it could be clap push ups, it could be a game of tennis, like you name it. But you don't want to neglect the fast, powerful, explosive muscle fibers which will basically keep your body young as you age. Especially the next would be your mitochondria. Right. So the powerhouses of the cells, you know, what's actually going to be able to produce ATP and allow for better cellular health. The best way to train that based on research is very short efforts of 20 to 30 seconds in duration with very long recovery periods. And that only needs to be done once or twice a week. So what I mean by that, and this is similar to like a workout that we've woven into the, into the ladder at 430 second efforts at all out capacity, each one separated by about four minutes of recovery. Right. So that's classic mitochondrial workout. Think long work to rest ratio. Okay, so you got short or. I'm sorry, it would be a low work to rest ratio. Right. Like very short work periods, preferably not longer than 30 seconds, but preferably up around 20 seconds. So 20 to 30 seconds with long recovery periods and you want to do something like that once a week.

You're on a skier or a treadmill or a bike or something?

Yeah, skier, treadmill, bike, if you got to, you know, just like go for a walk and during the course of that walk, do four 30 second sprints during the course of a half hour walk. Right. It could be that simple. But basically that's the idea behind mitochondrial density training. Short intensity, long recovery periods.

And the density, what is that doing for you? It's just helping with metabolization of fat and glucose or. What is that?

I don't know if metabolization is a word. Dude, did you just make that up?

Am I making up words?

All right, we'll roll with it though. Metabolize. Yeah, it helps with metabolization, it helps with cellular energy. We know that mitochondrial density and mitochondrial health overall is actually beneficial for longevity and a host of other beneficial physiological functions. Interestingly, we know that that hit like high intensity interval training when overdone or going for too long during your hit sessions without enough rest periods in between each, each spurt of effort during an interval that's actually associated with decreased mitochondrial density and mitochondrial damage. Right. So there's like a sweet spot and a lot of people, they don't go hard enough during the intervals and they don't go easy enough during the rest periods and they do too much hit training. But you can do this mitochondrial triggering session like once a week, you're good to go.

You call the power plants of your cells, Is that what you said?

Yeah, as I said, power. Yeah, power plants. Well, we'll call them power plants of the cells. Yeah, because that'll make all the, all my vegan and vegetarian listeners happy. The plant power. And then you have the fourth component, which I used to train a ton for, because I did a lot of, of endurance sports where you're going at kind of like, like a mid level speed for a long period of time and having to burn a lot of lactic acid. But it turns out that the ability to be able to burn lactic acid is actually also associated with longevity. You know, I have one friend, Dr. Peter Attia, who's putting together like a program that he calls a Centenarian Olympics. And one part of that is making sure your body can buffer lactic acid efficiently. And some people will even take supplements like arginine or citrulline or any of these lactate buffering enzymes to increase their lactic acid buffering capacity. But really with lactic acid tolerance, the best way to train it is once or twice a week, just pump your muscles full of lactic acid and then don't give them a chance to get rid of that lactic acid much until the workout's over. So a perfect example of this would be either blood flow restriction training, right? Which, like, traps a whole bunch of lactic acid in the muscle until you're done with the workout and you take those damn straps off, which are burning the whole time, you know, straps on your arms or straps in your legs. And I don't know if you were downstairs when we were demoing those when we were filming in Austin.

I wasn't, but I've been. I have a shoulder injury right now, and with my physical therapist, I've been using the B strong band.

Yeah, those are fine. Like the B strong bands or the fancy ones or the Japanese Katsu bands that automatically inflate. You guys had to buy some when I came down there to film because there wasn't any in the facility. So you've got some downstairs somewhere. Dude, if you dig around in your. In your bins, I travel everywhere with them. And so, so BFR training. And the other thing that I'll do for lactate tolerance. And again, this is like one or two times a week. And I like to use this as a starter or a finisher to a strength training workout is something a lot of people may have heard of, called the Tabata set. T, A, B, A T, A. And that's where you just go for four minutes. You 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy on a bike or an erg or a rower or burpees, you name it. 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy for four minutes and a Tabata set, because again, you're pumping the muscles full of lactic acid. And unlike the mitochondrial training, not giving them a long time to recover. But it's a pretty. I mean, four minutes is a pretty short, like, lactic acid workout. It's doable. It sucks, but it's doable. But you do that one or two times a week, and you're hitting that fourth bucket, which would be lactate tolerance, okay? And then you get to another element that's heavily associated with longevity, that tends to decrease with age, that's associated with really good sporting capacity and health. And that's your VO2 max or your maximum oxygen utilization. Of all the different forms of cardio training, like the mitochondrial training I described, or the lactate tolerance training I described, or even like the. The fat burning machine type of training I'll describe in just a second. VO2 max training is probably the one people like the least because what it involves is anywhere from four to six minutes at your maximum sustainable Pace. This would be like hopping on the Airdyne or the aerosol bike or like the bike from hell. And just jamming as hard as you can after a quick warmup for four minutes and then using a one to one work to rest ratio, right? So the VO2 max workout, and you only have to do this once every one to two weeks, research has shown to keep your VO2 max elevated, but it'd be like four minutes maximum sustainable pace, right? Not, not so hard that you're pooped out after a minute, but hard enough to where, like it's as hard as you can go and sustain for four minutes. Like, let's say your RPM on the bike is 60 RPM. You'd want to maintain 60 RPM for the full four minutes, but you basically maintain that intensity throughout. We're talking like 85, 90% ish. And then you give yourself four minutes of recovery, right? So it's one to one work to rest ratio and you typically do four to six rounds of that. So if you want to think about it in really simplistic terms, four to six maximal sustainable pace efforts with four to six minutes of recovery between each four to six times through. But if you do that once every one to two weeks, even though it's really mentally demanding, like you're going to have massive VO2 max, which is amazing for oxygen utilization. So that, that's kind of like the fifth bucket. And some people will biohack this, right? Like there's this concept of exercise with oxygen training. Like I have this machine called a Liveo 2. It's got a little trigger on it where I can flip the switch from hypoxia, where it sucks all the oxygen out of the bag to hyperoxia, where I'm breathing pure oxygen. So what I'll do is I'll do like a VO2 max workout and I'll give myself like hypoxia during my 4 minute efforts and then just blast myself with oxygen during my recoveries. Or sometimes I'll do the opposite. I'll blast my muscles with oxygen so I can go really hard during the four minutes and then try to recover under hypoxia. And that has this vasodilation, vasoconstriction action on the vessels and it kind of amplifies the effects of VO2 max training. They're not inexpensive. And it's not like you got to buy a bunch of biohacking equipment, for example, for my programming ladder. But that's what VO2 max training is like. And That's a perfect example of kind of marrying a biohack, like what mine's called a live O2 machine. With VO2 max training.

The African Viking over here, Coach Rain and training day. I train with him a lot because he's based here in Austin and he has us finish a lot of workouts both in the app and when I train with him or in person. We'll do a. If it's a group, we'll do a maybe a 3,000 meter ski relay. So it'll be three on three, and you're just going all out and, you know, kind of similar work to rest ratio that you were talking about.

About.

But it's amazing over the course of six, eight weeks, certainly longer, how much you can improve your aerobic capacity. It's. I love that style of training.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. So that's a VO2 max training. I mean, like, those five buckets are the hardest buckets. Like, if you were to pull up in my ladder app and jump in the. You're like, you'll see strength, you'll see power slash speed, you'll see mitochondrial training, you'll see lactic tolerance training, and you'll see VO2 max training.

Will you program some stamina or endurance in there as well? Yeah, once a week.

Exactly. Because those are like five buckets. But then there's two other buckets that I like. One is endur or kind of like your fat burning machine capacity for this. People also overdo this. Like, this is the classic type of training that's low intensity aerobic, often like slightly conversational, like your hikes, your bike rides, your walks, your long swims, your paddle board sessions, stuff like that. But some people, honestly, they just get like chronic repetitive motion hamster on a wheel type of mindset with their training, and they're just going out and doing like a poopy face run for lunch every single day or just going on a hike every like. And I mean, hiking is great. My wife's main style of training, my wife Jessa, is like hot yoga and hiking, but she's also, you know, playing tennis with the family a couple of times a week. She's lifting heavy rocks around the guard and like hoeing and hauling alfalfa to the goats. But, you know, so she's getting like the strength training and the speed training and stuff kind of naturally just through life. But, you know, a lot of people, they just do too much of the chronic repetitive motion cardio training, when in fact, if you're just programming low level physical activity into your life. Like every call I take, if I could take it while walking, I walk talking to you right now. If I could be walking, I'd be walking, but my treadmill makes too much noise for a really good podcast. I didn't want to do this one outside, but I take 10,000, 20,000 steps a day just walking while I'm on calls, parking as far away as I can from a grocery store or restaurant, just kind of moving all throughout the day. That's how I like to tackle the kind of like the fat burning endurance cardio component. But I also, in my programs, once a week program anywhere from one to three hours, typically on the weekend, the long hike, the long paddle board session, the long swim, the long bike ride, maybe to a different, you know, nearby city 10 miles away to go hit a coffee shop and ride back or whatever. But the idea behind that is that I encourage people to do it in a fasted state. Like wake up Saturday morning and do a two hour hike fasted because it's not hard. You're not pushing yourself, you're not going to beat yourself up with no fuel on board, just hiking at low level capacity for a couple hours. Train your body how to tap into its own fats as a fuel. And you can always, if you're super duper lean like I am, sometimes I'll take a shot of ketones or a couple of scoops of amino acids or something like that beforehand just for a little bit of energy, especially cognitive energy, because I don't like to be hangry when I'm hiking. And that'd be a great name for your next app, by the way, Tom Hangry Hiker. But anyways, the, the endurance component is just basically low level cardio, preferably fasted one, maybe two times a week. And again, like this program that we're doing on ladder, it's not for the Ironman triathlete. If you're an Ironman triathlete, you're probably doing that type of endurance every day. I mean, I did when I was an Ironman, but in terms of just wanting to have good fat burning capacity for life, one or two times a week, you're just going out and doing something long and preferably you're fasted or relatively fasted while you're doing it. And that's kind of like the sixth bucket and then the final bucket, the seventh is mobility. So for example, and this is very similar to way I've programmed it in Ladder 10 to 15 minutes every morning. One of the first things I do when I get up is I foam roll and I stretch. And so by the end of the week, I've done like 75 to 90 minutes of mobility, whether through fascial work or whether through stretching. If you count the massage I get every one to two weeks, that also, you know, can fall into the mobility bucket. Any type of, you know, kind of like physical therapy esque exercises that you do, the warm up and cool down for your workouts. You know, for me, it's just the way that I treat my mobility, Tom, is I get up in the morning and I'll do 10 to 15 minutes of foam rolling, any tight body parts, stretching, anything that feels tight, et cetera. But I think of it this way. I'm like, okay, if I'm following my own rules of physical activity, just being woven into my entire day, you know, And I like to get to the end of my day and kind of feel pretty good whether or not I've worked out, because I've just kind of been moving all day, taking little breaks to swing some kettlebells or do a few pull ups, taking calls while I'm walking, etc. But when I wake up in the morning, my mindset is, all right, this whole day is a workout. So one of the first things I'm going to do in the morning is just warm up for my workout, right? And so that's the way that I do it. And so when I actually do, let's say after we podcast, I want to squeeze in because most of my workouts are 30 to 40 minutes. And let's say we finish our podcast and I want to go work out, I might warm up for like two minutes, dude, because I've already done 15 minutes of foam rolling and mobility work. I'm standing up while I'm talking to you at my standing desk. I got one of these little top O mats that I'm standing on. So I'm rolling my feet with a ball right now while I'm talking to you. I've got different positions I can be in, but basically the idea is you kind of try to weave mobility in through your day more than spending like 15, 20 minutes before or after your workout focused on mobility, because I'd rather you just be working out during your workout time. So those are like the seven buckets, right? Strength, power, speed, mitochondrial density and health, lactate tolerance, VO2 max endurance or fat burning capacity, and then mobility. Now, of course, like, and my listeners would be familiar with this, Tom, that doesn't mean that there aren't other important things that you should be doing right. Eating whole, real recognizable food, preferably as close to your own biochemical and genetic individuality as possible. Getting tons of sunlight or even using red light panels or so called photobiomodulation panels or infrared light saunas, things like that. During the day or on a recovery day, when we have one big recovery and biohacking day worked into the Boundless program, it would be like grounding. Going outside barefoot or sleeping on one of these grounding mats, or just making sure you're connected to the planet Earth at some point every day for anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes. Throwing in a few sauna sessions during the week. Throwing in a cold bath or a cold shower one or two times a day. Making sure you drink lots of fresh, clean, pure water with minerals added to it. Having a good gratitude and meditation practice. Having positive relationships, right? Like I'm one of those guys who kind of wishes like Men's Health or Women's Health magazine would talk more about light and grounding and heat and cold and water and minerals and relationships as much as they talk about bicep curls and high intensity interval training. But ultimately, let's say that you're eating well, you're getting sunlight or some form of red light therapy on the regular, you're grounding or earthing on the regular, you're getting some kind of heat practice, like sauna, cold practice, like cold showers, good water with minerals, positive relationships and a good spiritual life. Like if you've got all that going for you and then you throw in strength, power, speed, mitochondrial lactate tolerance, VO2, max endurance and mobility, then I mean, like, long answer to your question, you ask, what should people do if they want to feel good and look good naked and live for a long time? That would basically be, you know, everything kind of like all at once. And that's, that's what I tried to do with the Boundless program in the Ladder app, which is weave all that stuff in.

I want to talk nutrition, but before we get there, you mentioned, you mentioned that sometimes people overdo it with the endurance training. Just curious. Other mistakes people make, whether it's recovery related or just curious. Any other, like, obvious mistakes that you see?

People make mistakes. Oh, geez. So I would say biggest mistakes would be there's a lot of pressure to. And this might kind of fly in the face of like all the different cool programs in the Ladder app and beyond. Of course, I keep making this sound like a big commercial for the Ladder app. Like it's not. I Just, I just want to fill people in on, on, you know what that is, and I'm excited about it. But, but, you know, whether you're reading a fitness magazine or whatever, like there's pressure to constantly change to new programs. I mean, like, that's the way fitness magazines stay in business is besides the supplement advertisements, like, they gotta have new program. Like, what's the focus today? What's the butt workout that the latest celebrity is doing that people need to drop everything and switch to from the arm workout that the movie star was doing in the last issue? Or, you know, or personal trainer knows the best way to keep a client signing up for month after month is to tell them, you know, oh, we got, we got to change up the workout next month. If you do what or what you're doing this month, it's not gonna work. So that there's this pressure to constantly change. But people do it too much. They don't stick with the same program long enough. And so like in the Boundless program in the Ladder app, like, I'm changing up the workouts every six weeks or so. And that's about as frequently as I would want to change stuff up. I mean, I personally have about 20 workouts or so that I cycle through nearly throughout the entire year. And that's important because you eliminate a lot of decision making, fatigue. You allow the body to become better and stronger and more proficient at the exercises that it is doing. And so I think people beat themselves up too much that they're doing the same workout that they were doing two years ago, when in fact you can give yourself permission to do that. I don't plan on not walking until I'm dead. Like, I'll walk every day. I'll swing kettlebells, you know, a few times every week, I'll do push ups every day. There are certain things that you just don't have to change up, but you have to strike a balance between that and what in, you know what, in sports training or athletic training, we call periodization. Like having certain periods of the year where you're focused on strength, or certain periods of the year where you're focused on fat loss, or certain periods of the year where you're focused on recovery. There's also, when it comes to changing up workouts, the entertainment factor, like you being excited to go to the gym because you're trying something new, or you have a new workout in your app or from your trainer, there's something to metabolic guesswork, right? Like an exercise physiology. There's a principle Called sed Specific adaptation to impose demands. And what that dictates is that the body's eventually going to become so efficient at the exercises that you do have it doing that you don't burn as many calories or, you know, your muscles don't stay quite as active if they're just, you know, used to doing. Like push ups, for example, are super easy for me. I started doing, cranking out literally hundreds of push ups a day back when I was training for this, this event called seal Fit. And not a day goes by, Tom, where I don't do like 300 push ups, right? I'll just drop at different points during the day and do 30 push ups. I'll go to the bathroom at a restaurant and drop and do 30 push ups and then wash my hands really, really, really, really, really well and then go back to dinner. Like, I, I do so many push ups every day. It's nuts months, but man. And so my body's really good at push ups compared to somebody who doesn't do that. Push ups don't do as much for me as they would for someone who's not doing that many push ups. But it also allows me to weave strength in throughout my entire day and physical activity in throughout my entire day like we were talking about earlier. So what I'm getting at here is that one big mistake is that people beat themselves up for just by sticking to an exercise program for a long period of time. And it's okay, do the same exercises and the same workouts for like, you know, four, five, six weeks, sometimes like eight weeks in a row and just not change anything up. And sometimes you find that you can, you can dig yourself into a pretty or. Well, that's probably a bad analogy. You, you can put a lot of money in the fitness bank and remove a lot of decision making fatigue from your workouts by doing that. As long as you recognize that you do have to change up things like the weight that you're lifting, the speed with which you're doing exercises, maybe a variation of a certain exercise like a dive bomber push up instead of a regular push up, things like that. But understand the balance between constantly changing and having like a shiny penny, oh hey look, a squirrel approach to your fitness programming. And also properly kind of making mild fluctuations throughout the entire year. So the way that I'm doing my boundless program in the Ladder app is I'm making little tweaks every six weeks. Weeks. But it's not as though you're doing like this full blown complete overhaul Every. Every six weeks, like, it's still the same flavor of exercise and it still allows for the body to continue to progress and get better. So that'd be one. Another mistake would be a lot of people, I think, sacrifice sleep, which is, in my opinion, as important as nutrition and exercise and relationships and everything else to work out. They either get up too early, like at 4am and short themselves on sleep so they can squeeze their workout in, usually because they're not working out smart and they're going to the gym and doing like bicep curls and tricep push downs and, you know, long slow jogs on the treadmill when you should be able to get in and get out of the gym in like 30 to 45 minutes easily. But a lot of people are not working out properly or they are trying to squeeze in their workouts too early or too late because they're not being physically active during a workday. And often they're working out too close to bedtime, which disrupts sleep. So if I have to choose between, like getting in my workout or getting an extra sleep, I will always figure out, okay, how can I make this workout very efficient? Minimal, effective dose of exercise so I can sleep until 5 instead of having to get up at 4 to go to the gym, or how can I get this workout done by 6pm instead of being in the gym an extra 45 minutes to an hour till 7pm dictating that I'm working out too close to bedtime, my core temperature is going to be too high, my cortisol is going to be too high. So I think a lot of people need to think about sleep and prioritize sleep as much as they do their workouts and their diet. And a big part of that is exercising efficiently and exercising intelligently. Right. You're not the Navy SEAL who's going to sleep when they die, and they're going to die earlier. So they are going to get a lot of sleep because they're dying earlier. But you want to balance out sleep with exercise. And I think too many people short themselves on sleep in order to exercise and you just wind up having that cortisol y tired eyes, wrinkly skin, collagen degradation, sick all the time type of scenario because you're just not prioritizing sleep enough. So that's another big one. You do need to sleep enough.

Our whole team was impressed that you were able to take a nap in the middle the of day that we had you on, you know, just to set it up. Ben is obviously Doing, you know, movement after movement. We tell him he's got, you know, we launch and then he still had 30 minutes to spare. And he says he's gonna take a nap. The lights are on and Ben just gets out all his gear and he just goes through a full sleep cycle in 30 minutes and then comes out and kills the rest of the movements. But I had never, I had never seen anything like that.

I do efficient sleep and efficient exercise. So I mean, if you were to watch me get ready for my nap in there, I'm like putting on a hap B and in a, you know, around my neck to simulate cbd, but not have CBD in my system so I could get up and still be exercising afterwards. I was using like a little Apollo wristband, full on sleep. I have this little sleep kit that's always in my bag. Whip that thing out and I can Crush like a 90 minute sleep cycle in 20 minutes using a setup like that. So do you wear a whoop or.

An aura as well?

I wear an aura ring, yeah.

And so can you see like within a 30 minute nap? I'm always curious, you know, what, what percentage of that are you able to get into the SWS sleep, into that deep sleep?

None of these wearables, they all suck at measuring naps. They do a pretty good job with sleep architecture for a full night of sleep. But I'm going off of research that has done sleep spindle research on people who are napping from 20 to 45 minutes. And it's shown that you simulate you go through like a full sleep cycle, but it's accelerated the sleep cycle is. And so probably one of the companies that's done the most research on that is an app that I use called Nucalm that just knocks me out for 20 or 30 minutes. And they've done some pretty cool sleep studies showing that that or another thing called Yoga Nidra, which is basically like almost like a body scan where you're relaxing yourself with a certain type of breath work that can do a really good job simulating sleep. So I sleep sleep anywhere from six and a half to seven and a half hours a night. And then I'm always doing like a 20 to 40 minute nap. So see, I would say that would be another mistake people make is just like not getting the sleep component figured out and then shorting themselves on sleep for exercise. Relying on a gym or health club to work out, that's a biggie. Like, you know, me being in your gym, that's probably like the fifth time I've been in a gym in the past two years since COVID started, because I have. I've got kettlebells and sandbags in my garage. I got some bikes and barbells and dumbbells in my other little home gym out in the forest that I walk out to. And too many people feel like they have to go to a gym or a health club to work out. They've set up this scenario where they tell themselves it's got to be the right set and setting to radically change your habits. You must radically change your environment. Like, I get all of that, but you don't want to spend 10 to 20 minutes or more driving to the gym, maybe sitting around for a few more minutes waiting for that that you signed up for, waiting for your workout buddies to show up, driving the 10 to 20 minutes back, you know, waiting in line for the bathroom, you know, taking the shower in a different shower. It's not your own. So there's all these. These things that pile up when you're relying on a gym or a health club, in addition to, like, the modern overhead LED fluorescent lighting. And, you know, I've written articles about all the mold problems in gyms, the WI fi pouring off the treadmills. And. And so, like, a gym is actually kind of an unhealthy place. And I get it, if that's what it takes to motivate you to exercise, is you have to visit a gym or a health club. But that was one of the things that we worked on, you know, with the Boundless program in Ladder, was like, we want people to do this in their basement, in their backyard, at a park, wherever, with minimal equipment. And I think that if you are reliant mentally or physically upon a gym or a health club in order to motivate you to work out, that's a mistake. And there's no reason that you have to have a fabricated room or box or facility in order to move your body. Like, you can go out to the great outdoors. You can go to your basement where you have some weights. You can hit that kettlebell that's right behind you in your office cubicle. So relying on a gym or a health club is another big mistake, I think. And so I encourage people to just reframe the idea of needing to go to a gym to. To work out. You don't have to go to a gym to work out, period. Feeling like your workout needs to last a certain amount of time, right? Saying, I gotta go to the gym for 30 minutes or I gotta work out for 45 minutes or I gotta get 60 minutes in or the world's gonna end versus giving yourself permission to do what I call micro workouts. And I do this often on busy days. I'll do sometimes on some days like four to five, five to ten minute workouts that I'll just squeeze in in between phone calls and podcasts and writing. And so I'll take that workout that was supposed to be, let's say five rounds of push ups, squats, burpees, kettlebell swings and 50 calories on the airdyne. Right. And I'll instead do that exact workout, but do one round at 7:00am, one round at, you know, 9:00am, one round just before lunch, one round after my afternoon nap, one round right before dinner, and just, just like squeeze it all in throughout the day. And a lot of research has shown that these micro workouts are really effective because really what it comes down to at the end of the day is how much time under tension that your muscles have been under. And there's no reason I actually, I've seen a lot of people adopting this and it becoming more popular this, this concept of micro workouts. You know, it's kind of like that same idea of me sleeping a little bit shorter but then throwing a nap in in the middle of the day. But basically don't think that your workout has to be that one dedicated time that you work out. You can actually split it up or even stop it halfway through and come back and finish it later. A lot of people think it's going to get super messed up if they don't do all four sets of bench press or squat in the same workout. And yeah, there is a certain amount of fatigue that builds up by compressing a workout into a period of time, like 30 or 40 or 60 minutes that allows you for some benefit, but you still get a ton of benefits from splitting it up into, into five minutes here, 10 minutes there, et cetera. So, so I would say give yourself permission to split up your workouts. If you don't get done what you plan on getting done, then just do some micro workouts, split it up throughout the day, finish the 30 minutes that you had that, you know, out of a 45 minute workout that you'd plan on and then just get the 15 minutes done right before dinner or crank out some extra, you know, burpees after lunch or whatever. So micro workouts would be another. And then one more I'll throw at you, Tom. And this would be a lot of people when they're working out they're just tracking muscle gain and fat loss. Even a lot of studies, if you look at them and you tear them apart, that say, whatever, resistance training is better than cardio or cycling is better than running, or, you know, x amount of cold water minutes is better than this amount of time spent in a cold bath. You know, a lot of these studies, all they look at is body fat loss or body weight loss or BMI or muscle gain or lean muscle maintenance. But they don't actually look at a ton of other health metrics that I think have to be paid attention to if you really are focused on lifespan and health. Spanish like your cortisol levels, your testosterone levels, your inflammation levels, your thyroid values, your red blood cell density or red blood cell width or red blood cell volume, your white blood cell count, all these things that we can now test in the comfort of our own homes that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars a decade ago at the Princeton Longevity Institute or whatever, we can track a lot more than just body fat and muscle gain or bmi. So understand that that's just one thing to look at whether you're analyzing the results of and reading a study on exercise or whether you are just tracking your own body. There's so much more to health that goes beyond just what's the percentage of body fat loss and what's the amount of muscle gain? Because I can tell you like if I stumble across the perfect program for let's say muscle gain and fat loss, but it's a program that also say lowers thyroid hormone, lowers testosterone, amplifies cortisol and results in long term soft tissue muscle damage. That doesn't mean it's a great workout, right? It means it's going to get me short term aesthetic gains for long term metabolic damage. And so many people will jump into a program and feel great for three months or four months or six months, months, and it'll beat them up and spit them out because all they're paying attention to is body fat and muscle and not all these other metrics that I think are just as important. Kind of like in the same way, I think light and grounding and heat and cold minerals and water and all this stuff is as important as the exercise piece. So yeah, I know it's a mouthful, but those are some mistakes.

Do you have a good at home kit for testing some of those biomarkers or how would one do that at home?

There's a lot of ways to do it, but. And there's, you know, like I've got one company I'm testing right now called Core. And it's literally like one of those Star Trek, as was the thing in Star Trek where they'd like wave it in front of you and you could tell everything that was wrong with your body. Are you a Trekkie?

No.

Yeah, but, you know, it's like that, that one, that one's called the Core. And I just put a little drop of blood and it analyzes like thousands of different biomarkers. And it's all under trial right now. I'm trialing it right now. I can't say I like it or don't like it. But then there's other companies like Thorne that send you a home test kit. They'll test sleep, they'll test hormones. One drop of blood and then you send it back to them. There are companies like Longevity or Viome that will do the same thing for your gut. There's companies like Strategene that will do the same thing for your genetics. There are companies like Dutch that will do the same thing for your hormones. You know, when I have a client who signs up for me and if anybody leaves a comment or perhaps in the show notes, you know, because I actually have a whole team that works on the show notes, they listen to these podcasts before they come out. And I'll tell them right now, you know, you guys put all my gold standard tests in the show notes so people can see, you know, when I'm on a phone with one of my clients, what I tell them to go order. And then they send me the results and I sit down with those results if I'm working with somebody one on one. And I tell them, okay, here's what you need to be eating. Here's the supplements you should be taking. Here's the things to talk to your doctor about. Here are the times of day you should be eating. You know, here's what agrees with your genetics, you know, and so, so it's not like there's one single test that rules them all, but there's about like six different tests you can order to your house that pretty much cover the bases on everything you'd ever need to know to advise you on your recovery time, on your, on your nutrition, on your supplementation, et cetera. So, yeah, and I'll put them in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com ladderpodcast Dr. All right.

So obviously still a bunch that we love to talk about, including nutrition, but I think we'll about talk, stick with exercise for now. And so what I'd love to better understand is how you go about programming your own workouts. And then maybe in addition to that, what is the most enduring change you've made to your own programming over time?

I love that question. Okay. And I agree. We do need to talk about nutrition. There's, like, there's so much that I want to talk about, Tom, that we're definitely. So if you're listening in right now, Tom and I are going to do a part two. Just so you guys know, we will do a part two because this is fun shit. And I feel like I'm getting a chance to talk now during my own podcast about stuff I never get to because I'm always interviewing somebody. All right, so how do I go about programming my workouts? When I sit down and I'm working with somebody one on one, or I have somebody like you come to me and say, okay, Ben, we want you to be our guy for the minimal effective dose of exercise and health span and lifespan for a workout, Right? When I. When I've got somebody's goals in front of me, the things that I take into account would be equipment, right? Like dumbbells, kettlebells, treadmill. What do you actually have? You know, like, I just had a client text me this morning because he's in Thailand right now filming for a. For a movie. And so, you know, he's constantly on the go, and he'll just, like, shoot a video for me when he gets to where he's going of what the gym looks like or what his home setup looks like. And then I sit down with that and say, okay, we don't have any kettlebells. So we're going to have to basically work with this shitty dumbbell set that you have in the corner of the hotel gym or that big park that we found on Google Maps near your hotel or whatever you happen to have available. With the boundless program on Ladder, we kind of stuck with a lot of the stuff that people would typically find in a gym or health club or stuff they could pretty easily get at home. You know, like kettlebell, BFR bands, things like that. So equipment is one time limitations. I always ask people, well, how much time do you want this to take? And if they don't know, I tell them we can get done, you know, put it shoving aside, like light therapy and sauna and cold. We can get done from an exercise standpoint with just about anybody on the face of the planet who just wants to look good naked and live a long time needs to get done in about 30 to 60 minutes a day. Right? But I always ask about time limitations, just in case, because, like, I have some CEOs who I work with who are like, like three days a week, an hour and a half. That's all I got, bro. What can you give me? And I'll work with that. I have other people who I'm jealous of who are like, yeah, I do all my work via my phone from a golf course, and I've got about, oh, maybe five hours per day every morning to take care of my body before I head out on the golf course. And I'm like a great B. I want your job, but the time limitations is another one. I look at goals, of course, right? Do you want to look good? Are you getting ready for an Ironman triathlon or a marathon or a Spartan heart and race, which would dictate I'd train you a lot differently than somebody who wants to live a long time, because those type of workouts aren't going to increase longevity. But if that's the personal Mount Everest that you want to climb, fine, I'll program that way for you. But if somebody wants to lose weight and lose body fat, there's a lot more fasted workouts, there's a lot more cold thermogenesis worked in, there's a lot more even sleep worked in, and a lot more of that fasted cardio worked in. If someone is training for longevity, you know, it's a lot more of exactly what I described earlier in this podcast. That combination of strength, power, speed, mitochondria, lactate tolerance, VO2, max endurance, mobility, light, grounding, heat, cold, minerals, water, relationships, everything. And that's actually what the Boundless program is. It's kind of like that Ladder one, really. It's kind of like longevity, I would say, is the best way to describe what we're doing with the Boundless program in Ladder. I look at injury, right? Injury history, and also existing injuries. What do we have to work around? And that's one reason I had to film like 700 different exercises down at your place, because we got to have options for people who might not be able to do, let's say a lunge jump, but can do like a split lunge with the back leg on a bench, or somebody who can't do a barbell squat due to back pain, but do just fine with a goblet squat, right? And so injuries are another thing I look at, and then I also look at. And this is one that gets thrown to a mix a lot. Desire for Social sports, a lot of people are like, I like to play tennis three times a week. I love my Pilates class or my hot yoga class. I want to go paddle boarding every weekend. And so I don't pile extra workouts on top of the social sports because sports are working out, you know, at the end of the day, you know, training stress is training stress. So I always look at what a person actually has, you know, going on from a social sports standpoint as well that they want to include. And so once I've looked at equipment, at time limitations, at goals, whether it be aesthetics or performance or longevity, et cetera, at injuries, at desire for any social sports, that usually gives me what I need to know to work on someone's program. For me, myself, I do the same thing every Sunday night. I sit down, I look at my week ahead, I go to those workouts that I tend to rely on on a regular basis, I look at where I'll be in the world and then I say and I literally do this like every Sunday night. I'm my. I know there's that saying that anyone who is their own coach has the worst coach they could ever get or something like that. But I like the versatility of being able to program my workouts and I'm pretty self motivated. So every Sunday I do this for my sons. I sit down and program all my son's workouts, I sit down and program my workouts and then I just have everything written out all the way up until the following Sunday. And that's how I actually figure out what it is that I'm going to do. And so, and that's the same thing I'm going to be doing for the Boundless program and ladder, right? Like I'm sitting down every six weeks. Okay, here's what I want to change, here's what I want to weave in, here's what they've been doing, here's what they're going to start doing, et cetera. And so that's how I program. And as far as how it's changed over time, I do. Well, I mean, look at it this way man, I used to do Ironman triathlon and Spartans and you know, all this crazy shit. I do way less exercise now. Even though I still, you know, back when I was training for Ironman, I was still training 14 to 16 hours a week, you know, a lot of weeks, 8 to 10 hours versus the 20 to 40 hours that's common amongst Ironman triathletes, especially Ironman triathletes who are Trying to qualify for world championships or whatever. So I've always been a minimal effective dose of exercise. Always use smarter science, such as a lot of those concepts I was talking about earlier to get as much result results as possible in as short a period of time as possible. But now I do even less exercise. I work out for 30 to 40 minutes a day. If we're talking about what most people would consider an actual workout. Right, so, so, and that, that's when I'm at home. When I travel, I'm often very, very busy. When I travel, I'm often in Ubers and airplanes and sitting in conference rooms and outside of my environment where I kind of do low level physical activity all day long that lets me get away with a 30 to 40 minute workout. So a lot of times when I travel, you know, I'll hit the gym for an hour, like the hotel gym for an hour in the morning or you know, or go for a longer walk or you know, put on blood flow restriction bands and go for a swim, you know. So when I travel it's a little bit more. But for me, if I'm working out for more than 60 minutes a day, it means that, you know, I'm way beyond what is typical for me. So way less exercise. Exercise would be one thing. I do a lot more micro workouts, like a lot more of those. Like give myself permission to just weave in 5 to 10 minute workouts throughout the day. I get by on working out less, however, by doing way more sauna, way more cold showers and cold soaks. A ton of breath work, including breath work while I'm working out. Deep nasal breathing, breath work before breath work after, you know, Wim Hof protocols before I hit the cold bath. I do a lot more meditation every single morning with my family, five to 10 minutes every single evening with my family, five to 10 minutes. I do a lot more fasting. I used to get up and punish huge meals. Now I do a 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast every day. Dinner time to dinnertime fast a couple of times a month, every quarter. Kind of like a spring cleanup where I'm doing a three to five day bone broth fast or vegetable fast or a kayakalpa or a panchakarma type of fast. That's more of an Ayurvedic approach. But I'm doing some type of fast on a regular basis and then a lot more focus on walking. I walk a ton, like I mentioned, 10 to 20,000 steps a day. So ultimately I do less exercise. 30, 60 minutes a day max. I do a lot more of the micro workouts. More heat, more cold, more breath work, more meditation, more fasting and a ton of walking. Whereas back in the day, dude, it would have been get up, you know, crush a swim, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. Lunchtime, crush a run, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. Evening before dinner, do a, do a bike or do like a four hour ride on the weekends or whatever, go to bed. Now. It's, in my opinion a lot more holistic, a lot more natural, a lot more conducive to longevity. I'm happier, I'm injured less, I feel great. You know, I'm in good shape. And so, you know, everything that I've changed in my own exercise program is kind of exactly what I wove into the Boundless program on Ladder. So that's what's changed.

Yeah, that's awesome. I'm just looking at the, I was just looking at a sneak peek of your week one program and it's exactly what you described. I think it's workouts anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. You even have a nature breath walk in there. It's truly your fitness protocol. That's awesome, man. Well, I know that we're going to do a part two, which I'll look forward to. Tell people where to find what they need about your program as well, if you want to wrap up now.

Well, yeah, I definitely, I mean, you had told me about some of the things you want to talk about. And so just for you and for the listeners, Tom and I wanted to talk about misinformation in the fitness era and all the nonsense and so called witchcraft out there. We want to talk to you about nutrition and some of my approaches to nutrition and how important that is or is not compared to fitness. I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the failures of a lot of the popular diets out there and clear up the confusion about that. And then we also wanted to fill you in even more on what the Boundless program is in Ladder. And Tom had some specific biohacks he wanted to talk about. And so we'll do a part two, but in the meantime, you know, from what I understand, Tom, and correct me if I'm wrong, basically September 19th is when this program is going to be available. My Boundless program on the Ladder app. I know that we'll link to it if people go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast that's the best place to go if you want to get the app and my program and everything a Because that's where all the show notes reside. And B, because they're able to track that link as coming from this podcast. And so it just helps me out if Tom and his team can see how many of you are coming over based on hearing this podcast. And so if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast, you can get there, or you can, of course, just find it in the App Store as well. Tom, was I correct? It's September 19th that my program launches?

Yeah. So it sounds like when this podcast drops, the program will be live and so encourage people to check it out. Definitely want to highlight that there's a seven day free trial, doesn't require a credit card. So we give everyone plenty of time to check out your full program and really get the full experience before they're asked to consider payment. And then, you know, to the extent they, they lock in, which I think many of you will, it's. It's as little as $39 a month, which, based on what I know about your offerings, this is definitely the most accessible price point that, that you've ever offered for an experience with you.

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, open the kimono. My private clients pay me $5,000 a month for me to manage everything. For them, for me to be like the CEO of their health and track their HRV and their sleep and go through all their labs and talk to them every day. Compared to that, for 50 bucks a month and the ability to be able to check it out for free and kick the tires, so to speak, this is a bargain. And of course, I wouldn't want to deceive people into thinking they're going to be on the phone with me every day on the Ladder app. But it's basically my goal was to make a lot of what I do scalable and not feel like I got to charge people tons of money to be able to access some of my knowledge and how I put programs together every month. So that's why I wanted to partner up with Tom. And I'm super excited about it. I'm going to be fully authentic and transparent with everybody listening. I didn't want to do an app. I thought it was gimmicky. I have not been impressed with any that I've seen. I, I, you know, talked to Tom. I went through the Ladder app. I went down there and filmed and, and, you know, now I'm like the polar opposite. I'm super stoked about this thing and I'm excited for, for you all to be able to try it. So. So, yeah. BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast and then if you guys have questions or technical difficulties or comments or feedback, leave them there and Tom and I will help you out. And then, Tom, I think part two is gonna be fun, dude, because I've already seen some of the stuff you want to talk about, and we're gonna have a lot of fun in part two, too. But I guess we're getting long in the tooth, so we should. We should pull it on this one. And then. And for folks listening in, Tom and I will record part two, I would say, within the next. What do you think, Tom? Like sometime in the next one to three weeks or so?

Sounds great. Okay, let's do it.

All right, cool. But, yeah, till then, thanks, Tom. You're. You. You're. You're great at putting me in the hot seat. I appreciate it.

It absolutely look forward to doing it again.

All right, folks, go to BenGreenfulFitness.com LadderPodcast Grab my program on the ladder apps called Boundless, and I'll see you in there, along with the entire rabied community who you're going to get to join in following this thing. So until next time, I'm Tom, or he's Tom. I'm Ben, and I can't talk. Signing out from bengrudefieldthennis.com have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.